If You Lived Here You'd Be Home by Now

by Christopher Ingraham

  “Nope,” I said. It was a matter of pride now. You could bury me in those goddamn leaves before I’d accept anyone’s help with them. “No, I’ll be good. Thanks, though.”

  Next spring the leaves were still there. We didn’t end up planting a garden that year, so the pile overwintered another year. And guess what? They were still there in 2018, too. That fall I officially gave up and hired a professional lawn service to do the mowing. The guy came out to do an estimate.

  “You want me to haul away that pile of leaves in the garden there?” he asked.

  I still couldn’t admit defeat. “No,” I said. “I like them there.”

  Briana called him back the next day. “Will you please take away the pile of leaves in the garden?” she asked. “We’ll pay you whatever it takes. Yes, I know what my husband said. You need to understand he has a problem and he needs somebody to do this for him. Yes, thank you.”

  The next day, the leaves were finally gone.

  John also gave me a crash course in the fundamentals of the sugar beet harvest that year. You may think, as I did, that you have some idea of what a sugar beet is, but take it from me: you have absolutely no clue. A sugar beet resembles one of the dinky purple beets you grow in your garden the same way that a Sherman tank resembles a Honda Civic. The median sugar beet is the size of a large child’s head and perfectly white. They’re typically a foot long and weigh anywhere from three to five pounds. You know those weird white vegetables that Mario yanks out of the ground in Super Mario Bros. 2, the ones that are half the size he is? That’s the most accurate depiction of a sugar beet ever produced by popular culture.

  In the eighteenth century the sugar beet’s predecessors were fed to cattle before somebody realized the beets contained sucrose, the same stuff that makes sugarcane sweet. A few centuries of selective breeding produced those fat, sweet monsters that farmers plant today. At roughly 20 percent pure sugar, a single beet can yield up to a pound or so of refined sugar.

  You probably think that most of the table sugar you consume at home and in restaurants comes from sugarcane. You’re wrong. Between 55 and 60 percent of it actually comes from sugar beets, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You think that most of the stuff you sprinkle into your coffee comes from tropical plantations, but most of it is grown in the mainland United States, in places like the Red River valley on the border between North Dakota and Minnesota.

  About thirteen thousand years ago, an area of North America roughly the size of the Black Sea was covered by a glacial lake called Lake Agassiz. For thousands of years, the lake’s animal inhabitants ate, pooped, and died in its waters, depositing a thick layer of organic material along its bottom. When the glaciers receded the lake drained, fairly rapidly, leaving all that material behind as beautiful black soil and raising global sea levels anywhere from two to nine feet in the process. As a result the Red River valley’s farmland is some of the most productive in the entire world, despite the short growing season of the northern climate.

  In addition to your staples like corn, wheat, and soybeans, the soft soil makes for ideal beet-growing conditions. When October comes the beets are ready for harvest, and every last person in the area knows it on account of the hundreds of semi-trucks laden with tons of beets that go barreling down the country roads at this time of year.

  In 2016 John took me out on the harvest one afternoon. We met at the grain elevator in the town of Euclid, northwest of Red Lake County on U.S. Route 75. John’s job was to pick up the freshly harvested beets from the field and haul them several miles away to one of the holding stations operated by American Crystal Sugar. There the beets would be weighed and then piled and left to sit out in the cold until the big processing stations in East Grand Forks and Crookston were ready to take them.

  I assumed that there would be some sort of large piece of beet-holding equipment along the side of the road that John would drive up to, and it would dump the load of beets in his trailer. Instead he wheeled the semi, trailer and all, directly into the field and pulled up alongside the massive treaded beet harvester that was waiting. When the harvester started up, John had to drive through the dirt alongside it, maintaining a constant distance and pace so the beets tumbling off the machine’s conveyer dropped into the trailer. He also had to keep an eye on his mirror to make sure the beets weren’t piling too high in any one part of the trailer. If they were, he had to speed up or slow down as necessary to ensure they were being distributed evenly.

