Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  An apology from Larry Buskin?

  “I just wanted to say it. That’s all,” he said.

  I nodded, and for some reason didn’t leave, but just stood there looking at Buskin’s face. For the first time ever, he looked almost normal, like someone who probably had a family who cared for him and worried about him. Maybe he even had problems like me. Maybe he had problems worse than me. Suddenly, I wasn’t looking at a dirtball anymore, and I almost forgot about the Eaglewings altogether.

  Buskin flicked his cigarette butt into the urinal. He started out the door but stopped a step short and turned around again. “I heard that you and Marmotti are pissed off at the sheriff about what happened to your father.”

  I said nothing.

  “Don’t mess with Heiselmann,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Larry paused and then spoke. “He’s into stuff.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he knows people that you never want to meet.” Larry tipped his head forward and raised his eyebrows in a sort of believe me, I know expression. Two seconds later he was gone.

  Opal and I stayed after school to talk about planning a protest march against Sheriff Heiselmann. I didn’t tell her anything about my little chat with Larry Buskin in the central lavatory.

  “First, we need people,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Second,” Opal continued. “We need to contact the newspapers and TV stations ahead of time so they can send reporters.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “Third, we need a message.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was thinking about something like Justice for Officer Finwick.”

  “That’s not enough. We need something stronger—something powerful.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We need something that will make people talk and make Sheriff Heiselmann nervous. He needs to feel it like a kick in the ass.”

  I stiffened and my jaw dropped an inch. “Like a kick in the ass?” I had never heard Opal talk like that before. Her face was black ice.

  “What can we say?” I asked. “We still don’t have any real proof against him.”

  “You’re right,” said Opal. “And we can’t go around chanting ‘Sheriff Heiselmann is a murderer.’ But we still have to come up with something that really points the finger at him.”

  I shrugged. “But we don’t have anything.”

  “Think, Del. There must be something. Even if it has nothing to do with your dad’s murder, is there anything that we can say about the sheriff that would make him squirm?”

  I didn’t say anything. Neither did Opal. We had nothing. Was our march going to be a flop before it even started? Suddenly, out of nowhere, the answer popped into my brain.

  “He killed a swan,” I said.

  “What?” Opal’s eyes reflected confusion.

  “On the Poygan Marsh,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes. A beautiful white swan. They’re supposed to be protected by law, but he killed it anyhow.”

  “That’s it!” said Opal.

  “It is?”

  “Yes!”

  She reached over the table and placed her hand on top of mine. Her smile glowed brighter than ever, and for a second I wondered if it was really meant for me. We were all alone in the hallway outside the cafeteria. Should I try to kiss her? It was just an idea, but who was I kidding. This was Opal Parsons and I was Del Finwick. Heck, I could barely even look her in the eyes. I may have been brave about a few things lately; but mostly, I was still just a minnow.

  We walked home together, but I didn’t even try to hold her hand or walk her up to her door or anything. God—I’m hopeless, I thought.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I ran the rest of the way home in the darkness, sliding across frozen puddles when they came up. Right away I went to the garage and got down on hands and knees on the cement floor. My hands were nearly frozen as I rolled papers and slid on the rubber bands. My stomach growled but there was no time for supper. It was Thursday, after all. Hoot Owls needed delivering and the people couldn’t wait. An envelope with $2.32 found its way to my pocket—right next to the bullet.

  34

  Friday was the start of our Christmas break and the very next day was to be our protest march against Sheriff Heiselmann.

  Opal and I had been working hard in her kitchen to get ready after school. She made phone calls to all three of the Green Bay television stations to let them know what we were doing.

  “Did they even sound interested?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” said Opal. “They said, ‘We will give it our consideration,’ whatever that means.”

