Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

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  McHugh began to love that basement. He started the very next day, finding the old places where the ductwork of a coal furnace once had been and cobbled that into the new line until his work stretched from the furnace out under the floor joists in two directions. The blower unit had a pretty good squirrel cage, and when he plugged it in and had a good load of oak so that you could feel the heat radiating out into space, well Marion said it felt pretty good.

  Not maybe as good as the Olsens’ but good enough.

  That was how he put it, early one afternoon, sitting at the nook in the back of the place where they could look out on the two acres of good creek-bottom pasture before the hills came down, as if to touch this place.

  It was dry down there in the basement. Each day he would throw another catch of wood, gleaned from those brooding hills where he would go with his old 8N Ford, chains on the rear tires and his chain saw resting in the little cradle he had fixed up to haul saw, gas, bar oil, and eighteen inch sections of wood he had found for the day. That was first off, in the morning. By ten or so he would be pitching the results into the bowels of the house as though it were some cargo hold or a barge. Inside, each day, the pile grew, resting on some of those large two-bys and slowly oozing from the north end of the basement where just last year he had worked cement around and over the last of the field stone. It was tight now, sealed like a jar of fish eggs, but giving off instead the smell of dry air and wood chips when you opened the door. The bark he usually scaled off before loading up the tractor, but of course some remained and each day he would take the scoop shovel and offer up a load of old, discarded wood-skin through the cellar doors and out into the cold.

  By noon they would be sitting down over dinner, the heat pouring up through the grates. He would have checked on the sheep, before and after his wood excursion, and the afternoon was his.

  It was like that in February.

  He had bred his ewes late and they wouldn’t be lambing until mid-April. That left the flat, wood-lovin’ days of February to find him deep in the rutted patterns of his living, following the paths of yesterday out to the shed, or renewing the tire tracks again this day—his tractor heading out across the field, up along the ridgeline and into the hills.

  It was an ordinary time—each day like the middle of his life. The big events—where the light breaks from or again finds the belly of the darkness—were now far removed, tucked safely away by the flat, recurrent pattern of his world. Sometimes, sitting in the kitchen, listening to the whir of the air handling unit forcing its warmth up through the grate, it seemed to him that his life was like one note, played over and over, or one lure—alone and unadorned—dropped through a hole in the ice.

  It was towards the end of this time, coming back with Marion with some salt blocks and a pickup load of feed for the sheep, that he got this idea about the fishing out on the Wisconsin. It was cold enough in the pickup, the side windows all frosted up in sub-zero weather, and she looked at him when he said it like he was crazy.

  “I can understand the Bahamas,” she offered. “Understand going down for a long afternoon in front of the TV down at Chet’s bar, but to go out on the flat plain of that river with a wind like it gets this time of year, well that’s a strange one!”

  He conceded her point, but not his idea. In fact, after pitching all the feed sacks into the near corner of the barn, he pulled the truck on over to the shed, plugged in the radiator heater, and found himself going through his tackle, looking for the kind of stuff that they might use this time of year.

  “So you’re really going to do it,” she said as he came in with his fishing gear. “Just can’t wait for a thaw.”

  “I don’t know, Marion. Just seems sort of nice.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to it. Just don’t get to thinking I’m going to be a part of fishing in February. I know they do it. But I’d thought, Jason, you’d had enough of that cold, all of those bone-rattling days we made do down here. And that just a week or two ago.”

  “A month, Marion.”

  “A month then. Soon enough. But you’re welcome to it. I’ll keep the home fires burnin’ as they say.”

  The next day, during the lull in the afternoon, the Kickapoo all stoked up, he drove on down to Prairie du Chien and Starks. He looked at their array of flat-bottomed john boats sitting on edge with snow settled on them and walked in wondering about it all.

  But what was there to wonder? Guys do it all the time. Sitting out on the Wisconsin or especially the Mississippi, mostly in fishing shacks but some always out in their insulated suits, their gas-powered augers nearby. It was this and snowmobiling. But ever since Harold had given him that ride over to Boaz in his Yahama once, them riding the ditches, rocketing across the stubble of corn fields in the black of a moonless night, looking for them little markers to point the trail, he thought he’d just go down in the car with Marion for the Friday fish frys and stick with his sheep.

