Little Klein

by Anne Ylvisaker

  “We’re Presbyterian, dear,” corrected Mrs. Clambush, “but I’m sure the corn is nondenominational.”

  As the grown-ups went inside for iced tea, Little Klein, with LeRoy on his heels, raced to the garage for a trowel. He dug a hole in the discussed spot before Mother Klein could change her mind. He slipped into the kitchen, grabbed three forks, and stuck them in the ground around the hole, then tied string around the forks, marking the territory. He made a label, CORN, and sat waiting for his brothers, LeRoy at his side.

  Little Klein longed to fish with his brothers but was considered a drowning risk by his mother. Days of sighing about the wait for his corn to grow, though, frayed Mother Klein’s patience, so as a distraction she let the Bigs take Little Klein to the river at last.

  “Keep LeRoy close,” she cautioned, unaware of LeRoy’s unusual swimming affliction.

  The Bigs tied a hook on a string on the end of a stick and deposited Little Klein on a spot of sandy shore. They drifted off to the ledge that reached out over the river, LeRoy panting behind them. The Bigs dropped their lines with reels and real coated fishing line.

  In the river just below the ledge, a deposit of stones made an underwater cove where the fish of Klein dreams lived. The boys called him The Minister because they’d first seen him on a Sunday morning and he’d slapped the water loud as the preacher’d pounded the pulpit on Easter. Ten years ago someone had pulled a 137-pound catfish from this river. The Minister could be their fame.

  While the Klein Boys hadn’t caught a really large fish in the river, a baited hook had not gone uneaten until they met The Minister, an overgrown catfish that’d lost his traveling spirit and lived a hermit’s life in this shallow stretch of river bottom where he grew fat and lazy eating unsuspecting delicacies that floated by. The Minister had seen enough of his mates yanked out of the water by ugly mugs like those peering at him over the ledge that he proclaimed a diet anytime their shadows disturbed his watery den.

  Little Klein stood in the weeds dangling his line near the shallow shore while his brothers baited The Minister and forgot about him. They certainly did not expect him to catch anything. Distracted by a squirrel, LeRoy wandered into the woods.

  Little Klein held his line steady for a bit, then jigged it, making the dead worm wriggle in what he considered an appetizing way. He imagined himself mess cook, feeding worms to an army of fish. He’d reel them in, caught on his line like ribbons on a kite string. There’d be a town fish fry to cook up his catch. “Who caught all these fish?” people would ask and he would hear his name, Harold Klein, murmured through the crowds. “That’s my boy,” his father would tell people. “That’s my boy and his dog.” Little Klein pulled his line along as he walked the shore, then repeated his dangling, jigging, and dragging. He was rewarded with a tug on his line.

  “Got one!” he yelled, hanging on to his stick as he ran along the shore in the direction the fish was pulling his line.

  “Set your hook!” called Matthew, sliding down from the ledge on his bottom.

  “Pull your stick up!” added Mark.

  Little Klein yanked his stick, and with a snap he was left with a six-inch twig while his line and the rest of his stick followed the escaped fish.

  They went home with an empty net that day, but Little Klein was hooked on fishing. He relived that moment when the fish pulled at his line over and over. The stick had been weightless in his hands and then like a divining rod had jerked and pulled like a thing alive. In those few seconds a rush of excitement flew from his hands up his arms, through his body, and right out his toes, and he wanted more.

  “I need a fishing pole,” Little Klein announced at dinner that night.

  “Can’t one of you boys share?” Mother implored, looking from Matthew to Mark to Luke. They stared back at her as though she’d asked them to share their underwear. “Okay, all right. We’ll see.”

  After dinner, Mother Klein poked around in the garage. She sorted through shovels, rakes, and old brooms. Then, mixed in with a pile of skis, she found it — a tall bamboo pole. She wrestled it free and leaned it against the house.

  “There,” she said to Little Klein, who was watching behind her. “Have your brothers tie some fishing line on there and you’re all set.”

  “Man alive!” exclaimed Little Klein, picking it up and swinging it around, accidentally catching the back of Mother’s dress, then whapping LeRoy.

