Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  My eyes scanned the first paragraph, and for a few seconds I couldn’t even breathe.

  An unidentified man died in a drowning accident below the Menasha dam on Friday. He was swept away by the current while trying to unsnag a fishing line along shore. Local authorities described him as an Indian and believe that he had no permanent residence. Efforts are underway to locate family members. His name is not known at this time.

  “His name is Wolf,” I said out loud.

  “What’s that, Del?” asked Mom.

  “Nothing.” A whirlpool of sadness spun inside of me.

  The article was short, only three inches long, yet I had a million questions. What really happened? Where was his body? Were they really trying to find his family?

  I grabbed my jacket and, like a zombie, walked outside and opened the garage door. Eisenhower’s red reflector blinked like a bear waking up from hibernation. I barely pedaled as the cold wind blew me down Nicolet and around the bend past the Banta Mill.

  A yellow torrent roared and churned from the bottom of the Menasha dam. The rapids surged bigger than usual. Standing waves stood steep and jagged like the spiny back of some great serpent stirring up lumps of foam and carrying them toward the mills downstream. Three fishermen worked the shore on the Banta side. I started with the closest one. Had he heard anything about the drowning? Had he seen it? The man just shook his head in somber reverence. The second man, like the first, knew nothing but expressed sadness at the lost soul.

  I approached the third man as he fished all by himself amid some concrete rubble at the base of a tree. He was hooking a minnow through the tail and preparing to cast it out on a bell sinker rig. I flipped down Ike’s kickstand and approached.

  “Have you heard anything about the man who drowned?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Saw the whole thing.” The man hurled the minnow and sinker at least twenty yards and set the rod vertical in a gap within the concrete. He then turned to me and smiled. “Never saw such an idiot.”

  His comment and manner cut me like a fillet knife. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It was that same, stupid Indian I’ve seen fishing around town.”

  I felt my teeth clamp down tight as the man continued.

  “The fool was intentionally fishing for mooneyes, if you can believe that. Just like an Injun to go after a trash fish. Anyhow, he was just downstream from here, wasting his time on them mooneyes when he gets his line snagged on a rock. Most people, like you and me, we’d snap it off and tie on another hook and sinker. Right?” The man looked at me, waiting for an answer.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Yeah, well Tonto didn’t do that. Get this. The dumb blanket-ass waded out into the freezing water—yanking and tugging—trying every damned thing to get it loose. Next thing I know he slips on a rock and goes off with the current. His head was bobbing and his arms were flapping. He yelled a few times but after a hundred yards or so he just went down for good.”

  I felt my toes curling inside the Eaglewings on my feet. A surge of blood rushed to my face.

  “You didn’t do anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “You did nothing?! How could you do nothing?! A man was drowning!”

  The man’s eyes went hard and dark. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the river and returned his gaze to me.

  “No skin off my nose, kid,” he said. “Just another dead pine savage as far as I’m concerned.”

  My whole body tensed. My toes coiled even tighter in the Eaglewings. My hands transformed into sledge hammers. I stared hard into the man’s bloodshot eyes and for those few seconds he and I just stood, face to face, spewing hate at each other.

  “Get out of here, shrimp,” he said. “Or I’ll toss you in the river too.”

  What happened next was like watching a movie. The camera zoomed in on my right leg as it swung back in slow motion and then surged forward. The nose of the Eaglewing steel-toed boot was a locomotive on the Soo Line barreling at full throttle toward its target. The man’s foam plastic minnow bucket exploded on impact, sending water, minnows, and white chunks airborne in every direction. Water sprayed all over everything, including the guy’s pants. The result was a circle of wet concrete littered with dozens of minnows flipping around like silver coins.

  After that, I just stood there. That’s right, all eighty-four pounds of me just stood there, refusing to run. My fists were clenched, the Eaglewings cocked and ready. At first, the man made a sort of growling sound. He leaned in and even took a step toward me. Maybe I would get thrashed or maybe I would get tossed in the freezing river like he promised. Either way I wasn’t moving from my spot.