  If you’re wondering how an eighteen-wheeler laden with twenty tons of beets drives through a soft field without getting stuck, the answer is it doesn’t. Things usually start to get dodgy near the end of a pass through the field, when the truck and the harvester have to turn around. The truck is almost bound to lose traction, so what happens is he gets a tow from a guy in an enormous tractor outfitted with treads. The tractor has a tow hitch on the back and the truck has a matching bar on the front for just this purpose. The tractor backs into the truck with a thud, the hitch grabs the bar, and the trucker gets a quick 180-degree tow so he can start the process all over again. Once the trailer is full the trucker drives off the field and the next truck waiting in line takes its turn.

  The trucks end up absolutely covered in dirt, and deposit enormous amounts of the stuff on the roadways during this season. Locals like to bitch about the beet dirt but none of them really mean it; lots of dirt means a good harvest and money in the pockets of the farmers, the truck drivers, the processing plant workers, and all their families.

  Once we had a load full of beets, John drove us out to the receiving station. There he stopped to get his truck weighed and the weight recorded, and to tease the girl behind the weigh station window about this thing and that thing. Once that was done he’d pull up alongside an enormous conveyor belt. The different components of the belt would swing into place at the dump end of the trailer, and John would lift the trailer and dump all the beets out the back. We’d watch them roll up the conveyor belts, and at the top get flung out onto the massive beet mountains that eventually end up covering the entire receiving station grounds. Once the load was empty he’d go do it again, dozens of times a day, until the field was fully harvested or he needed to take a break. Pitching in with the harvest for a few days is a good way for a guy with a truck to make an extra thousand bucks or so before the winter finally sets in.

  Another sign that autumn is in full swing is the presence of corn shocks in people’s front yards, particularly out in the country. Dick Brumwell taught us the term for the bundles of standing cornstalks tied near the top with twine, usually accompanied by some decorative gourds and straw bales.

  “Corn shocks,” he said.

  “Corn stalks?” we asked.

  “Corn shocks. What in the hell’s the matter with you east coasters anyway?” Dick couldn’t bear the thought of us spending our first fall in Minnesota without a proper shock gracing our yard. So he brought us out to his expansive garden down by the river, where some of his corn plants grew ten or twelve feet high.

  “All right, chop off some of these and drag ’em over to your car. I’ll go get you some pumpkins.”

  Bri and I set about hacking at the thick stalks with knives and pruning shears while Jack and Charles chased each other through the rows. We eventually ended up with a pile that looked like it would fill our CRV to the brim, just barely leaving enough room for the boys. Dick came back over.

  “All right, that’s a good bundle,” he said. “Now go get three more of those.”

  We protested, but he told us to shut the hell up since we didn’t know what we were doing, and that he’d bring anything that didn’t fit in the car over to our place on his Prowler.

  In the end we stood all the stalks up in our yard and tied them together near the top. The final shock was generally the shape of a tall triangle with a bunch of tassels springing out of the top. It was kind of like a fall version of a Christmas tree. Dick, we later learned, was particularly fond of
corn shocks because it was a project that he and his late wife, Diane, had always done with their children around this time of year. We were glad he could show us how to carry on the tradition.

  We were surprised to find most people pulled their shocks down shortly after Halloween.

  “That’s stupid,” I said. “They should stay up until at least Thanksgiving, add a bit of cheer to November.”

  “They probably take them down because they freeze in place and then you’re stuck with them until the spring,” Bri said. “You should go take ours down while we still can.”

  “Like hell I will,” I said. “Look how seasonal and goddamn festive that is. I’ll take it down after Thanksgiving, when we put the Christmas stuff up.”

  “Don’t you think these Minnesotans might understand this a little better than you, seeing as how this is our first fall here?”

  “These people don’t even know how to cook venison,” I said. “They don’t have a monopoly on all things autumnal. We’re gonna teach them a few things, you watch.”