  “Oh!” he cried.

  “Careful! Don’t you go hurting anyone with your father coming home in eight days, no . . . seven. You’d better just leave that pole by the house until your brothers can help you.” She paused. “Maybe it is too big. . . .”

  “No! I’ll be careful! It’s perfect, Ma.”

  The next day they set off for the river again. LeRoy and the Bigs gathered around Little Klein on the shore with instructions.

  “One: Don’t pussyfoot around when you get a nibble.”

  “Woof!”

  “Two: Don’t pull up too fast. Let ’im get the hook all the way in his mouth.”

  “Woof!”

  “Three: Set the line.” This with the yanking of an imaginary rod and a snap of wrists.

  Wagging tail.

  “And four: If you’re going to be a real fisherman, you have to bait your own hook.”

  “Woof! Woof! Woof!”

  Luke pulled a fat earthworm from the can they’d filled after dark the night before and tore it in half. “No use givin’ ’em a whole juicy guy like this if they’re not going to get a chance to digest it anyhow. All you need is a tantalizing sample. Want the other half, LeRoy?”

  With a clump of oatmeal suddenly squirming in his stomach, Little Klein held his breath and threaded his hook.

  “There you go! Toss it out.”

  LeRoy and the Bigs sat down on the bank to watch Little Klein and offer tips. The bamboo pole was twice Little Klein’s height and the line twice again as long, so a new method of casting was devised. Little Klein laid the line out along the edge of the water and the pole after it. He walked back to the hook end of the line and tossed it in the water then ran back to the pole end, lifting it from the middle and rotating it out over the water.

  When he grew tired of standing and jigging the worm, he sat cross-legged on the sand, his eyes not leaving the tip of his pole. The suspense of the first cast over, the Bigs argued over what new bait might tempt The Minister today, the merits of a cube of cheese being weighed against a wooden red spinner. LeRoy sauntered into the trees for a sniff around. The weight of the long pole having tired Little Klein’s jigging arm, he let the line float off downstream and his attention drift.

  The Minister was returning to his rocky den after his morning laps around the area and was surprised to see a snack resting right there on his floor. He rolled his eyes up to the ledge. No large-eared creatures peering over. A snack, free and clear, and he hadn’t had a worm in oh, so long. Ordinarily he would have been more cautious, but an annoyingly sociable carp had been dropping in lately and The Minister was not about to share, so with a greedy gulp he swallowed that half worm whole and settled in for a nap.

  At that same moment Little Klein decided to try his luck upriver a ways. He lifted his pole and turned to take it with him. Shoot. His hook must have snagged. He yanked. The Minister woke with a sharp pain in his belly and that annoying carp watching him with her watery lovesick eyes. He tried to burp the pain out and was nearly successful, but then it lodged itself in his lip.

  The Minister lurched about, trying to free himself of the pain. The carp came at him, wanting to help, and with a furious exhalation of bubbles The Minister showed her his back fin as he swam away in a panic. On the other end of the line, Little Klein felt not the pleasing tug of the fish he’d nearly caught on the stick but a yank that nearly stole the rod from his hands.

  “Bite!” he screamed, gripping his dancing pole. Little Klein dug his heels in the sand and skidded down the shore, caught as much by The Minister as The Minister
was caught by him. And then he was in the water, skipping along the surface but not letting go.

  “Bite!” he called again when he could get his face out of the water. Ahead of him, The Minister sped toward a submerged tree root, braced himself, and snagged the line he knew was trailing him. With a rip he left the hook and part of his lip behind and was free. He swam unsteadily back to his den, snuggled himself under a rock, and, without the energy to dismiss the loitering carp, The Minister slept.

  As the line went slack, Little Klein sank. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and LeRoy ran along the shore after him. The boys dived into the river and pulled Little Klein out, still clutching his rod.

  “Tip number five: Let go of the rod before it pulls you in.”

  “Woof!”

  “He got away,” mourned Little Klein as he examined the dangling line. “He must have been enormous. I’ll bet it was The Minister.”

  “Nah. The Minister never eats worms.”

