by S. Rose
15
IN THE LATITUDE of Northern Wisconsin, the late summer sun doesn’t set until eight-thirty. When it dipped behind the treetops and the pines cast long shadows like giant gnarled hands, I knew I’d been gone for hours.
Visibility was getting poor. I finally reached the river, but relief quickly turned to panic—I didn’t recognize my surroundings at all. If I’d come out too far upstream and overshot my destination, I might walk for miles before discovering I’d turned the wrong way. I knew that Highway 2 should be fairly close, no more than a mile, mile and a half, since it ran nearly parallel to the river for a good stretch. I figured that if I put my back to the river and walked a perpendicular path, I should come upon the road. We’d driven it many times, so I’d be sure to know which way to go. On the other hand, the light was fading fast and it would soon be dark in among the trees. If I followed along the riverbank, at least I could see where I was going. As I deliberated the best course of action, I heard a rustling from the opposite bank; a family of deer was making its way toward me to quench their thirst before bedding down, signaling the impending nightfall. I crossed the river and headed into the forest.
I hadn’t gone far when a mass of thick clouds moved in and plunged the woods into darkness, blanketing the scant light of the quarter moon. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. When a raccoon scuttled across my path, the sight of his glowing golden eyes made me jump behind a tree with a little screech, which scared it more than it did me. I felt pretty silly when I realized it was a raccoon.
At least the cloud cover kept the temperature from dropping too fast, but I was already chilly without a jacket. I hadn’t eaten since noon, but I’d stopped and filled my canteen at the river before moving on, so at least I wasn’t thirsty.
I walked for what seemed like an hour and knew that if I’d stayed on course, the road should be just ahead. Every so often I stood still, to check if I could hear a car in the distance, but all I heard was crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl. Each time I stopped, I noticed that my legs muscles were trembling. I was hungry, cold, and more tired than I’d ever been in my life. And I was hopelessly lost.
I didn’t cry because I knew Sparrow wouldn’t cry, and I already wanted to be just like her. She was strong and brave like an Indian princess. And she had the most wonderful name—Sparrow Flies-in-the-Wind. Maybe I could make up an Indian name for myself. Hmm . . . I know: Stupid-Girl Lost-in-the-Woods. I chuckled aloud to no one. Less than a month ago, I would have been terrified, but I thought about it rationally and came to the conclusion that there was no sense in wandering aimlessly around, wasting energy. It was so dark I nearly tumbled into a shallow ravine. That would be as good a place as any to spend the night, before I fell and twisted my ankle or something equally dumb.
I curled up in a bed of pine needles to await the dawn, pretty confident that I’d make it through the night and certain someone would find me the next day. My biggest concern was that my parents were going to be worried sick, not to mention furious with me for being so careless, but there was nothing I could do about that. A deep calm settled over me as I drifted into an exhausted sleep, lulled by the music of crickets.
I dreamed of goats. The herd had wandered off and Olga was missing. Sparrow was running through the forest in search of them, and I was struggling to keep pace, when Grandpa Wind rose up before us as if from the grave. “I’ll skin you alive,” he hollered, wielding a bloody hatchet. Sparrow turned and fled then kept on going. I tried to follow, but she went faster and faster, so fast her feet scarcely touched the ground, so fast her braids streamed out behind like the tail of a kite. Suddenly, she flew. But the higher she flew, the smaller she became, until the girl was gone and only a little brown sparrow flew above the treetops, leaving me lost and alone.
Baaahh.
I opened my eyes to find a huge figure looming over me; I thought it was Olaf, up on his hind legs and about to attack with his great horns.
“Ahhh,” I screeched, shielding my face.
“Ahhh,”the creature hollered, covering his ears, then lumbered away crashing through the brush. That’s when I realized it was only a boy—a very large boy, but a boy nonetheless.
Ma, ma-maaahh. The sound of goats came from somewhere close behind me. I recalled with relief that Sparrow lived with her mother, brother, and maternal grandfather in the woods not far from where we first met; the chubby boy must’ve been her brother. They kept goats, too. It was early morning, and the goats were up, demanding to be fed.
