Gone to the Woods: Part II

He would find out, many years later, that the river was between two wilderness lakes that lay fifty or so miles apart as the crow flies—which is a straight line on a map.

And, when Sig handed back the paddle he had dropped over the side, he had swung it around without thinking and caught himself a clout over his left ear with the hard wooden shaft.

But more, because of the water, the trees had not only touched at the top but had kept growing, so that they were intertwined, making a lovely thatch cover, a long, wonderful room with a living roof.

He had become folded into it; he had become an integral part of water and trees and birds and dragonflies.

The moment was so pure, so profound, that he caught himself holding his breath.

As the canoe floated into her vision, she raised her muzzle from the water and droplets fell from her lips like jewels to splash back on the pads in sparkling rivulets.

The boy couldn’t make it quite clear, couldn’t articulate the feeling, the knowledge, but he knew.

Then he turned the fish over and did the same on the other side, rinsed the fish thoroughly one more time, before pulling out his knife and slitting the fish neatly down the belly.

And it was wonderful, but it also had a downside in that it awakened in him an absolutely ravenous wolf of hunger.

But he watched Sig do as he had said, eating the cooked skin and sucking the eyes out with great relish, and he was hungry.

A cloud of smoke billowed up, wafted around, and the mosquitoes disappeared.

It was about three inches high, brown and tapered with little ridges running up and down the side looking for all the world like a tiny brown Christmas tree.

When they had lured the dog and the boy a distance they figured to be far enough to protect the chicks, they would suddenly be “cured” and fly off, still away from the chicks as a ruse, before finally circling back.

One morning after breakfast Sig looked across the table at him and said: “We’ve got to cultivate the cornfield today.”

Then a lot of smaller straps over their backs to hold the heavy load-pulling straps in place, then bridles with bits in their mouths, coming back with long leather lines—called reins—that the boy found later Sig would hold and use to turn or stop the horses.

But the horses were so big and seemed so steady that when Sig got in the seat and picked up the reins and made a clucking sound with his tongue and they started to move, he didn’t feel out of place at all.

He thought then that he had never felt quite that way before, that he had always thought, felt, knew, believed, that there was some risk, some impending danger in his short life that kept him from relaxing into true, effortless safety.

He reached across the table and tousled the boy’s hair.

It was rich sandy loam and warm to the touch, and he felt something round and firm, and he pulled it up and there it was, a new small red potato.

Brandishing his new goose thumper, he moved into the yard and walked toward the geese.

He picked the first one—a mean gray gander—and hit him as blue perfect hard as he could.

One cool afternoon, he was weeding—he now did the same as Edy, pulling each weed by the roots, like extricating a disease, weeding with anger—and Sig came to the house.

The boy was at nearly a full lope just keeping pace with him.

Sig went to the granary and dragged an old table out of the shed and put it near the fire.

Then he went back in and came out with a wicked-looking fish spear—eight barbed tines that looked shiny, like they’d been filed sharp—on the end of a ten-foot wooden shaft.

He took the four fish and clambered out of the canoe, ran to where Edy waited at the table—she was holding a long, curved knife—dumped the fish and turned back for Sig.

Then, in the same motion, she split each fish down the middle so it splayed out flat, took handfuls of salt from a bag on the other—clean—end of the table, and rubbed it vigorously into the exposed meat.

A mantra in his head: Running with gut buckets. Gutting with run buckets. Bucketing with gut runs. Guts. Running guts.

Indeed, they appeared to love them and dived in as soon as the stuff slid, oozed, squelched into the trough.

The tension in the room was so taut it seemed to hum.