by Morris, Ian;
TO PACK
1 pair jeans
2 T-shirts (black) 1 sweatshirt
3 pairs underwear (white)
4 pairs socks (3 white, 1 wool)
1 toothbrush
1 tube Crest
1 razor (w/ 5 blades)
1 can deodorant
1 bar soap
(1) 6″ Crescent wrench
1 pair pliers (needle-nose)
(1) 5 mm Allen key
(1) 6 mm Allen key
1 convertible screwdriver (w/ Phillips and flathead bits)
4 tire levers (2 aluminum, 2 plastic)
1 spare inner tube (700c)
1 spare tire (collapsible)
3 spare brake/derailleur cables
1 roll handlebar tape (white cotton)
1 flashlight
1 lighter (Zippo)
1 road map (Wisconsin)
1 compass
1 Bible (King James, paperback)
1 copy Johnny Tremain
1 copy Lou Gehrig, Captain of the Yankees
1 film can marijuana
1 pack Zig-Zags (gummed)
2 packs Marlboros
My first impression when I saw all this stuff was that I’d need a trunk. Then I set about the task of making it all fit. I used the Gehrig book, which was a tall picture book that I got from Aunt Berthe for my seventh birthday and the Bible (given to me by Brad, the Youth Pastor when I graduated from Sunday School) to construct a frame, pressing the baseball book against the back of the pack and laying the Bible, which had a hard spine, on the bottom.
On top of the Bible, I set the other books, jeans, T-shirts, and my sweatshirt. The weed I stashed beneath a false bottom in my shaving kit, piled the toiletries on top and zipped it shut. I packed the tools in a soft leather case that I bound with a bungee cord. That left just enough room to snake the flashlight and cigarettes into the puckers that opened between round and square edges. When everything was in, I pulled the strap tight. Fully loaded, the bag weighed a ton. It hit the floor with a thud when I dropped it, and Pop shouted a groggy, “Hey” from his room.
I set my alarm for 5:30 and lay on my bed thinking about what I wanted to take that there was no room for: the red flannel shirt I wore every day of my Junior year, my Farm and Fleet parka with the chainsaw gash on the left sleeve from where Grey was playing Freddie Krueger on a birch that fell in their yard in a storm, and all my cassette tapes that took me days to dub.
All I knew about the future came out of the brochures that had arrived in our mailbox at the rate of a half-dozen a week all summer. There was a picture of Rosewalter Hall, my dorm. There were schedules and course descriptions. There were letters from fraternities, which looked like a blast, live-in clubs where guys dressed in tuxedos for charity, until I told Callie, who set me straight. (“They’re dicks.”)
I fell into a sleep without dreams and woke the next morning with the ringing of my alarm. In twenty minutes, I’d showered, dressed, eaten breakfast, and was ready to leave. But Pop wasn’t up yet and I heard nothing from his room. I drank more coffee and stuffed an orange and a couple of bananas into my bag. The doctor had said we were supposed to wake him up in the middle of the night and take his temperature to make sure he didn’t have a brain hemorrhage.
Just when I thought he’d expired, I heard the creaking of bedsprings, and he appeared in the hallway, walking close to the wall to steady himself. He looked a little like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, the way he walked, favoring the right side of his body, that likely having to do with the broken collarbone, the separated shoulder, and the three broken ribs. Every movement required ingenuity. He had to tilt his whole body to pour a cup of coffee and then squat until his arm was level with the table to set the cup down. Every move of his arms or legs knotted his forehead with pain. He lit a cigarette, striking a match one-handed, and picked up the paper from the night before.
I watched him pretend to read for a long few minutes, then said, “I guess I’ll get going.”
He folded the paper and swatted my hand away when I tried to help him up. We must’ve looked pathetic, Pop and his injuries and me bracing myself against the sink, as I swung the heavy pack onto my shoulder. We were pathetic: Pop not able to talk to me even when I was going to be gone for months, and me not able to tell him I’d miss him. I snagged my bike and together we walked out the door and down to the street. It was cool and foggy. You couldn’t see as far as the ferry dock. I slid my arms through the straps of my pack and straddled the bar.