  The next weekend it snowed and the temperatures plunged well below freezing, not to return again until spring. The corn shock was rooted in place, as were the straw bales and gourds, which were now also solid as a rock. The arrangement remained there all winter, mocking me as the snow piled around it.

  “What do you think is decaying faster,” Bri asked in January, “the pumpkins in the front yard or the pile of leaves in the garden?”

  I said nothing.

  With a beet harvest and a proper corn shock under my belt there remained one item on my Minnesota bucket list before fall was out: I still wanted to bag my first deer. In the week following my disastrous first foray into the field, Ryan had swung by one evening, grinning from ear to ear, with a ten-point buck strapped to a trailer behind his car.

  “See?” he said. “This is what you miss out on when you don’t show up to hunt.”

  “Show me proof you didn’t just hit it with your car.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Ingraham.” He drove off.

  Jason got himself a deer, too, an even bigger buck, a twelve-pointer in fact. I told them I wanted to go one more time, set myself up in a stand on Russ’s property some afternoon. The next weekend was the last weekend of the season so it would have to be then. That Saturday the Brumwells again drove me out to Russ’s property. Dick was already there; he’d bagged a deer earlier in the week but kept going out to the stands just because he enjoyed it so much. As we readied ourselves for my final attempt he told a tale about some deer he had watched out in one of the fields that morning.

  “Well, there’s this group of doe grazing in the field,” he says, “and along comes this young buck, little guy, maybe six points, looked like he had a tine missing on one of his antlers. Well, he comes over to the does all puffed out but they want nothing to do with him, they keep running off and you can tell he’s getting agitated. Well, finally this great big older buck, this experienced old man, walks slowly over to him and nods his head at him, like he’s calming the young guy down. Telling him to take it easy, he’s still young, he’s got lots of time, no need to be in a hurry and rush things. Well, what do you know, eventually the two of them go walking off together, just quietly out of the field side by side. It was the neatest goddamn thing, I tell ya.”

  Once again we load up the Prowler. This time they give me a prime location—Jason’s new stand that I’d help put together earlier in the season, the one with the porch overlooking the corn plot.

  “If you can’t find a deer here, Ingraham, I don’t know what to tell you,” Ryan says.

  I climb up the ladder, get comfy in the seat, luxuriate in the space. I slide the windows open and shut just for the hell of it; they’re quiet as a whisper. I check my rifle; there’s a round in the chamber and the magazine’s attached. I’ve got six shots if I need them.

  The sun goes down and there’s nothing moving in the corn except for a few birds. I’m about to write the whole thing off, convinced that these sonofabitching Brumwells have probably been spraying my stands with deer repellant before I get there as a joke, when suddenly I see them: a whole herd of deer making their way into the feed plot.

  I look them over from my tower: doe, doe, doe, all doe. They have no idea I’m here. It’s silent, you can hear their footsteps, the rustling of the cornstalks as they pass. They’re in no hurry, ambling casually about the corn. Some of the deer on the edge of the group look up from time to time with a wary eye but there’s no sense of hurry about them. Hunting season is almost over; the deer that are still here have nearly guaranteed themselves another trip around the sun.

  I see a slightly larger deer emerge from the edge of the woods and my heartbeat quickens a bit. It’s a buck for sure, six points at least. I could give it a shot, or take my chances and see if something bigger comes by. I could just let it go, after all. As a general rule I try not to hurt animals. If there’s a spider in the house I try to scoop it up and put it outside. I come from a family of animal healers. Shooting one is against my nature. I could be like Dick, relax and watch the deer mingle, see what they have to show me.

  Fuck it, though: I didn’t move to Minnesota to be a passive spectator. Murdering a deer goes somewhat against my morals but it’s something I need to experience, if nothing else than to be able to lay claim to some of that delicious ground venison. I decide to go for it.

  Slowly I rest the barrel of the rifle on the window frame, sliding it out just enough to make it comfortable to fire from my spot. A couple of the doe look up toward the cabin of the stand but don’t act as if anything’s amiss. I center the crosshairs on the buck, just behind the shoulder blades. I inhale. Exhale slightly. Hold. I pull the trigger.