  Then a strange thing happened. The man’s jaw dropped a little, he looked down at the flipping minnows and sagged. The hardness in his eyes washed away and a look of confusion took its place. The next thing I knew he was on his hands and knees scooping up minnows into the only fragment of his minnow bucket that still held water.

  I stepped over to Ike, gripped the handlebars, and flipped up the kickstand. Before riding away, I glared down at the man.

  “His name was Wolf!”

  32

  I walked around on Monday morning with my head in an invisible fog. When I really thought about it, Wolf and I had probably talked to each other for a total of three minutes, yet his death hit me hard, like I had lost a best friend or something. I didn’t get it. Part of me was saying to shake it off, but a bigger part of me said “shut up” to the first part.

  The lunch lady in the cafeteria plopped a tuna melt sandwich, some chips, and a cookie on my tray. I sat alone and tried to eat the sandwich, but it tasted like cardboard. Something smacked me in the back of the head. I turned around and gazed up at the ugly face of Leon Dinsky, the dirtball who had spotted out Opal on the first day of school.

  “Hey, Minnow, can I have your cookie?” he said.

  “No.”

  He reached over the table, no doubt expecting me to do nothing. When his hand touched the cookie my fist came down on it like a hammer forge. It hit his knuckles dead center and crushed the cookie beneath it at the same time.

  “Ahh!” he yelled and jerked his hand back as the tray clattered to the floor. All heads turned in the cafeteria and the place went quiet. “I’ll get you for this, you little shit,” shouted Dinsky.

  I stood and faced him, fists clenched and drawn. My toes curled inside the Eaglewings and I felt my jaw muscles tighten.

  “How about right now,” I said, and I meant it.

  For a second or two Dinsky’s eyes went blank. He glanced left and right but found himself alone. At last his eyes focused on me again.

  “Screw you,” he said. He flipped me the middle finger and walked away.

  Yeah, Wolf was dead all right. But something, maybe part of him, was still alive inside of me. I looked at my own fists and had to will them to unclench. Gosh, I thought. That wasn’t anything like a minnow.

  I was not excited for my meeting with Rhonda on Monday afternoon, but I had arranged with Mrs. Schwartz to use the chemistry lab to practice our Mockingbird lines and didn’t think I should back out. Mrs. Schwartz was eager to help us and said we could rehearse as much as we wanted. Besides, she thought it was a cool idea, acting out our book report. On her desk I saw a copy of the morning newspaper.

  “Can I borrow your paper, Mrs. Schwartz?”

  “Of course.”

  I scanned the whole thing, especially the local section, but didn’t find anything new about Wolf.

  “Hi, Del.”

  “Oh . . . hi, Rhonda.”

  “Did you practice your Mockingbird lines?”

  “A little.”

  I returned the paper to Mrs. Schwarz’s desk and we settled in at a table in the chemistry lab. Shake it off, I told myself as we sat next to each other at a workbench. I offered up a weak smile, but my heart wasn’t behind it.

  She went first, in the character of Scout and—Wow! Rhonda absolutely nailed i
t. How she pulled it off was like some sort of a miracle. Her performance of the character Scout swallowed me up to the point that I almost didn’t feel like pouting anymore. In fact, I wasn’t even seeing those baggy clothes and army boots. Through those eyes and expressions, with the southern drawl mixed right in, I was on the front porch of a house in Macomb, Alabama, at a time thirty years before I was even born.

  “Holy kamoly,” I said. “That was swell.” I meant it too. Rhonda was everything that she had coached me to achieve. She was expressive. She did get into the mind of the character. She was Scout.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  I opened my script and cleared my throat. Did I let it rip? Did I give it everything I had? Nope. I just couldn’t do it. The words came out about as lifeless and flat as the robot on Lost in Space.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I swallowed and blinked. Then I told her about Wolf and what happened to him. Rhonda’s eyes softened and even got damp. She stepped next to me and hugged me hard—so hard that I found my face sandwiched between her breasts and wondered if I was going to suffocate in there. I didn’t mind.

