Memory Boy Page 6

  “How about some jazz?” my father said softly. “Try down around ninety-five.”

  My mother rolled the dial. “—was the Shawnee Kingston Jazz Band,” the announcer finished, “from their tribute to the Buddy Rich CD. Next up, a classic set from John Coltrane.”

  We all looked at my father.

  He was silent a moment. “Maybe Miles is right,” he said. There was something incredibly sad in his voice. My mother clicked off the sound altogether.

  “Anyway, Birch Bay tonight, gang,” she said, stowing her Palm Pal and trying to pick up the mood.

  No one said anything.

  See what the news does? I wanted to say.

  For the next half hour we rolled along at a good pace, and even I, the family pessimist, started to relax a bit. We might actually get there alive. Once we got to the cabin, we’d unload our food, including several big bags of rice. The lake was full of fish, and I knew how to catch them. There was firewood, there was fresh water. We’d be fine.

  Heading north, with a quartering westerly breeze in the sail, we approached the entrance to Camp Ripley, a longtime center of National Guard activity. As a kid I used to think the convoys of trucks were cool because they were painted in camo. But lately trucks like that made me uneasy.

  An armed sentry at the head of the long camp driveway stepped out onto the highway and held up his arm. We had no choice but to dump the sail and coast to a stop. My mother hopped off the Ali Princess well before we reached a complete halt.

  “Hello there,” the soldier said to her.

  “Why are you stopping us?” she said. She was suddenly in the face of the young soldier. “This is a public highway, right?”

  “I’m not really—” he began.

  “Is there some particular law we’re breaking?” she asked.

  “Well, my orders are to check on folks—”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall the United States Constitution being amended lately, particularly Article Twelve, which guarantees citizens the right of free passage. You do know the Constitution, don’t you?”

  A small convoy of trucks approached and signaled a turn onto the highway—which we blocked.

  “Um, have a nice trip, ma’am,” the soldier stammered, and stepped aside.

  “That’s more like it,” my mother said, shaking her finger at him. “Just because this country’s struggling a bit doesn’t mean you guys are in charge, remember that!”

  “No ma’am, I mean, yes ma’am,” he called out, and waved the trucks forward.

  We pedaled a few yards until we caught the wind.

  “I don’t remember an Article Twelve,” I ventured. I had studied the Constitution in civics class; Article Twelve did not ring a bell.

  “Me neither,” Sarah said.

  “Well, if there’s not an Article Twelve, there ought to be one,” my mother said.

  By noon the wind had dropped, as had our speed. It was getting warm, too, another reason I had not wanted to move during the day. All four of us pedaled steadily. Sarah kept drinking water as if our supply was endless.

  “Take a break soon?” my father asked. Little rivulets of sweat and dust leaked out the sides of his mask.

  “Rock Lake is just ahead,” I called. It was a small town where we always stopped for ice cream.

  “Maybe the Dairy Queen is open,” Sarah panted.

  “Yeah, well, if it is, let’s check the prices first,” my mother said.

  Soon, just off the expressway, behind a grove of dusty pines, rose the red-and-white water tower of Rock Lake. Its round top was painted like a fishing bobber.

  “I see it,” Sarah said. “I saw it first.”

  Not true, but I didn’t say anything.

  We turned off the expressway and pedaled toward Main Street—which was blocked. A wooden barricade sat across the entrance to town, manned by an old fellow slumped in a lawn chair and wearing sunglasses. LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY read the sign on the barricade. Beyond, down Main Street, a few people came and went on riding lawnmowers and small garden tractors.

  We pulled to a stop. The old man jerked upright in his chair; he had been dozing. He stared at the Princess as if he was dreaming. “Whoa! What do we have here?” Several locals stepped from the nearby bakery to look at the Princess. Three teenagers, each driving a muddy four-wheeler, roared up. Wearing full helmets and dark goggles, the drivers peered at the Princess and raced their engines.

  My mother ignored the local Hell’s Angels kids. “Good afternoon,” she said to the gatekeeper. “Is the Dairy Queen open?”

