The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  “A play on Gayelord Hauser?” He was the author of a best-selling diet book called Look Better, Live Longer, all the rage among health food faddists at the time. Harry’s mother, who was good-looking enough in my book without any outside help, worshipped his every word. “Who does he belong to?”

  Harry read another tag. “Someone named Duluoz. But it’s not a Wisconsin license. New York, it says here.”

  “He’s a long way from home.”

  “Poor little puppydog,” Harry cooed, rumpling Gayelord’s ears. “Is ’oo lost? Is ’oo lonely? Is ’oo . . . housebwoken?”

  “Don’t talk baby talk to him,” I snapped. “I can’t stand it.”

  He looked up at me, wide eyed and batting his lashes. “Oh, Gayelord, is the big bad Mawine angwy wif us now?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Then a new voice sounded from the darkness. “I gotta agree with the ‘Mawine.’”

  A short, stocky figure stepped into the light, and at first I thought it was Curly. But this guy was much younger, with short, dark, tousled hair, high cheekbones, dark, wide-set eyes, and built like a football player. He even walked like a running back, toes turned inward. He wore faded Levis threadbare at the knees and a blue chambray workshirt. Scuffed black motorcycle boots on big feet. “I’m Peter Martin,” he said. He swung a bottle from his hand and held it out to us. “Have a drink? We’re camped out down the other end of the island. I was just taking a little sundown stroll with Gayelord here. Digging the sunset. Then we heard your music and ambled over in this direction. Gaye musta smelled your food cookin’ and decided to see what he could mooch off you.” He smiled. “Sorry for the interruption, but c’mon have a snort. I know I’m getting a bit dry.”

  Harry stood up and accepted the bottle. Jack Daniels. We each poured a slug into our tin cups, sweetening the coffee, and Harry filled a third one for Martin. He sat down crosslegged beside the fire and raised the cup to Harry. “Cheers, man.” He smiled again and I could see he was half lit already.

  I gave him our usual riff about the canoe trip, leaving out the Curly and Doc bit and making no mention at all of our troubles at Twodoggone Lake.

  “Peter Martin,” Harry mused. “The owner’s tag on Gayelord’s c-collar says something different.”

  “Yeah, Duluoz. He’s, uh, a friend of mine. Over in Brooklyn. He gave me Gayelord. Said the pooch was unhappy in New York, too big for a one-room apartment. I was gonna be on the road this summer, so he turned him over to me.”

  “Having a look around the c-country, are you?”

  Peter Martin grinned, his dark eyes sparking. “Hey, man, it’s the only way to go. Don’t you think? Fuck the cities. New York’s a frosty fagtown, confusion and nonsense, Chicago not much better, all clangor and stink from the stockyards. Money money money, all they think of. L.A., Frisco, Denver—screw the lot of ’em. The one true and noble function of our time is to move.” He pulled a packet of Zig-Zag papers from his shirt pocket, tipped in a line of shredded green tobacco, and rolled a lopsided smoke. Lit it with a kitchen match snapped alive with a thumbnail.

  “Boo?” he said through his teeth, holding in the smoke. He held the cigarette out to us.

  Harry drew back in mock fright. “Please don’t say things like that. I-I’ve got a weak heart and I’m scared of the d-d-dark enough as it is.”

  “No, no, no,” Martin said. “Boojie. Bambalacha. Muggles. Some call it mohasky.”

  “I’m in training,” I said. “Tobacco shortens your wind and I may have to run for my life in Korea.”

  “It’s not tobacco,” Peter said, laughing. “It’s grass, tea, Mary Warner. Good for you. Some call it Mary Jane or moocah, or just plain loco weed. I like to think of it as blue sage, Indian hay. A sacred herb.” He shook his head, smiling. “Jeez you guys are square. Have a toke and I swear it’ll make your night nicer.” He looked up at the stars, shining through the trees. “It’s all an illusion, anyways.” The guy was always smiling.

  To oblige him we each took a drag, then another. Following Peter’s example we held them in as long as we could, then exhaled slowly through our teeth. Gayelord sat before us in the good-dog posture, grinning as he inhaled the smoke. We passed the joint around until it was down to a nubbin. Peter Martin fed the stub to the dog. “Mellow him out,” he said.