  “Are you going to the funeral?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Wolf’s funeral. Are you going?”

  “I don’t know if there is a funeral,” I said.

  I made two telephone calls after I got home from school on Monday. The first was to Rhonda Glass to see if she would come to school early to help me practice acting out my Atticus lines again before our Mockingbird report. She said yes and even sounded excited.

  The second phone call was to the county courthouse to find out about the funeral plans for Wolf. Yes, he would be buried at taxpayer expense. No, there would be no funeral.

  “What about a gravestone?” I asked.

  “A small, numbered marker will be provided.”

  “A number?”

  “He has no name.”

  “His name is Wolf.”

  “We don’t actually know that, now do we.”

  “I do. I’ve met him. He’s my friend.” I kicked the stove.

  “If you would like to provide a stone marker at your own expense, you may do so. In the meantime, the state will be marking his grave with the number 648. ‘Unknown male’ is how he will be entered into the registry.”

  No, I did not slam down the phone. It took every speck of patience that I had inside me, but I placed the phone down, gently in the cradle.

  Then I slammed my fist hard on the countertop. “Jeez!”

  My practice session with Rhonda on Tuesday morning went better than I’d expected. I had worked on the lines at home and made myself into a pretty good Atticus. Rhonda Glass made me better.

  She listened and smiled. “That was good, but make it bigger and louder. Use your hands. Use your eyes. This is Scout who you are speaking to, your only daughter. Now, look into my eyes and try it again. Really be Atticus Finch this time.”

  Rhonda was right. I needed to really cut loose. I cleared my throat and looked into those sparkly blue eyes. I took a deep breath and went for it.

  After I finished reciting my lines, Rhonda stepped up to me with a huge smile on her face. For the next few seconds, there was no talking.

  Now, if you’re wondering if I liked being kissed by Rhonda Glass, the answer is yes. And it didn’t matter that she was a giantess in a burlap sack either. I went lips to lips with Rhonda Glass, the best actress in the history of Shattuck High. Besides, did you hear what she said about me afterward? If you missed it, I’ll tell you again.

  “You were wonderful.”

  Yep, that’s exactly what she said. And that’s when I knew I could be an actor—for real.

  I wasn’t even nervous walking into Mrs. Borger’s English class. I waved at Rhonda in the back of the room. Then I sat down at my usual spot next to Opal.

  “Good morning, Del.”

  “Hi.”

  It felt a little weird talking to Opal just a couple hours after getting kissed by Rhonda Glass. What I really, really wanted, of course, was to kiss Opal. Could it happen? I still hoped so. Could I get her to go to the dance with me? I didn’t know, but I sure as heck wanted to try.

  She’s the one, I told myself. The girl I’m going to take to the Snow-Ball Dance.

  Mrs. Borger tapped her ruler on the desk to get the class to shut up and pay attention. After a few boring announcements, she introduced me and Rhonda to give our report.

  Did Rhonda and I get through our play acting report without a glitch? Yes, we did. Was it a home run? Absolutely. And when I walked back to my desk, Opal Parsons looked at me with a smile on her face like I was Clark Gable and she wanted my autograph or something.

  At the end of class, Mrs. Borger asked me and Rhonda to stay for a few minutes. After the rest of the class had cleared out, she looked at us both very seriously.

  “I want to speak to you both about your report,” she said.

  Rhonda and I glanced nervously at each other. What had we done wrong? Had we broken some rule?

  Suddenly, Mrs. Borger couldn’t hold back her smile any longer. She reached out her hands and squeezed mine and Rhonda’s in her own.

  “I’m so proud of both of you.”

  “Thank you,” said Rhonda. I felt my chest get bigger.

  “That . . . was the best, most creative book report ever given in the history of my twenty years teaching English in this school.”

