A Grain of Wheat

by Joseph Jacobson

  Lars was bitterly disappointed when he found out that Steve had no intention of spending the summer on the farm. He had already lost most of his hope that Steve would succeed him, and this dashed the rest of it to pieces. Julia too was heartbroken. But Steve, displaying considerably more initiative than his parents were used to, insisted that having a variety of experiences was part of a good education and that next summer he might well decide to stay home. So Lars gave him enough money to last him through the summer, and then some.

  Taut as the string of a bow, the arrow poised, young Stephan Pearson roared off one early morning for parts unknown. Rolled into a compact bundle and lashed to the rear fender of his cycle was everything he thought he would need for the whole summer—a bedroll, a long-barreled revolver, a few clothes, a cooking kit, and some toilet items. Stuffed under the lashing was also a lunch his mother had given him at the very last moment. Inside the lunch was a tear-stained note that read, “Please, darling, if you get lonesome, come home.”

  Get lonesome? He already was! Had he ever been anything else? Lonesome was normal.

  His first idea was just to keep going until he came to the “perfect spot” of his mind’s eye: a cool stream in a wilderness far from human interference, flowing lazily through rolling hills and towering trees, in a glen filled with lush vegetation and prolific berry bushes, with animals and signs of animals everywhere. There must be thousands of places like that in northern Minnesota, and one of them would be his, he told himself as he headed in an easterly direction.

  As he drove along, he had to force himself to slow down. What was there to hurry? There was no reason here for entertaining the morbid thoughts that he had tried to escape from all year. After all, none of the people he encountered along the way in stores or gas stations was out to force him to do anything. Calm down! Take it easy!

  As it happened, Steve spent the rest of June roaming around in northern Minnesota. First he went to Warroad near the south shore of Lake of the Woods. He was tempted to stop right there, but a little voice inside him said, No, this is not far enough away from the lumber industry and tourists. So he drove east to Baudette and then south through the wilderness to the Red Lakes, encountering a few startled Indians on horseback along the way. This country pleased him in a way, but it was not exactly the kind of terrain where he could expect to find his “spot.” The trees were scrubby and the undergrowth was scraggily, and it was flat as a pancake. He often stopped along the way as he slowly wound down. He knew his “spot” was ahead of him, somewhere. That’s all that mattered. It was a happy few days for him.

  When he arrived at a point east of the southern shore of Lower Red Lake, he turned east along a small winding road not much more than a fire lane. He followed it through the tiny hamlets of Northome and Effie and into the wilderness beyond. And there one morning as he was chugging along the narrowest road he had thus far encountered, the motor of his cycle gave a couple of coughs and a sputter and stopped dead. He tried in vain to restart it. Nothing obvious appeared wrong to him. So he decided to walk the cycle in a leisurely way on to the next town, Togo, where he would get a mechanic to look at it. He had just passed Deer Lake. That meant, according to the map, that he was over halfway to Togo from Effie.

  He had not foreseen how much sheer sweat it would take to lug the bulky machine down the lane. Each little rise, not even noticeable when the cycle was running, seemed like a mountain now. As the day progressed, he was assaulted by thirst, dust, and weariness and discouragement. His canteen was not large enough to last between streams. The cycle sunk heavily into the loose sand at many points along the way. His arms and legs ached from the nonstop effort. The sun beat down on him pitilessly. When evening came, he was still a long way from Togo, tired, hungry, dirty, and without much food. Despite himself, he was starting to feel irritable and disenchanted. The sun had already sunk beneath the horizon when at last he came to a much needed brook where he soaked his legs in the cool water and drank deeply. Then he loaded his revolver and walked up the brook in search of his supper.

  Nothing presented itself. Chipmunks scurried around. A hawk circled high overhead. Nothing edible was to be seen—no grouse, no rabbit, no squirrel, not even a raccoon. So in the last faint glow of daylight, he followed the stream back to the cycle and made supper of a raw carrot and a few crackers. Then he stretched out in his bedroll for the night, pretty disgruntled.

