Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

As we got closer and closer to noon, Asa used his cane to stand in the skiff and look around. The wind had picked up a little and our willow branches rustled. Otherwise, everything was peaceful and calm.

  “When do you think we’ll hear the first gunshot?” I asked.

  “I thought you said that nobody could shoot until noon.”

  “Some of these guys get an itchy trigger finger,” I said.

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Last year a hunter couldn’t resist shooting a nice, fat mallard about twenty minutes before official shooting time. You know what happened after that?”

  “No.”

  “Lots of other hunters got the itchy trigger finger too and at quarter ’til noon everybody was blasting away.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do, join in with the mob?”

  “Nope. Dad always waited. I won’t even load the shotgun until five minutes ’til.”

  The morning wore on and at 11:00 we put our eighteen decoys in the water. After that we ate our lunch. At 11:45 I pulled the Winchester Model 12 out of the case. Then at 11:47—BOOM! The first shot rang out.

  It was as if General Grant gave the “commence firing” order at Gettysburg, and wouldn’t you know it, all that noise caused ducks, hither and yon, to jump up and start flying. So did I load up the Winchester? No, I did not. It didn’t matter what every other Tom, Dick, or Harry did, our rule was that we load the shotguns at 11:55 and start shooting at noon.

  When the minute and hour hands on my Timex overlapped, I lifted the Model 12 a little higher on my chest and got ready.

  “It’s time,” I said to Asa.

  “Go get ’em, boy,” he said.

  Guess what. It was a whole lot harder to hit a flying duck than a cereal box alongside the Soo Line tracks. I knew I was supposed to lead them, but jeepers. It was like shooting at jet fighters, they were so fast. After the first hour, I think I was zero for infinity. Then a blue-winged teal came within my range. I hoisted up the Winchester and held it at about 45 degrees and tracked in front of that speedy duck and pulled the trigger.

  POW! . . . Splash.

  “Good shot!” yelled Asa.

  Holy smokes! I was a duck hunter—for real. I rowed us out and retrieved the dead bird.

  Things quieted down as the sun plowed across the sky and started sliding back toward the horizon. A group of hunters on the marsh blasted away at a high-flying flock, and a lone mallard fell somewhere in the middle of the weedy mess. I watched one of the men gliding on swamp skis through the soupy sludge, his shotgun slung over one shoulder. He retrieved the duck and skied back through the swamp grass to his hunting blind and raft of decoys.

  “That’s so cool,” I said. “Did you see him glide right over that muck?”

  “That’s Sheriff Heiselmann and his group,” said Asa. “I recognized their voices and saw his truck at the boat landing.”

  A half hour passed. I kept my mouth shut and so did Asa, but we both watched and listened as Heiselmann’s group horsed around, using language that didn’t belong anywhere—not at home, not at school, and especially not on the Poygan Marsh. They must have been drinking beer or something, because every once in a while we saw them toss bottles into the lake. Asa just shook his head.

  We both heard the sound at the same time. I thought it came from geese at first, but the call had a rough, scratchy wheeze and whistle to it.

  “Swans,” said Grandpa Asa.

  My eyes scanned the horizon and there they were, to the west. Two of them—huge, white birds sliding though the sky with a slow, sweeping wingbeat that sort of made me think of a time before humans walked the earth, more majestic and wonderful than anything ever created by man, that’s for sure.

  “Just look at ’em,” I said.

  “They’re getting rare,” said Asa. “It’s against the law to shoot them. You know that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t keep from smiling. It was Poygan magic all right. In they came, right over the marsh. Closer. Closer. Closer.

  “They’re going to go over Sheriff Heiselmann’s group,” I said.

  Asa said nothing.

  “You don’t think they’ll shoot ’em, do you, Grandpa?”

  Asa said nothing. We both watched and listened. Watched and listened. Watched and listened.

