“Sidney, I don’t like it that this man is paying for my daughter to get on a bus to somewhere I’ve never heard of to meet with some man we’ve never met and don’t know anything about. I think this is terrible. Sending a girl alone on a bus to an unknown city.”
“Mom, Mr. Harlan the principal is a really great guy. He’s totally trustworthy. If he says this might work I have to at least try. It’s the only chance I can see of going to college. Mom, I’m going.”
I told Dale the next time he stopped over. He shook his head in bewilderment. “You are really something. How does this stuff happen to you? You just have the craziest luck. Puppies in a box, bus tickets to colleges. You’re always full of surprises. Well, I for one sure am proud of you. Your mom’s just an old worry-wart. And she’s probably jealous ‘cause all the cool stuff happens to you.”
On Thursday night Dale stayed over and got up at four in the morning to drive me to the bus station. He wouldn’t be late for work because the bus was leaving early. The dogs had food and water and the furnace got turned up a little since the stove would go cold before my return. Dale wished me luck and promised to be there when the bus got back that night around nine o’clock. The plan was that I’d have several hours between eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon to do the interview. The principal had told his friend I’d be stopping in at the school to meet with him sometime in the middle of the day Friday.
I took the bus and slept most of the way. When we pulled sleepily into the St. Paul bus station I felt the whole arrangement was kind of crazy. I was wearing my red long underwear. I looked out at the urban setting and thought, “Oh my God I’ve been up in the woods too long. I look like some kind of mountain man.”
I had my ripped jeans, my hiking boots, my down vest and my down coat. My trapper’s hat. My chopper’s mitts. My do-it-yourself haircut. Well, at least I looked the part for the story I was about to tell. I had about twenty dollars on me and the papers for my return ticket to Virginia. I had my Illinois driver’s license. I had a cherry-tinted lip balm. That was about it.
I started walking, asking people if they knew where the college was. I got pointed up a huge hill, past the St. Paul Cathedral. I walked along a stately long boulevard called Summit Avenue. Eventually, after maybe three miles of walking, I arrived at the college. I asked where the English department was. Some students pointed to an old red stone building. I walked in. The weather in St. Paul at the end of February was balmy compared to where I was living, four hours straight north. I unzipped my coat and my vest. I checked out the students as I made my way through the halls. None of them were dressed the way I was. I felt like I had gone out sledding and everybody else was studying and working. I realized I would have to completely rethink my way of dressing, my way of living, if I were to be accepted. Going to this nice college would be as big a culture shock as going through the transition of living up in the cabin had been. I found the office door with Dr. Blake, the head of the department’s name on it, and I knocked.
I heard a cultured voice, “Yes. Feel free to open the door.” This guy didn’t sound like he was from the Iron Range at all. I opened the door and there sat a distinguished older gentleman wearing a bow tie and a tweed jacket. Books everywhere, papers everywhere.
“Hello Sir, my name is Sidney Duncan and Mr. Harlan is the principal of my school in Northern Minnesota and I understand he’s a friend of … ”
“Sidney! You made it! Come in, I’ve been looking forward to this!”
We liked each other right away. He told me about his childhood in the North Country. I told him about my situation and about Mr. Harlan’s school.
We spent nearly an hour in conversation and then Blake got serious, “Listen now, Sidney. You’re not going to learn a damn thing from that English teacher up there between now and the end of school. Some of these students come from very serious preparatory schools. They will have a big advantage over you. I think you can do this. I think you’re bright enough and confident enough to do anything. But you must do your own supplemental reading at this point, and writing too. Let’s give you a real book to read. You can take these with you and bring them back next fall. I want you to write a few pages about each one as you finish it. Just your impressions and musings. You return it all to me when you arrive in the fall, all right?”
He turned to his bookshelf. I was shocked that he would trust me with his own books. I was shocked that he was talking as if this whole college thing was in the bag.