  The next evening, hungry and bone-weary, he finally nursed the dead cycle into Togo. But Togo was nothing more than the place where his trail crossed an equally obscure trail! Marking the spot almost ceremonially was a small log cabin with a stable behind it. Thank God there was a light burning in the cabin. Steve took heart and rapped on the door. An old geezer with a full white beard and white hair covering his shoulders answered the door and listened in rapt disbelief as Steve explained what had happened.

  “Shonny,” he said toothlessly. “I ain’t heerd of nothin’ sho dadbing shtoopid ash that in all m’ born daysh. Ya mean ya trushted that ther contraption to bring ya through thish here wild land without nothin’ happ’nin? Well, I shpect I gotta put cha up fer the night. I sure dunno wha cher gonna do with that ther contraption.”

  The two of them scarcely exchanged another word all evening. Steve got the distinct impression that his host thought he was crazier than a hoot owl. He served him up a warm dose of some kind of stew in a badly cracked bowl which tasted pretty good, finished off with a cup of something like coffee. The old duffer’s eyes never left him until they turned in for the night. It was all pretty awkward, but also comical in its own way. Steve stretched out on the dirt floor in his bedroll, aware that he had intruded uninvited on the old man’s privacy, but also that he really needed him and was genuinely grateful to him.

  In the morning he gave the old fellow his revolver and some money as security, rented an ancient buckboard from him drawn by a haggard draft horse and loaded his motorcycle onto it, tying it down as best he could. The old man told him his best bet would be to head for Virginia which he could find by traveling east to the first intersection and then turning south “fer a good peesh.” It proved to be a long and tedious haul.

  It took four full days to reach Virginia. Steve lived on a sack full of baking powder biscuits supplied by his host. The old horse rarely exceeded one mile per hour. Once in Virginia he was another week-and-a-half getting the parts shipped up from Duluth for the mechanic to install, a week of pure misery for him. Virginia represented Steve’s worst nightmare: the destruction of wilderness to appease human greed in the name of progress. Everyone there had pinned their destiny on the ugly scar of the open-pit mine. The only virtue in the whole place was their carefree disregard for the Prohibition Amendment. Steve appreciated that.

  It was a full two-and-a-half weeks before Steve pulled up in front of the cabin in Togo with the horse and buckboard. He had been tempted to sell the old nag and the wagon and move on, but the thought of forfeiting his revolver and much of his money was enough to induce him to return. The old man had just about written off the old plug and the wagon as losses and chalked up the revolver and the money as gains when Steve pulled up in front of the cabin. After staying the night with the old man and thanking him sincerely for doing what he could, Steve fired up the motorcycle first thing in the morning and set out.

  Steve had only one thought when he set out—to put that wretched country behind him as fast as he could. It had been a long and clumsy three weeks that had contributed nothing to his goal for the summer. He would look elsewhere to find his “spot,” and it wouldn’t be in Minnesota.

  X

  The next couple of days carried him blindly out of Minnesota and into Wisconsin via Duluth and Superior. Very little else registered with him but the roar of the engine and the blur of the trees as they whizzed past him. Exploring the byways no longer appealed to him as it had before his misadventure, and the main roads seemed to lead him from one “Virginia” to another, each belching smoke into the air an
d tearing up the terrain to make someone rich. It was getting urgent for him now: he just had to get away from all that. He whipped through the northwestern tip of Wisconsin in a day, drawn on by his very ignorance of what lay ahead. Another day and he was halfway across Upper Michigan: Ishpeming, Negaunee, Marquette, and beyond. The wide clear expanses of Lake Superior were now lying before him, but even then he did not stop to have a look.

  Around him now towered his rolling verdant hills. Beside him tumbled his crystal brooks. On both sides of him were his berry patches laden with fruit. But none of it registered with him.

