Igloo
I would do anything for Osmo Makinnen, the school bully, although, since I was nearly three years behind my class in age, I was often the butt of his teasing. Provoking my tears was easy, and when I complained, the others called me “sissy” and “teacher’s pet.” Miss Crocker could do little but comfort me. She was seldom with us on the playground, particularly in winter, when we donned our wool coats, hats, mufflers, and rubber boots and swirled around the school like insane starlings.
One winter, after the heaviest snowfall of the year had hardened into drifts, Osmo and his cohorts excavated an enormous tunnel in the snow the county plow had pushed back from the road—massive deposits of hard snow covered with an icy crust. The tunnel led to an igloo large enough for three persons.
Osmo began the excavations by explaining his plans for the room, which we would use as a clubroom. He delegated most of the digging but ignored my anxious wish to contribute. I should have known better. Showing his disregard, even contempt, for me, he passed the shovel over my head to my cousin Grace, who stuck out her tongue. I hung about, pathetically trying to catch his eye.
For the next week, until the digging was over, I stayed by myself, made snowmen, and followed fox-and-geese patterns, pretending that others were also playing the game.
I was surprised when Osmo said he wanted me to be the first to-enter. He insisted on an early start, to leave time for the others to visit before classes started again. I didn’t even bother to eat my lunch.
He first removed the end of an old barrel blocking the entrance. “You’ll have to crawl all the way back,” he said. “I’ll be right behind.”
The passageway was barely wide enough for my shoulders. I negotiated a turn by squirming along on my belly. Osmo had warned me not to kick the tunnel sides. The roof of the igloo was built of snow blocks, each dovetailed and rounding to form a domed roof. Sunlight shimmered through the roof, a lovely iridescent green.
Osmo asked my opinion of the place. I said it was great. I imagined Eskimos safe inside from an arctic blizzard. Osmo took a handful of wood shavings and some twigs from his pocket, scooped out a spot in the floor, and struck a large wooden match to start a fire. He unwrapped a small packet of waxed paper, revealing two small strips of venison. “Your lunch,” he said, holding the meat over the flames. “Big hunter come from hunt.” The meat looked juicy. He took the first scrap for himself then handed me the second.
He ordered me to stay while he went for the others. I heard voices at the far end of the tunnel, then laughter. The igloo shook. I started toward the passageway and was horrified to find it blocked. They were crushing the whole thing in on me!
Fighting panic, I returned to the igloo, finding it hard to breathe. I was too short to reach the domed roof Would death be like this—ice-breath seeping through my skull?
I thought I heard Osmo’s voice. I was wrong. They had returned to classes, leaving me there. I would not cry! Slowly, I began to dig with my hands where the entrance had been. I shoved snow in behind me. I cleared a few feet but realized I was getting nowhere. The compacted snow was too deep.
I found a block of frozen mud, scraped up by the snow-plow, which I flung against the roof It broke through! The tumbling snow formed a mound, which made it easier to reach the roof blocks, to push them by hand. I was free!
Our Food
We used bacon grease for frying eggs, stirred it into bread batter and biscuits, and mixed it with Welfare peanut butter to make the spread go further. Peanut butter usually came wrapped in butcher paper. We filled lard pails half full, set them on the stove reservoir to warm, and then mixed in bacon drippings. The result was delicious—salty, smoky, and loaded with calories and cholesterol.
We churned our own butter from Lady’s cream in a gallon-sized glass jar with screw-on top and wooden paddles and handle. It took half an hour of vigorous churning. We loved the buttermilk. When Lady’s supply of cream didn’t suffice, Dad bought oleomargarine, which in those days could not be colored since it would pass as butter, something prevented by the powerful Wisconsin dairy lobby. We dumped the pale oleo into a mixing bowl, opened up a bead of orange dye, and proceeded to color the oleo to resemble butter. It seemed more palatable that way. Colorless oleo resembled lard, something only truly destitute people ate on bread.
Twice a week we baked bread. The flour, from government surplus, came in fifty-pound cloth bags. None of these were wasted—all were bleached and sewn by my mother into dresses, shirts, sheets, towels, and handkerchiefs. We begged for bits of yeast cake to eat. Once the dough was kneaded, we turned the loaves out into heavily greased tins, black from use, and stuck them in the warming oven to rise. We stocked wood—pitch pine if we had it—until the stove was hot. Mom fried pieces of bread dough in deep grease. These “fritters” were delicious smothered in peanut butter and sugar!
We seldom had meatless days. The staple, which we soon tired of, was corned beef from Argentina. “Not to be Sold” was stamped in black letters on the gray tins, followed by “U. S. Department of Agriculture.” I liked the meat best either straight from the can, cold, in huge forkfuls, or warmed with peas. We had variety, too: In the fall, at Thanksgiving, we had venison, and later a butchered pig or a yearling calf Chicken, a special treat, was reserved for holidays and an occasional Sunday. In late summer, when we culled the new flock, we frequently had chicken.