“Well,” I said.
He squinted in the morning sun, the lines on his face fanning out from the sockets of his eyes like spokes from a hub. “Got everything?” he asked,
“I think so.” Then I noticed his boots weren’t tied and had to climb off the bike, set down the bag, and get down on a knee to tie them. He kept moving his feet away from my hands so I couldn’t get a grip on the laces. “Come on, Pop,” I said. “You’re going to have to get somebody in every day to do this.”
He made a face and I knew he’d sooner break his neck than ask anybody to get down on their knees on his account.
When I stood up, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket, and when I shook it, I felt a wad of bills in his palm.
“I got enough,” I said, but he wouldn’t take the money back.
“Take it,” he said. “If you need help later, go to somebody else.”
I told him, “Thanks.” I meant thanks for the money, not thanks for making me feel like a shit for leaving him by himself in traction.
The Reeds’ pickup came rattling down the road. From the way it weaved I guessed Agnes was driving. That was something Jack liked to let her do, he said, because it was his duty as a newsman to keep the citizenry on its toes.
“We’re on our way down to Washburn and figured we could take you that far,” Mr. Reed said from his window.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Come here, then,” Jack said. When I walked to his side of the truck, he handed me a small, black, plastic box. “This was supposed to be Grey’s, but he won’t have much use for it.” I opened it and saw that it was a black pen with a clip that looked like real gold.
“It’s a fountain pen,” Mrs. Reed said.
“Do you know how to use one?” Mr. Reed asked.
“No idea,” I said, and they laughed.
“When you’re on the ferry I want you to look under the cardboard,” Jack said, “Not until.”
I said, “Gotcha,” and waited for them to pull away before I climbed onto the saddle.
I said, “See you, Pop.”
Arms folded, he said, “Don’t waste time.”
“I won’t,” I said, though I didn’t know whether he meant on the way to college or during the rest of my life.
I coasted onto the ferry ahead of the Reeds, climbed the stairs to the bridge, and rapped on the glass. Pete waved me in.
“There’s the man,” he said. Pete was short and wide around the middle, but hard, and thickly tanned. He’d run the ferry for as long as I’d lived on the island, and for just as long people had said that he’d lived another life before he had come to the island. What that life had been we didn’t know, though we guessed it had something to do with the tattoo of Jesus on his right forearm. “You’re the only one this year. You’re the only one going as far as Madison.”
“That can’t be right,” I said.
“No? Think about it.”
“Stu Hansen.”
Pete shook his head. “St. Olaf’s,” he said.
As he eased the boat out of its slip, I named a few others from my class who I thought were going, and each time he told me why they weren’t. Every year the Star publishes the pictures of the island kids who will be attending the University of Wisconsin. It’s an honor Jack doesn’t extend to the ones attending more famous schools out east. Every year I’d see the pictures and admire the kids without exactly knowing why, except that they were supposed to be admired. Having just le
arned that my picture would appear alone on the front page this year, I didn’t know what to feel, except someone must have made a mistake.
We scanned the water of the channel, as the mainland drew closer in front of us. “When you coming back?”
“Never.”
He laughed. “You’ll be back,” he said. “It’s only a matter of when.”
“When do people usually come back?” I asked.
“Thanksgiving. Some of them. Almost all of them at Christmas. A college town is no place to be at Christmas,” he said. “You’ll find that out.”
“How come?”
“How the hell should I know,” he said, keeping a hand on the brass wheel. “Christ, you’re a hard one.”
I was quiet, and he must have thought that he’d spooked me because he reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “You’ll want money,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’m all right there.”