  Safety’s on.

  Shit.

  I flip the safety off. I inhale. Exhale slightly. Hold. I pull the trigger.

  It feels like the cabin explodes. The muzzle flash is blinding in the near-darkness and the walls of the cabin capture the deafening sound waves almost in their entirety, sending them ricocheting back toward my brain. For a few seconds I can’t see anything. At the edge of my hearing, beyond the high-pitched ringing, I hear a commotion out in the feed plot and then silence.

  I step out onto the porch to survey the scene. It doesn’t look like there’s anything out there at first, but then I see movement, see the buck struggling on the ground right where I’d shot at it. It’s still alive.

  Well, shit.

  In truth, I wasn’t prepared for this. I had thought through everything up until the exact moment I pulled the trigger. I had assumed at that point that I would either hit the deer and kill it, or miss it and have it run off. I had envisioned the outcome as binary: hit or miss, alive or dead. I wasn’t prepared for wounded and suffering.

  I climbed down from the stand carrying the gun with me and walked over to where the deer was, about one hundred yards away. It was flailing about on the ground. I couldn’t see a wound anywhere but it appeared that its hind legs weren’t working. The only humane thing, at that point, was to put it out of its misery. There was a knot in my stomach. It didn’t feel right—my instinct on seeing pretty much any animal, wild or domesticated, is to squat down on my haunches and make “here, kitty kitty” sounds. To reach out a hand and see if it wants to be pet. To ruffle its fur, see how soft it is. Instead, I had to end this deer’s life. Destroy it.

  I stand a safe distance away and put the scope up to my eye. I inhale. Exhale slightly. Hold. I pull the trigger.

  Safety’s on.

  Shit.

  I flip the safety off. I inhale. Exhale slightly. Hold. I pull the trigger.

  There’s another boom, less deafening for being out in the open this time. The deer looks at me for a moment, almost as if it’s disappointed. Then it resumes its flailing unabated.

  I realized immediately what the problem was: for some dumb reason, I had aimed with the scope even though I wasn’t more than ten yards away. The scope was calibrated for a distance of tw
o hundred yards. The round had probably sailed above the poor creature by a foot at least.

  God damn it.

  I pull back the bolt and put another round in the chamber. I lift the rifle up again, sighting down the line of the barrel this time, just kind of eyeballing it. I inhale. Exhale slightly. Hold. Safety’s already off. I pull the trigger.

  There’s a sucking sound from a new hole in the deer’s chest and then it is still. The animal’s suffering, and mine, are finally over.

  I flip the safety back on and rest the rifle on the ground. I sigh deeply. I feel deeply unsettled and weird. There’s a nearly full moon rising above the clearing. The deer’s blood, pooling around its body, shines black. I’m exhausted. I feel bad, honestly. Queasy. Like I’ve just done something horrible and irrevocable. It was something I’d wanted to experience, to even prove to the Brumwells that I could do it. But now that I had done it, I wished I hadn’t.

  Soon I hear the sound of the Prowler and see its lights as it comes down the trail toward the feed plot. I wave my flashlight and hail them over. Ryan gets out.

  “Jesus Christ, Ingraham, was that three shots I heard? How many deer did you shoot?”

  “Just the one,” I say.

  “Christ, I would have given you two magazines if I had known your aim was gonna be that shitty.”

  Ryan calls Jason and his dad. “You’ll want to get over here quick,” he says. “Ingraham’s about to gut his first deer. I think he’s gonna puke.”

  “How many goddamn deer did he shoot?” I hear Dick say on the other end of the line.

  It’s a relief to be at the butt end of the Brumwells’ abuse again. The intensity of the moment I first pulled the trigger had narrowed my frame of reference down to just myself and the deer, the only two players in a life-and-death drama acted out on a stage of black dirt at the end of the world. The Brumwells yanked me back to the real world. I kept my ambivalence about the killing to myself. It was easier to just go along with the joshing, let my tragedy dissolve into farce.