Gone to the Woods Read online

  Then the next one—Sig said later that he’d kept screaming—and the one after that and, from then on, he fairly laid left and right with the club until he had worked through the flock. Then he turned around and went back at them for a second pass. Climbed right into the middle of them—Rex and him—until, in a second, there wasn’t anything around them but goose poop and feathers floating down. The geese were gone.

  Didn’t bother him again, the geese.

  He carried the club for a couple of weeks to make sure. When he walked by them, they’d hiss bad goose words at him and flop a wing or two and one—had a crooked neck—would actually look away. But the war was done, and that night at dinner, Sig told Edy about the fight, said, “The boy settled the goose problem,” and the boy didn’t feel bad at how Sig seemed proud of what he had done.

  So much for the geese.

  The boy settled it.

  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. He had been down in the pasture near the stream and he called the boy to the porch. Edy was inside and she came to the door.

  “They’re running,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Edy nodded and showed a wide smile. “Starting today?”

  He nodded. “We better get ready. They’re starting late, so it might be a short run.”

  “What’s running?” Which the boy thought was an all right question, considering that he didn’t have a single clue as to what he would see running in the pasture. Horses? Cows? And why were they running?

  “Fish.” Sig looked back down at the stream as if visualizing something. “The spawning fish run. Every spring after the ice goes out they run and lay their eggs upstream.”

  “And we watch them?” The boy couldn’t see what difference it made.

  “We take them,” Edy said. “We spear some of them and smoke them.”

  So, he thought, that explained the little hut he had seen off to the side of the barnyard. When he’d asked about it, Sig had simply said, “That’s the smokehouse.” Which didn’t help much but the boy knew Sig didn’t like second questions when he had answered the first one. So he guessed they caught the fish or speared them and then lit them on fire in the little hut and smoked them.

  No. No sense there. Hard to light a fish on fire. No more questions yet. He would learn as they went.

  And what came, he found, were days and nights when they worked so hard it was possible to forget time, forget anything. Forget everything.

  “Why don’t you start the smoke fire?” Sig asked Edy. “We’ll get the chute ready.”

  The boy followed him—it seemed that he spent most of his life following Sig; the boy who followed Sig—and they went down by the stream. Where it narrowed between the two banks, the boy saw a post that stuck up approximately in the middle of the stream, which was in line with a post buried in the soil of the near bank. He had seen all this before, and the roll of rusty netted wire fencing next to the bank post, so he’d assumed it was part of an old fence.

  Wrong again.

  As he watched, and then went to help, Sig pulled the canoe near to them from where it lay and slid it into the water with the nose still on the bank. Then he unrolled the rusty fence, wrapped the wires that pointed out of one end on the near post, gestured for the boy to help feed it out, and climbed into the canoe with the roll of wire. He paddled with one hand, unrolling the wire as he moved, out to the post in the stream, then pulled it tight along the bottom and attached it to the post in the stream. Set this way the netted fencing made an underwater barrier that would make anything swimming upstream have to go around it through the narrower opening at the end.

  The fish, he thought. They’ll have to swim through that narrow slot. He had naturally been looking for fish and hadn’t seen any. The water seemed too dark, or else they were like the mushrooms and you had to learn to see them.

  “Follow me,” Sig said after pulling the canoe back on the grass. “Let’s go see how Edy is doing.”

  He was hurrying now and the boy had to nearly run to keep up. It was hard to believe the army hadn’t taken Sig because of one of his legs being shorter or something. He never told the boy quite what it was; only that he had tried and they had turned him down because of his legs. The boy was at nearly a full lope just keeping pace with him. Seemed like that would be plenty good for the army.

  At the little smoke hut, Edy had built a fire in a small pit about ten feet away. She covered the fire pit with a piece of sheet metal and put dirt over it. She had finished covering the sheet metal with dirt as they came up and the boy thought that seemed silly—to dig a hole and bury a fire.

  Then he saw thick smoke coming out of the little hut and Edy saw his surprise. “There’s a stove pipe buried from the pit into the bottom of the hut—that way the smoke gets cooled. Cold smoke is better for the fish. Any meat, really. Sig likes smoked venison, too.”

  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.

  “Get a bucket of water from the well,” he said to the boy. “Slosh off the top of the table and then fill the bucket again and have it standing by the end of the table.” He thought a moment. “Then get another bucket and hurry down to the canoe.”

  “Bringing water?” He couldn’t believe he’d need a bucket of water at the stream.

  “No.” He was turned and gone, almost jogging with the spear, and called over his shoulder. “Empty. Bring an empty bucket. Hurry.”

  By the time the boy found a bucket in the barn and ran after him, he was already at the stream and had climbed into the front of the canoe with the spear, which put him leaning over the narrow part of the stream where the fish would have to swim around the netting to get through.

  As the boy got there, Sig was intent, staring, before stroking down suddenly into the dark water with the spear.