  So what was he doing at Starks? Of course they were friendly in there. Talked in general about the places most folks like to fish the river. The latest fishing results. Bait and lures that were the most popular. It was strange how he had lived in that country and never fished the river. Driven over it often enough, especially that bridge on in to Boscobel. And eaten along its shores in that place with that large parking lot and no apparent need for its sign: Immediate Seating. And had canoed it with his cousin from Chicago, riding it down, watching the riverbars, noting the turtles lazing in the late-July sun, nodding to the rivermen sitting on the swivel seats of their bass boats, their motors tilted up. But this was different. Real different. And perhaps that was why.

  The next day he got up three days’ worth of wood. Got is cut and stacked and ready for his absence. Then he dug out his rod, checked on his leaders, his floats, threw out a mostly-used old can of Mike’s Cheese It fish eggs, and lubricated two of his reels, sitting at the kitchen table over old newspapers.

  “Smells like summer,” Marion said, but they both knew that summer fishing had never really been a part of his life. His older brother had given him the stuff, the summer before he headed off to teach in the deserts of Saudi. English prof. And if he were here now, Jason reckoned, he would certainly have something to say about fish. Fish eggs or something. Perhaps mythology. He remembered his brother once going on about the first catch of the season. Said he had gleaned it from reading about the Tlingit Indians of the Northwest Coast. And even the Huron, over in Michigan. He remembered his brother standing in the front of the tree, one Christmas eve, just before they were going to all sit down to dinner at his wife’s folks’ place—Norwegian they were. Just before the creamed herring and Lutefisk, talking about the Hurons and how they preached to their fish! He had thought about this later that same night when they were sitting in church. Selected the best preacher and had him go on about it for days. Trying to convince the fish that they should not be afraid. Frank said the Huron would not burn their bones. Sitting in the silence the best among them preached long and hard to the first fish of the season so that the others might also come and be caught.

  But a fish fry was as close as he came to fish. Except now.

  Two days later he was out on the ice, down north of Wauzeka, close to where the Kickapoo empties in. He pulled in next to a couple of other trucks within sight of the river. He took his axe in one hand and in the other he held his rod and a large insulated thermal bag, with thermos and sandwiches and tackle box inside, as he worked his way down and out onto the ice.

  He started his journey up towards Clear Creek, about a mile south where the river and the road come close. But then, after saying a few words with the two there, men long used to the cold and who had carved out this place for their lines, he decided on south and headed off, his bag slung over the shoulder, taking long strides, the snow crunching underfoot as he worked his way on down the river.

  It was a nice day, once you got used to it. Just getting warmed
up was what Roland would have said. And he wondered of Stelle with her long hair and delicate wrists and the steel of her eyes. What would she have said of all this? Roaming out on the ice with his insulated, steel-toed boots?

  He hiked on down quite a ways. The river was broad here, flat with ice and an occasional spot where it seemed the air had trapped the water in the midst of making a small wave. In other places there were ridges where the snow had melted down, he supposed, into a solid core. Down south, well out of sight of the others, he finally stopped, chopped a hole and began to set up. Baiting a hook, he left the rod to lie, resting on the handle of the axe, the bopper floating in the impossibility of water still flowing. He tried the coffee with a sandwich and waited, sitting on the ice, alongside his spot, thinking of those turtles of the summer, now somewhere below him in the mud—waiting.

  Something cleaned his hook. He rebaited, feeling the cold on the bare skin of his hand as he worked quickly. There were tracks of jet planes in the sky and drifting on the air the sounds of cows, across the highway, where he could make out both house and barn.

  It wasn’t long—perhaps two hours by McHugh’s calculation— when sitting on the blanket he had brought along for insulation—even with the coffee coursing through his veins—would no longer do. He thought of the furnace in his basement dutifully chugging out heat and felt the cold deeper within his flesh and stood to go.

  Of course that didn’t happen right away. By himself, the decision was an easy matter. But there was the rod. He freed up the bobber and worked the weights free after cutting off the hook. He reeled it in and put knife and gear neatly away in tacklebox. When he stood up, to put blanket and thermos back into the sack, he was cold.

