“I am here,” he says. He is my savior.
I grab a flashlight. The door to the pickup truck opens and two young men, an old woman, and a little girl get out. The apostles, I think. We walk to the coop, where the Meats are sleeping. My poor hens are huddling together as usual, just outside.
The two younger men are dressed as if they were about to appear in a music video: oversized leather jackets and baggy jeans, chain wallets, baseball caps turned to the side. They cross their rangy arms over their chests. They so do not want to be here, boxing up free chickens. One look from the savior, though, and that is what they do.
The old woman is expressionless, but she nods to me and I nod back. I smile at the little girl and she turns her face into the hood of her jacket. They speak to each other in Spanish. The man, my savior, is the only one who speaks to me.
“My family eats well tomorrow,” he says, and shakes my hand.
All spring and all summer I was raising meat for them and I didn’t even know it. I thought I was doing something for myself and for my family. I wasn’t. I was doing it for him and for his family.
It has taken us a whole year, twelve full moons have come and gone, but our circumstances have shifted, just a little. My moon is waxing now, not waning anymore.
A year ago I would have served the wild turkey that Owen hit with our car, and now I’m giving away good meat to a family that might need it even more than we do.
This, I think, this present moment, this is what a good harvest feels like.
It wasn’t only a farm that needed saving a year ago; it was a family. It was all four of us.
My savior, the apostles, and the Meats all get back in the pickup truck and drive away. I watch until their taillights disappear at the end of my driveway. I shine the flashlight into the coop. The hens have already moved back in, and snuggle together in the nesting boxes. I think back to when they were just baby chicks, just yellow cotton balls with eyes.
Maybe God thinks of me and my sons this way.
“Safe and sound,” I say. “We are all safe and sound.”
Epilogue
August 2010
BLUE MOON
Blue Moon: An extra full moon that occurs in a season. Also colloquially means a rare event, reflected in the phrase “once in a blue moon.”
—Farmers’ Almanac
Through my bedroom window I hear the lazy afternoon hum of cicadas in the old elm tree, mixing together with a gold-inch’s cheery song and the excited whispering of the last guests to arrive.
There’s a pause, time slows, then I hear Owen launch into “Over the Rainbow” on his cello and my heart vibrates. That’s my cue.
I walk down the stairs and there’s Luke and Will, waiting for me at the bottom and grinning. They’re handsome in their new khakis, white collared shirts tucked in, and leather belts. Their thick hair, often so unruly, is combed and smooth. They smell like soap. Luke has polished his new dress shoes, but Will is wearing flip-flops.
“I can’t find my other shoes,” he whispers, as if he is already anticipating my irritation, but I hardly notice.
Even with heels on I have to stand on my tiptoes to kiss the top of Will’s blond head. But flip-flops are fine, field flowers are fine, dancing in a barn is just fine, too. Pete is waiting, so it’s all just fine by me.
My sons hook their arms in mine and we walk out our front door and onto our porch and down the length of it until we stop in the middle. My porch posts are decorated with beautiful paper flowers handmade by my mother, and the railing is draped with yards and yards of orange and white gingham. Our guests stand in the front lawn, smiling at our second chance, and the late-summer sun shines on their faces.
A local poet, ordained via the magic of the Internet, looks smart in his paisley vest and bow tie. He faces the crowd, the Good Book open, and begins to read from the Song of Solomon.
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along. For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have already appeared and the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, And come along!”
The door at the other end of the porch opens and out walks Pete in a black suit, his two grown sons in khaki and white too, and they join Luke, Will, and me on our porch. Owen stops playing, puts down his cello bow, and joins us. Together we are a bride, a groom, and our five solid sons. Together, we are a family.
“Welcome!” the Poet says.
Pete takes both my hands in his and looks into my face. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are our witnesses, then more pretty things are said that I don’t remember clearly, because I am too happy.
“Repeat after me …” the Poet says. Pete turns to face the assembled crowd, grins at my parents and then at our family and friends.
“I, Pete!” he bellows, with a surety that fills up my whole body. Shoulders back, chin up, his hands relax over the porch railing as he says, “Take you, Mardi.”
He takes me, I think. He’s seen a fox run off with one of my chickens, he’s heard me on the phone negotiating with bill collectors, he likes his own farmhouse but knows what the Big Valley means to me and agrees we’ll live here.
He knows me and yet still he takes me. Me.
Nearly five years ago he and I shared one of the worst days of our lives and now we’re sharing one of the best.
Then this man I love and am in love with slides a pear-shaped diamond ring on my finger. The Poet can hardly get the words out before I take Pete, I so take him for me, and then we are married, and then we are kissing.
“I’d like to present to you—HOOONNNNKKK!”
The Poet is about to say, “I’d like to present to you Pete and Mardi, husband and wife,” when the ceremony is interrupted.
A huge semi truck drives by and blows its horn. Loud.