Butcherings occurred shortly after the first snows. The semiarctic cold would preserve the meat, cut into roasts and chops, wrapped in butcher paper, and hidden in snow on the roof of the house, secure from thieving dogs, skunks, and coyotes. Most meat, except for the occasional roast, we fried or braised, usually with sliced and fried potatoes. We would never eat sausage made from animal blood, in the German fashion, and my mother disliked organ meats.
We also ate much fish: in summer, walleyed pike, bass, pickerel, crappies, and sunfish caught on poles made of trimmed tree branches; in winter, pickerel and pike hooked through the ice on special flagged rigs my dad carved out of apple-box wood. And there were suckers and red horse seined during the brief spring spawning season and “cured” in my uncle’s smokehouse.
Twice a month we made cherry cakes with lard or bacon drippings, cocoa, and icings of powdered sugar mixed with heavy cream and colored with food coloring. Soft, raisin-filled cookies were a favorite. We ground the raisins in a heavy food grinder, the sort you anchor by tightening a large wing nut to the table. Most meals, though, did not include sweets, except for a slice of bread covered with jam or cream and sugar. We sometimes ate fresh strawberries, wild raspberries, lettuce, and fresh vegetables in season. During the winter, greens were entirely unavailable, even in the grocery stores.
Pancakes were a staple. The sourdough starter was months, possibly years, old, and bubbled away, sitting in its crock (“You Beat Eggs, We Beat Prices”) on the kitchen range.
Dad was always first out of bed, winter or summer. He started the fire, building it from the quiescent coals of the night’s banked fire. He flipped on the radio to WLS, and sounds of Roy Acuff, LuluBelle and Scottie, and Minnie Pearl wafted through the house as flames roared up the stovepipe.
Next, he fired the range, set the black fry pan and charred griddle over the heat, and added flour, a couple of fresh eggs, and water to his pancake batter. As bacon fried, he spooned grease onto the griddle and spread the batter. Upstairs, still in bed, I felt the rising warmth. A few inches from my face, frost melted and dripped from the nail ends.
I dressed quickly. Downstairs I piled griddlecakes on my plate and smeared them with fresh butter, clotted cream, and blueberry jam. Crisp bacon cut the sweetness. I drank fresh milk. Dad had coffee from a granite pot he kept brewing all day. He called the beverage “mud”; it was thicker than espresso. We never scoured the pot.
The Butchering
1
Dad told me to hold the knife and the pan.
I heard the click on wood
of the bullet inserted, rammed,
saw a flicker flash
in a tree beside the trough,
saw a grain in the sow’s mouth,
felt my guts slosh.
“Stand back,” Dad said.
Waffled snow track
pressed by his boots and mine.
Blood and foam.
“Keep the knife sharp, son,
and hold the pan.”
One of us had shuffled,
tramped a design,
feet near the jack pine.
“She’ll bleed slow.
Catch all the blood you can.”
A rose unfolded, froze.
“Can’t we wait?” I said.
“It should turn warmer.”
Spark, spark buzzing
in the dark.
“It’s time,” Dad said, and waited.
2
Bless all this beauty! preacher
had exclaimed; all sin and beauty
in this world, beast and innocent.
Fistbones gripped the foreshortened
pulpit rim.
Thick glasses drove
his furious pupils in.
3
Dad brought the rifle to the skull.
The sow’s nose plunged into the swill,
the tips of her white tallow ears as well.
Splunk! Straight through the brain, suet
and shell. Stunned! Discharge of food,
bran. Twitch of an ear. Potato, carrot,
turnip slab. “Quick. The knife, the pan.”
He sliced the throat.
The eye closed over.
Hairy ears stood up, collapsed.
Her blood soured into gelatin.
She had begun to shit.
4
We dragged her
to the block-and-tackle rig.
We tied her tendons, raised her,
sloshed her up and down.
We shaved her hair,
spun her around, cut off
her feet and knuckles,
hacked off her head,
slashed her belly
from asshole down through
bleached fat throat.
Jewels spilled out,
crotches of arteries,
fluids danced and ran.
We hoisted her out of dog reach,
dumped her entrails in the snow,
left the head for the dogs to eat—
my mother disliked head meat.
The liver, steaming, monochrome,
quivered with eyes.
We took it home.
5
I went to my room.
Tongues licked my neck.
I spread my arms,
threw back my head.
The tendons of a heel snapped.
What had I lost?
bit, bridle, rage?
Preacher in his pulpit
fiddling, vestments aflame.
He, blazing, stepping down to me.
Hot piss came.
I knelt on the floor,
bent over, head in arms.
Piss washed down, more.
I clasped my loins,
arm crossed over arm.
And I cried
loving my guts,
O vulnerable guts,
guts of creatures.
The Sow’s Head
The day was like pewter.
The gray lake a coat
open at the throat. The border
of trees—frayed mantle collar,
hairs, evergreen. The sky dun.
Chilling breeze. Hem of winter.