  All three men in Heiselmann’s group popped up in their blind and their shotguns went vertical as they blasted away like crazy with flames shooting out of the muzzles. Both swans lurched in response to the noise and the impact. Frantic now, they beat the air with their huge wings and tried to pull themselves higher into the sky. I thought they were going to survive, I really did. But then a final shot rang out and the impact broke the wing of the lead swan causing it to tumble and spiral down at an angle until it crashed in the middle of the swamp.

  The Heiselmann gang hooted and laughed their fool heads off.

  “That son of a bitch,” said Asa.

  One of them, and I’m pretty sure it was the sheriff, got on his swamp skis with his shotgun slung over his shoulder and started out toward the crippled swan. He wobbled and nearly fell and his buddies laughed and hooted all over again. Eventually he got going on a pretty steady glide and stopped.

  “Oh no!” said Asa.

  I looked at him but his eyes weren’t on Heiselmann. He was watching the sky again. The surviving swan had circled back.

  “It’s returning to its mate,” said Asa.

  My gut twisted as I watched the surviving bird set its wings and glide in toward its crippled mate. At the same time, I could see Heiselmann working his gun, trying to get it reloaded quickly. He brought the shotgun to his shoulder.

  BOOM! . . . BOOM! . . . BOOM!

  The sound rang out and echoed back from the wooded shore. The flying swan, as before, pounded its wings hard, gaining altitude once again in a second attempt to escape. Climbing, climbing, climbing, the surviving swan hammered its wings against the air. And once again the sheriff tried to reload, but the second swan was out of range, fleeing for good into the empty sky.

  Heiselmann kept going and caught up to the crippled swan in the middle of the swamp. The next thing we knew, he was beating it to death with the barrel of his gun. He reached down and came back up waving a long, white wing feather, then stuck the feather in his cap and shuffled back to his buddies, who laughed and drank more beer.

  “He killed that swan for the fun of it. Did you see that?” I asked and looked at Asa.

  “Yes. I did.”

  My thoughts drifted back to the afternoon when I had seen Sheriff Heiselmann taking the yellow envelope from the Cadillac Man. He had been doing something illegal, all right. Anybody who would kill a swan just for fun had to be crooked, right through to the core.

  When we got home a note on the kitchen table surprised me, saying that Mom had gone to a movie. Anything was better than watching her lie around the house, so I felt happy. There was no sign of Sally either. She had disappeared, as usual, to wherever seventeen-year-old girls go on Saturday nights.

  I only had the one small blue-winged teal to pluck and clean, and Grandpa Asa instructed me along the way. When I was done I popped it in the refrigerator.

  “We’ll have roast duck for dinner tomorrow,” I said.

  “You better get a chicken to go along with it,” said Asa.

  Do you think I thought about Heiselmann killing that swan when I went to bed that night? Yes, I did. In fact, the picture played over and over again in my mind. And do you think I thought about Opal Parsons? Yep, I thought about her too—but only about a million times.

  11

  Have you noticed that I haven’t had much to say about my mom? Maybe, by now you’re getting the idea that she just hangs around the house smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and watching television all day long. Well, if that’s what you think—you’re right. And knowing that, you probably think she’s not a very good mother. And if that’s what you think—you’re wrong.

 
; When I was a little kid, my mom held our family together just like the thread that keeps the scraps that make a quilt from coming apart. When nobody would lead my Cub Scout den, my mom said she would do it. And when my sister, Sally, wanted to try out for the school play, my mom volunteered to make the costumes and run the stage lights. When I was just five years old and had my tonsils taken out, guess who was there when I woke up? And when my throat was too sore to eat sandwiches and toast, guess who made me Jell-O with banana slices and marshmallows mixed in? My mom, that’s who. And when Dad needed to give a speech at the Rotary Club, guess who wrote it for him and helped him practice? That’s right, and it was a dang good speech too. He got a standing ovation, if that tells you anything. And did I say that she was a great cook? She once made a batch of lasagna that was so good that her friend Mrs. Larrusso asked for the recipe. Mrs. Larrusso was born in Italy, if that tells you anything. So if anybody thinks I don’t have a great mom, well they don’t know anything about anything.