“Let’s see. What would be most amusing in your situation is to read about small towns and public education from the masters. Main Street Sinclair Lewis is a must. He knew exactly what you are going through. Bleak House Charles Dickens, the finest essay on the terrors of the poor, the narrow minded, the oppressive cultural void. You should read both.”
He held the books out to me. I took them. Paperbacks, very worn. I flipped the pages and saw many handwritten notes in the margins. I would start reading on the bus, I promised.
“All right, very good. We need to walk across campus now and visit the financial aid office. You’ll have to tell them what you told me. They may ask some very serious questions. It’ll all be to help them determine your eligibility for financial awards. I’m excited for them to meet you.”
We crossed the campus. Dr. Blake, who was tall and lanky, surprised me by moving at a much faster pace than I was used to. I almost ran to keep up with his long brisk strides. When we left his office he had added only a beautiful hand-knitted wool scarf, wrapped several times around his neck, trailing behind him as he walked, and I was proud and also mortified to be crossing the formidable campus alongside this impressive figure. We arrived at the financial aid office and I was out of breath but he was not. We burst in to an old wood-paneled room with several women sitting at large wooden desks. My chaperone greeted them and asked after a man who came out from a back office. He was obviously the head of the financial aid department.
Dr. Blake seemed to be enjoying this. With a big grin he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Miss Sidney Duncan.”
Everyone nodded and said hello. He put his arm around my shoulders and declared, “Sidney’s an excellent student and I believe she deserves to be here in the fall.”
The man whom Dr. Blake referred to as the bursar crossed the room and offered to shake my hand.
“Sidney, hello. We’ll need to have you come in and tell us more about your circumstances. Is that all right?”
“Yes, sure. Thank you for the opportunity.”
“Oh well, this is what we love to do is help students achieve their dreams.”At this point Dr. Blake added, “Sidney has quite a story. Very remarkable, really. Wait ‘til you hear this.”
We all sat down and I was grateful that Dr. Blake stayed with me. I saw my situation at the cabin very differently as I narrated it. I saw how shocked they were that I was there alone. I saw how cold they thought it was up there. I saw how isolated and crude they thought the townspeople were in a place like that. I saw how sad they thought it was that I didn’t know where my dad was. I wanted to break down and cry, but I wanted them to respect me and think I was handling it all well, so I fought the tears and told it all like I didn’t care. I told it like an adventure story. I enjoyed their attention and I tried to make them laugh with my retelling of some of the trials and tribulations of my life.
When I was finished and the questions had all been answered, they were all looking at me with such poignant empathetic faces that I thought I really might cry. Dr. Blake stood with me to say goodbye. He put his arm tightly around my shoulders again.
They shook my hand and I heard, “Don’t worry dear, you’ll be here in the fall” and “Don’t worry, we’re getting you out of there.”
I was given many forms to fill out and mail back as soon as possible. They filled a college canvas book bag with the books Dr. Blake had given me. I was so excited to be carrying that bag.
The bursar s
aid, “Don’t hesitate to call us Sidney, if you need any help with the paperwork.”
I walked in silence beside Dr. Blake as we left the building.
“Sidney, I have to get to my next lecture now. Will you be able to find your way?”
“Yes, for sure. I know exactly.”
“All right. You did a great job in there. I think it’s all going to work out fine. They seemed confident, as am I, that this would be a great opportunity for you and a good fit for you academically. I will see you in September, my dear girl. Take care and give my regards to our Mr. Harlan.”
“Yes I will. Thank you again. Okay, goodbye.”
“See you in September.” I kept saying those words as I walked across the city in fading late winter light. I again passed the beautiful cathedral on the hill. I picked my way down the steep slope past the capitol building on my way back to the bus station in the center of the city.
I read the beginning of Main Street as I waited in the warm bus station. I chuckled to myself as Sinclair Lewis began his tale of a small town in Minnesota in the early nineteen hundreds. I could see why Dr. Blake thought this would be a good book for me. These small towns had hardly changed in the past seventy years.
