Russ graduated from high school in 1978 and went off to Illinois State University, where he majored in botany. He spent a lot of time by himself, studying in an unfurnished room in the basement of his dorm, next to a couple of coin-operated washers and dryers. To help alleviate his loneliness, he joined a socialist group and grew a mustache because all the other guys in the group had a mustache. He didn’t really believe in socialism. If he worked hard, why should someone else receive the fruits of his labor? He told one of the leaders of the socialist group, a guy who didn’t attend ISU but audited philosophy classes, his beliefs. The guy told him that he was a capitalist, and that capitalists were the scum of the earth. Russ didn’t like being called the scum of the earth. At the next meeting, in the basement of the theater building, the guy told the group that Russ had something to say. Russ said that he didn’t have anything to say. The guy said, “Go on and tell them what you told me the other day.” Russ then told the group he didn’t think it was fair that others should receive the fruits of his labor. The group suddenly became very agitated, demanding that Russ explain why he was attending a socialist meeting when, in fact, he wasn’t a socialist. Russ told them he attended the meetings because he didn’t have any friends. (Not to mention that the group threw potluck-style dinners where Russ was always a big hit because he brought vegetarian treats that Buddy had sent him in the mail.) This was Russ’s last socialist meeting. The next semester he threw himself into his schoolwork and made the dean’s list with straight As. However, he still wanted to be a part of something, as he always had this under-the-surface feeling that he wasn’t quite a part of anything. Maybe this was because Chic was his father. He didn’t really know, but he didn’t like the way he felt.
Back in Middleville, the health food store was a smashing success. The health fad of the seventies had never gone away, and people were driving to Middleville from Peoria and Mackinaw and other small Central Illinois towns to purchase tofu, vitamins, herbal teas, bulk honey, unsalted peanut butter, and dried fruit from the store. Buddy also bought a commercial juicer and concocted new recipes like the Spinarrot (spinach and carrot), the Middleville (pumpkin, chili powder, honey, and carrots), and the Waldbeeser (ginger, apple, kale, lemon, and carrot). Kids and adults alike loved Buddy’s juices; even people who didn’t buy their groceries from the store would swing by for a fresh juice. The popularity of the juices catapulted the store into an entirely different level of success. The store was doing so well that Buddy was able to transition out of working the counter, spending more of his time on a cookbook/memoir about his life. Lijy encouraged him, but Buddy wasn’t a natural writer, so it took him a long time to construct a sentence. Sometimes, Lijy would find him at his desk in the back of the store, a mess of papers spread out before him. She thought that he was thinking about the next sentence, but he was in fact daydreaming about the day that he could sell the store and move his family to a state like Arizona. Maybe they’d open another health food store there? Or a store that sold diet books? Or fresh-squeezed juice? Even though he was past fifty, retirement was not in his future. He wasn’t about to sit idle and spend his afternoons fishing in the river.
Russ Waldbeeser
February–July 1982
One day during the spring semester of his senior year, Russ spotted a flyer for something called Greenleaf hanging on a bulletin board in his dorm. There was no meeting advertised on the flyer, just a phone number handwritten at the bottom. That night Russ called the number. Jacob Honness, a senior and political science major, answered and told Russ that Greenleaf hadn’t held a meeting in a year and a half and that, in fact, he was the only member of the group. He further explained that he didn’t want the club to require a large time commitment or make its members march through campus protesting this or that. Russ didn’t want to belong to a club that required a large time commitment or made its members march through campus protesting this or that. He asked about the next meeting, and Jacob said they could get together the following Saturday.