  My mom came down with something called multiple sclerosis, okay. It’s just a stupid, bad-luck thing that hit her, sort of like polio in the olden days. I read all about it, too. When multiple sclerosis hits, there’s nothing anybody can do to fix it. It creeps up on a person slowly, but it’s bad—understand? Sure it was hard on our family, and I even complained and felt sorry for myself sometimes, but that’s nothing compared to how it changed everyday life for my mom.

  She started out having blurry vision. Well, lots of people get blurry vision, so she didn’t think anything about it at first and just blamed it on her eye glasses. About a year later, she started getting dizzy spells and stumbling and even falling down. That’s when Dad took her to see a doctor. The doctor wasn’t sure, so he sent my mom to a specialist. And when the specialist wasn’t sure, he sent my mom all the way to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. That’s when we found out that Mom had multiple sclerosis—for sure.

  Here’s the good thing about multiple sclerosis: people can live with it for many years. Here’s the bad thing about multiple sclerosis: it never gets better.

  Okay, so now you know.

  And if you’re wondering why our house is messy most of the time and why we don’t eat eggs and sausage every morning and why we don’t even have lime Jell-O with sliced bananas anymore, well, now you know.

  And if you’re wondering why my mom didn’t go over to Grandpa Asa’s apartment once in a while and help him clean up that dump even though he’s her own father, well now you know that too.

  Mom just got sick, that’s all. She’s like Lou Gehrig of the Yankees. They didn’t keep him out of the Hall of Fame just because he got sick, did they? No, they did not.

  That’s how it was with my mom. And if anybody wanted to argue with me about that—well they could just come on over to our house on Fifth and pay a visit. I’ll be the one wearing the Eaglewing steel-toed boots with the reinforced shank.

  12

  I finally finished reading The Scarlet Letter, and Opal was itching to get started on the report. We were scheduled to give our presentation in just a week.

  “Where should we meet to work on it?” she asked.

  “How about the Science Resource Center?”

  Opal rolled her eyes. “Is that the only place you ever go? This report has nothing to do with science, you know.”

  I shrugged. “I like it there. Have you seen the jar with the pickled tape worm?”

  “That’s just gross.”

  Even though Opal didn’t like the Science Resource Center idea, I sure didn’t want to go to the regular study hall and get pelted by pencil erasers for an hour.

  “How about my house?” asked Opal.

  I was paralyzed. Her house? I stood rigid and mute like a totem pole.

  “Could you come over at 5:30 on Thursday? You can join us for supper.” Opal smiled.

  “Thursday? I’ve got to deliver Hoot Owls on Thursday.”

  “How about six then?”

  “Okay, I guess that will work.”

  “Great! I’ll tell my parents that you’re coming. I hope you like southern cooking.”

  “Southern?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? My mom and dad are from Alabama.”

  The bell rang and kids settled into their seats.

  “You’ll be there, right? Six o’clock on Thursday?” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  For the next ten minutes my brain flew around like the Tilt-a-Whirl at the Winnebago County Fair. Can I get my Hoot Owls delivered by six? Southern food? What the heck is that? Crayfish and Frogs?

  I set a new record for delivering 232 Hoot Owls in an hour and fifty minutes. As it turned out, you could save quite a bit of time by not stopping to check with the fisherman behind Doty Cabin and by skipping the Menasha Lock and Dam and by not sniffing around for the houses of Green Bay Packers players on Second Street. The time was three minutes before six when I ditched my delivery satchel and grabbed my notebook and copy of The Scarlet Letter. I tiptoed through the house and snuck back toward the kitchen door leading to the garage. I almost made it too. My hand was actually touching the screen door handle when Mom picked me up on radar from the living room.

  “Where you going, Del?”

  “Riding my bike.” It wasn’t a lie.

  “Where to?”

  “A friend’s house.” Still not a lie.

  “Which friend?”

  “Just a kid in my English class.” Still not a lie.

  “Try not to get run over by a truck.”

  My mom actually does love me. She just has a weird way of expressing it sometimes. I dashed out the screen door. The spring twanged and the door slapped shut. I was gone.