“Really?” he said and thought about this. “Well, I got to give it to you,” he said, “so don’t argue with me.” He pushed a bill into my shirt pocket. “Take over for a minute,” he said, stepping sideways away from the wheel. I stepped in. “There’s your course,” he said. “Keep your fucking hand off the throttle.”
I steered the ferry through the placid water of the channel until it was time to change course. Pete put his hand on my shoulder. “Keep your nose clean,” he said.
The Reeds were standing in the bow at the rail. Agnes had raised her glasses from her eyes and was craning over the side.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
Jack said, “Mrs. Reed thought she saw an eagle.”
“There,” she said, “by the water line.”
“That’s a buoy,” Jack said.
“Well it looks majestic, just the same.”
While their backs were turned, I opened the pen case they had given me. I lifted the cardboard base, and found five hundred-dollar bills, new and stiff as hacksaw blades.
“Man,” I said. The way people were throwing money at me was starting to freak me out. “You know I can’t take this.”
“We knew you were going to say that,” Jack said, “which is the only reason it’s not more. We would have done better than that for Grey, so quit while we’re all ahead.”
“I’ll think of it as a loan.”
“If you have to.”
We heard the engine go in reverse and turned to see the slip approaching. I shoved the money into the pocket of my shorts. Holding onto the rail, I mounted my bike and cinched the toe straps. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a last glimpse of the Reeds. He looked nervous and little tired around the eyes; she smiled, but her mind was somewhere else. The gate hit the asphalt with a clang. Mr. Reed said, “Go get ’em,” and I rolled off the deck onto solid ground, pedaled up the hill, turned left onto Highway 13 and spun out of Bayview, heading south.
10
THE CARHOP’S TALE
It was 310 miles from our porch to the Rosewalter dormitory. I figured to make the ride in two days. I planned on covering two hundred before dark but I missed the turnoff from 63 onto Bay-view County G and reached the town of Cable before I realized my mistake. This detour took me only five miles off course, but by the time I found County M, which cut through the southern tip of the Chequamegon Forest from the west, I had lost an hour that I wouldn’t be able to make up.
In Clam Lake, I stopped at a gas station. The old man behind the counter stared at me as I wheeled my bike through the door.
“On some kind of bike trip?” he asked as he rang up the quart of orange juice and dozen donuts I bought.
“I’m riding down to college.”
He slapped his palms on the counter. “Oh, heh, isn’t that a stunt,” he said and offered me a bag, which I refused. “Think we’ll have Ogilvy back?”
“I don’t see why not,” I said, though I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Still there’s no guarantee that he’ll ever be the same. Ankles are troublesome.”
“Yes,” I said, recognizing that even if I had known then—as I learned in time—that Ogilvy was the best flanker the Badgers had had in twenty years, I couldn’t have given the man the assurance he was looking for.
County GG ran due south through the forest. It was lowland, mostly pine, dotted with small, algae-green ponds, and patches of birch rising white out of a ground fog. I thought about the man’s question, about the injured football player and wondered if I would be expected to know more than I did about the game. Maybe, I thought, you just pick those things up after you’ve been on campus a while.
When the forest gave way to farmland a few miles north of Loretta, I’d ridden eighty miles. My watch was in my pocket where I’d put it to keep myself from looking at it every few seconds. Consequently, I had only a vague idea of what time it was. My guess was that I wasn’t far off schedule, but it was a cool morning, my pack was heavy, the roads were unfamiliar, the land more hilly than I’d remembered, and I was tired. The sense of adventure I’d felt when I left gave way to doubt.
What had been wooded marshland was now rolling pastures. I fought my way up each hill, coasted down the other side, rolling to the base of the next. And so it went for several miles. I rode, hearing sounds of civilization around me but not seeing another soul, until I rounded a corner and saw a battered pickup parked on the shoulder. The roof was half caved in and its blue paint was faded almost white by the sun. As I got close I saw that the bed was filled with watermelons and on the rear gate sat a man in a white cowboy hat and a girl in a pink-and-white-checked dress. They were dark skinned, and I assumed they were Ojibwa until I got closer and saw that they weren’t. The truck had Arizona plates. The girl’s hair was long and snarled but her dress was clean. The man’s mustache, which stopped at the edges of his mouth, was flecked with gray hair. He looked old to have a daughter that young. It being just the three of us on that particular stretch of road, I thought it would be rude to pass without talking.