  He came up with about a four-pound fish wriggling on the spear. He turned, wiggled the spear over the canoe and shook the fish off, looked to the boy. “Bring the bucket into the canoe and put the fish in it. When the bucket is full, run it over to Edy and dump the fish out on the table, then run back down to me with the bucket.”

  “How long…?” He was going to ask how long it would take to fill the bucket but he had already turned, speared another fish, and shaken it loose inside the canoe while the boy was climbing into the end that was still on the bank. Both fish were still moving, flopping and bloody, from the spear holes.

  The boy hesitated for a moment, then thought it couldn’t be worse than worm goop or goose poop, and grabbed a fish by hooking his fingers through the gills, dropped it into the bucket, then the other one, and, by this time, Sig had already speared a third one, and a fourth one, which filled the bucket.

  “Go,” he said without looking at the boy. “Go now or the bucket will get too heavy. Don’t waste any time.”

  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.

  Where he already had six more fish.

  The boy took four and ran them up.

  Then back.

  Four more.

  And up and back and up and back, until somehow a whole day seemed to have passed and he was staggering with each bucket of fish and couldn’t, honest to God, tell how many times he had run or whether or not he was heading up or down. Just fish and more fish, endless buckets of fish.

  He didn’t even count the buckets. Had no idea how many fish.

  Way past tired.

  Like his back and legs belonged to somebody else, somebody who hated him.

  Flat numb.

  Just numb.

  Until at last Sig turned,
said, “That’s all.”

  He took the last four in the bucket, held the spear loosely in his left hand, bucket in the right, and loped—yes, the boy thought in horror, trying to keep up, he loped—back up the hill to where Edy stood at the table.

  Oh, the boy thought. We’re not done. He thought that maybe they were getting close to the end of this, this, whatever it was they were doing. Burning fish in cold smoke or something. But they were not done yet. Oh good. He staggered after Sig and found, to his shock and still more horror, that they were far from finished.

  They hadn’t really started yet.

  Edy was at the table, wearing a rubber apron and flattening fish on the table. With one swipe, she cut the bellies open and scooped the guts out and into an old, rusty boiler next to her on the ground. 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.

  Without a break Sig fell into place next to her with another knife, cutting and cleaning and dumping guts into the boiler, spreading and flattening and rubbing salt into meat.

  Foolishly the boy thought: I don’t see how I can really fit into this, until Sig motioned him to the boiler of guts. “Get the straw fork from the barn and use it to put guts in the bucket we carried the fish in. When it’s full, take it to the pigpen and dump it in the trough. Then come back and do it again. Oh, don’t waste a lot of time or we’ll get ahead of you—there’ll be guts all over the ground.”

  Silly of him not to see that—more work with the bucket. His job of work—gut buckets. Running with gut buckets. A mantra in his head: Running with gut buckets. Gutting with run buckets. Bucketing with gut runs. Guts. Running guts.

  He would not have believed that there could be that much pure guts in fish. Running trip after trip with full buckets. Would never have believed that the pigs would eat them. Indeed, they appeared to love them and dived in as soon as the stuff slid, oozed, squelched into the trough. At first, he stared in a sick fascination, but then realized exactly what they were nosing into and tossing and eating, and after that, he looked away before … well, after that, he looked away when he emptied buckets.

  Even later it would be difficult for him to remember anything in any kind of pattern. He ran with the guts, ran until his legs were past being on fire, past any feeling. And when the guts were gone, at last, all the fish that were spread open and salt-rubbed had to be hung in the little smoke hut on wires, so that the smoke went up and through them all. Sig stood in the door opening to the hut while he ran back and forth from the table and handed him salted fish, gulping and choking on the smoke that poured out of the open door, while the boy handed him the fish, two at a time, while Edy kept processing new ones for him to take to Sig and then run back to run, to run, to run …

  Then more wood—from a pile of hardwood chippings that Sig had made with the axe—packed into the flame pit, covered with the metal sheet and more dirt, then hand more fish to Sig while Edy kept cutting and rubbing and he kept running and running and then …

  Chores.

  Cows to milk. Barn to clean. Eggs to pick. Chickens to feed and to keep out of the guts while the pigs ate them—the chickens were like feathered wolves after the guts, fighting the pigs.

  Then more wood. Until it was end of day and the sun was going down. Edy left them for a brief time and came back with thick sandwiches and a jar of milk for the boy. The sandwiches had a yellow filling that looked like BBs and tasted like fish. But everything tasted like fish, even the milk. And smelled, even the milk smelled like fish, and when he leaned down against the side of the smoke hut and tried to not sleep, he asked her what was in the sandwiches.

  “Caviar,” she said.

  “What’s caviar?”

  “Fish eggs. I took some out when I was cleaning the fish and fried them in butter. Good, aren’t they?”

  “Fish eggs?” He started to put the sandwich down. “Like out of the guts?”

  “And butter—only rich people eat like that. Caviar and butter. Good stuff. Aren’t you going to eat it?”