  You’re probably wondering why I didn’t want to say too much to my mom about going to have supper at Opal’s house. Well, first of all, it’s just good policy for any kid to avoid specifics when it comes to those where you going? and what are you doing? sort of questions. I mean, a kid has to think for himself sometimes, and parents don’t need to know about everything. And big sisters? Well, they don’t need to know anything. Besides, did you really expect me to tell my family that I was going off to eat southern food with the only black family in Neenah? Hey, Martin Luther King Jr. achieved a lot, but America still had a long ways to go. Don’t get me wrong. My mom believes in equal rights, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was raised by Grandpa Asa, if you know what I’m saying.

  I pulled up to Opal’s house, and instead of dumping Eisenhower in the yard or behind some bush, I used the kickstand and set Ike alongside the lamppost out front. In the reflection of a window, I saw my hair going in about twenty-seven different directions, so I licked the palm of my hand and flattened it out. I heard some pots and pans clanging inside, and some interesting smells made their way to my nostrils. My stomach felt hungry and a little bit sick at the same time as I approached the front door. I banged three times, but not too loud. Then I waited with my arms hanging down properly at my sides.

  Opal came out of the kitchen smiling. “Hi, Del.”

  “Hi.”

  “Come in. Supper’s almost ready.”

  We walked into the kitchen. Was I nervous? Yes, I was nervous.

  Mrs. Parsons turned on a friendly smile as she greeted me with a big metal spoon in her hand.

  “Hello again,” she said.

  The cautious look from our last visit was gone. Happy wrinkles in the shape of bird’s feet sort of sprayed out of the corners of each eye. Her nose had that same little upturn as Opal’s. Mrs. Parsons wore the same blue uniform I had seen before with the name Ellie stitched on the white oval patch on her shoulder, but a white apron covered most of the front with strings that tied in back.

  “Hello, Mrs. Parsons.”

  “You get all them papers delivered?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Got them done in record time.”

  “Good. I hope you hungry. We havin’ fried chicken.”

  I listened hard to her accent and
felt a little bit like I was meeting someone from another country or something. The closest I’d ever been to Alabama had been a family vacation trip to Illinois when we visited Abraham Lincoln’s house and tomb.

  The door to the garage swung open and Mr. Parsons walked into the kitchen. He was a big, stocky man with a large, round head with short hair that looked like black carpeting. A few white hairs showed up on the sides, each one as curly as a spring. His skin was darker than Opal’s or Mrs. Parsons, and he had deep wrinkles in his forehead. I watched as he wiped his hands on a greasy rag.

  “Daddy,” said Opal. “This is my friend Del.”

  Mr. Parson didn’t smile. He flashed his eyes quickly across my face, and just nodded his head without saying anything at all. His mouth sort of tightened up. Then he turned his back and went to the sink, where he spent several minutes washing his hands over and over again with a bar of Lava soap. At last he turned around and studied me some more, smiling very slightly.

  “Del must be short for somepin,” he said.

  “Delmar.”

  Mr. Parson’s eyebrows shot up and he launched into a look of admiration.

  “That’s a fine name,” he said. “Is dat a family name?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “My father had an uncle named Delmar. But he died so I’m the only Delmar now. I usually go by Del.”

  “Have a seat, Delmah. Glad to make yo quaintance.” At last, he smiled for real.

  “Glad to meet you too, Mr. Parsons.”

  We all sat down with one of us on each side of the square table.

  Mr. Parsons looked at me. “Would you do us de honah of leading us in grace, Delmah?”

  “Sure,” I said, and everybody bowed their heads, folded their hands, and closed their eyes.

  Do you remember how I pulled a rabbit out of my hat when Mrs. Borger asked me about the rhyming scheme in a Shakespearian sonnet? Well, now I was in a similar fix. I tapped into a hidden corner of my brain and pulled out some words my dad used to say at Sunday dinner. That’s right. Our family used to say a prayer at dinner every Sunday even though we’ve pulled it back recently to just Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Anyhow, I had the words and the problem wasn’t saying them. The problem was trying to say them southern.