  At the same time, I was on the floor making big, sturdy signs out of double-thick cardboard. The message was the same on each one:

  SHERIFF HEISELMANN

  KILLED A SWAN

  I put the words on both sides so people could read them coming and going. We only had Opal, Mark, and me signed up to march, which was a bummer. I had tried to convince Steve to join us, but his parents still had me rated with Jack the Ripper on the bad guy list. I mentioned the march to Eric Staley and Dale Benson, two guys I knew from my neighborhood. They listened politely and everything, but in the end, I might as well have been talking to a couple fire hydrants on the corner. Oh, well. I made up a few extra signs anyways, just in case somebody joined at the last minute.

  The protest route was Mrs. Parsons’s idea, and it was a big one. She suggested that we begin on Highway 41 at the exact spot where Dad was murdered and continue south all the way to the Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Oshkosh. Thousands and thousands of people would surely see us with all the traffic going by. Mrs. Parsons agreed to drive us out there and pick us up again when we were done. The whole hike would cover eleven miles and take most of the day. We would need sandwiches, cookies, and drinks. Opal’s mom took care of that part too.

  By the way, our protest plans never made it to my mom’s ears. I thought about telling her, but then had second thoughts, knowing that she might squelch the whole thing. I could have just snuck out of the house, I suppose. Instead, I told her that I was going to confirmation class at the church and then hanging out with Mark at the bowling alley. It was no small lie this time, and I was already feeling rotten about it. In my mind I had to do it. The march was just too important to stop. My only hope was that God would understand, because I knew that Mom never would.

  At eight o’clock Saturday morning, we met at the Neenah library. It had snowed overnight so everything sparkled like the glitter on a Christmas card. The bank thermometer told a different story. The rectangle of yellow light bulbs flashed a number that began with a minus sign. Two below zero. Yipes! If those kind of temperatures kept up, they would be driving cars on Winnebago by New Year’s.

  I had on my long underwear, parka, and snow pants. Mark showed up in coveralls with an orange deer hunting coat over the top. Opal wore her bright-blue ski jacket with matching pants. Except for the color of her skin, she could have modeled for a catalog. Just as I was piling the signs into Mrs. Parson’s station wagon, an unexpected voice pierced the cold air.

  “Hi, everyone.”

  I turned around quick. Holy moley! It was Rhonda Glass, clomping down the sidewalk like a greenish-gray version of Frosty the Snow Man.

  “Can I join you?” she asked.

  I gulped some air. “Sure, Rhonda. The more the merrier.” My mouth said the words, but my brain wondered if she could walk a single mile. To be honest, I didn’t even know if we could fit her inside the car. I looked at her feet. Army boots.

  “We’re so glad you came,” said Opal. “We’ve got plenty of signs.” She gave Rhonda a big hug and I was mildly jealous, thinking about when I might get a hug like that from Opal Parsons.

  Mrs. Parsons offered Rhonda her hand and a big smile. “Welcome and thanks for coming,” she said. “The larger the
group the more they gonna take notice.”

  “She makes us larger all right,” Mark whispered in my ear. I kicked him in the leg and shot him a look that I usually reserved for dirtballs.

  After Mrs. Parsons dropped us off on the side of Highway 41, a surge of pessimism ran through me. The cold was one thing, but that wicked north wind? Criminy! It nearly ripped my face off. We had no sidewalk, no map, and the cars whipped by like cannonballs. On top of that, I remembered hearing somewhere that it was against the law for pedestrians to walk on divided highways. Good grief! If we didn’t freeze or get hit by a truck, would we all land in jail?

  “Let’s go,” said Opal. “The walking will warm us.”

  Guess what. She was right. Marching south, the wind pushed us along and stayed out of our faces. It took some muscles to hold up our signs, but they pulled us down the highway like spinnakers.

  The giant slide from the old amusement park looked down at us like we were insects on the big, white flatness of the eastern Wisconsin landscape. Billboards on both sides of the road screamed their advertisements for cars, steak houses, and insurance companies. The shoulder of the road itself was a minefield of ice clods, slick patches, and the occasional shredded truck tire. By all accounts, it was an ugly place on an ugly day for marching.