  And he did. He ate the sandwich because why? Because he was hungry, starved, and it tasted good. That’s why.

  “Wait until you have the stew.” She turned back for the house. “It’s one of Sig’s favorites.”

  “Stew?” He was sitting on the ground, leaning back against the side of the smoke hut. It was dark. Everything was starting to spin and his eyes were closing while he fought to keep them open. “What kind of stew?’

  “Fish head. After they boil out I’ll throw in some potatoes and we’ll have fish-head stew tomorrow. Each head has thick cheeks that’s the best meat on the fish. You suck the eyes out and eat them with cheek meat and new potatoes—Sig says it’s blue perfect good.”

  In truth he heard her but didn’t hear her. He was dropping fast. And in seconds he was asleep. Sometime in the night somebody wrapped him in a blanket and let him sleep on next to the hut on the ground. He knew-felt somebody was close to him and he thought it was Sig because he had to stay there all night to tend the smoke fire. In the morning when the boy woke up, he was still there, sitting next to him, sleeping with his chin down and his arm over the boy’s shoulders to keep him upright, sort of leaning against him, and he didn’t mind.

  Didn’t mind at all.

  And later that same day, in the evening after chores, they sat at the table for supper and he had fish-head stew with new potatoes and sucked the eyes out and ate the cheek meat and sopped up juice with chunks of new bread and butter and it was better than good.

  He thought then—and still thought later as an old man—that it was right for him, everything was right for him right … then … blue perfect right, and he wouldn’t have minded if it could go on and on and he could stay and not have the other part of his life. This part.

  Shouldn’t make plans.

  Shouldn’t ever make plans about how things should go.

  Shouldn’t.

  About a week after they finished smoking fish and had eaten fish-head stew, he got to eat some smoked fish—brown and leathery and glistening with oil and salt—and he came to realize why they did it, why he helped to do it, smoked the fish. And he was playing hide from Rex in the cornfield—the corn was higher than him by this time—where he would run down a row, then step over three or four rows and call his name to see if the dog could find him.

  And then Rex didn’t come to look for the boy because he’d heard a car engine coming down the driveway and was chasing it, barking and growling as he bit at the tires.

  They almost never had cars drive in. As a matter of fact, it only happened once while he had been there, when a milk buyer came in a truck and wanted to buy any surplus milk they had.

  But this was a different sound—a car, not a truck engine—and he made his way carefully through the corn to get back to the house. Truth was, he was a little shy. So he worked his way around to the front of the house to come in the front door quietly.

  His mother was standing in the kitchen with a man he had seen in Chicago. Sig and Edy stood facing them, and the boy thought it strange nobody was sitting at the table and then he felt it. The tension in the room was so taut it seemed to hum.

  He slid in the door.

  His mother turned and saw him. “Hi, sweetie, we’re here to pick you up.”

  He thought one word: But.

  Just that. But.

  “Uncle Casey is going to take us to Minneapolis and we’re going to take the train out to California and then take a ship across the ocean to be with your father in a place called the Philippine Islands.”

  But.

  He couldn’t leave …

  But.

  This is the place now, he thought.

  His place, his place to be …

  “Get your stuff,” she said. “We have to get going.”

  Sig shook his head. “The boy fits here. He belongs to stay here.”r />
  The man named Casey stepped forward. He was not the boy’s uncle and would never be his uncle. He held up his hand, pointed to the door, and talked like he had a way to make it happen. “We need to take the kid now.”

  Sig grew bigger. Like that. Without moving he seemed to be bigger, to tower over the room. His voice was soft, but had sharp edges. “You need to get from this house.” Still bigger, eyes hot. “Now.”

  And the man named Casey who was not his uncle moved, his eyes white with a new look, fear. Took a step back and the boy thought if Sig lights up on him, Sig will kill him. Just break him. And that didn’t sound so bad, thinking on it.

  But Edy stepped forward. Soft voice, woman’s voice. “No, Sig. Not now, Sig. He has to go with his mother, Sig.” Repeating his name like a soft song. “We have to let him go now, Sig.”

  Sig turned and looked at her and something settled in him, in his eyes and his body, and he settled, just that, settled. He still looked bigger, but settled, as if he were a dog and Edy was petting him, soothing him.

  The man named Casey who was not his uncle went back out to his car and the boy smiled when he heard the geese go after him and then his mother went up the stairs and brought down his clothing and box and took his hand and pulled him out to the car and all the time Sig stood there next to Edy. They both came outside and stood watching.

  And Casey who was not his uncle turned the car around and drove out of the yard, with Rex running alongside barking and biting at the tires, and the boy watched out of the back window until they were out of sight, crying some, crying some, but nobody saw.

  Just crying for himself. Just alone.

  And all he thought was but …

  But.

  Part III

  THE SHIP

  THE POX

  The train ride wasn’t so bad.

  He still missed Edy and Sig and thought of them almost every day and almost all the time with almost every breath and he had been on many trains by now and could not be surprised by them.