The meeting was held at Jacob’s one-bedroom apartment, a messy place not far from campus with empty soda cans on the coffee table and a big fish tank. The meeting didn’t turn out to be much of a meeting. Russ completed some paperwork, and Jacob collected a ten-dollar fee from him and gave him a button to hang on his bag or coat or wherever. After that, Jacob shook his hand and said the meeting was over. He looked at Russ like he wanted him to leave, but Russ wasn’t ready to leave. He wanted to talk about Greenleaf, about what the group was going to do next. He told Jacob that he was a botany major and was interested in the group’s efforts and wanted to know how he could help. Jacob told him he could hang some flyers. Russ had hung flyers for the socialist club; flyer hanging was tedious and boring. He wanted to organize something. Jacob pretended to share Russ’s enthusiasm, while at the same time slowly ushering Russ toward the door. At the door, Jacob asked Russ to write up a proposal. On the spot, Russ blurted out, “Maybe we can plant a tree or something. For Arbor Day.”Jacob shrugged and said he’d check with his Greenleaf contacts in Portland, Oregon. Then, he wished Russ good day and shut the door.
Two weeks later, Jacob interrupted Russ while he was studying in the library and told him that he’d talked to his contacts in Portland and that they thought an Arbor Day event was a good idea. Jacob, however, said he didn’t have the time to help plan the event. This was his final semester, and he was taking a 300-level political science class and a linguistics class that required him to read two hundred pages per week. Russ said he’d be happy to plan the event by himself. Before Jacob left, he gave Russ an application. “The Greenleaf people said to give this to you. Since you seem to like this stuff, they thought you might want to do it.”
“What is it?”
“An internship or something. I don’t really know.”
Russ stuffed the application into his backpack without reading it. He was too excited to concentrate on anything other than the Arbor Day event.
The Greenleaf Arbor Day Event was set for April 6, 1982, at noon. It would take place on the east side of campus behind the football stadium; the closest dorm was half a mile away. Russ had hung flyers all around campus announcing the event, and he had roped off the area—a square about five feet by five feet—where the tree was to be planted. Jacob rode up on his bicycle a few minutes before noon, joining a few other people around the rope: Dr. Spenser, Russ’s mentor in the botany department, who lived with his four dogs outside of Normal, Illinois, in a school bus converted into a trailer; a student Russ didn’t recognize; and a guy and a girl from Oregon who said they were affiliated with Greenleaf and had driven there for the event on a spring break trip. With the help of Dr. Spenser, Russ had gotten a local tree nursery to donate a blue spruce, a sapling about the size of a five-gallon bucket. At noon, Russ and Dr. Spenser dug a small hole in the center of the roped-off area. It took about five minutes to plant the tree. After they were finished, everyone wished each other, “Happy Arbor Day,” and then scattered back to their lives. Dr. Spenser had to take care of some things in his office; the unknown student waved and said he needed to meet up with some friends. Russ was tying a ribbon on the tree when he noticed that the two Greenleaf representatives were watching him. They suggested getting a drink to celebrate Arbor Day.
At the Thirsty Scholar, the three of them cozied up together in a booth. The two Greenleaf representatives, Tyler Wilcox and Ginger Beauchamp, wanted to know what Russ’s major was. When he told him that it was botany, they both looked at each other and smiled. They wanted to know his plans for after college. Russ shrugged and said that lately he’d been thinking about farming Christmas trees. The idea had come to him that past winter, when he saw Christmas tree stands being set up around campus. He told them that those trees needed to be grown somewhere, and that he wanted to be the person to grow them. This idea troubled Ginger and Tyler; they asked Russ if he wouldn’t rather grow trees than cut them down. Russ told them that he had to make money somehow. They sug
gested a tree nursery instead. Russ said that a tree nursery could be part of the business, but the real money would be made harvesting trees and that there probably wasn’t enough demand for a tree nursery because once a tree was planted it lasted for a long time, like fifty years, so he’d basically sell one or two trees to a customer over the course of their lifetime, and that, according to Russ, was no way to run a business. But, he told them—and here was the “good part”—for every Christmas tree he cut down, he’d plant two new ones. In his mind, he was being ecologically prudent, and he was making a little money, which, for any business, he said, was the goal. Both Ginger and Tyler nodded. Tyler took a sip of his beer. At that moment, Russ felt a light tapping on his leg. He looked under the table and saw the toe of Ginger’s boot tapping his shin. She winked at him. Then she asked, “Have you given any thought to the Canadian internship?”
