by David Rhodes
All the forces demanding Winnie’s attention seemed to be releasing their grip. Still seated on the bench with her eyes closed, she contemplated this brief freedom, and felt herself falling deeper and deeper into an indescribable peace. Both the falling and the peace had many layers, and she slowly dissolved into them until there was nothing left of her but a single wordless prayer, which she experienced over and over again.
After some time, Winnie began to experience a silent nudging to return to the practical world of everyday events. She felt the outer layers of her consciousness growing firmer, more alert. There was a new coolness in the air. The sound of birds resurfaced in her mind, accompanied by a number of recognizable fragrances.
Slowly opening her eyes, she noticed early evening shadows lying at the base of things. She took a deep breath and looked at her wristwatch. Over three hours had passed since she’d entered the garden. Jacob and August would be home soon and she had things to do.
Then her attention was drawn to a gangly shadow beneath her. Something about it was disturbing. She wondered briefly how a shadow could be there, and soon understood that it was her own, and then—in a rush of recognition—that she was five feet above the ground, levitating in midair.
A west wind came up the valley and Winnie was blown several feet to the east, directly above the painted bench she had been sitting on. She tried to propel herself downward, but without success. Her movements succeeded only in swiveling her around, turning her over, or having no effect at all.
Winnie laughed. She stretched her right foot out beneath her and managed to hook her toes inside the space between the horizontal board on the bench-back and two of the wooden slats connecting it to the seat. Anchored in this tentative way, she exerted pressure against the bench with her toes, and lowered her body several inches in the air. But as soon as she relaxed, she rose back up. Then she lost her tentative grip and floated freely again.
Fortunately, the next breeze that came along blew her farther into the garden, where she brushed against the ornamental crabapple that Jacob had planted for her several years ago. Grabbing the nearest limb, she pulled herself into the center of the tree and attempted to grapple her way toward the ground. By pushing against the fattest part of the limbs she managed to force her feet into the grass, but as soon as she let go she rose back up into the tree.
“Put me down!” She laughed and was suddenly alarmed to find she was not alone.
Dressed in a long-sleeve muslin shirt, red suspenders, gray work pants, and duck boots, Wally Roebuck stood about twenty feet away, watching her. When he saw her startled expression he said, “I’m sorry, Winnie, I should have announced myself. There wasn’t anyone in the house, so I came out to look at the fish in your fountain. Ivan told me about them, and I’ve been wanting to come over and see them for a long time.”
“This is very embarrassing,” said Winnie, still holding on to the limb above her head and attempting to keep her voice calm. “I’ve been experiencing something I can’t explain.”
“I don’t understand it either,” said Wally. “I’ve found the key is to eat something, and almost anything will do. Here, eat some of this.” He walked over, took a couple of nuts and dried berries from his shirt pocket, and handed them to her. She ate them, and within a few minutes she felt firmly earthbound.
Then she noticed that her feet were cold, and put her socks and shoes back on.
Wally went to the fountain and looked at the fish in the deepest part of the water. Their gills fluttered, but otherwise they were motionless. “I’ve stopped trying to make sense of everything,” he said. “I had to after I began thinking about the afterlife. Acceptance is the only useful logic for me now.”
“Do you believe in individual salvation?” asked Winnie.
“I don’t,” said Wally. “How about you?”
“I used to,” said Winnie. “But the thought eventually just wore itself out inside me. Either we will all become fully conscious or none of us will.”
“What about those gifted ones who seem so far ahead of the rest of us?” asked Wally.
“Even the scouts are part of the wagon train,” said Winnie. “Why do you want to look at my fish?”
“Fish fascinate me. I don’t know why, but I dream about them all the time. And yours are beautiful and strangely colored. I imagine your son knows the scientific names for them.”
“You could safely bet your afterlife on that,” said Winnie with a smile. “I hear you and Buck are going to build a heated garage for Jack Station.”
“Yes, and I’m going to get a new hammer. Working with Buck has been one of my greatest joys. I assume you’re coming to Blake and Dart’s party?”
“I’ll be there,” said Winnie.
“So will I,” said Wally, looking up from the pool. He jotted something into his notebook and turned back to her. “Can you tell me anything about this Wild Boy that August and Ivan keep talking about?”
“I suppose it would be all right to tell you,” replied Winnie. “The Wild Boy is no wilder than you or me. Lester Mortal brought him back from a mountain village in Vietnam. The boy lives with Lester and is well cared for in every way. Believe me, I’ve checked.”
“How do you account for the way Ivan and August think of him?”
“Mostly that’s just boys being boys, but some of it is probably Lester’s doing. He has his reasons, and I suppose we should respect them.”
“What are they?”
“The boy is a grandchild of a friend of Lester’s. They served together in one of those special units of the army. They were running reconnaissance missions and his friend fell in love with a woman who lived outside their temporary base. They had a son together. After his discharge, Lester’s friend returned to Vietnam to be with her. They stayed together for many years, and their son eventually married a local girl in the village. After Lester’s friend got sick from Agent Orange poisoning, he returned to the States and Lester visited him in a veterans’ hospital several months before he died. He asked Lester to go back to the village and make sure his wife and son were provided for. He made Lester promise, and when Lester finally fulfilled that promise several years later, the village had been devastated by typhoid. His friend’s wife and son were no longer alive, and his daughter-in-law had died three years after giving birth to another son.”