  What we had in our favor were passing eyeballs—thousands, millions, billions, zillions of cars and trucks roaring both ways. And, of course, that meant people—and some of those people had to be reading that “Sheriff Heiselmann Killed a Swan.” And that had to mean that people were talking. We had to be making a difference. We just had to.

  From my position in the rear, I could see my whole, small army. Right in front of me, Opal’s scarf whipped every which-way from where it wrapped around her blue coat. In front of her, Mark stalked, predator-style, scanning left and right with his sign over his shoulder like a rifle. Rhonda amazed me most of all by leading the charge. She walked with a wobbly, sort of teetering stride—a human metronome ticking back and forth along on the shoulder of frozen gravel.

  “Good job, everyone!” I shouted over the wind.

  Rhonda hooted. Mark pumped his sign toward the sky. Then, Opal started singing and the whole group joined in. First off, she led us in several verses of “If I Had a Hammer.” From there she taught us a bunch of verses of “This Train Is Bound for Glory,” and we ended up marching to “The Marine Hymn” with Mark at lead vocals.

  After we were just about worn out from singing, the group settled back into a sort of mindless slog with our heads hanging low. It was Mark who decided to liven things up by signaling people to honk their horns. He walked backward to face the oncoming cars and trucks and pumped his fist up and down.

  “Come on, people, let’s hear it!”

  Well, guess what. It worked, and as long as folks saw Mark yelling and pumping his fist, about one in three of them happily delivered a few beeps in return. And when you’re talking about a billion cars, one in three is a whole lot of horn honking. I especially liked the big-throated foghorn sound of the eighteen wheelers. Some just gave us a couple taps, but others let loose with a long-winded blast that practically shook the ground.

  That energy got us through the coldest part of the morning. Then a car pulled up on the shoulder of the road. It was Mrs. Parsons in her station wagon with a bag of sandwiches and two Thermos bottles.

  “I brought hot chocolate,” she said.

  She filled four steaming mugs and I don’t think anything ever tasted so good. Mark made some wisecrack about wanting to spike it with whisky. Mrs. Parsons ignored him. “You only two miles from the bridge,” she said.

  “After that, it’s Oshkosh,” I said.

  “That’s right, and guess what. A Channel 2 news van is waiting for you at the bridge. You all gonna be on television.”

  All four of us whooped it up and did a little dance with our signs.

  Mark looked at me with a big, stupid grin. “This is pretty cool, Delmar. You better think of something to say.”

  “Yeah . . . I’ll think of something.”

  After Mrs. Parsons left, we were all still chirping and laughing—practically having an early victory celebration. That’s when a Sheriff’s Department patrol car drove by real slow. It wasn’t Heiselmann, I was sure of that, but the guy had read our signs and his face wasn’t smiling. As he went past I saw him pick up the microphone of his radio.

  Was I worried? Yes, I was worried.

  It was just past noon when we made our way up to the beginning of the mile-long bridge that crossed Big Lake Butte des Morts. Opal had us singing “If I Had a Hammer” again. We high-stepped to the rhythm and pumped our signs like a miniature marching band. Just like Mrs. Parsons had predicted, the newspeople were there. Two newspaper men each had fancy-looking cameras in their hands as they waited by their cars on the exit ramp. A Channel 2 news van was parked behind the others and a reporter wearing a bright-blue jacket with the Eyewitness News logo and holding a microphone waved us over. A television cameraman kneeled on the ground and aimed the big film camera at us marching toward him.

  “Make it look good everyone,” I yelled. “Keep singing.”

  Rhonda’s knees chugged up and down like pistons. Between that, Mark’s sign pumping, and Opal’s singing, well, I don’t mean to brag, but for four Shattuck High kids on a freezing-cold day in December, we were an impressive sight.

  We stopped right in front of the TV cameraman and kept the singing and high stepping and sign pumping all going. The camera was just ten feet away and the reporter jabbered into his microphone. Then he walked up to me.

  “Are you Del Finwick?”

  “Yes, sir.” Behind me, Opal, Mark, and Rhonda sang and stomped and waved.

  “Can you tell us the reason for your march today?”