  It was late afternoon and he was halfway between Marquette and Munising when clouds began to gather over the lake and move in towards land. A storm front formed above the water, drawing a dark curtain across the horizon as it sped towards the shore. Waves were already sending spray over the road and the still air hung in breathless expectation of what was coming. Then it hit. A vicious gale caught Steve broadside. He gripped the handlebars fiercely to keep the cycle on course. He lowered his head into the driving rain and hurtled on through the sudden darkness. The lake heaved and waves battered the rocky shoreline right next to the road. Steve was drenched. Then came the lightning and thunder. Locals call it “the Lake effect.” It can come out of nowhere and happen at almost any time.

  Steve didn’t realize that he was speeding along behind the storm front and thus lodging himself within the most torrential section of the downpour. His first glimpse of Munising was veiled by gray sheets of rain, denying him a view of one of the most serenely beautiful towns in the North. He was oblivious to its sturdy quaint homes and saw nothing of the crescent of majestic hills that abruptly rise at the end of its short streets or of the sea of azure glass that normally stretches out deep and pure before it. He roared right through the heart of Munising in the belly of the storm.

  Just east of town the highway swung inland and the shoreline receded northward. In less than an hour twilight and darkness closed in, trapping the young cyclist in the even blacker delirium of the unabated storm. His sense of direction abandoned him. All he really cared about was pressing ahead, staying on the move. He was stone-faced and stiff-armed. He plowed on through the night until an erratic flash of lightning happened to reveal a narrow trail that disappeared into the dark forest north of the road. Benumbed and soaked, on impulse he swung off onto the trail and plied his way along it, dodging ruts and gullies as best he could. Guided by blind determination alone, he fought his way ever higher into the blackness. At a fork in the road he took the narrower one. Up and over a great hill and down the other side he went, then up and over a smaller one, bouncing through the trees and over the rocks in the trail. Then suddenly as he was descending a steep slope a little too fast, he ran head-on into a tree fallen across the trail and flew off the cycle into a bed of drenched leaves. And there he lay. The shock of the fall had fortunately shut off the engine and now only the sound of the storm could be heard, moaning in the treetops.

  Presently it stopped raining and the thunder grew more distant. The moon came out and, beaming down onto the forest floor, it glittered in each standing drop of water and lit up the figure of a young man in a shiny leather motorcycle jacket lying fast asleep on the ground.

  XI

  The gray hues of the morning came while the thick fog was rolling and billowing upward. By the time the sun had been over the hills for an hour, only light wisps of steamy mist were seeping out of the matted forest floor and swaying to and fro with the breathing air. Little woodland creatures were scurrying about rectifying the damages and reaping the benefits which the storm had left in its wake. One busy chipmunk, her cheeks budging with food and her head bent low, was scampering back to her nest as fast as she could go along one of her normal pathways home when she collided nose-first into a fleshy mass sprawled out in the ground. The collision alarmed her more than it did the mass. She looked up, jumped back, and scurried off on a wide detour.

  The other party to the collision, namely Stephan Pearson (or more accurately his left cheek) stirred sluggishly. He seemed about to roll over when one of his eyes opened a slit. Then the other one opened. Both of them blinked. Then they both closed again. Stephan Pearson muddily conjectured that he must still be dreaming. Then he opened both of them wide and sat up.

  He was halfway down the slope of a large hill, sitting in deep soft turf and surrounded by a whole world of emerald and azure. Before him spread a broad basin that was almost completely enclosed in verdant hills covered with lofty pines, maples, and oaks and carpeted with lush undergrowth. Directly in front of him to the north was a V-shaped opening in the wall of encircling hills through which he could see the placid blue waters of Lake Superior stretching out into a horizonless distance. Springing from somewhere on the hillside behind him was a rushing brook that tumbled to the bottom of the basin and cascaded down towards the lake through the V. He could hear deer romping around in the creek bed beneath him, and at the tips of his fingers was a patch of blueberry bushes burdened with plump, succulent berries. Steve sat there taking it all in for many minutes and then ventured in wonderment: I spend a month looking for this spot, and then I stumble onto it in the dark. It’s perfect. Why would you ever want to leave it?

