The Summer He Didn't Die

by Jim Harrison

  When B.D. arrived back at Belinda’s house at eight the next morning Bob looked a bit rough with pinkish eyes and ultraslow movements. He was leaning against his SUV’s fender speaking into a Dictaphone: “I am embedded in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a little-visited area of characterless landscapes, of impenetrable forests and vast swamps laden with algae and densely populated with virulent flying pests of every description. On a hike at dawn I was lost in a local swamp and my face is now puffy and ravaged by bug bites . . .”

  Bob went on and on and B.D. looked at the tiny slough at the back of Belinda’s yard and figured that was how Bob had gotten his pants wet to his knees. Belinda had already left for work and B.D. stood there gnawing on a messy chunk of leftover pork steak he had brought along and listening to Bob continue with the Dictaphone: “. . . and on this rutted dirt road which reminds me of the Mississippi Delta are the tar-paper shacks of pulp cutters who supply logs to the local paper mill which may very well supply the paper for the magazine you now have in your hands, gentle reader. Must our forests be cut for this purpose? Advanced environmentalists think magazines should be limited to the Internet while paper companies point out that the trees are going to die of old age anyway and thus loggers can be thought to be merely euthanizing our forests. Meanwhile whole families live in these tar-paper hovels and beat-up trailers where the children are poorly clothed and fed and education is paltry within this ancient triage of survival.”

  B.D. was confused because Belinda’s home was smack in the center of Escanaba’s most expensive housing development, but then he figured it was not for him to question the procedures of a famous writer though he was irked by Bob’s final Dictaphone sally: “I am being escorted today by a big, rawboned Indian logger who looks like he could make mincemeat out of Mike Tyson. He has been clearly brutalized by the hardest labor possible and is functionally illiterate. You who live on the Mary Poppins playground of the eastern seaboard are in for a tough ride as I offer you material to soil your lilywhite left- and right-wing hands . . .”

  B.D. was pissed because to his mind only Indians were Indians, those who practiced the life and religion like the Chippewa people he had met at the winter powwow including the mysteriously traditional Medewiwin tribal members. Even Uncle Delmore barely made the cut though Aunt Doris had certainly fit the definition. B.D., despite the high probability of his mixed blood, simply thought of himself as a backwoods workingman. He was also irritated at being described as illiterate because every few years he took an evening off to write down his thoughts and he had read all of his grandfather’s library of Horatio Alger, James Oliver Curwood, and Zane Grey. Alger had advised “hard work and pluck” though pluck seemed to be a hard-to-define item. He had also spent idle time in the past decade reading over half of One Hundred Years of Solitude a rich cottager had given him when he delivered a couple of cords of firewood. B.D. knew he couldn’t last a minute with Mike Tyson who could knock down a dairy cow with a body punch. It was clear that Bob didn’t know the first thing about the sport of boxing.

  Their workday continued poorly with a visit to Doris’s cousin Myrna up north of Gladstone. Myrna lived near a shabby rural enclave but her own cabin was as neat as a pin. Myrna served them a slice of blueberry pie and Bob seemed disappointed that she owned a computer and was well versed in the lawsuit against the BIA over unpaid or lost royalty moneys. Myrna was steamed because she had knitted four hundred pot holders for a home-work company and never got paid. Bob swiftly offered to look into the matter but Myrna seemed to doubt his effectiveness and said that the company had a Chicago address and a nephew was a steelworker in nearby Gary. The nephew intended to look into the matter armed with a ball bat just like in The Godfather which she thought was a wonderful family movie. When Bob began to quiz her on the life of poverty Myrna was less than cooperative though she said that she had started paying her own way at age seven and since she was currently seventy-seven she had worked nearly seventy years in what she called the “free-market economy.” The local tribal council had bought her the computer so she could e-mail relatives. Myrna felt lucky she had been smart enough to make a living. She said it was harder in the old days when one winter there were few deer and her family had had to eat their plow horse.