Russ didn’t know what she was talking about.
“The tree-planting internship Greenleaf sponsors every summer in Alberta, Canada,”Tyler said.
Then Russ remembered the application Jacob had given him, which he’d stuffed in his backpack and forgotten about.
“We could use someone like you,” Ginger said. “Someone with a business mind.”
Tyler slid another application across the table. “Give it some thought,” he said.
Russ did give it some thought. In fact, he thought about it so much that he couldn’t sleep that night. But it wasn’t the prospect of planting trees in Canada that was keeping him awake, although he did think that would be pretty cool. Rather, it was Ginger Beauchamp. Had she been flirting with him that afternoon? She had to be. Why else would she be kicking him under the table? Wasn’t that called “footsie,” and wasn’t “footsie” considered flirting? He’d had two girlfriends during his four years at ISU, but both of them had wanted him to shave his beard and cut his hair, and he didn’t want to shave his beard or cut his hair. He wanted to be who he wanted to be—a guy with a beard and long hair. Not to mention, when he told a girl he was a botany major, she would usually get this faraway look in her eyes and walk away from him while he was in the middle of talking. Ginger was different. She had tapped his shin with the toe of her boot. She had winked at him. He got out of bed, turned on the light, sat down at his desk, and filled the application out.
The internship was on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, several hundred miles from Calgary. Russ arrived a few days after the Fourth of July; Tyler picked him up from the train station. There were six Greenleaf members participating in the internship: Tyler, Ginger, Russ, and three other guys from colleges around the country. They all stayed in a hunting cabin without electricity or indoor plumbing. The cabin was one big open room with a kitchen area. On one wall were four bunk beds, and in the middle of the room was a table with an overhead light that was powered by a camping generator. Every few days, someone needed to go into the nearest town, Luscar, to get gas for the generator. At night, the group played cards; in the morning, they woke early and alternated making skillet breakfasts on a camping stove. After breakfast, they drove into Jasper National Park, where they spent the day planting trees and ramming long spikes into the Canadian ground to “feed” nutrients to the trees. Russ loved the work. There was a problem, however, and that problem was Ginger.
Ginger Beauchamp was a twenty-two-year-old Canadian girl who did her work without complaining, and each time it was her turn to pick a card game, she picked Hearts. She had a gap between her front teeth, but despite the gap, she was a pretty girl with a slight build, like a cheerleader’s, and auburn hair. She was fond of wearing cutoff jean shorts around the cabin and a gingham shirt that she tied up to show her belly button. Most nights before bed, she would lie in her bunk and read. Russ would lie on his side, his head on his arm, watching her hold the tiny penlight, her eyes raking across the pages. He imagined a life with her unfolding like the narrative of a novel: event after event; good days, bad days, and in-between days; conflict, tension, and resolution. They’d buy a house, a farm, something outside Middleville, where they’d grow trees together, maybe have a couple of dogs. Cows. Chickens. They’d have a baby one day. It all seemed so clear in his imagination, so perfect.
Unfortunately, the other guys in the group had fallen for Ginger, too, and it seemed that Tyler was the frontrunner. They’d gone to high school together, and from conversations with the other guys, Russ found out that the two of them had once dated, though they weren’t currently a couple. One of the other guys, Nathan, from upstate New York, who’d started a Greenleaf charter at Syracuse, said he was “lying in the weeds, just waiting for his time to pounce.” They all were. Around the card table, Russ could feel the tension. All eyes were on Ginger, on every move she made. When she shuffled the deck, the guys watched her, their tongues basically hanging out of their mouths like dogs. Russ kept looking under the table to see if Ginger was tapping anyone else’s shin. She was always sitting Indian-style in her chair. Once, when Russ looked under the table, she asked, “What’s under there, Russell?” For some reason, she called him Russell, although Russ was his full name, and after a while, the other guys took to calling him Russell Muscle.
