American Boy

by Larry Watson

  My mother was squarely in the other camp, which included all those suspicious of outsiders and uneasy at the prospect of change. They felt that the Dunbars’ fine clothes, their grand house, and their trips to Minneapolis to take in the symphony or ballet were not markers of culture and sophistication, but rather of ostentation. And for many Minnesotans, there could be no greater failing. These folks were determinedly unpretentious, and their sense that life in Willow Falls didn’t amount to much was consistent with their perspective on life in general. In our wind-blown part of the world, where nothing rose higher than a few cottonwoods, to want too much or to reach too high was to set yourself up for inevitable disappointment. Not surprisingly, most of the people who felt this way had farming in their background; they might have been town dwellers by this point, but not for more than a generation or two, and they likely had a relative or two who still lived out in the country.

  Before leaving the kitchen, my mother said, “Phil asked if you want to bus tables during your Christmas vacation. He’s willing to hire you on.”

  Phil Palmer was my mother’s employer, and I knew she would have asked him for this favor. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Don’t think too long.”

  My mother walked out of the kitchen, but then returned almost immediately to retrieve her Pall Malls. And she had another question for me. “How does Mrs. Dunbar fix her stuffing?”

  “She mixes in sausage. And slices of apple. To keep it moist, she says.”

  “Sausage and apple ... huh!” Her eyebrows rose as if she found Mrs. Dunbar’s method of preparing dressing more baffling than the news of the shooting.

  “It was good.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Have you had your fill of turkey yet? If you haven’t, I could make a little one for us. But big enough so we’d have some extra for sandwiches.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Well, let me know if you change your mind. Red Owl’s going to sell their leftover birds cheap.”

  “But it wouldn’t be for Thanksgiving.”

  “No, but it’d be turkey.”

  I knew the Dunbar house so well that I could tell which of their four telephones Mrs. Dunbar had answered from the sound of her footsteps as she walked away to find her son after putting the receiver down. High heels on the wood floors—the telephone on the small table next to the wide staircase.

  As soon as Johnny came on the line I asked, “Did you hear about Lester Huston?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Deputy Greiner called a little while ago to tell Dad what happened. Dad lit into him because apparently Greiner told Lester Huston that Louisa Lindahl was in critical condition. He made it sound like she was going to die. So Lester Huston thought there was a good chance he’d be charged with murder.”

  “What the hell did Greiner do that for?”

  “That’s what Dad asked him. The deputy kept saying it was part of his interrogation. Dad told him that when Sheriff Hart gets back to town he’s going to hear what a screwup he has for a deputy.”

  “Man, what I would’ve given to hear your dad read Greiner the riot act!”

  “He was pissed, all right. Royally pissed.”

  Before that day I would have had a hard time imagining Dr. Dunbar angry. But now I had seen his expression when I touched Louisa Lindahl’s stomach.

  “Does Louisa Lindahl know Huston’s dead?”

  “Dad went upstairs to break the news to her a few minutes ago.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Dad didn’t want her spending the night in the clinic. There aren’t any real beds in there, and it would have been too far away if she needed something during the night. So we moved her upstairs to that little back bedroom.”

  “It was okay to move her? Jesus, she was shot—. And you helped? Did you carry her or what?”

  “She could walk a little, but only a couple steps. We tried propping her up between us, but she couldn’t raise her arms to put them around our shoulders because it pulled too hard on her stitches. So finally Dad just carried her.”

  “He carried her? Up the stairs?”

  Johnny laughed. “Sure, he’s a doctor!”

  “Did she say anything, you know, when you were trying to help her?”

  “Nah. She barely knew where she was. But when we helped her off the table, she whispered, ‘Fuck.’”

  Lying awake in bed that night, I tried in vain to recall the sight of Louisa Lindahl’s breasts. But try as I might I couldn’t concentrate on that image. Instead, questions kept imposing themselves. What, I wondered, would make a man lean into his own death when all he needed to do to save his life was sit back and slacken the noose that he himself had knotted? Was it fear of the punishment he’d receive, or did he find unbearable the realization that he had killed the woman he’d loved?