  Peter lay back on an elbow and poured another cup of coffee sweetened with bourbon. “So you’re in the Marines,” he said. “I joined the Navy during the war, V-12 program, wanted to be a fighter pilot in the Pacific. But I couldn’t take the drill, all those asshole regs. Everything by the book, by the numbers. Finally I wigged out. Punched the company commander smack in the mouth and went off to the library. Later I showed up naked for a dress inspection. That did it, spent weeks in the loony bin while they gave me all kinds of tests to see what kind of psycho I was, but then they gave me an honorable discharge. Unfit for service. But I still wanted to see the war. I signed on in the merch. The merchant marine? So I’m a kind of a marine too, but different.”

  I’ll say.

  Brush wolves howled from across the river, an eerie high-pitched chorus.

  “Aaaah,” Peter Martin said. “Coyote nowhere. The place for me.”

  9

  THE FRIENDS OF GAYELORD SCHNAUZER

  Later that night, when the coffee and bourbon were finished, our new friend led us up-island to where his buddies were camped out in an old, prewar Airstream trailer. We brought some of our gear with us. Gayelord led the way through the aspen jungle, using his nose to sniff out their earlier backtrail. Peter was impressed with our hardware. “God,” he said, “if Ol’ Bull Lee could see these guns, he’d cream his jeans.” Bull Lee was a writer friend of Peter’s who lived in Algiers, Louisiana, just across the river from New Orleans. Peter and his friends were heading down there from here, once they could figure out a way to get back across the Firesteel. A dirt track had led them in to the river a week ago and they’d crossed to the island with the Airstream towing behind a battered gray ’49 Hudson. But since their arrival, the river had risen and there was no way they could get back without waterwings. The Firesteel was falling now, sure, but still too deep to venture it.

  His pals were an odd lot. A slutty-looking babe in her twenties named Marylou; a short, blond, criminal type called Dean, skinny and wild eyed; and a heavyset fellow named Hal who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad along with Dean. They were sitting crosslegged around a Coleman stove when we pulled in, stirring a pot of canned chili con carne. Empty cans littered the ground. “The crackers are kinda stale,” Dean apologized after offering us a bowl of it. “We’ve been marooned on Crusoe’s Island for damn near eternity.”

  “No thanks,” I told him. “We just ate.”

  Peter went over to the Hudson, leaned in, and turned on the car radio. He fiddled with the dial, zooming up and down through ethereal static, until he picked up a faint but clear signal. Jazz, it sounded like. “From New Orleans,” he said. “At night we sometimes pick it up. You can hear all of America in the dead of night if the atmospherics are right. St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, even Denver sometimes. It’s different music everyplace. You can put your thumb on the pulse of the country this way. And man, what a different beat. In New York you gotta go to the clubs to hear real American boogie. Dig that tenorman, wailing away at the stars. Just like those coyotes out there.”

  “Jack gets a bit carried away,” Marylou said in a gravelly whisky-alto.

  “Jack?” I said. I looked around.

  “I mean Peter,” she said. “Or do I mean Duluoz?”

  “What’s in a name, man?” Peter said, looking at me. Then he grinned at Marylou. “You oughta know, honey. A ‘Peter’ by any other name would taste as sweet, hey?”

  “Fuck you, whatever your name is.” She pulled out a Benzedrine inhaler, unscrewed it, shook out the six thin white strips of paper inside, wadded them up in little balls and popped one in her mouth, chasing it down with a slug of hooch. Peter and Dean follow
ed suit. Hal ate two.

  Peter put the tin bowls and the chili pot down on the ground for Gayelord to finish off. “Saves doing the dishes later,” he said. Gayelord’s tongue made quick work of it, missing not a morsel. We smoked more boo and drank powdered lemonade in water from the Firesteel, spiked with shots from another of Peter’s bottles, and listened to jazz until Dean said we had to turn off the radio for fear of draining the battery.

  The northern lights came on suddenly, flashing down in green tendrils threaded pink and blue, then blazing white and dancing back and forth across the skies in a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. At first I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, maybe some side effect from the Mary Jane, but then the others began commenting on them. “Hey, listen up,” Peter said. “They crackle! They hum. Do you hear that bass note? Hey, man, they’re playing our song. Oooom mane padme ooooooom! Dig it?”

  “I always said you were a freak-o nutcase, Jack,” Dean said, cuddled under a blanket beside the faltering stove with Marylou. “That’s not the oom song. It’s the Nutcracker Suite, sure as shit.”