  “Yes. Why?” the old-timer said.

  “We thought we’d stop for some ice cream,” my mother said.

  The old man’s gaze went to our luggage in the cargo bay. “You’re not from here?”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “We have a cabin just up the road a ways. That’s where we’re headed.”

  “A cabin? Where?”

  “It’s on County Road 77, north side of Gull Lake.”

  “Where on the north side of Gull Lake?” one of the teenagers called; he gunned the engine of his lawn tractor.

  “Just a half mile past the golf course.”

  The men looked at each other. One of them shrugged.

  “Okay, then,” the old man said. He pulled aside the barrier with a scraping sound. “Otherwise I’d have to ask you to get on that crazy rig and head back where you came from. We already got too many people coming up here from the cities.”

  “Too many,” another rough-looking guy echoed.

  “Have a nice day,” Sarah said as we passed by. The four-wheeler posse made two loud loops around us and raced their engines while we parked.

  “Losers,” Sarah muttered.

  The Dairy Queen clerk was a middle-aged woman wearing a little red-and-white hat. There was only vanilla ice cream, and no cones, but sundaes were possible.

  “And how much might these sundaes be?” my mother asked.

  “Ah, four sundaes? That would be $32.00.” The clerk looked at my mother without smiling.

  “I always said this town was a tourist trap,” my mother murmured to my father. Then she looked up. “All right. Four sundaes. And don’t spare the ice cream.”

  In the end they weren’t that big. As we ate, some locals watched us.

  “Strangers,” Sarah said to them. “That’s us.”

  They stared blankly.

  I kicked her sharply under the table. “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t like being here. Outside, the four-wheelers kept making circles around the Princess. I felt like that carp with its fin out of the water.

  “Eat up,” I said to my family.

  As we left Rock Lake, the whining four-wheeler brigade was nowhere to been seen. That was fine by me. We picked up the pace on the Ali Princess and quickly put Rock Lake a couple of miles behind.

  Maybe it was the energy boost from the ice cream, or maybe it was because we were almost to Birch Bay, but we finally found our pedaling rhythm. Another hour at the most. I began to daydream about a nap on the wide lakefront porch....

  “Miles!” my father shouted.

  “Oh, God!” Sarah chirped.

  In a whine of engines and a blue cloud of oil smoke, a half dozen four-wheelers broke out of the trees and raced alongside us. Two of them, ones I hadn’t seen in Rock Lake, were driven by larger guys; plastic rifle scabbards jutted from the rear.

  “Keep going!” I shouted to my family.

  The gang matched our pace, then sped ahead. I thought they were leaving—until they turned sharply, skidded to a stop, and blocked the highway. We had nowhere to go.

  And the Ali Princess had no real brakes.

  “Drag your feet!” I cried. We did, and managed to stop just inches short of a muddy, battered vehicle with balloon tires.

  “What is this?” my mother said. As usual, she hopped off the Ali Princess and stepped forward.

  “This is a toll road,” the biggest driver said. He glanced to the others,
who nodded. We could see none of their faces. I looked again at the rifle scabbards.

  “No, it’s a public highway,” my mother said.

  “Not today it isn’t,” another rider said.

  “Go easy,” my father murmured to her. He, too, was looking at the gun cases. He stepped forward.

  “Hey, young dudes,” he said easily. I recognized his stage voice, his musician’s manner. “What’s going on? We’re headed up to our place on the lake.”

  “Fine. Pay us and you can be on your way.”

  My father smiled. “You guys need a few bucks for ice cream, maybe a little gasoline, I can understand that. Hey, all you got to do is ask.”

  I understood—maybe for the first time since I was small and saw him sail the Tonka Miss all day against the wind—that my father knew how to do a lot of things. It was just that he was totally different from me.

  “So, we’re asking,” the leader said him.

  “Okay,” my father replied. He kept his voice light and amused. He wagged a finger as he counted the riders. “Six of you. How about five bucks apiece. Thirty bucks.” Without waiting for an answer, he reached into his shirt pocket and peeled off three tens. He held out the money. The leader snatched it.

