Gone to the Woods Read online

  “Put it in your shirt pocket and, every so often, take small bites and let them soak in your mouth without chewing before you swallow. It will keep you going.”

  No questions. The boy did exactly as he said, and Sig was right. He would pull the muffin out of his pocket, take a tiny bite, tuck it into his cheek, being sure to not let any crumbs on his hand or in the pocket go to waste, and move up the hill, picking mushrooms as they came.

  And they came fast. They were like a giant rug of little Christmas trees, and about the time they got to the top of the ridge, two things occurred to him. His sack was full. Right to the top. And his back and legs were tired and his joints were aching, burning.

  Sig walked over. His sack was also full, but he didn’t look particularly tired.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said, smiling the short smile, eyes crinkled.

  The boy nodded. “I’m pooped.”

  He shook his head. “More than that—too many mushrooms. I’ve never seen them this thick. Usually we might get one bag or so. This way we’re already full up on what we need—full and more.”

  “Why is that a problem?” A question, he thought. I shouldn’t have asked—he’ll tell without asking.

  “We used to try and dry some on the tarp spread on the ground while we kept picking. This way, though, we have to head home as fast as we can so Edy can get them to drying on protected racks in the porch.”

  He stopped himself from asking why, why, why …

  “There’s too many for the tarp and if we put the extras off in the dirt to dry they’ll spoil or the ants will get them. We have to go. Head back. Right away.”

  It was downhill back to the canoe and took them only a few minutes to get there. They put the mushroom sacks in the middle with the bedroll and pack, the boy climbed in the front and knelt on the bottom as Sig jumped in, pushed them out into the stream, and they started back.

  They were paddling upstream, which slowed them a bit, but there was virtually no current, and though it was late in the day, they covered a good distance before dark set in.

  The boy paddled as well as he could, catching a good stroke now and again, but Sig kept up a strong push all the time.

  As the sun went down, the mosquitoes came up. They kept moving away from them for a while, but soon the mosquitoes caught up with them and were clouded around the canoe so thick, it was hard to breathe without getting a mouthful.

  Finally, Sig said a couple of words the boy had heard in the bars in Chicago and steered the canoe to shore near some dead willows. Without getting out, he broke off some dry sticks, carefully fashioned them into short pieces. Next he took the saucepan out of the pack and put it on the floorboards of the canoe. He put some river mud in the bottom of the pan, maybe an inch thick, then stacked dry sticks on top of the mud, lit them with a match, and as soon as they were going well, he grabbed a handful of green grass and some leaves off live willows and threw them on top of the flames.

  Instant smoke.

  No mosquitoes.

  Just that fast.

  Sig pushed the canoe out into the stream again and they kept moving. The smoke swirled and worked around them in the canoe as they paddled. Now and then it got in his eyes or made him sneeze, but that was much better than the—he thought—evil mosquitoes.

  They had paddled a large part of the day to get to the campsite, and then more the next morning. Plus, that had been with the current. They were now going back against it, and while it wasn’t very strong, it was enough to slow them a bit and make it more difficult to paddle.

  First it was evening, and the mosquitoes, but soon after that came the hard dark, and for a time, he couldn’t see much past the front of the canoe. But before long the moon came up—first a glow over the trees and then full-on white and bright. It shone on the stream ahead of them and made the water look like silver, and for a time, he was caught by the beauty of it. There were so many things happening to him now that he had never seen before that it seemed to fill his brain with new pictures, new sounds, new smells.

  Yet, pretty or not, silver or not, new or not, they had to keep paddling. And though he couldn’t come anywhere close to what Sig was doing, he did the best he could, and before long, his arms hurt, his shoulders ached, and his knees where he knelt on the floorboards seemed to be on fire.

  But it didn’t matter that there was aching or pain.

  Keep paddling.

  Had to keep moving.

  In a short time for the boy—if not for Sig—it seemed they were not moving at all. They stroked the paddle forward and pulled it back and then again and again and again.