  The Bigs used to be tree climbers, but as they’d grown tall, they’d grown heavy. The backyard pine was a testament to their girth, with its shattered lower limbs. Only Little Klein could navigate the nubs of these former branches, shinnying up to higher limbs to keep lookout whenever needed.

  Today, Little Klein was watching for Stanley Klein, returning father and husband, as well as allergic and uninformed owner of a dog named LeRoy.

  LeRoy howled at the base of the tree.

  “Take that dog somewhere today,” Mother Klein ordered the Bigs as she weeded her garden. “He can’t be here when your father arrives.”

  “Ma!” whined Luke.

  “Go on, guys,” said Little from high in the branches. “I’ll come find you after Dad gets here.”

  “Oh sure. When after? Tomorrow? I don’t think so,” said Mathew, Luke grunting his solidarity.

  “Mercy, Lord, you gave ’em to me,” pleaded Mother Klein with the sky. “You should have dealt me more patience while you were at it.” She drew her small frame to its full height and turned to the Bigs. “Boys, take LeRoy and find somewhere you haven’t been before. . . .”

  “She means get lost,” muttered Luke.

  “Go,” finished Mother Klein.

  Little Klein watched the road from between the branches. The last time his father had been home was four months ago, and he was sure he’d grown since then. There had been a snowstorm that kept the boys home from school. Mother was afraid the snow was too deep for Little Klein, but Father had said, “Let him go play, Esther. Just put a red hat on his head. He won’t disappear.” Little Klein’s heart swelled for his father then. His father thought of him as one of the boys. But outside the snow was deep, and it was sticky, too. The way it stuck to Little Klein’s pants and jacket and mittens gave Luke an idea. By the time Father Klein came out looking for him, Little Klein had been rolled into a snowman. Only his wildly flapping hands and the hole revealing his frozen face gave him away. Instead of punishing the Bigs, Father Klein had laughed. He’d hooted. He’d chipped Little Klein out of his snow wrapper, tears running down his face, and called him his little elf.

  This time would be different. Now Little Klein had bigger stories to tell. He had fish tales. His corn stalk was emerging. They had a dog and he got to be the one to deliver the news. His father would let him keep LeRoy once he met him and found out what a good dog he was. He hooked his knees over a high branch and dangled upside down while he watched cars approach and pass the house. Little Klein watched until the noon whistle blew in town, until his head was heavy with the blood all draining south, until it was so heavy in fact that when he reached up to grasp a branch to pull himself up again, he slipped and fell through branches, which slowed his fall but didn’t stop it until he landed facedown on a bed of pine needles and a fresh heap of LeRoy doo. He pulled at a pine needle in his ear and groaned as he rolled over.

  “There’s one,” said a voice attached to a pair of shiny new shoes.

  “Dad!” coughed Little Klein as he pulled himself up then fell back.

  “Ooff,” he said, lying on his back, resting a hand on his stomach, and encountering the smelly LeRoy paste. “Ick!”

  Stanley crouched down and peered at Little Klein’s face. “You all right, Little Guy? Can you get up?” He turned toward the house. “Esther! You in there? Boy’s hurt out here! Esther!”

  “Dad, I’m okay,” huffed Little Klein as he rolled over to his side and slowly pulled himself up to sitting.

  “There,” said Stanley, moving back a little. “There now. Thatta boy.”

  “My baby! Stanley? Is that you? He fell out of the tree? Heavens to Betsy! Is he broken?”

  “Since when do you let him climb trees?”

  “Don’t pick him up yet. He could have injured his back or neck.” Mother Klein knelt next to Little Klein while Stanley stood awkwardly by.

  “I’m fine,” said Little Klein, swiping a palm across his face, spitting, and struggling to his knees.

  “He’s fine,” echoed Stanley Klein.

  But Mother Klein picked him up and his face went red.

  “Hi, Dad,” he said as they swept past Stanley and into the house, where he was propped on the couch with blankets and pillows while Mother Klein scrubbed at his head with a wet cloth. Stanley sat in a side chair and waited for Esther’s attention.

  “Where are the boys?” he asked.