“What happened to the child?” asked Wally, crossing over to the bench and sitting down.
“The child was badly neglected, partly because his features increasingly resembled his American grandfather’s. Isolated and ignored, he had learned very little language. He was six or seven years old when Lester found him, an elective mute living on the edges of the village, scavenging for food, and roaming through the mountains. His face and hands had been scarred by a land mine that was set off when another child stepped on it.”
“Lester brought him back here?” said Wally.
“After returning to the States, the child’s fear of other people made life difficult. Lester tried to enroll him in a public school, and later he took him to several private clinics. The child resisted all the help that was offered, and after a while Lester began to resist it too. Every time the child was given a new label, his spirit dimmed further. He persisted in not speaking, and his health declined. I should also say that Lester had come to a place in his own life where all he thought about was protecting the child. You might almost say that civilization and Lester had fallen out. He’d come to the end of one phase of his life, and except for that child, he had nothing good to begin the next one with. And so he decided to keep the child beyond the grasp of anything resembling modern society. The child had already been damaged, and Lester vowed that he wouldn’t be hurt again. He was also afraid that the boy’s right to be in this country would be questioned, and perhaps there would be some attempt to deport him.”
“So Lester came here,” said Wally.
“Nature was the only thing that consistently appealed to the child, and Lester was det
ermined to hide him in the Driftless—away from the great urban centers, hidden away from institutions and other people. He wanted him to be able to roam about as freely as he had in the mountains of Vietnam. And so Jacob helped him purchase a piece of land. Jacob also helped him register the child for homeschooling with the Department of Public Instruction, and makes sure that Lester has all the books he needs for the child’s curriculum. He also helps him market his ginseng. And he still checks on them both every couple weeks.”
“So Jacob knew about this child before anyone else?”
“Yes, and Lester made Jacob promise never to tell anyone. He even made him promise not to tell me, and Jacob kept that promise until very recently, when August became fascinated with the child. Jacob asked Lester if he could tell me, and when he had I went out to Lester’s hut. I saw the child’s room, which was clean and in good order, and I saw the medical reports from the doctors, and watched from a distance as Lester and the child conversed in sign language. It was perfectly clear to me that they are both reasonably happy.”
“So Lester became a hermit and frightened people away in order to protect the child,” said Wally. “All these years he’s been protecting him.”
“Lester worked at cultivating the image he wanted, and for the most part it worked. People stayed away. And according to Lester, living in nature—among plants, animals, and changing seasons—restored the child’s intelligence and spirit. Along with his health.”
“But Lester couldn’t expect to hide him completely.”
“He knew the child would be seen from time to time. It couldn’t be avoided in the beginning. He made mistakes and once in a while someone saw him. But whenever anyone went looking for him, Lester chased them off. And as the boy became more knowledgable about the area, he was seen less and less often.”
“Ivan says he and August have visited Lester’s home many times.”
“Lester says he’s fine with the boys coming. Usually the child hides in his room, but Lester imagines that over time he will become more comfortable with them, and may even start interacting with them. But Lester wants to take it slow. Like I said, he’s protective.”
“Fascinating,” said Wally, and wrote something in his notebook. “What does Lester call him?”
“JW.”
Strawberry Wine
On the day of the wedding an ominous cloud rose out of the west. It grew darker and threatened to rain on Nate as he turned the pork over the fire pit at the end of the driveway. Several drops seared into steam as they struck the hot coals. Dart came out of the farmhouse to check on the meat sauce and yelled at the sky. By ten thirty the clouds had cleared.
Bee took over the job of roasting pork while Nate and Blake brought folding tables from the basement of Winnie’s church. In the farmyard, they arranged them in lines of five around two tables that would soon hold the large platters of food: pork, barbecue chicken, corn on the cob, homemade beef bratwursts, potato salad with pickles and sweet onions, zucchini bread, green beans with almonds, baked beans flavored with maple syrup, wild Wisconsin rice, sliced tomatoes, fruit and nut pies with homemade frozen custard, and an assortment of locally made beers and wine from rhubarb, peach, apricot, and strawberry.
Dart covered each table with tightly stretched wrapping paper, and Nate and Blake went back for the folding chairs. Ivan set blue jars of wildflowers and grasses with seeded-out heads on the tables.
Guests began arriving mid-afternoon, and despite having been told that food and beverages would be provided, most of them brought something to add to the abundant feast. In a short time there was hardly any room to put plates down on the tables.
When the Roebucks arrived, Wally went directly to the roasting pig. He wanted to talk to Nate about the tail; he’d heard it had unusual properties. Ivan led Kevin across the farmyard and pointed at the grass, to the exact place where July Montgomery had died.
