|
|
Just about six months later then it was mid-winter and white and cold, and I turned my Escort left, northbound, onto County Road 69, and later I thought how much I liked it that North Road was 69.
That was the old Escort on which I learned about alternators and brakes and coils and spark plugs but learned quite poorly. Do you remember those kids in math class – algebra or geometry – who asked, “When am I ever gonna to use this in real life?” That’s how I treated everything which truly was useful for real life: I just didn’t wanna learn it.
North Road turns right at the back door of the park, left along the park boundary, right again, left again, right under the old pine, right again, then the right angle (that means 90° in geometry) left, and then straight to a 90° right, and by the graveyard, and past Camp 20 and Weber’s corner, and there was the mill, open, throwing sawdust out the other side. And there was my great-uncle George in the Carhartt and Red Wings and Stormy Kromer and thick glasses and earmuffs. He’s 93 now and now his mill is down off of Murmur Creek. But in those days all those years ago it was on North Road along the Flute Reed.
My job at the mill was usually just something to keep me busy, anything to keep me moving, working physically, plus to offset my board and room. Come to think of it, considering all that, it was a very important job, or important for me to do. Supposedly Gandhi once said, “Nothing you do will make any difference, but it is very important that you do it.” Henry Miller once described himself as, “Gandhi with a penis.”
I gathered the scraps – the slabs, the rough bark sides, long toothpicks, the cracked planks, the rotten cores of the larger trunks – I gathered them and stacked them neatly in great stacks, out of the way, and they’d later be processed for firewood. Sometimes given enough time and energy it would be me that would process them by setting them on the sawbuck and bucking them with a chainsaw; buck and buck and buck, until there was so much firewood at my feet that I couldn’t move. Then I’d move it, pile it, and stack it. I moved it with the wheelbarrow or by the sled or in the bed of the pickup, depending on where I was moving it – that is, how far away it was being stacked.
It was just fir, I think, or maybe spruce. Very poor firewood. Quick to burn, needing plenty of it to heat. But there was no shortage of it for us. It was very important to keep busy doing the work. I’m not even sure what my great-uncle George did with all the wood he milled. You get the idea. Work was the important part. Keeping me busy. Keeping my mind occupied.
Which as I said was very important for me back then, because if I was left alone inside on a chair, I would brood. If I lay down on the floor or on my bed I would ruminate. If I was to go outside, I might sit down in the snow and expire.
In the evening he cooked, and I did the dishes. We would sit at the table in the glaring lights, with all the great picture windows all around; it black outside so all the windows did was reflect back to us ourselves and the table and kitchen area and woodstove.
I asked him about the WPA or CCC or forest service, I can’t remember now. I asked him about the history of the cabin. The first structure (log), the addition. The first, second, third garages. We were on our third outhouse back then.
On the third night like this we were quiet for a while. And then he seemed to remember something.
“I don’t know,” he said, “if you drink?” The hell kind of question was that. Actually, I was surprised that I hadn’t thought about it up to then.
He didn’t much himself but got up and motioned me into the sleeping quarters, where he got down on his hands and knees under one of the guest beds and pulled out a bunk box filled with bottles. Probably gifts from guests that he never got around to drinking. So, I went through them all, and made my selection(s). Probably Scotch or Irish or Canadian.
And we sat at the table in the evening in the bright light overhead, and stared out into the abyss, until it started staring back at us. I asked him about the war. The Bulge. The wound – or was it two wounds? The Bridge at Remagen. Patton.
One morning he suggested I take the day off and do something fun. So, I took the old .22 and my snowshoes and strapped on the snowshoes and went down the steep bank into the value of the frozen, snow-covered Flute Reed River. I got onto the creek proper and could hear it flowing under me, under the snow and under the ice. I turned right (that is, downstream, so you can orient yourself).
And what a wilderness I entered.
So many fir and spruce trees in hibernation, so many aspens and birch and black ash suspended near death. Dead wood in blowdowns over the creek and windfalls in the vale, and driftwood on the bends and old and new beaver dams.
Nothing much else. I snowshoed the creek all the way downstream to the first bridge, a couple miles, then walked back up North Road carrying my snowshoes and the .22. It was mid-afternoon by the time I got back. Anyway, at least I wasn’t thinking too much of her.
Leave a Reply