Back at the cabin, I saw everything differently. The depleted woodpile didn’t scare me any more. The trickle of water at the kitchen sink, the mounting pile of frozen excrement and toilet paper behind the woodpile, the oil tank for the furnace running low, all of this was someone else’s problem. I would be going to college in a much warmer place next winter. I’d be saved. I worried about my dogs. Dale had said he’d probably be able to take them, but we were pretty sure his mother wouldn’t be thrilled. The dogs’ habit of killing animals and dragging their carcasses back to the front yard wouldn’t go over so well anywhere else. I wasn’t sure if they could be tamed at this point. They had become wild. They loved me and I loved them but I wasn’t sure if they could adapt to any other life. They had thick coats of fur like sled dogs, that you could sink your fingers into. I didn’t think they could be happy in a house now.
At school, word of my successful interview got around. There were a handful of college-bound kids and I had miraculously joined their elite circle. Mr. Harlan beamed when he told me that Dr. Blake had called to thank him for sending me his way. Mr. Harlan offered to help me go over the whole packet of application forms to be sure I was doing everything right. We thought he might have to cover the application fees out of his student fund but when we called the financial aid director he found out they would be waiving the fees. They also told Mr. Harlan that they had dug up an endowment from an alumnus from Northern Minnesota who wanted to give money to a student who was willing to be an English major and pursue a license to teach high school English. He asked me about that.
“I was planning on being an English major anyway and if I get the education certification then I could teach if I can’t do my music.”
Mr. Harlan liked this.
“To leave there after four years with an actual license to teach in the state of Minnesota would be very practical. You could always fall back on that then the rest of your life.”
“Tell them yes,” I said, and my course was set.
One morning in the first week of March, I stood waiting for the clanking old bus and Corey the party guy bus driver to come barreling down the road. Snow was piled high above my head all around me in the turnaround. The temperatures had let up a bit and it was maybe only ten below that morning, with a high planned for well above zero. The faint light of day was becoming more evident each morning as I stood at six-thirty waiting for the bus. When the bus doors swung open and the welcome blast of hot air hit me in the face, I saw Corey’s eyes brightly fixed on me.
“Hi?” I said in inquiry.
“Sidney. How ya doing this morning? I have something I want to tell you. Can you stay up here for a minute.”
“Yeah, sure. What’s going on?”
I stood at the front of the bus and he didn’t step on the gas and peel out like he usually did.
“My wife and I had our first baby last night.”
“Congratulations.”
At six-thirty in the morning I didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm for this.
“Yeah, thank you.”
He looked like he was going to start crying. I decided I better listen more carefully.
“Yeah, so … well, see … I’ve been telling my wife about you all winter. And I haven’t said this to you, but I feel like I want to now. When I first was picking you up in the mornings, and I mean I had heard stories about you being down there on your own and all, and just kept thinking this city girl ain’t gonna make it. I’m sorry, but that’s what I thought.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Okay, well, just let me finish. So winter came and when it got real cold I’d be driving down here in the morning and it’d be pitch black, not a soul for miles, and I’d say, she won’t be there. There’s no way she’s gonna be standing there waiting for this bus. And lo and behold there you’d be. Every day. I couldn’t believe it.”
I felt the warmth of what he was saying. I felt for this one moment that time stood still. I stopped caring that he was holding up the other kids, holding up the drive to school, to talk to me. I listened.
“So I kept telling my wife all this while she’s been pregnant, and I just want you to know that when our baby was born early this morning, it’s a beautiful baby girl, just perfect in every way, and we decided to name her after you.”
I stood with my eyes meeting his, “And I just hope she turns out to be as fine a young person as you are, Sidney.”