“WHAT THE HELL did ya do a damned fool thing like that for?” Sparrow wanted to know.
I sat in their tiny kitchen with her family. It was Sparrow’s older brother, Timmy, who’d discovered me—turned out that I’d spent the night barely a stone’s throw from their place.
I’d briefly met Sparrow’s grandfather, Piotr Gorski, who was close by gathering kindling when he heard Timmy shriek. He escorted me into the house with a fatherly arm on my shoulder and announced, “She okay! Da girl okay now.” Then he headed through the woods on foot to fetch my folks because they didn’t have a phone. Grandpa Gorski had an old beater of a car parked under the trees, but it didn’t run. From the thick blanket of pine needles covering the windshield, I’d say it hadn’t run in quite a while.
Sparrow’s mother was a rawboned woman of medium height, with graying blond hair that needed washing and combing. It was hard to tell her age. Her dishwater-blue eyes had a perpetually weary expression, as if she’d given up struggling so long ago that she no longer recalled what the fight had been about and didn’t much care. She had light skin, although not as pale as a Scandinavian, with rough, red patches on her cheeks and a broad, flattened face that appeared very Slavic. I recognized the heavy accent as Polish. She gave me a mug of fresh goat milk and a slice of bread, along with a hardboiled egg from her own chickens. The bread was stale, and she advised me to dunk it into the milk—“It’s a dunker,” she said. As I munched, I stole subtle glances about the little room, mindful of my mother’s warning not to appear snobby or critical.
The house was constructed of plywood framed with two by fours. The roofline was low and the rafters exposed, so the place looked like a work in progress rather than a finished house. The ceiling and most but not all of the walls had fluffy insulation material tacked on. They had electricity, as evidenced by a crisscross of exposed wires on porcelain nobs, and a couple of single light bulbs hanging overhead.
I was told that the kitchen tap only ran cold water, unless they made a point to light the propane water heater. There was no flush toilet. I’d already stopped to use the outdoor john and then tried to run warm water to wash my hands properly, which is why I got the explanation about the water heater.
The furniture consisted of a battered wooden table and chair set and a grimy old sofa; the torn upholstery was patched with duct tape. Located in the center of the main room was a soot-blackened cast-iron potbelly stove, with two burners on top and no baking oven. I guessed it was for cooking, as well as the only source of heat, though I couldn’t imagine living with such hardship. Throughout the long winters, the temperature in Wisconsin regularly plunges to forty below and doesn’t rise above freezing for months on end.
There must have been at least one bedroom in the house, because there was an Indian blanket nailed across a doorway to serve as a door. The sole window didn’t provide much ventilation, so they had the front door open for light and air. The place was buzzing with mosquitoes, but I’d been bitten all that night; my face was spotted with red itchy welts.
“That was one dumb stunt.” Sparrow continued to chastise me.
“Easy now, be nice,” her mother said gently. “Let the poor girl eat something. I’m sure she had her reasons for heading home.”
“Thank you for breakfast, Mrs. Wind,” I said politely.
“I’m not Mrs. Wind, dear.” She looked awkwardly down at her feet as she spoke. I absently followed her gaze and noticed she was wearing beade
d leather moccasins. “My married name is still Schimschack, but please, just call me Anna.”
I stared in disbelief. “Schimschack? Then are . . . are we related?” I stammered.
“I’m not your blood, if that’s what you mean,” Anna explained. “I’m a Gorski; came over from Poland in ’47—but we arerelated by marriage. But this is your true cousin, Timmy Schimschack.” She stepped aside, reached a hand behind her, and tugged her son by his wrist out from the shadows.
“I call ’im Schimmy . . . Schimmy Tinschack,” Sparrow interjected with a wry smile. “His daddy was Lester Schimschack. Lyle was Lester’s daddy . . . your dead grandma’s brother. Lyle’s gone too.” She gave me a quick rundown on the dead branch of my family tree. “Still don’t know what happened to old Lester.”
“Sparrow.” Anna looked at her daughter in mortification. “Timmy, this is your cousin Cassandra,” she explained, letting the matter drop.