  When they left Myrna’s cabin Bob and B.D. had a modest squabble over Bob’s desire to meet someone who was more of an “Indian Indian” and B.D. said that Indians were just people and didn’t go around acting Indian all day long. Their conversation further declined when Bob whined that he had had to devour three Viagras during his night with Belinda to “achieve parity” with her rapacious sexual needs. Back in their university days other young men in their communal household had barred their doors while Belinda stalked the halls looking for an angry sex fix. B.D. had long since ceased to judge women as sexually promiscuous as himself but this news about Belinda hurt a bit because he felt they were still on the first flower of their love. There was the question that he had become so domestic what with raising Red and Berry and trying to make a living that he was no longer a lover known far and wide (in the U.P.) for his considerable bed energies. A select few women like Belinda required extra effort and he had fallen short.

  This maudlin mood kept getting interrupted by Bob working his cell phone and his OnStar phone at the same time. Bob talked to people in New York and D.C. while B.D. drove the fancy Land Cruiser, the dashboard of which reminded him of the gizmos in the cockpit of the plane when he had had his own jet trip. Rather than seeking out the poor Bob kept having him drive up high hills for better phone reception. At one point he was impressed when Bob shouted, “Tell National Geographic to kiss my ass.”

  B.D. had assumed that they might share a six-pack on their journey but Bob insisted that alcohol even in its slightest form could steal the incentive for the work at hand. This was after B.D. had driven into the yard of a casual half-breed acquaintance known as Larry Big Face and they were met at the fly-covered screen door by Larry’s old mom who had a goiter under her chin as big as a football. She heated them up some beavertail stew but when Bob started asking questions all she would say was “Fuck you, white boy” which Bob found discouraging. Her son Larry was in jail for throwing someone out through the window of a bar up in Ishpeming. Bob offered her his hip flask and she downed its contents in seconds but still wouldn’t answer any questions. “Mind your own fucking business,” she screeched. They left in a hurry when her pet, a vastly overweight raccoon, waddled snarling out of the bedroom. Out in the yard Bob said he suddenly had to go to the toilet and B.D. pointed to the outhouse over near a pen that contained a furious billy goat.

  B.D. doubled back from Sagola over through Crystal Falls to Iron Mountain so that they could have lunch at Fontana’s and hopefully a beer. Bob was talking on his cell phone when they walked into the back of the restaurant and he collided with a doorjamb but seemed not to notice. B.D. had observed that when cell phones weren’t working properly people would hold them up and stare at them in betrayed puzzlement.

  In the restaurant their workday effectively ended when Bob noted a locked cabinet of expensive wine, then sniffed the air and smiled his first smile since arriving in the great north. B.D. ignored him and chatted with a foxy waitress he had bedded years before during a women’s bowling tournament in Escanaba. B.D. had visited the restaurant several times when flush and had always ordered the “Roman Holiday” which included a meatball the size of a baby’s head, a big link of Italian sausage, plus gnocchi and spaghetti all drowned in an excellent but not very subtle tomato sauce. In the old days you could get a side dish of half a garlic-roasted chicken for two bucks if you were really hungry.

  After washing up in the toilet B.D. paused extra long for an unwise, critical look in the mirror. He tried very hard to ignore a twinge in his jaw which might mean yet another tooth had armed itself and was ready to attack its owner. He was also worried about a local news item on the radio he had heard while Bob was in the outhouse wherein a fishing friend
Marvin, also known as Needle Dick, had been apprehended on his motorcycle with a female passenger going 120 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour speed-limit area up in Marquette. Marvin had resisted arrest by throwing the cop over the top of his squad car and would miss Christmas this year.

  “I’ve designed a meal for us,” Bob said when B.D. arrived at the table. B.D. thought, There goes my Roman Holiday, but then in the darkish corner of their banquette he saw three opened bottles of wine and Bob was starting with a martini. The alcohol embargo had been lifted and what’s more Bob slid three hundred dollars across the table.

  “I’m having to cancel us until a later date. I’m headed for Afghanistan on a fifty-grand story.” He was pounding the table with his cell phone for emphasis then gestured at the wine. “I haven’t had a decent meal in nearly two days. We’re celebrating by trying out a lot of the menu.”