  5.

  AMONG DR. DUNBAR’S MANY CONTRIBUTIONS to civic life in Willow Falls—serving on the school board, standing by as physician-in-attendance at high school athletic events, heading up charity drives—he organized hockey in our town.

  Though we clearly did have a climate conducive to the sport—our ponds and the Willow River usually had at least a skin of ice by Thanksgiving—hockey was not popular in our part of the state. In northern Minnesota boys laced up their skates and grabbed a stick as soon as they could walk, but in Willow Falls the big sports were baseball, football, and basketball, as well as hunting and fishing. Dummett’s Hardware sold pucks, sticks, and skates, but there were no school or amateur hockey programs, and no public ice was maintained for the sport. A few kids whacked a puck around on one of the public rinks from time to time, but until Dr. Dunbar came to town there were never hockey games. He had played hockey in high school and college, he loved the sport, and he wasn’t about to give it up just because the residents of our town had wobbly ankles and didn’t know a hip check from a glove save.

  Every year then, once the cold weather came to stay, Dr. Dunbar converted a carefully measured section of their big backyard into a skating rink. And while the children in Willow Falls were welcome to use the rink to practice figure eights or to play crack-the-whip during the week, on weekends the ice was reserved for hockey games. You had to be at least high school age to play, and over the years a few men became passable players—usually enough, anyway, for two full teams.

  When Johnny and I were growing up, Dr. Dunbar provided us with plenty of instruction on the ice. But until we came of age, we stood along the sidelines with the rest of the spectators—at least fifty people would often show up to watch the weekend games. Even when there was little chance we’d be invited to play, though, we always came prepared. We wore our skates, our supporters and cups (we called them “cans”), and we wrapped newspapers or magazines around our shins. Finally, when we were sixteen, we were allowed to take part in the competition.

  In truth, however, those pickup games were far more recreational than they were competitive. What would have landed a player in the penalty box in a real hockey game was likely to be accidental and followed by an apology on our rink. Body checks were more like the suggestion of what an actual check might be, and there was never an occasion when players were tempted to throw down their gloves and square off. And Dr. Dunbar and the Burrows brothers, Stan and Don, were the only players who wore hockey gloves or pads. More often than not, Dr. Dunbar also wore his old Wolverines jersey. The rest of us were out there in wool mackinaws, sweatshirts, and mittens. No one wore a helmet or a mask, but back then very few professional players did either.

  The Burrows brothers were pretty fair hockey players. They’d grown up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and played in high school. Red Rayner was from Warroad, Minnesota, and he could play, too. A few more men had some hockey in their past, and still others developed a few skills just from playing over the years, but Dr. Dunbar was indisputably the best player. Born and raised in northern Michigan, he attended the University of Michigan on a hockey scholarship, and though he had an opportunity to p
lay junior-league hockey after graduation, by then he had decided on a career in medicine.

  Every time he laced up his skates, though, his talent and skill returned, and his superiority to every other player was apparent. He skated backward faster than most of us could move forward, and he handled the puck as dexterously as the rest of us might flip a coin and pass it from hand to hand. On the ice he had agility and grace that would have been astonishing if you only saw him sitting behind his desk in a suit. And if you were lucky enough to be on his team, your game improved instantly. He’d pass the puck to you in such a way that it didn’t even seem as if you had to catch it; it would simply land on your stick at exactly the instant when it had to be there. And with what seemed to be little more than a flick of the wrist, his shots on goal flew from his stick as if the puck were rocket propelled.

  One Sunday a few weeks after that Thanksgiving Day when Louisa Lindahl was brought to the doctor’s clinic, we gathered for a game. There was no wind at all, and snow was falling at a rate of over an inch an hour, covering the drifts that had been on the ground since Thanksgiving. The flakes fell straight down like a heavy veil, but Dr. Dunbar was not to be deterred. He and a few other men brought out snow shovels, cleared the ice, and the game was on. A few wives, girlfriends, younger brothers and sisters were on hand as spectators, the snow gathering on their coats and hats faster than they could brush it away. They clapped as much to keep warm as to cheer us on. And Janet and Julia skipped from one side of the ice to the other, shouting encouragement to their father, Johnny, or me, their allegiance dictated by who was closest to the puck.