  “Oh, they’ll be back in a bit,” she said, and they launched into an exchange of adult talk that left Little Klein out. Here he was on the couch like a baby, like nothing had changed, but things had changed, if only his father would see. Right this minute there were no Bigs in the house to distract his father from his youngest son. This was Little Klein’s opportunity to have his father’s sole attention.

  “We got a dog!” he interjected at last. Silence was not the expected reaction, so he continued. “His name is LeRoy and we built him that house that’s in the backyard and he —”

  “You have what?” Stanley exclaimed, rising slowly, his eyes darting around the living room as if the dog would appear from behind a chair or picture frame. “You can’t have a dog,” he said finally as he dropped into his chair. “No dogs. Absolutely not. Get the notion out of your head, boy.”

  Stanley turned back to his conversation with Mother Klein, who scrubbed Little Klein’s head harder.

  “Ouch!” he said. “But we do have a dog and his name is LeRoy and he’ll be back soon and you’ll meet him.” This time the silence was much shorter. Stanley looked at Esther, who was giving her sternest eye to Little Klein, who said, “What?”

  “You’re right,” said Mother Klein. “You do look fine. Go back outside now and wait for your brothers.”

  “But I —”

  “Go.”

  Little Klein trudged as far as the back door, which he opened and closed, and then tiptoed back in to listen.

  Little Klein was not allowed to be superstitious. Mother Klein blessed his head every morning, and according to her, luck had nothing to do with his head resting safely on his pillow at night.

  But today, listening in from the kitchen to his parents talking about LeRoy, he remembered about the mirror.

  “Can’t have a dog here,” Stanley was repeating.

  “. . . protection . . . no harm . . .”

  Last week when the Bigs were wrestling their way through the front door, they’d knocked the mirror off the entry wall. Mother Klein had simply dealt out broom, dustpan, and bandages while Little Klein counted slowly, realizing his brothers would be living out in the world on their own before they’d be free of the seven-year spell he wasn’t supposed to believe the mirror held.

  The next day Matthew and Luke conked heads so hard their eyes may have leaked, they threw up, and Dr. Dahlke had to be called. While the doctor pulled at their eyelids and shone a thin light in their pupils, diagnosing concussions, Little Klein studied Mark, who didn’t look so big without his flanks and imagined what a thin pair they’d be alone. So sure was he that his conk-head
ed brothers were catching the train to Saint Peter’s pearly gates that when a spider dropped from the ceiling at the moment the injured sat up to argue, Little Klein saw it as an eight-legged sign of good fortune, a reduction of the mirror’s sentence. But once his relief wore off, Little Klein forgot about the mirror, superstition, and bad luck.

  “He’s going to the pound and that’s all there is to it.”

  The mirror, it seemed, had not loosed its curse.

  Little Klein had to find his brothers before they brought LeRoy home.

  The boys had started walking in the direction of downtown and why not? On the way they could chance meeting Lucy or Janet. There was Anderson Park for running little kids off the monkey bars and winding the swings over the top bar. Once downtown, there was Mildred to tease and sodas at Nile Drug. Little Klein became so involved in imagining the adventure of finding his brothers that he did not hear the voice until it was shouting at him: “Hey, Klein boy!”

  Little Klein looked up. He looked in front of him, behind him, then again the unfamiliar voice bellowed, “Over here, runt!”

  Little Klein’s eyes followed the voice across the street. There stood Mean Emma Brown, the tallest girl he’d ever seen, her hair in shock on all sides, men’s boots on her feet, legends of her nasty temper generating an aura about her.

  “Ain’t Luke Klein your brother? I’m looking for him.”

  Little Klein didn’t pause to answer. He turned and ran, zigzagging through the neighborhood, feeling her close behind him but hearing nothing.

  He didn’t see Widow Flom until he ran flat into her.

  “Harold Klein!” she said.

  “Sorry, ma’am!” He looked behind him at the vacant street, then slid around to stand on the other side of Widow Flom.

  “Does your mother know you are out wandering the streets alone?”

  “Well, I . . . she . . . I mean . . . my dad . . .”

  “Your father? Is he home?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Does he know you are out wandering the streets alone?”