I could see why the poor kid got picked on in school. Timmy’s hairless baby face had puffy pink cheeks that sat on his shoulders and seemed to swallow his sweaty neck whole. As if that weren’t a tough enough burden to bear, he had a broad pug nose with prominent nostrils that flared with each labored breath and beady brown eyes sunk deep in the fat. The end result was that cousin Timmy bore an unfortunate resemblance to a Yorkshire pig at market weight.
He’d looked large when standing over me in the ravine, but within the confines of the small room I saw that he was huge—a head taller than his mother and at least twice as wide. The impression of girth was enhanced by a horizontal striped t-shirt that stretched tight across his torso. Timmy’s midsection rivaled the Michelin tire man, while his pendulant breasts would have been the envy of many a flat-chested woman. Everything about him was soft and flabby. He had thick white thighs that melded together at the knees and disappeared under his baggy shorts in a mass of cellulite. His fatty upper arms were as big around as two plucked roasting hens but ended in surprisingly small, white hands with slender, delicate fingers. There was something very disconcerting about his hands; they looked as though they should have belonged to someone else entirely, and got stuck on by mistake.
Timmy didn’t look at me as his mother drew him forth but fidgeted nervously, twisting his slender fingers and rocking from foot to foot, all the while mumbling something about rabbits.
“Timmy, remember your manners and say hello to Cousin Cassandra,” his mother instructed. Timmy’s pink face began to flush as visible beads of sweat broke out across his forehead. “Cassandra,” she repeated. “Now ain’t that a pretty name?” she coaxed.
“Hi, Timmy,” I offered. “You sure scared me this morning. I was having a bad dream and then—there you were. I thought you might be a big old goat about to butt me,” I said with a little chuckle. “Guess I scared you too.” I was running out of conversational material.
Timmy leaned in close to his mother’s ear and whispered something. “Oh, that’d be nice . . . if she’s up to it,” Anna responded. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“Mmm . . . no, you ask . . .” Timmy mumbled, attempting to cover his broad blushing face with his too small hand. “You ask her,” he insisted.
“He wants to show you his bunnies . . . he raises Angora rabbits for wool. They’re real pretty, all soft and fuzzy. Timmy won some ribbons at the fair, didn’t ya son?” His mother tried to encourage him.
“Umm.” He smiled bashfully and stole a fleeting look at my face.
“Every year, people come up to him at the fair and offer to buy some, but he won’t part with any of ’em,” Sparrow added with a little laugh. “He’s afraid they’ll go for meat, but I tell ’im there’s nothing to eat on them rabbits, they’re all fur . . . they’d go for pets. He’d better either sell some babies, or keep the females locked away from the males. Else we’re gonna be run over with rabbits.”
“Ma, I gotta go feed ’em,” Timmy said urgently, wringing his hands. His voice was high pitched and whiny.
I didn’t get to see the Angora rabbits that day. A vehicle roared up the dirt road and stopped just short of the house. The engine didn’t even cut off before I heard my mother’s anxious voice calling. “Cassandra?”
Mom ran toward the open doorway but halted at the threshold; be it ever so humble, her manners were far too engrained to barge uninvited into a stranger’s home.
“Come on in.” Anna welcomed her with a smile and a beckoning hand.
“Mommy!” I placed the mug of milk down carefully before jumping up to great her. With a bland but nutritious meal in my belly and the resilience of a child, I was as good as new. I threw my arms around her and held her close.
“Oh, Cassandra.” My mother cradled my head with her hand and pulled me to her breast, then gently ran her fingers through my tangled hair. “We were worried sick. Your father was out looking for you all night. The sheriff is at Grandpa Parsons’ house . . . a man came with his bloodhounds!”
“I’m so sorry, Mom. Uh, where’s Dad? Is he real mad at me?” I imagined he’d holler plenty when I got home but probably had better things to do now that the commotion was over. I was wrong.
“He doesn’t know we’ve found you yet. Your father is driving up and down the highway this very moment, calling your name out the window like a lost soul. He set off at the crack of dawn, even though he was up ’til three in the morning searching the woods by the Indian reservation.”
“Oh, no . . . I never meant to cause all this trouble. I thought I could find my own way home, but I got lost . . . Wait—how did you know I went to visit the reservation?”