  “Now we got some miles to cover, and you boys have a nice day,” my father said. He jerked his head for us to get ready to pedal.

  The lead bandit looked at the money in his hand. “Seems to me if you got thirty, then you must have a hundred.”

  There was silence.

  “Or three hundred,” another said. They all laughed.

  “In fact, why don’t we take all your money?” the leader said.

  I looked at my baseball bat. One against six was not good.

  “Listen, boys,” my father began.

  “You listen to me. I want you all to step off that crazy vehicle,” the leader said. The others nodded.

  “So much for traveling in broad daylight,” I muttered.

  The hijackers dismounted and pulled narrow wooden clubs from their rifle scabbards. At least there weren’t real guns.

  “Step aside,” the leader said.

  We obeyed.

  Just as the gang was about to ransack the Princess—like in an old cowboy movie—the sheriff arrived. Not really the sheriff, but a single green Humvee with its headlights on.

  “Shit!” the leader said. The gang whirled around to look at the Humvee. In one motion they leaped onto their little iron horses and cranked the engines. Within seconds they lurched forward and roared up the bank and into the trees. Their dust hung in the air.

  The Humvee approached, then braked to a stop. “Hello, folks.” The driver wore mirrored sunglasses.

  My father nodded.

  “Was that that gang of little shits on four-wheelers?” the Humvee driver said, looking at the dust cloud and the tracks up the bank.

  “I would say that was them,” my father said.

  “Their ass is grass,” the Humvee passenger said. “We’ve had nothing but trouble with that bunch.”

  “They did seem a little short on structured summer activities,” my mother said. My heart was still pounding.

  “Tell you what,” the Humvee driver said. “We’ll give you folks an escort for a few miles just to make sure you’re safe. In fact, I’ve got a tow rope. Why don’t you hook on?”

  “Miles?” my mother said.

  The government never did anything for me, that’s for sure. Most people depend on the government. Not me. I depended on myself.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Thank you,” my mother said to the soldier. As we hooked on and got ready for our free ride, she glanced at me and shrugged. “Crow is not that bad to eat. As an adult, you get used to it.”

  “Excuse me?” the Humvee driver said to her.

  “An inside joke,” my mother said.

  “Ready!” I called to the driver. And with a small lurch we were off. We kicked back and let the breeze blow over us as we rolled north.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BUENA VISTA REVISITED

  THE ORAL-HISTORY PROJECT CONTINUED FOR six weeks. Six times I visited Mr. Kurz. Mainly we worked on things. Sometimes he talked, sometimes he didn’t. Unlike most of the other ninth graders, I didn’t bother with a tape recorder. I didn’t even take notes. I could remember what I needed to. And anyway, most of it was rambling, useless stuff.

  Berries. A man should know his berries. Best ones are blueberries. If they can escape a late frost in June, you’re lucky. But they’re hardy plants. They don’t need a lot of sunlight, plus they grow best where there are pine trees and the soil is sandy. Blueberries like pine needles for some reason. Makes the soil sour, is my theory. You want to find blueberries, look for pines, rocks, and sand. But they don’t last long. If the bears don’t get them, by the end of July, they’re done.

  Wild grapes last a little longer. Look for them along riverbanks and swamps. The vines use other trees to climb up and get better light. They depend on other trees. Kind of like most people depend on the government. Parasites, I call them. But wild grapes are mighty tasty. Most times you got to look high up and climb for them, but they’re worth it.

  High-bush cranberries last the longest—again, if the birds or bears don’t get them. They come in red clusters. You’ll see them in September, where it’s swampy, hanging from bushes a tall man high. Sometimes you can smell cranberries before you see them—kind of a rank, sweet odor. They’re good all fall and into the winter, even if they freeze. Once when I was trapping in January, I saw some bushes red with them. Those berries were as hard and clear as agates. I picked them, but I had nothing to carry them in except my hat, which I had to put back on my head ’cause it was cold. When I got home, the heat of my skull had thawed the berries and red juice was running down my neck. I looked like I’d been in a fight with a bear. I made jelly that night. Whole cabin smelled of it, hot and tangy.