  “You’d better turn off that Coleman pretty quick or you’re going to run out of fuel,” I said. “Can’t you guys build a fire?”

  “We’re city boys,” Dean said. “We only burn down buildings. Whole city blocks if we can manage it. Anything smaller’s beneath our dignity.” Hal giggled. Peter went into the trailer and came back with a pea coat, which he draped over his shoulders, turning up the threadbare collar. “From my days in the merch,” he said. “Ah, the sea stories this coat could tell.”

  “Yeah,” Dean said, “like the time you got cornholed by the cook on the way to Liverpool.”

  “Fuck you,” Peter said.

  “Ooooh, I’d like that!” He leaned over and turned off the stove. At once the chill of the night air hit us. There was no warmth in the aurora.

  Harry had brought the sax and now he ran changes up and down the valves, a hard sound, no vibrato, as if he were leaving that effect to the Wurlitzer buzz of the northern lights.

  I got up from where I lay on top of my sleeping bag and gathered some firewood. Kicked out a shallow depression in the sand and got it going with a couple of dry pine cones for kindling. I reeled a bit on my feet as I stood there looking up. The lights were singing, urging me to join in the dance. I could hear Harry laying a dark blue line down beneath the tickle and tinkle of the Firesteel where it sluiced over the stony ford, a castrati choir of alien voices. I could almost see the lights swaying over the water where it glinted below the stars. Or maybe it was just the night fog rising. From far upstream came the splash of a rising trout. Harry heard it too: he blew it a gentle blat.

  These people were what in those days we called Bohemians. Later they’d be called Beats, the Beat Generation, Beatniks after the Russkies launched Sputnik, and even later, hippies. They belonged in the city, any city, the scruffier the neighborhood, the better. Greenwich Village or San Francisco’s North Beach. “That’s their natural habitat,” Sergeant Stingley said. “They fit in perfect with the rats and roaches.” Commonists, he called them. “The only way they know how to shoot is up,” and here he’d wink and depress an imaginary plunger into the crook of his elbow. Out here in the boonies they’d starve to death, I thought, or die of exposure if the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. Well, that’s their lookout. Or so I believed in my jarhead mode.

  I lit the fire, waiting until it was going good, then walked back down to the river to get some more wood for the night. Harry got up and came along. Gayelord followed us.

  “F-f-freaks is right,” Harry said when we were out of earshot. “I don’t like that Dean guy. He’s creepy. Did you see the way he was eyeing the g-guns?”

  “Guy like that’s likely to cut our throats during the night,” I said. “Maybe we ought to trade off watches again. Or just say fuck it and drive on.”

  Harry looked out at the river. “Too foggy,” he said. “There may be r-rocks and whitewater downriver.”

  “Let’s check it out.” I led the way down the bank. Gayelord ran ahead, picked up a stick, and came back to drop it at my feet. “Thanks, pooch,” I told him, “but let’s pick up firewood on the way back, hey?”

  “I think he w-wants you to throw it for him,” Harry said. Gayelord was sitting and looking up at me, head cocked to one side. I sidearmed the stick out into the river. It landed with a heavy splash, invisible in the fog.

  “Fetch!”

  Gayelord hit the water in a flat racing dive and disappeared into the mist. “Oh fuck, I hope he can find his way back.”

  We heard him swimming around out there, chugging and puffing, but in a minute he was back, the stick crosswise in his mouth and his eyes gleaming with pride. He dropped it at my feet, then shook himself off. They always wait to do that when they’re close enough to spray you. Doggy altruism. They love the water, so of course you must love it too.

  “Hey,” Harry said, “he knows his job. Must be the Labrador in him.” He threw the stick, farther this time, and again Gayelord found it in short order.

  “This could go on all night,” I said, pushing on down the island. A short distance ahead we came to a deep, narrow, weedy inlet. Out in the fog I could hear ducks talking, low and slow as if they were sleepy. Gayelord heard them too, ears peaked and his head cocked quizzically. We eased down the shore and then we saw them, a big raft of migrant waterfowl, mallards or blacks by their size and shape. Probably a mixed flock of both varieties, with greenheads predominant. Maybe some blue-wing teal mixed in with them for good measure.