  And again.

  Up the silver path on the water, except that it seemed the silver was coming toward them, not that they were moving toward the path and then, in the end, nothing.

  Just arms and paddles and back and knees and shoulders and smoke from the mosquito fire and exhaustion, so bone-tired that he couldn’t even tell when or if his eyes closed. No lying down on the cross boards this time, no peaceful dozing off into dreamland.

  Just nothing.

  Maybe not even sleep so much as an absence of thought, a going away of his mind, a stopping of all things; he went out and into some grayness and then a dark hole that formed around him, and still kneeling, without going physically down, his body simply quit.

  He could not tell about the rest of that night. Small nudges of memory, little quick images: Sig pulling to the shore for more twigs and grass to make smoke, hour after hour of the canoe sliding under him, then bumping gently against the bank, being pulled onto shore still in the canoe, Edy’s higher voice, soft and gentle, the dog whining, being carried by Sig, the boy’s cheek against his coarse whiskers, past the barn into the kitchen up the stairs and into bed.

  The bed in his room, and then only deep wonderful sleep.

  JOBS OF WORK AND HORSE SLEEP

  After hunting mushrooms and coming back to the farm, he worked with both Edy and Sig at whatever they were doing, depending on who wanted him. Sometimes with both at the same time.

  He helped Edy spread the mushrooms to dry on racks covered with sheets in the porch, and found that he had certain jobs of work—that’s how Sig put it—“you’ve got particular jobs of work to do.” Not just slapping mushrooms on the drying racks. Each mushroom had to be shaken free of dirt, and any extra soil at the base needed to be cleaned off before the morel could be carefully placed on the drying surface where the afternoon sun could get at it. It didn’t sound like much and it didn’t tire him, but the work took time and had to be done right or the mushrooms would spoil and not be there in winter for soup and stew.

  There were other jobs of work as well.

  He couldn’t split wood for the stove. The axe was a big double-bladed Collins so sharp Sig could shave arm hair with it, too heavy for the boy to handle. He tried, but it looked like if he didn’t handle it right, it would take off his foot or at least a toe—that’s how Edy put it—so he had to back away from splitting.

  His job of work with wood was to carry it into the house each morning and fill the woodbox in back of the cookstove. He also gathered sticks and chips for Edy to use for kindling to start the stove if the coals went cold in the night, which they usually did, and he was surprised at how much wood it took to bake bread or cook pancakes or brew coffee. He started to drink coffee about then. Not a lot, and Sig added a good dollop of cold water to his cup, and the boy took it with milk and honey, two spoons, but every morning before starting the morning chores they would have a “bite of coffee,” is how Sig put it, and maybe one or two cookies.

  Then they would milk. They had three cows, but only milked one, which gave plenty of milk, way more than they needed. He couldn’t actually milk. His hands were too small for the teats, which hung down like little handles or miniature milk hoses. He tried it and got a tiny bit to squirt into a waiting kitten’s mouth, but because his hands didn’t fit right, Edy said it might cause the cow to be upset and stop giving milk
and there would be no cream, butter, and drinking milk. So his job of work with the milking was to go out in the pasture with Rex and bring the cows into the barn to get milked.

  There would be many favorite parts of his staying with Edy and Sig, many things that would make him think happiness thoughts as time passed. But going for the cows morning and evening was one of the best of all times.

  The cows kept the pasture grazed down so that it looked like one beautiful, giant manicured lawn. Birds that Sig called killdeers ranged all over, catching bugs from the spots of manure left by the cows. Some of them had baby chicks and the mothers would work, moving away from them pretending to have a broken wing, trying to lead Rex and the boy away from the babies’ nest. 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.