  “Thank you,” said Rhonda. I had about a ten-pound frog in my throat and couldn’t speak.

  “I am assisting Mr. Schirmer in a spring theater production here at Shattuck High,” said Mrs. Borger. “The play is Romeo and Juliet and I want the two of you to try out for the lead roles.”

  33

  I didn’t say no to Mrs. Borger, but the whole Romeo and Juliet thing scared the crap out of me. Giving a book report in front of thirty people was one thing. Acting out love scenes on stage in front of a real audience was something else completely. And what if I had to put on makeup and wear tights?

  I worried about it all afternoon and evening, and when I sat down with Opal for lunch the next day, she convinced me to quit being such a dipstick.

  “It’s a huge opportunity, Del.”

  “I’ll look like an idiot.”

  “You’ll look great and everybody who is not an idiot will admire you. You’ve got talent, Del. Believe me; you showed that yesterday. You owe it to yourself to try this. Not only that, but you’ll be doing a favor to Mrs. Borger and the whole school because I don’t think anybody in all of Shattuck High could do a better job than you and Rhonda.”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I was just being a dweeb. Maybe the play was my big opportunity to get out of everybody else’s shadow at school, and it took Opal to make me realize it. Maybe it would even help me shake off my crummy nickname.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll audition for Romeo.”

  Did Opal kiss me? No, but she gave me a big, giant smile about as bright as the sun. After that I knew for sure that I would ask her to the dance.

  After all of those nice words from Opal and Mrs. Borger, I was practically floating down the halls. The good feeling stayed with me through geometry class, even though we had a quiz. At the end of seventh period, I felt so confident that when I had to go to the bathroom, I decided to take my chances in the central lavatory. It was usually the last place I would go, but on that afternoon, I walked right inside.

  Can you guess who was already hanging out in the central lavatory? That’s right. Larry Buskin and a couple other grits, all leaning against the sinks smoking cigarettes. They had the window cracked open and the cold draft smacked me right out of my happiness. I tensed up and, for a second, thought about running back out the door.

  Buskin spat on the floor in front of me. “What’s up, Minnow?”

  “Nothing.” I looked at the row of old urinals that were about as big as bathtubs tipped on their ends but decided not to turn my back on the goons. Instead I w
ent in a bathroom stall, shut the door, and latched it.

  Buskin spoke quietly to the other two. “I need to talk privately with the punk.” There was a shuffling of feet as the other guys bumped out the door.

  Holy crap! This is it! Just me and Buskin in the central lavatory—what a lousy place to get thrashed, and I was 99.9 percent sure that’s what was coming next. The only question was whether he would wait until I came out or bust through the latched door and grab me right out of the stall. I looked down at the Eaglewing steel-toed boots with the reinforced shank. They weren’t shiny and new anymore after wearing them for a month and smashing one plastic minnow bucket to pieces. My toes curled in each boot.

  “I have a question for you, Minnow.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  Nuts! There was no way out.

  I said nothing, but finished my business, zipped up my pants, and hit the flush lever. For a minute I just stood there, sweating and wiggling my toes inside the Eaglewings. To keep my hands from shaking I put them in my pockets. My right hand touched the bullet. I rubbed it, hoping for a genie, but of course nothing showed up. Nothing, that is, except memories of Dad, and that was enough.

  I opened the stall door and stepped into the cave of tile and giant urinals. Each footstep in the Eaglewings seemed to echo off the walls. I stopped a few feet away from Buskin, who towered above me with a cigarette sticking out the corner of his mouth. He pulled it out and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something,” he said.

  “What?” My muscles tensed. It was almost go-time. I stood as ready as I could be.

  “How come you never turned me in to the principal that time I kicked your ass?”

  I said nothing. My concentration was focused on the Eaglewings and when to flip the switch.

  “I would have been expelled,” Buskin continued.

  I said nothing. My teeth were clenched.

  “I think I owe you for that.”

  Am I really hearing this? “You gave me a concussion,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”