  What a day. What a night. They were frazzled after lunch and slept for a while in the car in the restaurant parking lot. B.D. judged the meal as wonderful indeed until halfway through and two bottles of wine, which Bob drank like beer or cool water, when Bob began to cry. Bob had been in Rwanda and told B.D. that he had no idea what it was like to see thousands of men, women, and children who had been hacked to pieces. B.D. agreed, but that didn’t close the matter the descriptions of which scarcely jibed with the marinara on the gnocchi. B.D. thought, The man has been on the go for a decade and though he’s thirty-three he looks like he’s pushing fifty and when he eats it’s as if the substance is far greater than the food mixed with his falling copious tears. Delmore had spoken of his nervous crack-up before leaving Detroit and B.D. figured that was what Bob was experiencing. B.D. made bold and asked if this was the right time for Bob to return overseas. “I’ve spent all my earnings on wine, women, and song in the capitals of Europe. Now I have to feather my nest. My wife, Tanya, likes five-hundred-dollar scarves and shoes.” B.D. was working on his T-bone and couldn’t digest Bob’s information. The T-bone was aggravating his newly sore tooth though Bob’s word paintings of the outside world made his own life appealing.

  It was just before dark when B.D. dumped Bob off in Belinda’s yard. Bob had bought and drank an additional two bottles of wine for the drive home. Belinda didn’t want him carried into the house because he had pissed his pants. It was a muggy evening so she covered him with a pink sheet to protect him from mosquitoes.

  “I was unfaithful to you with Bob,” she said, shaking with tears.

  “I know it.” B.D. gave her a hug. It had been since Christmas and the death of Doris that he had seen anyone cry and now even educated people were falling apart.

  “That asshole told you, that fat-assed motormouth. Now you probably think I’m a catcher’s mitt,” she sobbed.

  “I’ve never once thought of you as a catcher’s mitt, darling.” He held her tightly while watching Bob roll over in his pink cocoon. It was hard to get a clear view of what was going on in his life.

  Delmore was miffed when B.D. got home. He said he had prepared a fine dinner but Red and Berry had given their portions to Bitch and Teddy who had taken up residence under the porch rather than in the brand-new doghouse Delmore had bought. B.D. glanced at the wastebasket beside the kitchen counter and noted the three empty cans—one had contained a popular beef stew, the others corn and tomatoes. The fact that the kids steadfastly refused to eat Delmore’s “secret recipe” did not prevent him from trying it again. B.D. figured you didn’t have to be a great cook, just passable. In between sexual bouts at Belinda’s they had watched her favorite programs on the Food Channel and B.D. realized he would never be able to chop onions like Bobby Flay or the burly, red-haired Italian.

  “The daughter of Sappho called. She says she needs you badly. To mop her floor or what?” Delmore’s dislike of Gretchen was boundless.

  B.D. called Gretchen who was capable of only sobs and hiccups, then said good night to Red and Berry who were watching the kind of contemporary horror movie where a monster shoots out of a woman’s bare chest and bites off the head of her fatally startled lover.

  “We must learn to accept our losses.” Gretchen’s voice was slurred. There was a bottle of Canadian whiskey on the kitchen table before her and she wore a loosely wrapped violet-colored robe which bespoke spring in B.D.’s heart. This was the rarest of all occasions when he didn’t feel like drinking. He had been well behind Bob in the wine sweepstakes at lunch but still had had enough to want to avoid a “doubleheader” which is what getting drunk twice in one day was called in the U.P.

  In truth B.D. was being thrown about Gretchen’s kitchen like a ping-pong ball by moral ironies. On the one hand Gretchen had always admired his great talents as a listener which centered itself in actual curiosity about what people said, a rare claim in itself. While he sipped his whiskey and she gulped hers she compared her loss of her lover Marcia to his coming loss of Berry. This made B.D. bilious with anger so that he finally downed his drink in one gulp. Gretchen’s Marcia had written her a taunting and cruel letter from New York City where she was ensconced with a soap opera starlet.