  He would have and be had by many dogs in his life, but Rex was, he thought, unique. He was, by definition, a yard dog. When they went off in the canoe, for instance, he did not try to follow along the bank, which many dogs would do, but stayed with the house, the yard. He went with the boy to get the cows, into the nearby pasture, but only that far. Any other time he stayed in the yard, around the house—and he ruled the yard. He would position himself where he could see every part of the house, barn, sheds, and yard and stay there, watching everything, studying everything. And if he saw something out of kilter, something not quite right—like the two tomcats fighting, which happened now and again, or the geese coming after the boy, or anything, absolutely anything bothering the chickens—he would step in and end the problem. He once caught a skunk trying to get into the chicken pen, and he literally tore it to pieces. Stinking pieces. God-awful thick-stinking pieces all over the yard and they couldn’t get close to Rex for over a week from the smell on him, but that skunk didn’t, and never would, get at any chickens.

  They really didn’t have to bring the cows in. When it was time to milk, the cows would start by themselves to head to the barn, but walking out to them, walking in after them, in that beautiful huge green trimmed lawn with killdeer flying around and Rex walking softly by his side was like being in a world made just for him to enjoy.

  He would take his shoes off when he hit the pasture and hang them around his neck by the shoelaces and walk barefoot in the damp green grass, wiggling his toes when the blades tickled him. Now and then if he wasn’t paying attention—usually because he was being led away by killdeer mothers—he would accidentally step in fresh cow poop. It was sticky, squirting between his toes, but somehow not as bad as goose poop. Couldn’t explain why, just not as bad, and washed out cleaner in the stream.

  In the center of the pasture, there was a salt block the cows licked, making curved, gouged-out pockets in the salt. They made it look so good he tried it a few times. Coarse salt taste, but not bad, and sometimes, when he went for the cows in the afternoons when the sun was hot, it tasted downright good.

  They seemed to know things, the cows. They would walk along ahead of Rex and him, almost as if they were lost in thought, walking slowly on the path that led to the barn. Sometimes the boy would walk next to their shoulders and put his hand on them, thinking, he didn’t know, that he might learn something that they knew by touching them. Felt good, made him feel good inside, but he couldn’t tell why, and they didn’t seem to mind.

  When they got to the barn, they went in by themselves, climbed into their own stalls, and stood while the boy went to the feed sack and gave them each a dipper full of something Edy called “sweet feed” grain in their lick-shaped, worn-wood feed boxes. Like the salt block, they made it look so good he tried a bit, chewing it slowly. It wasn’t bad. Sort of sweet, a molasses-and-iron taste, and he thought he might try it in a bowl with milk and honey, but he never got around to it at breakfast. Too much other good stuff—pancakes with raspberry syrup, mush with a dollop of salty lard in the middle and dripped over with honey from the partially sugared honey jar, salt-cured bacon so crisp it broke in pieces, eggs from the coop with the bacon—for him to get into animal feed. But there would be times in his life later, in the army, in hard-hungry places when he would remember that cow sweet feed with fond memories.

  Getting the cows in twice a day wasn’t all the cow work. His job of work after that was to shovel-clean the gutter. While the cows weren’t in the barn that long—just for milking—and then went back out to pasture they would almost always leave what Sig called “a perfect present” in the gutter. Wet, flop-wet, plop-wet, if he was close when they dropped it—it fell about four feet into the gutter—it was impossible to keep from getting the splatter on him somewhere. Sometimes in his face, and sometimes a bit might go in his mouth. Not the absolute worst thing in the world, but he spit pretty regular until he could find a new taste to take over. Maybe a lick of salt or spoonful of honey. There were lots of things that tasted better than cow poop.

  When milking was finished, the milk was put in tall can-buckets and carried to the well house, next to the chicken coop. Down in the well some feet was a shelf-ledge where the temperature stayed lower than outside and the bottoms of the tall milk containers were actually in the water for half a foot or so, which kept them especially cool. Any extra milk left from before—and there was always a good amount—was put outside in a low wood trough for the chickens. Edy said it made their shells stronger and the eggs taste better, which was true by him since he thought they tasted great. Especially with crisp bacon and fresh baked bread toasted on the flat of the woodstove top.