My road is on a hill and this truck is on the downslope, and the driver must have seen all the flowers and my white cotton dress and the big crowd gathered, because he blows that sucker for a really, really long time. It echoes down the hill and into the valley long after he has passed by.
“I’d like to present to you—HOOONNNNKKK!”
All of our guests are giggling or at least grinning. All five of our sons are laughing so hard that not one of them is standing up straight. My father has his arm around my mother and her mouth is open in an O, but she is smiling too, as big as anyone.
“Is it always going to be like this when I kiss you?” I ask my new husband.
I ask him this softly, while people are laughing, and I speak it close to his ear so no one else can hear me.
“Most women would be happy with fireworks,” he whispers back. “Or rice, or a honeymoon.”
“I’m not most women.”
“Don’t I know it.”
I look into his whole face and remind myself, Be aware of your surroundings. And I will this moment to last. I will it into a present that I can open again and again whenever I want to. Inside will be the laughter of our sons and the safety of our little farm and a love so surprising it feels just like the blast of a horn.
Author’s Note
This is a work of nonfiction. The events depicted really happened and really happened to my sons and me. I wish some of them hadn’t, but to quote my wise grandpa Hain, “Sometimes you just get what you get.”
All dialogue is from memory, and I’ve been told that I have a pretty good one for that kind of thing—a level of recall that has inspired observations such as “Man, you never forget anything, do you?”
Some names have been changed, and there is one composite character: Pecker the rooster. Dates, facts, and dollar amounts are from district court records, tax returns, public-school attendance records, a police report, insurance papers, a divorce decree, canceled checks, shutoff notices, concert tickets, land deeds, welldrilling invoices, a mortgage application, and wedding photos.
&nbs
p; Acknowledgments
If you are a single mother in the heartland, trying to make a go of your questionable choices while writing about them, here is what I would suggest:
First, raise a trio of undaunted sons like Owen, Luke, and Will. Raise sons unafraid of dirt, cold, their mother’s tears, public opinion, or hard work. Raise sons who celebrate with you, when you have secured a book deal, by cheering, as Will did, in this way: “Yeah! No more government cheese!”
Raise sons who love you despite your ridiculous self, who support your writing by turning down their guitar amplifiers during your working hours. Raise sons who you just know will be the very best kind of men when they are grown—smart, compassionate, funny, and resourceful. (I’d tell you how good-looking they are, too, except that I still have to live with them.)
But even before that, have Marylyn and Chuck Link as your parents, and Florence Link and Richard Hain as your grandparents. These capable people will not tolerate your smart mouth or you rolling your sarcastic teenage eyes, but will take you to dude ranches and on wilderness horseback trips, send you to journalism school (and pay for it), buy you warm coats, pass on their cookbook and their reverence for the land, for Michigan, and will even try to teach you the value of a dollar, which, to your peril, you will take a very long time to learn.
Next, try to carry a marriage for twenty years and fail. Swear off men forever, don’t date, and recoil in horror when your friends suggest you create something called an online dating profile. Lust after Pete instead, the cabinetmaker you hire to build an addition onto your century-old farmhouse. Fall for him hard as timber. Marry him. Proceed to love him to pieces.
Get help and good advice from writers whose talent is surpassed only by their generosity. These would include Anya Achtenberg, Fleda Brown, Elizabeth Buzzelli, Lynn Hugo, Phillip Lopate, Thomas Lynch, Richard McCann, Emily Meier, Aimé Merizon, Cari Noga, Anne-Marie Oomen, Teresa Scollon, Heather Shumaker, Aaron Stander, Doug Stanton, Keith Taylor, Carolyn Walker, and, most especially, smudge sister Mary Ellen Geist.
Raise your writer’s hand as high as you can so that you can be noticed way out here in the Midwest by the determined, smart, and miraculous Jane Dystel and everyone at DGLM. Have her show your words to editor Jordan Pavlin, a woman who hears them and understands them and teaches you that that’s the very best you can hope for as a writer: to be heard and understood; to be able to say, “This is how it was—and we survived it.”
A Note About the Author
Mardi Jo Link is the author of When Evil Came to Good Hart (2008) and Isadore’s Secret (2009), winner of the Michigan Notable Book Award. She lives with her family on a small farm in northern Michigan.
Visit: www.mardijolink.com
Like: www.facebook.com/MardiJoLink
For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com
Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm
by Mardi Jo Link
Reader’s Guide
The introduction, author biography, discussion questions, and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Bootstrapper, a memoir by Mardi Jo Link.
About the Book
Bootstrapper is the smart, hilarious, and endlessly entertaining account of one of the most difficult years in Mardi Jo Link’s life, as she awaits her divorce and struggles—among rapidly mounting obstacles—to raise her three boys and preserve the dream that she has for them all. But Link’s memoir is more than just one woman’s tale; it is a story to which any reader can relate: a testament to the journeys of self-discovery that we must all undertake as we confront seemingly impossible challenges and navigate life’s most unexpected twists and turns.