  For many days he acted as if he never would. The first day, after checking the motorcycle for damage (everything on it was working fine) and for leaks in the upended jerry can (it was still full of gas), he moved what little property he had down the hill about a hundred feet to a flatter piece of ground near the creek. Right off the bat he decided that all his hunting would be done outside the hollow. Nothing should be allowed to disturb its peace and harmony. He could fish in the brook and eat the fresh berries that were all around him: blueberries, raspberries, a few remaining strawberries, blackberries, thimbleberries, gooseberries, currants—they were all there. Firewood was no problem, nor was drinking water. Everything was virtually at his fingertips, with no irrelevant obligations to distract him. Joyfully he set about the task of making this place his home.

  The first few days he did some exploring. He followed the stream back up the hill beyond the hollow, discovering to his great satisfaction that small game abounded, especially squirrels, rabbits, and grouse. He didn’t even have to hunt for them: they came to him if he sat still for a few minutes in the grass under a tree. He had only to wet his fish hook in a quiet pool to catch a gourmet meal of rainbow trout. He had no need to garner bergamot leaves for tea since patches of the plant were everywhere to be found, along with wood sorrel and wintergreen to munch on.

  He also busied himself by constructing a small lean-to out of saplings where he could roll out his bedroll and store his few belongings in the two small weatherproof cases he had brought with him. He built a makeshift latrine nearby adjacent to a large patch of milkweed, nature’s toilet paper. The pond just below the campsite served as his bathtub. He dug a garbage pit several hundred feet to the west where wild creatures could clean up his leftovers without confronting him. Within a week this place felt more like home to him than any place he had ever lived in before.

  On the evening of his seventh day in the hollow, he stretched out on his soft bed of white-pine needles as night began to fall and watched the stars pop out one by one. The flames playing in the embers in the fire pit set the shadows of the trees dancing eerily in the stillness. A hawk was spiraling round and round overhead. Was he looking for supper or was he just having fun? At this hour of the evening, probably just having fun. Whip-poor-wills were calling to one another from the far edges of the hollow, their strident age-old song attesting to the timelessness of the present moment in this timeless place. Lying there, Steve was drawn into an all-pervading sense of the rightness of things. The troubles and dissensions that people create for themselves were not to be found here. They seem so big when you’re in the middle of them and so tiny when you’re not. A warm breeze blew lightly in his face and fanned the glowing coals of the fire.

  “This is life,” he w
hispered.

  And, lo, he was asleep.

  XII

  One morning a few days later, Steve took a notion to hike up the creek as far as he could go, but he had not gone very far when he was attracted to the unusually jagged face of a ridge off to his right. Not being at all pressed to follow his original plan, he decided instead to clamber up to the sharp crest of the ridge and have a look around. In a matter of minutes he was commanding a spectacular view of a sweeping panorama for many miles in all directions. It was most reassuring for him to see nothing but heavily forested hills as far as the eye could see in three directions and nothing but water as far as it could scan to the north. And no sign anywhere of those robbers of the peace and freedom of such marvelous Worlds Apart as this—the human race!

  Then Steve studied the terrain immediately around him. What had seemed like a sharp peak from the bottom was in fact the lopped-off end of a ridge sloping gently downward on the other side of the face. The shoulder of the ridge itself ran down to an obscure point in the distance like a well-tended shady lawn. It was bordered by giant spreading hardwoods interspersed with pines and cedars, a perfect arbored lane. The sight of it so fascinated Steve that he spent the rest of the day roaming all the way down the ridge and back, exploring its spur shoulders and admiring its grace. A bear was feasting in a raspberry thicket. Deer were almost everywhere. He even found a large patch of late-season strawberries in perfect condition. As the sun began to lean toward the horizon, he made his way back up to the summit, shot a fat young squirrel, and roasted it over a fire.

  He was about to begin feasting on it when he heard a crashing noise coming straight towards him through the thick undergrowth along the ribs of the ridge. He froze. Unfaltering it broke its way through twigs and stalks. It couldn’t have been a bear or a deer. The light breeze was taking the smoke from his fire in the direction of the noise. This was not an animal stealthily stalking him. Now it was very close. He reached for his revolver, got up, and swung around to face the beast head-on.