I passed the iodine-colored brook,
hard waters open,
the weight of the sow’s head
an ache from shoulder to waist,
the crook of my elbow numb,
juices seeping through
the wrapping paper.
I was wrong to take it.
There were meals in it.
I would, Dad said, assist
with slaughter, scrape off
hair, gather blood.
I would be whipped for
thieving from the dogs.
I crossed ice
that shivered, shone.
No heads below, none;
nor groans—only water, deep,
and the mud beds of frogs asleep
not a bush quivered,
not a stone. Snow.
Old snow had formed
hard swirls, bone
and planes with
windwhipped ridges
for walking upon;
and beneath, in the deep,
bass quiet, perch whirling
fins, bluegills, sunfish,
dim-eyed soaking heat.
Mud would be soft down there,
rich, tan, deeper than a man:
silt of leeches, leaves
tumbling in from trees,
loon feces, mulch-thick
mudquick, and lignite forming,
cells rumbling, rifts.
I knelt, chopped through
layers of ice until
water, pus, spilled up
choking the wound. I widened
the gash. Tchick! Tchick!
Chips of ice flew.
Water blew from the hole,
the well, a whale, expired.
My knees were stuck to the ice.
I unwrapped the paper.
The head appeared
shorn of its beard.
Its ears stood up, the snout
with its Tinkertoy holes
held blood. Its eyes were shut.
There was grain on its mouth.
It sat on the snow
as though it lived below,
leviathan come for air,
limbs and hulk
dumb to my presence there.
I raised the sow’s head
by its ears. I held it
over the hole, let it go,
watched it sink, a glimmer
of pink, a wink of a match,
an eyelid.
A bone in my side beat.
Snaring Rabbits
Snowshoe rabbits were in great abundance. Resting places below flaring spruce trees were rich with droppings. Rabbit trails compacted the snow, creating banks. Dad showed me how to fashion picture-frame wire into a noose that would slip easily around a rabbit’s throat.
I tied several snares to overhanging branches. Rabbits were smart, so I made the loop of wire big enough not to be seen.
For a week, nothing. Two snares were brushed aside. The others revealed no signs of rabbits, yet the trails were freshly used.
Finally, I dismantled the traps. One snare held snowshoe rabbit remains. There were signs of struggle, as though the death had been difficult. I freed the snare and swung it, still affixed to a frozen head, as far as I could into the swamp.
Venison
Dad hunted alone. Other men preferred groups, posting hunters at strategic spots on deer runs, assigning others as beaters circling the forests, clattering, frightening the animals, driving them in toward the waiting hunters.
Deer season always began at dawn. Dad ate a hearty breakfast and packed a lunch. Over his union suit he wore a wool shirt, a sheepskin undervest, woolen pants, two pairs of wool socks, gum-soled boots, leather gloves with insert linings, and a mackinaw cap with ear flaps. He took his favorite Springfield rifle, not the most accurate of guns. He seldom drove to a hunting ground, preferring to tramp back through the snow, often waist-deep, to the swamps where he had earlier observed deer.
Why didn’t I hunt with him? Any father would have delighted in the company of a tall, strong son, and I was already over 6’. He never chided me for my fear of guns or for my exaggerated sensitivity to killing. Later, I could laugh, saying that the only thing I ever shot was a bumblebee inside a morning glory—I would stick the barrel of my .22 rifle in on top of the bee and fire. My efforts at killing squirrels were always misses. I would level my gun, pull the trigger,
and flinch, dismayed by a puff of dirt behind my intended victim, who sat there chattering.
Each day Dad spent in the woods seemed interminable. Would he shoot himself or be killed by a bear? By twilight, as sunset stained the rich snow cover and dark was about to fall, my anxieties grew.
When Dad bagged a deer, he gutted it where he shot it and then dragged it through snowy thickets to a copse near Sundsteen Road. Then he walked home, cranked up the Model T, drove to the spot, draped the gutted deer over the hood, and drove back home.
First he sawed off the antlers; then he hacked off the head, which he threw outside for Fido, the dog. He flayed the hide. Later, it would go to a tannery, in exchange for pairs of gloves. We loved watching. Large pieces of venison he hung outside from an upright frame used for gutting and butchering. We would boil the ribs smothered in sauerkraut. Tougher, less-choice portions became hamburger. Much of the meat we wrapped in newspaper and stored on the kitchen roof Occasionally, Dad killed a second deer, usually a doe. This one Mother canned. The meat lasted until early summer.
Christmas Tree
Wednesday morning, December 20th. Shimmering trees were loaded with ice. My sister and I were dressed for the outdoors. “Get one with a good shape,” my mother said. “And be careful with that axe.”
We rushed on skis over the packed trail, crossing fields, the south pasture, and on through birch and tamarack to the lake. Fresh rabbit tracks had broken the ice crust. I carried the axe. We whirred along for half an hour and then we halted before a superb view of frozen Minnow Lake.
Crunching Gravel Page 3