It is 2005, and Mardi Jo Link’s marriage of almost two decades is coming to a close. On the eve of her divorce from the man her friends refer to as “Mr. Wonderful,” she is faced with increasing debt and all of the problems that come with it. Her family is struggling to stay fed, stay warm, and stay positive. As soon as she finds a solution to one problem, another arises. As if that isn’t enough, Link faces the emotional tolls of separation, cycling through periods of grief, loneliness, guilt, and anger as she tries to come to terms with the path her life has taken. Day by day, she and her family must find ways to survive, as she fights desperately to maintain their way of life and save the farm that they call home. They are forced to use their ingenuity, resilience, and resolve to get by and to rebuild a dream that seems to be crashing down around them.
Unfailingly, unflinchingly, and often irreverently honest, Bootstrapper is not just the story of one family’s struggles on a Michigan farm, but a meditation on self-discovery, our failures and our foibles, and the ways in which we finally—with determination, humor, strength, and resolution—triumph and overcome. Weaving history and heritage with the here and now, Link’s story is a contemporary tale of the virtue that has always been an integral part of the fabric of American living—self-reliance. Finally, Bootstrapper is a story of love and family and the things we do to preserve what is most valuable, to keep whole the most precious parts of our selves and our lives.
Mardi Jo Link’s relentless humor, wit, and (most of all) sincerity propel us forward throughout, enlighten us, keep us moving along with her to the very end—rooting for her and the things she holds most dear, eager to reach with her the success we are certain she deserves.
Discussion Questions
1. Evaluate the epigraphs at the start of each chapter. What relationship do they have to the major themes of the book? What do they also reveal about Link’s personality, character, education, and interests?
2. In the first chapter, Link takes her children to the Cherry Festival. She lets her son try his hand at a shooting game even though she realizes it is fixed. Why is it important that she let him do this anyway, knowing he will probably fail, and why is it a significant detail that he ends up winning? Shortly afterward, a thief snatches tickets out of her son’s hand. What realization does Link come to at the conclusion of this event and their time at the Cherry Festival? How does Link develop this idea as a motif throughout the book? Where does this concept reappear within her story?
3. Why is Link so affected by the death of her horse Major? What does his death represent for her? Does her stance on this or her interpretation of this event seem to change or evolve at all by the end of the book?
4. At the time of Major’s death, Link recalls a single line of poetry, which, she says “saves me, just, from that death blow” (this page). In addition to this example and the epigraphs at the start of each chapter, literature and poetry is reference in many other places in the story. She recalls the poetry of Emily Dickinson, for example, at the time of her divorce hearing in chapter 9. With this in mind, what roles do literature and education play overall in the personal journeys and growth of Link and her sons?
5. After the death of Major, Link must sell her horse Pepper. The horse ultimately escapes from her owners and is found trapped in mud up to its chest. What meaning or symbolism does Link find in this event? What does it reveal about her own feelings and situation?
6. Evaluate the structure of the book and consider the chapter titles Link has chosen. What period of time is represented in each chapter and in the book as a whole? Why is it significant that the chapters and their titles reference the cycles of the moon, the passage of time, and the changing of the seasons? What do these items say about change as an inherent part of our human experience? What can we draw from her son’s observation in chapter 4 that Einstein believes the concept of time to be a fiction?
7. Evaluate the genre of the book and its tone. How does the tone of the book influence our reaction as readers? Is the book honest? Convincing? Exaggerated or embellished? Consider the voice of the book—is it sentimental, humorous, serious, or meditative? How does Link employ humor as a literary device? How is her memoir like or unlike other memoirs you have read?
8. Link often relates her story to a greater history.
In the first chapter she compares the plight of her family to those who endured the American frontier, “even the Dust Bowl” (this page). She creates a sense of multiple generations not only with her own family through her children and her parents but through the sense of history via the long ownership of the farm and history of the land over so many years. What are some of the common struggles featured in Link’s memoir? Why do you believe the documentation of these kinds of experiences in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry is important?
9. How do faith and spirituality surface as key aspects of the book? Link seems to be on a journey to discover her faith and come to an understanding of what she does and does not believe. Raised as a Lutheran, she brings her sons from church to church. She prays, consults the Book of Job, and employs Buddhist practices, mantras, and meditation. Where does she end up in this spiritual journey by the book’s end? In what does she ultimately find faith, a sense of spirituality, and consolation?
10. Is there a traditional villain (or villains) in this book? If so, who are they? What characteristics do they share? Why, for instance, is Link so unfriendly to the potential buyer in chapter 12? Besides people, what other items or concepts represented in the book become symbols of villainy?
11. Evaluate point of view in the book. Though the story is told by Link, how do her sons and other characters provide some variety in point of view? What is the effect of this? Why is it important that Link’s voice does not overrun the book? In chapter 5, for example, as she and her sons gather firewood on the side of the road, she imagines the scene as a bystander would witness it. Why is it important or relevant that she possesse this ability to see things from another perspective?
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