I said nothing but I smiled. I nodded my head and we looked at each other with tears in our eyes. Corey revved the bus engine then and I turned and made my way to a seat near the back. All the kids were dozing or listening to the music. Corey turned the music back up to its usual raging volume. The bus bumped along on its well-worn path. I looked at the ramshackle houses and shacks and cabins we passed, and kept my eyes on my favorite sign as we went by, “Why Live In God’s Country Without God?”
PRESTON’S VISIT
Preston surprised me with a phone call in March saying he wanted to come up and stay with me over spring break. I had the week off from my school too. I picked him up in the old red truck on a snowy late afternoon in late March and we made the drive out to the cabin. My big brother looked thinner, smaller somehow, than he had at the end of the summer. He had lost his suntan and looked pale and tired. I noticed that his thin hands, which had always seemed elegant, were strangely fragile now, and stained on the fingertips, a dark tobacco brown, which I knew meant he was smoking a lot of handrolled cigarettes. He was wearing his same black wool beret pulled down over one eyebrow, the same black pea coat he was wearing when he left for school over a huge fisherman-knit cream-colored sweater which had been our dad’s. The cuffs were soiled and pulled down, almost covering his hands. He had a plaid wool scarf wrapped several times around his neck and up to his ears. He appeared world-weary, and was quiet. I wasn’t sure what to say. I was frightened by his appearance and worried about him staying with me for the week. I kept wondering what he was going to want to do and how we were going to pay for food.
As we drove, Preston stared out the window and I saw the endless frozen landscape of unbroken treeline through his eyes. I felt like I was driving him out into the middle of nowhere. My colorful life of music and school and fun disappeared and it was just trees and snow forever.
As we approached the cabin though, Preston seemed to light up with anticipation. He suddenly became animated, talking too fast for me to answer.
“Oh my God, Sid. I can’t believe you’ve been up here all this time. How cold did it get? What did Grandpa’s thermometer do? Oh my God, it completely bottomed out? No fucking way. Holy shit. Fucking insane. This is crazy. It’s crazier than I thought it would be. Look at you, you’ve fucking adapted, in that fur hat. You’re like some woods woman.”
I could see his mind jumping all over, trying to catch up with all that had happened since the summer.
“When was the last time you saw old Mom? Seymour? You’ve seen Seymour too? What’s he like now that he’s fucking our mom? When did you last hear from Dad? Poor Dad, God Sid, I feel so bad for him. I feel so fucking terrible for the guy. Damn. God damn. He tried so hard, Sid. He loved Mom so much. He really did. I think Mom is a bad person. I think she pushed Dad too hard to make money so she could come up here every summer while he was toiling away. Then when the money got tight she jumped ship with his old best friend.”
I listened, not sure what to think. I stared out at the snow, keeping my eyes on the yellow line.
Soon we were on our road down the point and Preston was peering out his side window watching for the cabin lights. As soon as I turned into the drive Preston hopped in his seat with excitement.
“The snow is so high! What? I can’t fucking believe this! Who plows this? I cannot believe this place. Oh my God Sid, this has been so insane for you, I can see it man. Fucking intense.”
Suddenly my brother fell silent and I knew he had laid his eyes for the first time on my two half-wild dogs and their yard of bones. They were both sprawled out like great lions on their smoothed area of packed-down white snow smeared with the red bloodstains from their kill.
I smiled as my brother stared in silence.
Finally he spoke in a slow solemn way, “Sister Sid. Those are your dogs you told me about, but you didn’t tell me they got a hold of Mom and ate her.”
We both laughed a long time and then we got out and I introduced my brother to Ribbon and Bow.
A day or two into his visit, I told Preston we were going to need to buy more food but I didn’t have much money. He said he had some and that we should drive to the big grocery store in Virginia. I protested that we could go to the small store in the tiny town where my school was but he insisted on us going to the big store.
We drove to town the next morning and pulled up in front of the grocery store. Preston said, “Okay, you get whatever you can pay for, whatever you would normally get, and I’ll go around and get some more stuff okay? I’ll take care of my stuff myself.”
A Girl Called Sidney Page 25