“Hello,” I said.
The man lifted his finger to his hat. The girl disappeared behind his arm.
I pointed at the watermelons and said, “Do you have anything smaller?”
“Smaller? Si,” the man said and dragged a basket of peaches onto the tailgate, tossed me one, and waved me off when I tried to pay him for it. The two of them watched as I ate it. The girl asked the man a question I didn’t understand, and he shook his head. The peach wasn’t ripe, but I told them it was good and tossed the pit into the high grass.
“You’re not likely to get much business on this road,” I said.
“Truck broke,” he said, nodding at a snapped fan belt that lay on the asphalt like a dead bull snake.
I asked where they were from. “Monterrey,” the man said, “Mexico.”
“What are you doing up this way?”
“Apples.”
The girl had climbed off the truck and was poking my front tire and pushing at the brake levers. I said, “I think she wants a ride.” I hoisted her up by the arms onto the saddle.
“Too little, I think,” the man said, but he saw that she was enjoying herself and he didn’t stop me. Her arms weren’t long enough to reach the handlebars, so she grabbed my arms with both hands.
The girl shouted something to the man, and he answered her in a whisper.
When he gave me a bag filled with plums and pears, I handed him a wad of bills from my pocket, and, as I did, saw one of the C-notes that Mr. Reed gave me sandwiched between the ones. I started to take it back, thought better of it, and pushed the top bill over with my thumb so that he could not see the one beneath.
He refused.
“Buy a new belt,” I said, pressing the money into his palm. I waved bye-bye to the girl and rode away before he could count it.
I rode the next several miles no-handed, eating fruit out of the bag and trying to make up my mind about what I’d just done. The day might come when I would need the money. I als
o worried that I might have hurt the man’s pride, that he might tear up the bill and come looking for me. Then I remembered the broken fan belt. Maybe he would use the money to fix the truck, then come looking for me. I saw a Western like that once.
About an hour before sunset, a wind picked up from the southeast. I was prepared to sleep on the ground, but not in the rain, and I turned south toward a town actually called Little Chicago, thinking I could find a motel. There were none and I rolled south, getting only a couple of miles before the skies opened.
Riding a bike in a rainstorm is like driving a convertible through a car wash. Your tires kick water and mud up in your face. The setting sun against the thunderclouds glowed a jaundiced yellow. I pedaled blind for miles, telling myself over and over that it couldn’t rain this hard for long. And yet it did. For miles, I pushed on against sheets of water, seeing nothing but the wet asphalt as it passed beneath my front wheel.
I was concentrating so hard on not riding off the road that I nearly missed a drive-in root beer stand, hidden from view by a row of trees.
All the stalls were deserted except for a black Chevy pickup with monster tires parked on the opposite side of the service island. The rain beat a patter on the canopy. I pressed the button on a dented, orange intercom. When the waitress came out to take my order, the guy in the truck honked his horn. She gave him the finger. He threw the truck in reverse and hit the gas, kicking gravel everywhere. The girl ignored him, writing on a pad she held to a plastic tray with her thumb. She was sixteen, I guessed, and pretty, with brown hair tied in a ponytail sticking out of an orange visor, which was part of a uniform that didn’t flatter her. The shirt was too tight across her chest and the shorts made her ass look big. “Wo jeez,” she said when she saw me, “looks like someone got a little wet.”
“You noticed,” I said.
“Not much gets by me.”
“Want to get me a hamburger and a float?”
“Please.”
“Please.”
She pretended to think about it. “Where you going to put it?” she said. “Trays go on the window.”