  He noticed that the chickens weren’t the only things to hit the milk trough. The kittens licked at it until the sun made it sour, and even then he caught Rex licking at it a few times, not to mention now and then blue jays would fly in and take a little.

  After milking chores were done and the barn gutters cleaned, his job of work was to gather eggs in the old bucket with straw in the bottom and throw some feed out in the dirt for the chickens to scratch at and eat.

  Then to the house, wash his hands and face at the washstand, wipe them on the towel hanging on an old deer antler nailed to the wall above the wash bowl, and in to breakfast, which was mush with lard and salt and honey or pancakes or eggs and fresh bread (Sig called it “new” bread). Eat until he thought he was going to pop. And, of course, coffee.

  After breakfast, it was time to get into the work of the day.

  The garden was a large plot in back of the house, to the rear of the outhouse, which needed to be constantly weeded—especially the part with the new potatoes, because they had been planted early, and the three rows of sweet corn. Sig said corn was a weak plant and that the weeds would kill it if you didn’t keep it clean. So the way it worked was—no matter who you were—anytime you weren’t doing anything else, you’d go back and take a lick at weeding the garden with the hoe kept as sharp as the axe, or pull the weeds out by hand so you get the roots.

  He hated weeds his whole life because of that garden plot.

  Bloody things. Heard Edy say that once, so he picked it up.

  Bloody things.

  Weeds.

  When he’d been there long enough to get into the rhythm of things and knew his own jobs of work—and if he took in weeding the garden along with the rest of the other morning and afternoon chores, it took most of a day. One morning after breakfast Sig looked across the table at him and said: “We’ve got to cultivate the cornfield today.”

  There was corn in the garden, weeded so often he didn’t think there was a single bad plant there. But that was sweet corn, roasting corn. What Edy called table corn. The other was field corn, which the boy knew, or thought he knew, was mainly for animal feed. It was quite a large field—he supposed later in memory it might have been twenty or so acres—and much too large to weed by hand.

  Plus he had said “cultivate,” which the boy did not exactly understand, but he sat quiet. He had learned a lot from Sig, and the one mo
st important thing was if you didn’t bother him with questions you would sooner or later get the answer. Mostly sooner. So the word “cultivate” he filed in his not-know corner for the moment.

  “Which means the horses,” he said, finishing his coffee. “We’ve got to get them in from the pasture.”

  “‘We’?” he said. “You mean you want me to help get the horses?”

  Which posed a problem. They were in the same pasture as the cows, usually away from them, way down at the east end where they stood in the shade of some fence elms. They typically didn’t come into the barn, just drank water from the stream, and ignored the boy as much as he ignored them.

  It wasn’t that he was particularly afraid of them. Merely thoughtful of how they ignored him. And they were so enormous, easily twice as large as the cows, like one brown and one tan hair-covered walls on legs—he thought that he could have walked under them—that it was more sensible to kind of, well, let them be.

  “You can bring them in,” Sig said, making the boy’s brain go blank. “I’ll grease the cultivator and get the harnesses ready while you go get them.”

  Sure, he thought, no problem. Been doing this all my life. “How do I do that?”

  “Just take a lead rope off those pegs in the west end of the barn, go out, and put it around one of their necks and lead him in—doesn’t matter which one, the other will follow.”

  What, he thought, if they didn’t want to come? What if one of them stepped on him? But he kept his mouth shut, and resigned to his possible fate, made his way to the barn. Their feet were as big as washtubs, he thought as he headed closer to them. He’d be smashed to goop in the pasture. What if that happened? How could you even pick up kid goop? With a shovel? A mop? Was it ploppy like cow poop? Smelly like goose poop?

  He picked up a lead rope and walked out of the barn. The horses were both down at the end of the pasture where they usually stayed, and he made his way but did not exactly hurry—carefully studying killdeers and green grass and almost everything else in the world as he did not exactly hurry—toward them.