Before she could answer, a large man filled the doorway; his tall, broad form blocked the light.
“Pa!” Sparrow maneuvered around our bodies, which were locked in embrace and taking up a good deal of the room. That’s probably why Chief John Soaring-Eagle Wind didn’t step inside.
SPARROW HAD WAITED at the reservation until her father returned with Grandpa Wind. It was almost half-past nine o’clock, but she didn’t dare ask why they were so late; the look on their faces said it was none of her business. As it turned out, John Wind had been arrested for trespassing when he refused to leave the town hall without a copy of a land transaction: the original deed and surveyor’s records of none other than Randal Parsons’ property.
He didn’t get what he wanted that day, but it wouldn’t end there. While Sparrow and I sowed happy seeds of friendship, her elders had ignited the final battle in the war between the Parsons and the Wind clans.
Naturally, Grandpa Wind was in a hurry to get to town and bail out his son before he spent the night in jail; but the urgent family situation was not the sole reason for his gruff manners. There was another conflict underway in that neck of the woods. The age-old struggle between man and nature reared its wild head once more, in the form of rogue black bear.
No one really knows why it happens, but sometimes a bear loses his fear of man. This boar had been on a rampage, breaking into hen houses and barns. He’d stolen a piglet from a pen and carried it off in his mouth, not in the least fazed by the farmer who yelled and chucked rocks. The bear even managed to claw open a freezer full of meat—after he’d torn the shed door off its hinges. When he chased two fishermen to their truck after they unsuccessfully tried to chase the bear away from their bucket of fish, the district wildlife officer started to take him pretty seriously. After he attacked and injured a man, the bear was considered a rogue and marked for death.
Only two days before Sparrow and I tromped through the woods, the audacious animal descended upon the reservation. He knew just what he wanted and how to get it: he tore aside the gate to the goat yard and sauntered in. Grandpa Wind rushed out from the milking in time to see him dragging off a young goat by one leg—in broad daylight.
The first thing he could lay his hands on was a hatchet stuck in a nearby tree stump, used for chopping kindling. He rushed at the bear, brandishing the hatchet and hollering a mix of English oaths and Ojibwe battle cries
. As Sparrow related the incredible tale, I remembered my terrifying dream of Grandpa Wind. To this day I’ve wondered if it was only a dream—or did the ghosts of ancient Indians send me a vision?
The bear dropped the goat but did not run. He rose brazenly on his hind legs with a roar, then lunged at Grandpa Wind. It ended in a stalemate. The beast took a blow that opened his snout and left a flap of furry flesh hanging alongside his nose but not before he left his mark on the man, slashing him across his right forearm. Then he loped off into the forest, dripping a trail of blood. A promising young doe lay on the ground, still alive, but paralyzed with a broken back. Mr. Wind didn’t stop to staunch his wounded arm before he fetched a rifle and put the goat out of her misery.
“I TOLD PA how I brung the Parsons’ girl out to the place and how you run off without telling me,” Sparrow explained later when we were finally alone. “He went all dark and quiet. I didn’t know if he was mad at me for losing you in the woods, or madder that I brung you out in the first place. I asked if maybe we could use the office phone to check and see if you got back, but he said, ‘Come on, we’re going to pay a call on the Parsons.’ Then he loaded his rifle, and we headed for the truck. About a mile down the road, I got up the courage to ask him, ‘Pa, why’d you bring your gun for?’ But he jus’ kep’ his eyes on the road, stone silent. We were almost there, and I says, real quiet, ‘Pa, you looking to get a deer?’ ‘Never you mind,’ was all he said. I was scared he might really shoot Old Man Parsons.”
By time Mr. Wind arrived, my parents were frantic; they’d started looking for me when I didn’t turn up at suppertime but had no idea how far I’d gone. Mom confided that Sparrow cried like a baby when she found out I didn’t make it home. (I never let on that I knew.) She’d wanted to go out searching with the men, but her father wouldn’t allow it and drove her home first. I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t hear his truck pull up at the Schimschack’s place, not twenty yards from where I lay sheltered in the ravine.