  “Man, what a setup,” I whispered. “We could sneak down here before first light, one of us on each point of the bay. Then get them flying between us. Limit out in five minutes. And with Gayelord to help us, we wouldn’t lose a bird.” The dog whined his assent. He was sitting on my feet and I could feel his stub tail whipping back and forth.

  “Except we’ve only got one shotgun,” Harry said. “M-mine.”

  I’d forgotten for a moment that Curly still had my Remington.

  “Still, we ought to try it. You get well hidden with the gun in some brush near the point, and I’ll sneak around the other side. Then when it’s light enough, I’ll jump up and spook ’em toward you. If you can reload fast enough you ought to be able to drop at least four of them, maybe six or eight if they’re knotted up.”

  “It’s a p-plan,” Harry said. “M-maybe a game warden will hear me shooting and come over to check our licenses. He could help get these people off the island, and maybe put out an alert to the state troopers for D-Doc and C-C-Curly.”

  “Yeah, but maybe he’s already had an alert for us. From Stoat & Co.”

  “Hmmm.” Harry scratched his head. “Well, I s-still think we should do it. I’d rather be hauled in by the 1-law than m-murdered by those b-bastards. Wouldn’t you?”

  When we got back to the Airstream freighted down with firewood, the gang was buzzed and incoherent on Benzedrine, booze, and boo, still gabbling up a gale. Words swirled around in a bluewhite dustdevil—satori, nirvana, Buddha, delusion and illusion, along with references to New York jazz joints like the Apollo, Kelly’s Stable, Small’s Paradise and the Savoy up in Harlem, all the cool clubs on 52nd Street. They nearly got to slugging it out over the merits of their champions. Basie, Lester “The Prez” Young, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Bird. Harry’s ears perked up. And then into writers. William James, Dos Passos, Saroyan, and not surprisingly that long-winded jabbernowl Thomas Wolfe. I never could read him. Peter thought he was God. Well, the way they were going it was clear we wouldn’t get any sleep around there.

  I looked at Harry and shrugged. He nodded. We stoked up the fire again, picked up the horn, the Thompson, and the BAR, and eased on out of there, taking Gayelord with us back to where we’d left the canoe. The dog seemed to prefer our company. Or maybe it was just the smell of the guns. He didn’t once look back.

  We traded off watches during the night, not taking any chan
ces. It was cold and dank, but we built no fire. If Doc and Curly happened past, let them see the other fire and put ashore with Peter and his pals. We’d hear them long before they found us. I woke Harry in the dark when the sky to the east was just starting to lighten toward gray. We loaded the canoe and shoved off, with Gayelord in the bow alongside Harry. The fog had thinned but still lay close to the water. When we slipped past the trailer, the coals of the campfire glowing eerie in the dark and reflecting blood red off the aluminum, Peter and his pals were all dead to the world. They’d probably sleep until noon.

  We pulled ashore just short of the inlet. Harry set up at the point with the Winchester and a box of 4s, and I made my way through the woods to the other side, Gayelord at my heels. The ducks were still there, starting to stir as dawn neared. The sound of their muttering voices set Gayelord to shivering. He knew something was up, and deep in the Labradorian recesses of his brain he knew it was going to be good. He whined once, but I hushed him and he never uttered another sound. Instinct.

  When I was halfway up the far side of the inlet, I pushed quietly through the brush, crouching low, and had a look-see. A pink streak low in the east was brightening quickly to red and the last stars winked out like dying fireflies overhead. Another cloudless day. The ducks, maybe fifty or sixty of them, were knotted up in the middle but closer to me than to Harry. I couldn’t see him in the alders that grew down close to the water, but then I caught a glint from his gunbarrels.

  Okay, we were ready. “Let’s get ’em up, Gayelord,” I said. We bulled noisily through the brush, down to the edge of the water, and as I started waving my arms and yelling, Gayelord joined in with a loud, deep bark I hadn’t heard before. The ducks exploded off the water, jumping straight up, quacking in chorus and winging out low—straight toward Harry. His gun banged twice, hollow in the distance, and three ducks dropped with a splash at his feet. A pause while he reloaded and it banged twice more. More falling bodies. Then I saw him spin around, reloading again, and fire both barrels, bangbang—chasing shots, but they told. Two more birds fell, in the main-stem of the river this time. Yes indeed. Crisp extractors on old Ollie Winchester’s masterpiece.