  Johnny and his father played on the same team that afternoon, with the Burrows brothers on the opposite team for the sake of competitive balance. I was on the Burrows’ team, but I didn’t contribute much. My hockey skills were limited to getting up and down the ice in a hurry, so long as I could travel in a straight line.

  Our games usually started slowly, as we all adjusted to being on skates and the older players allowed their joints to thaw. That day the heavy snow made all of us even more tentative in our first few trips up and down the ice. Soon, however, we were at full speed, though the pace varied considerably from player to player, and it was interrupted frequently that afternoon in any case, in order to clear the ice of snow.

  Shortly after one of those breaks, Johnny was skating up the side of the rink with the puck. I had a clear shot at him, and when I hit him with a shoulder check, he flew off the ice and into a snow pile with a thump. The hit was legal, but the collision was more violent than I expected it to be, perhaps because I caught Johnny completely by surprise, the contact coming before he could do a thing to prepare himself.

  But other than having the wind knocked out of him and getting some snow down his collar, Johnny was unhurt, and he waved off my apology. Back on the ice, he skated alongside me, and said with a smile, “I hope that’s just a phase you’re going through.”

  It was a private joke. In sixth grade our teacher had been the soft-hearted Miss Dell, and she never scolded her students with anything stronger than that phrase. Johnny and I adopted it as our slogan, and any punch in the arm, failed joke, or clumsy mistake would likely provide an occasion for one of us to recite Miss Dell’s words.

  After I slammed into Johnny, however, something in the game changed. Only a couple minutes later, the doctor and I tangled behind the goal—chicken wire stretched between two steel pipes—and while we were scrambling for the puck, he jabbed me hard in the ribs with the butt end of his stick. Only a few minutes later, he hip-checked me so hard he knocked me off my skates. I landed hard and slid into the knees of another player who almost fell on top of me.

  I had no doubt that the doctor was singling me out for this treatment, and though it made me mad, there was nothing I could do to get back at him. If I tried to skate into him, he’d spin away and make me miss, perhaps with another check to hurry me on my way.

  But anger and adrenaline now fueled my game, and I soon intercepted a pass and broke away with a clear path to the goal. Bent low and moving fast down the center of the rink with the puck out in front of me, I had only the goalie to contend with, the wide-bodied but slow-handed Dennis McMaster.

  Then something rapped my ankle. At first I thought I had kicked myself with my own skate as I sprinted down the ice. Another bump came, and this time I knew I hadn’t done it to myself. Then, before I knew exactly what had happened, I was off my skates and sliding along on my chest, the puck wobbling ineffectually out in front of me and my stick trailing off in another direction.

  I could do nothing to control the direction or speed of my slide, and I realized too late that I was heading for one of the pipes. My mittened hand and wrist kept my head from taking the full force of the impact, but the blow came hard enough. And just as it did, it occurred to me that it was Dr. Dunbar who had tripped me up.

  The doctor skated up quickly, joining Dennis McMaster beside the goal. “You okay, Matt?” Dennis asked.

  “Yeah.” The answer was reflexive. I hadn’t had time yet to access my injuries.

  I tried to pull myself to my feet, using for support the same pipe I’d banged into. A skate slid out from under me, but before I fell again Johnny was there, his arm under my armpit, steadying and lifting me.

  “Doesn’t count,” he said with a smile, “if your head goes into the net. It’s got to be the puck.”

  “Head. Puck. I get those mixed up.” I tasted blood, and began to probe carefully with my tongue to determine if I’d lost any teeth. They were all there, but blood filled my mouth and I spit, streaking the snow.

  My cheek. I had bit my cheek.

  “Goddamn, Matt,” Dennis said, a comment I initially thought was prompted by my bloody expectoration.