  Okay, fine. I could do something with the bear part. Maybe make up that the bear had broken into his cabin. Hand-to-hand combat. Who was going to know? Plus I’d heard that Litzke graded mainly on volume. Some kids said he had a scale and weighed the final project: The heavier the interview, the more the pages, the better the grade.

  My brothers, my whole family, they always thought I was crazy. Just because I lived alone and saved my money. Not like them, with credit cards and house payments and fancy cars. I told them, when you pay interest, you’re working for the bank. Banks are like prisons—you just can’t see the walls. They said I was nuts. Just because I never had a credit card in my life, and no house payment, either. Nuts, they called me. But that’s how I could live so cheap—I never paid any interest to nobody. But you live like a hermit, they told me. Maybe so, but I’ll bet I got more money put away than you do, I told them. Which was a mistake. You never want to tell anybody—not even your own family—what you got. Because once you tell, you’re a marked man.

  Mr. Litzke took great pleasure in asking me how Mr. Kurz and I were getting along.

  “Fine,” I told him.

  Once he dropped by Mr. Kurz’s room to check on us. Luckily I managed to hide my tools.

  “Well, are you two getting a lot of work done?” he asked loudly.

  “A lot,” I said. So far Mr. Kurz and I had repaired four skateboards, and I had cleared a total of eighty bucks reselling them.

  Mr. Kurz stared suspiciously at Litzke. We were all silent.

  “Carry on, then,” Litzke said.

  After he left, Mr. Kurz muttered, “Who was that guy?”

  “He works for the government,” I whispered.

  “That’s what I thought,” Mr. Kurz said.

  They never found me, though. They came up north and were snooping around, asking, but no one knew where my cabin was. That’s because it wasn’t on the tax roll. He, he, he. Why buy your own land when there’s thousands of acres of it just sitting there? State lands belong to the people. And that’s me, I’m the people. A veteran, too. In th
e War I fought in Italy, Germany, France, you name it. Before the War I was different. I liked people. But when it was over in forty-five, all I wanted was a little peace and quiet. So I went up north and found me a spot on the river and built me a shack on the Mississippi. Near Itasca Park, that’s all I’ll say. Better than a shack. A nice little cabin. No roads to it, either—but you could get to it by car. He, he, he. That’s all I’ll say about that. Anyway, when my family couldn’t find me, they had to leave me alone. Which is the way I wanted it. I lived by myself for over fifty years. Happy as a clam, too. My mistake was coming down to the city for my sister’s funeral. She got old and died. Don’t know how that happened. But she was the only nice one among my brothers and sisters, so I took the Greyhound bus down from Bemidji. I was eighty-nine myself by then. They were waiting for me, oh yes. All smiles. I should have known something was up. After the funeral they said, Hans, we want you to stay on with us. No thanks, I said. They said, You can’t go on anymore living like you do, like a wild man, like a hermit—look at you, they said. I said I liked my life just fine. They said, We have a place for you here in the city. A place of your own, they said. They kept smiling. All smiles. That night I slipped out of the house, tried to walk to the Greyhound bus station. But I got turned around. Every street looked the same. I couldn’t remember which direction anything was. I didn’t know which way was home. I just wanted to get back up north to my cabin. But the police found me, took me back to my brother’s place. And here I am. At Buena Vista. What kind of name is Buena Vista, anyway? That’s what I want to know.

  “It’s Spanish,” I said as I tightened a truck nut. “It means beautiful view.” I kept working. I hadn’t been listening closely.

  Then I felt him staring at me, and I looked up. His beady blue eyes had swelled with water. His heavy lower lids were like two dams ready to break and let their rivers flow. Suddenly he turned away from me. He went to his armchair and sat staring out the window.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SQUATTERS

  AFTER A FIVE-MILE TOW FROM the friendly soldiers, we unhooked at County Road 77. “We’ll take it from here,” I said.