  Well, maybe not the bone-rattling cold Marion had talked about, but cold enough anyway. Cold with a way that tells you it could get dangerous, quietly, without fanfare. Like a widow-maker in the deep woods, the rotted elm tree standing with the clothes of its bark all around the trunk. Dead-still. Dangerous.

  He was stiff when he walked. It took more steps than usual to get up a rhythm and to swing his sack over his shoulder. A wind had come up out of the northeast, so he figured he’d be better walking back along the shore. He would go there and then cut through the brush and back up to the river road.

  He headed north. Had come quite a ways west, he thought, crunching his way on the ridges of the ice. He was surprised to see the fringe of trees that marked where the Kickapoo flowed into the Wisconsin. To the east, he looked back on the railroad bridge and where he had left the last human companionship before this mighty venture. He could feel the cold working its way into his hands, remembering the many times in the early grey of the morning when he would hold the chainsaw in the blue smoke of its first starting and the cold would work its way in.

  Almost to the shoreline. His steps were flowing now. At first it was almost like that old furnace in Stelle’s pickup, his body like a hunk of metal that would not move. But it was better now, tingle of the cold wearing off in his boots, his stride extending. It was better with the stiff leather of his form loosening up and working free, when he broke through.

  They had of course told him about certain places along the river where there were springs. Standing in the warm air of Starks in the afternoon, looking down at the display of knives under the counter-top, the idea of springs in the river had seemed nothing out of the ordinary. But now here it was and him standing with his right leg down in a sudden hole, the water working its way, like thick oil, out onto the ice, and him knee-deep in water.

  In the summer, canoeing, he remembered seeing people half across the river and standing knee deep. But today the water was a knife. He felt it at once, working over the tops of his boots and through the matted layers of insulated suit. Knee deep. He lifted it up quick. Held it, like a dog that suddenly gets ice in one of its paws. Holding the wounded thing up in the searching cold of the air. He lifted up his leg like it was a prize catch and thought of Roland by the furnace: not much but spit if…can’t get this up and in that pickup..

  But the first time he set it down, he felt the river of water running down his pant leg and the lake in the bottom of his boots. It was some different. “Some different, Roland!” he said out loud to the river. It was sort of funny. He was not that far from shore. But that’s where it can get a little dicey, they had said. Right about at the edge of things: where trees meet pasture and breath finds the air. Or dreams, with their warmth the cold of your slowing life.

  He moved quickly then. Never dropped his rod or lost his sack. Just in. Then up and holding it while the water drained. Then the nudge of cold and the foot placed down on solid ice. Then— with the knife of the water working on his leg—quick as he could over to shore. He could see through the brush only a few yards. It would be a good push through. Several hundred yards of Lord knows what. And so he lightened up— dropping the sack, dropping the rod and axe—lumbering off. Like a hamstrung deer, he thought. Stove up.

  But getting to the road wasn’t as hard as he first supposed. He shoved through the worst of it and tried not to think about what was happening to the leg as he worked all that cold around with each step. Near the road he climbed over some pretty good windfall before he could make out the rising slope of the roadbed. A car passed, just a glint of metal through the trees. He worked his way on up and broke free, finding at last the level of the road, civilization with a yellow strip in the middle and posts along the side, painted white.

  From there it was easy. Two cars later he was unlacing his boot in the front seat of a warm sedan as a good-natured woman heading up to Bell Center gave him a lift. The water felt like it was trying to work its way through the last of his skin, like it was acid, relentless, etching the metal of his being, while she talked of shopping down at Prairie and how they liked the quiet of living out. He smiled in the midst of the confusion of his leg until the talking stopped. She dropped him by his truck, took his quick thanks and moved away fast—perhaps too fast, because of his success in hiding what was really happening. He limped into the truck, fished the keys from the top, zippered pocket of his coveralls and fired it up.

  Then, praying for heat, he carefully took off his boot and peeled down the layer of his wool socks, like it was skin, looking at the pale white of his ankle and foot, almost silver in the cold, the water of the river dripping off like scales. The pain was warping his vision. The leg was killing him with its pain. It was a living, breathing thing, not a stick of cold wood. Would he be all right?

  Slowly now heat worked its way into the cab of his truck. He was lucky it was only sub-zero windchill and not sub-zero cold. He would come back later for his gear.