Gone to the Woods: Part IV

Not really a home; grubby apartment that he thought of as a dark, damp, wet ugly nest of...he didn’t know what.

Called a runaway. Like he was escaping jail. Detained—not arrested, they said, but detained—and sent home with a church volunteer do-gooder.

Chaff and dust off the combine blowing in his eyes and nose so thick it made him sneeze and spit and itch like the dust was made of tiny needles.

And the kid drove the truck out to the dirt road and into the town and onto the grate next to the elevator and dumped the grain out the back and into the grate. Raising the dump bed as it ran out to make it flow. And then lower the bed and back, empty, to the field just in time to catch up with the farmer on the combine, which had another full hopper to dump.

The farmer did the first round to make the furrow straight, up and back down with two furrows, one in the middle and one to the side, then the boy took it.

He had a hot plate down there, in a corner on an old woodbox, with a wire up to the outlet on the side of the bare bulb that lit up with red-hot wire filaments.

He’d watch as they circled in large surging pools of turbulent muddy water until they were so tired the rushing current would take them back downstream where the water was still and they could rest and clear the mud from their gills before they tried again.

The fish didn’t eat when they were spawning, so fishing for them with bait didn’t work. But he’d found they could be snagged with the right kind of hook.

They’d take down grouse, rabbits, big gray squirrels if he caught one low on a tree.

The hook had to sink in the roiling water below the dam, but this was still too light, even as heavy as it was, so he hardwired a large sinker or a steel railroad bolt-nut beneath the hook and out of the way.

Carp swam at the same time as other fish, mixed in. But nobody wanted carp, they were too bony and lived on the bottom in the mud.

People here wanted walleyes and northern pike. Mostly large walleyes so they could cut filets off the side. Eat the cheeks and eyes. Good meat.

The bar had an ancient cooler in the back and Elmer would pay the boy for the fish and put them on ice in the cooler to sell to his patrons.

There were two seedy booths against the wall opposite the bar.

Along with the money he had saved and scrounged, this brought him to over five dollars.

Somebody said once they served them in fancy restaurants in the cities. Didn’t call them pigeons because nobody would eat them. Called them squabs. Call them that—squabs—and people paid top dollar for them.

He cut into the thickest part of the trees and worked back out to the edge of the river where it curved around a big, lazy bend, an eddy, a place where the water swirled into a constant dead hole.

Square windowpanes that seemed to channel the shafts of gold light filled with dust motes.

Just the sound, an almost-music like a lullaby his grandmother sang to him when he stayed with her and his hurting knees and elbow bones kept him awake. Her gentle voice-song, crooning.

Stayed and listened to the old ladies’ stories until the library closed and he could go to work at the bars for change and get a grease-bomb hamburger from Elmer—free for a change—and make a dollar seventy-five working the drunk-change gimmick and move back to the basement at the dump—The Dump—and catch some good sleep near the furnace with a belly full of hamburger and money in his pocket.

He thought at first that he should tell somebody. Maybe tell the librarian. Just a notion and then it was gone.

Try to snag the knowing the way he snagged fish below the dam or snared rabbits in the woods.

After the ball came and knocked the pins down, a pinsetter had to pick up the ball, slam it into the groove track that sent it back to the front to the bowlers, grab the pins and slide them into the holding-holes, heave down on a bar-lever over the machine that put all the pins down and set them right for the next ball that came.

Stupid fools would shoot a rabbit or grouse with a deer rifle. Blow small animals like that to smithereens. No meat left. Just shreds.

They were at her face, working at the corners of her eyes, and she jammed her head down in the water and shook it to get rid of them. But when she raised her head, they were there again in force. Exasperated, she shook her whole front end and dived completely into the water, splashing and slamming her head back and forth, kicking the water in a glorious spray that caught the afternoon sun and made a quick rainbow.