  “My dad was Officer William Finwick, the sheriffs’ deputy who was murdered on Highway 41. The sheriff and his investigators have done practically nothing to solve the case. We’re here to demand justice.”

  “Why do you say that they have done practically nothing?”

  “Well, for one thing, they hardly even looked for evidence. Barely tried to find the bullet that killed my dad.”

  “How do you know that?” asked the reporter.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out the bullet, holding it between my thumb and index finger for the reporter, the cameraman, and the whole world to see. “Because my friend Mark and I found the bullet after the cops gave up. It’s from a .357 Magnum revolver.”

  “I see,” said the reporter. “And what is the meaning of your signs? They say ‘Sheriff Heiselmann Killed a Swan.’ Can you tell us what that’s about?”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “He’s a lawbreaker. I saw him shoot a swan for no reason and leave it to die right there on the Poygan Marsh.”

  Guess what happened next. Two police cars showed up with their red lights flashing. They zoomed in fast and skidded to a stop in the gravel next to the news van. And who do you think got out of those cars? That’s right. Sheriff Heiselmann himself and three of his deputies. They approached us, and they weren’t smiling. I pocketed the bullet.

  “This is an unlawful protest!” shouted the sheriff. Even from a distance I could see the red color burning across his face.

  The reporter stepped back, but the cameraman aimed at the sheriff and kept right on filming.

  Sheriff Heiselmann moved forward with his handcuffs, gun, and other gadgets clanking with each step. I could tell he was trying to read our signs. Once he figured out what they said, the full eruption of Mount Heiselmann went off. In two seconds, the sheriff was practically on top of me, shouting right in my face. “You have no idea who you’re messing with, you little brat!” I felt his hot, stinky breath on my nearly frozen face. His eyes wanted to kill me. He then spun around to face Mark, Opal, and Rhonda. “You will disband and disperse! You have two minutes!”

  Nobody moved or said anything.

  “I said you will disband and dis
perse! You have two minutes before you are placed under arrest!” It was like my team of marching protesters had finally frozen solid.

  We used up one of our two minutes before anything happened. Then, it was Opal’s voice that finally thawed the ice as she started singing the words to “If I Had a Hammer” again.

  Mark looked at her like she was crazy. Rhonda looked at her like she was a genius. I looked at her and saw her mother marching over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. I started singing along. Next thing I knew, we were all singing along. Pretty soon, with our feet stomping and our signs pumping, we became a unified force and I almost felt like we should lock arms.

  I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I thought about Wolf yelling from the freezing rapids below the Menasha dam. I had a vision of him splashing around in the water and finally slipping below the surface. Suddenly, the march was for him too.

  “To the bridge!” I yelled out.

  Rhonda didn’t hesitate. Thump! Thump! Thump! She led the way. At that point, there was no quit in us as Mark and Opal moved in right behind her with me bringing up the rear. We made the biggest ruckus we could muster with our singing, stomping, and sign waving. That’s how Opal, Mark, Rhonda, and I made our first attempt to cross the Butte des Morts Bridge to Oshkosh right in the face of the sheriff and his deputies.

  Opal was right in front of me when she turned and looked back. At that moment, I noticed something about her eyes. They were her mother’s eyes.

  What happened next was as predictable as the sunrise over the Poygan marsh. The sheriff ordered his deputies to stop us, and they came at a full sprint. The big red-haired guy wanted me first, his handcuffs at the ready. I pulled into a crouch, faked right, and dodged left toward the ditch.

  “You little bastard,” he said, and he followed me with his long legs pumping. I was no sprinter, but I was wily, and I eluded him every time he came close. For what must have been a full minute we played keep-away. I heard Opal scream as another deputy tackled her and cuffed her hands behind her back. Rhonda shoved the cop, trying to get him off Opal, and before long she had her face in the snow with hands behind her back too. Mark didn’t run, but he made it difficult on the officer by pulling his arms into his sleeves so they couldn’t handcuff him. In the end it took two deputies to wrestle him into the back of their car, uncuffed, and lock the door.