Russ knew he needed to stake his claim, needed to prove himself. So he started to do what any guy would do: he “flexed his muscles” to show Ginger he was the type of man who would be good for her. When they all sat around at night, passing a joint (something Russ now liked doing, although he’d never done it before coming to Canada), he tried to be funny, lively, a good time kind of guy. When they planted trees, he planted twice as many as anyone else. At meals, he ate twice as much as anyone else. When they played cards, he played to win; a few times, he even cheated to make sure that he won.
And then, one afternoon while they were out planting trees, Ginger spotted a pinecone hanging on a branch about three stories up, dangling like a Christmas ornament. She pointed it out to everyone. The other guys admired the pinecone and went about unloading sandwiches and sodas from the cooler and spreading out a blanket. Tyler rolled a joint. Russ, however, knew that he had to climb the tree and get that pinecone for her. He started climbing. Ginger watched him while she ate her sandwich; the other guys ignored him, or did their best to ignore him, as they passed around the joint. The smell of cannabis wafted up to Russ’s nostrils. He wanted to be down on the ground with them, smoking the joint. He was only about ten feet from the pinecone, but those last ten feet were precarious, as the pine tree was beginning to triangle. He climbed up another branch and tried grabbing the pinecone, but it was still out of reach. He adjusted himself and prepared to climb a little higher—one more branch and he was pretty sure he’d be high enough to get it. He looked down and saw Ginger looking up. She waved. The other guys were laughing. Russ made his move. He stepped up on the branch and shifted his weight onto that foot. At that moment, he heard a loud crack. He didn’t even have time to scream as he lost his balance and thudded to the ground. Ginger put her hand over her mouth. The other guys looked over at him and laughed even harder. On the ground, Russ’s whole body felt like it had been pumped full of air and was about to explode. He let out a moan and managed to say, “Oh, shit.”
Chic Waldbeeser
August 1982
Chic got his first look at Russ’s girlfriend, Ginger, through binoculars a few days after they arrived back in Middleville. The rumors around town said that Russ had gone off and broken almost every bone in his body, and that, like his father, he had found himself a woman from some faraway place and brought her back to Middleville. Chic spotted the two of them in the kitchen, where Ginger was hand-feeding Russ slices of apple dipped in peanut butter. The kitchen table was covered in flowers and get-well cards. Russ had broken both of his arms and his left leg. After each slice of apple, Ginger wiped Russ’s mouth with a napkin. Chic wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but the girl looked just like any other girl.
Russ’s fall had inspired Chic. After hearing the news, he had written three poem
s, after not having written one in nearly a decade. He mailed Russ a get-well card and included one of the poems. He’d come to the bridge with his binoculars to watch him open it. He imagined Russ and Ginger passing the card back and forth. He imagined them laughing. He imagined Russ hanging the card on the fridge. He imagined his brother and Lijy reading it. He imagined Erika reading it. He imagined them all smiling at its poignancy. He imagined the card hanging on the fridge for months and beginning to fade in the sun.
After eating an apple slice, Russ picked up a card from the table and read it. He smiled. Ginger took the card from him, read it, and smiled, too. Chic tried to zoom in on the card, to see if it was his, but there was no zooming, of course, with binoculars. He leaned over the railing of the bridge, trying to get closer. It had to be his card; it had to be his poem. His poetry was bringing people joy. His heart was pounding, and he felt connected to Russ and Ginger. Not connected like he was holding them or hugging them, but connected like jumper cables went from his heart to their hearts, from his brain to theirs, and even though he might not be happy, his words were making others happy. He leaned a little bit farther, then lost his balance and flipped over the railing. He caught himself, and was hanging by one hand, the water below him. He could hear the current rushing. He only had to let himself fall. He knew the water was deep enough. He would be all right. He would survive. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and let go.
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