  Dr. Dunbar dropped his stick, thrust his hand under his arm to pull off his glove, and reached toward me. “Better let me look at that, Matthew.”

  I assumed he was referring to the hole in my cheek, but when I opened my mouth and tilted my head a curtain of red fell over one eye.

  Either the ice or the steel pipe had opened a gash over my eye, and that was the injury that concerned Dr. Dunbar. I tried to wipe away the blood, but a red fog immediately clouded my vision.

  Dr. Dunbar gently pushed my hand out of the way and inspected my injury. His fingers were warm on my forehead. After gently prodding the split skin around my eyebrow, he said, “Let’s go inside, Matthew. We need to take care of that cut.”

  As the doctor and I walked off the ice, he made no apologies for having played a part in my fall. But I knew instinctively what he’d done. I’d underestimated how protective he felt toward Johnny, and how far a father would be willing to go in order to seek retribution for an injury to his son.

  The people standing around the rink parted to allow the doctor and me to pass. The twins hurried over to check out my injury. Julia turned away at the sight of my blood, while Janet tried to get closer and said, “Ooh, Matt, your eye!”

  “He’ll be all right,” said the doctor. “We’ll just take him inside and put a Band-Aid on it.”

  It seemed clear that he was minimizing my injury for the sake of his daughters’ peace of mind, but the doctor’s words still calmed me.

  Dr. Dunbar and I stopped on the porch to take off our skates. He removed his first, then squatted down to unlace mine, enabling me to tilt my head back and keep the heel of my hand pressed to my eye.

  “You wait here, Matt,” Dr. Dunbar said. “I’ll go find a towel or something so we can walk through the house without you bleeding on Mrs. Dunbar’s carpet. And if you feel thirsty, help yourself.” He pointed to a galvanized washtub packed with snow and bottles of Miller High Life and Coca Cola, the after-hockey refreshments he always provided. “But even if you don’t want anything to drink,” he added, “grab a handful of snow and hold it over your eye. It’ll slow the bleeding.”

  I could hear the familiar sounds of the game behind me—the clack clack of wooden sticks collidi
ng, and the skrrk skrrk of sharpened steel on ice. Would I ever hear those again without remembering the taste of blood? I shivered as my sweat cooled beneath the layers of clothes.

  Just as Dr. Dunbar reached for the door, it opened from the inside, and I inhaled sharply when I saw who was standing there. “I was watching,” said Louisa Lindahl. “I saw what happened.” She held out a rag she’d brought for my wound.

  Not long after the doctor stitched her up that fateful Thanksgiving Day, Louisa Lindahl was back on her feet, though they didn’t take her far. Once it became apparent that the young woman had no resources and no place to go, the Dunbars told her she could move in with them. She could work in the clinic, handling some of the clerical work, thereby freeing Betty Schaeffer to concentrate on nursing. Louisa accepted the offer, and she had been helping Mrs. Dunbar with household chores as well as working in the clinic. She was staying in the back bedroom upstairs, the same one Dr. Dunbar had carried her to after treating her for the bullet wound.

  But I knew all this already, and so I was not surprised to see her. No, my sharp intake of breath was caused by something else.

  Since that day when I’d stood over her in the clinic, I’d been completely taken with Louisa Lindahl. It was too soon to call it love and too simple to call it lust, but I felt something powerful, and whatever it was would have had me following her from room to wainscoted room in the Dunbar house if I could have done so without attracting the wrong kind of attention. She, on the other hand, had given no sign of noticing me. Except once.

  A week earlier Louisa was alone in the kitchen, putting away dishes, when I came in looking for glue for a science project Johnny and I were working on upstairs. I generally had no trouble making conversation with girls who interested me, but I lost all courage in Louisa Lindahl’s presence. Her haughty beauty was as intimidating as it was alluring, and she was in her twenties. And then there was the fact that I’d seen her unconscious and unclothed, a delicious secret knowledge that nonetheless put an even tighter clamp on my mouth. Finally, there was that matter of the gunshot wound. I had no idea how that factored into the whole equation, but it could hardly be ignored.