  “But then life is a soap opera,” Gretchen choked. She went on to describe her last-ditch efforts to at least secure Berry one more year at home. She had been told to mind her own business which Gretchen had always done and a nasty squabble had ensued. She then came home and found the letter from Marcia.

  “They’re not taking Berry from me. They’ll have to pry my cold, dead fingers from my rifle first.” B.D. couldn’t remember when he had heard the catchy phrase. “I’m smuggling her into Canada and that’s that.”

  “You’ll be gone from me forever,” Gretchen sobbed.

  “You could go along. We’d get married and raise Berry,” B.D. suggested hopefully.

  “Cut that shit. You know how I loathe you men and your silly peckers.” Gretchen poured herself another drink, half of which missed her lolling mouth.

  “I’m not saying we would have to go all the way. Berry needs a mother.” It was here that the moral ironies intensified. B.D. had been fiddling with his car keys and impulsively shoved them off the table. One part of him felt high-minded about saving Berry but the other half, perhaps more, was intent on catching a glimpse of Gretchen’s bare legs. He bent down for the keys and the view was more than he had hoped for. The bottom of her robe was fully open and she wore no panties. While he was bent thus the blood pumped into his head and both his sore tooth and weenie felt the ancient rhythm of his heart. He tarried a bit long as if in a trance.

  “You asshole!” she said, kicking out a foot and narrowly missing his head.

  He reared up dizzy from forgetting to breathe. He covered his face with his hands while struggling to prepare a suitable defense but when he peeked through his fingers she was asleep. This presented another satanish temptation but he knew it was time to be noble. Grandpa had told him to never take advantage of a drunk woman unless you were drunk yourself. He picked up Gretchen and carried her to her bedroom. He felt it wasn’t fair to himself to avert his eyes so he didn’t but it would have to stop with looking. He remembered way back in Horatio Alger when villains were called “craven” and he didn’t want to be that. He placed her gently on the bed and drew her robe ever so slowly together resisting the temptation to play peekaboo with the robe flaps. Her body was the loveliest he had ever seen and somehow looked educated. Oh how he craved to plant one little kiss on target but he didn’t. He wrote on a tablet on her nightstand, “No greater love has man than me for you” and left. Out in the bracing midnight he felt brave, strong, and good, qualities he would need in the coming months.

  Part III

  T HE SUMMER CAME AND WENT QUICKLY WHICH IS THE nature of summer for people who are not children, those lucky ones to whom clocks are of no consequence but who drift along on the true emotional content of time.

  After Brown Dog’s exhausting day with the educated class—Bob, Belinda, and Gretchen—he and Delmore settled down in their own humble War College, the farm
house and trailer on Berkutt Road, named in honor of the nineteenth-century timber predator who sheared the Upper Peninsula of its virgin forest like an insane barber. B.D. and Delmore were trying to come up with an early and tentative plan to save Berry from the government. They would sit at Delmore’s dining room table for their skull sessions with Delmore putting on his money-counting visor and making notes on a law tablet. The pressure on them was such that B.D. was excused from pulp cutting on Delmore’s timber leases. With Berry in specific peril Delmore became curiously older, melancholy, and less scroogelike. B.D. felt himself in an odd twilight zone of unexperienced mental activity and insomnia because he was no longer physically exhausted every evening. Delmore was in full contact with Canadian relatives fixing on a nephew of Doris’s whom he had previously thought of as a draft-dodging malcontent who lived on the Nipigon River to the east of Thunder Bay. B.D. talked to the man on the phone but was not encouraged when he sounded more than a little like Lone Marten, the radical Indian activist who had gotten B.D. in so much trouble previously. This Canadian nutcase called himself Mugwa, which meant Bear, which Delmore regarded as “dangerous medicine.” B.D. and Mugwa arranged a meeting in the Canadian Soo though B.D. was a felon and not welcome in Canada, and Mugwa would likely be imprisoned if he entered the United States. B.D. would have to count on entering Canada as one of the thousands of innocent fishermen who invade Ontario every summer. The idea of being camouflaged as what you already were intrigued him.