“And you think he was murdered?” asked Kevin.
“No doubt,” said Ivan. “It was a government job.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“He knew too much. My grandfather was good friends with him, and he knew everything July did. In fact, he’s lucky he’s still alive. They once unloaded a truck of concrete blocks together, took them off the flatbed, one in each hand.”
“Who’s your grandfather?”
“He’s next to the fire pit talking to Wally. That’s his big rig parked over there, the one with the cool chrome horns. Want to see my new video games?”
“Sure. Where are they?”
“Inside my dad’s house. Come on.”
Lester Mortal arrived with the Helms. As soon as he saw him, Wally came over to talk. But Lester had been living in relative seclusion for so long that being around this many people left him looking as if he were standing in the middle of the road and watching a bus speed toward him. “I’m sorry,” he said, backing away from Wally. “Give me a little time to adjust.”
“No problem,” said Wally. “We’ll talk later.”
Bud Jenks arrived with his mother and three of his cousins. Blake handed them beers from the tub, and Dart set a tray of bite-size roll-ups before them.
Several carloads of Nate and Bee’s relatives arrived and immediately made themselves at home, pulling off juicy pieces of pork and eating them without plates. They all knew that Nate and Bee had been spending a lot of time together, and they couldn’t help but wonder about it.
“We spent a week together in Slippery Slopes,” said Bee.
“You and Nate always liked each other,” said Uncle Ray. “Everyone knew that.”
“We thought we’d kept it a secret,” said Nate.
They all laughed.
A silver Mercedes drove down the lane and parked in the farmyard. Frieda Rampton climbed out with her husband. She looked confused and a little awkward until Amy and Buck came over, handed them glasses of strawberry wine, and sampled the pastries they had brought from a shop on the west side of Madison. Frieda’s husband said he’d heard about the new prison being built outside Words, and wondered why Buck’s construction company had turned down the job.
“My father’s still the head of the company and he was against it,” said Buck.
“Which one’s your father?”
“Over there next to the roasting pig, writing in his notebook.”
Dart came over and asked Frieda if she wanted to slap her again.
“No,” said Frieda, laughing. “But ask me later.”
“Come on,” said Dart, “let me introduce you to everyone.”
A blue Mercury sedan pulled into the drive. Jack Station walked over and showed Buck and Wally a picture he’d cut out of a catalog—the kind of doors he wanted on his garage. Blake met him near the food tables, shook his hand, and handed him a glass of peach wine.
About midway through everyone’s first plateful of food, a motorcycle came up the road and turned down the drive, the sun reflecting off the chrome. Skeeter Skelton climbed off and Blake went out to greet him. Skeeter was wearing full leathers, a red handkerchief around his head, and an expression of windswept indifference.
“Glad you came,” said Blake. “Are we still taking that ride together next weekend?”
“You bet,” said Skeeter. “Do you think we should borrow a couple leisure bikes for the ride—heavy ones with loud pipes and big cushioned seats?”
“Might be a good idea,” said Blake. “Have you ever heard of sour beer?”
“Of course. Do you have some here?”
“About a case of it.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” said Skeeter with a smile, taking off his leather jacket.
Two cars filled with people from the church arrived next. All the women were in dresses, the men in suits or sweater vests. The new pastor introduced himself to everyone in a baritone voice, careful to make sustained eye contact.
As Nate poured another bag of ice into the beer tub, he saw something out of the corner of his eye beyon
d the farmhouse. When he looked up, the Wild Boy was in the hayfield at the top of the hill, watching.
Sitting at one of the tables, Bee noticed Nate’s sudden interest, followed his gaze, and saw the child herself.
Across from her, August turned to see what Bee was looking at. He climbed out of his folding chair and went over to Nate.
“Do you see him, August?” asked Nate.
“I see someone or something that appears to resemble him,” said August.
“He probably smelled the food from several miles away. I know wolves can do that. Let’s take something up to him. Do you think he’ll accept it?”
“Perhaps a bowl of fruit, nuts, and raw vegetables,” suggested August. “He doesn’t eat meat.”
“I’ll put one together,” said Nate. “You take it up. I know he trusts you.”
“How do you know that, Mr. Bookchester?”
“Your friend Ivan told Blake, Blake told my cousin Bee, and Bee told me.”
August looked up the hill again. Then he saw Lester Mortal staring at him from the end table, a patient yet serious look on his face.
Winnie watched her son from another table. She saw the old veteran looking at August. When Lester noticed Winnie looking at him, he looked away.
Several minutes later, August took a basket of food up the hill. The child came over and they both ate a piece of fruit. August set the basket on the ground and sat beside it.
Winnie watched the other child sit next to him.
Then both children jumped up. A thin hand pushed against August’s chest, knocking him off-balance. August tried to push back, but the other child was quicker and leaped back. August ran after him and the boy dashed through the alfalfa. They were both laughing, but there was something in the tone of the other child’s laughter—even from this distance—that worried Winnie.
She went over to sit next to Lester Mortal, who was also watching the children while keeping a safe distance from the other guests.