She must be a reporter. I step back to make a little room.
“Hi!” says Alkomso.
“I’m doing a story on the STEM fair for the Colter Crier. Are you the winner?”
“Yeah.” Alkomso extends her hand for a shake. Then she yells to Mark-Richard, who is standing with his foster family, to get over here. “Well, me and Mark-Richard.” Mark-Richard comes over.
“Good, good,” the reporter says. “I’m going to want to talk to you. Can you point me to the girl who did the project on ‘Foods of the Forest’? I mean, this is just fascinating. Two projects, one from each side of the fracking argument. This is going to be a great story.”
Alkomso grabs my arm and yanks me to her. “Here she is. And we’re all best friends! All three of us. Will you add that to your story?”
The reporter opens her notebook and writes something down. Without looking up at us, she says, “Names?”
For the next ten minutes, Alkomso, Mark-Richard, and I answer her questions. When she finishes, the reporter says, “Thanks, kids. Maybe you don’t know it, but the whole crowd was talking about this issue because of your projects. Half of them want to let Kloche’s go on. Half of them want to save the woods. You’ve started quite a stir in this small town.”
“Mr. Flores, our science teacher, told us to pick something that was important to us and to our town,” Alkomso adds.
“Who?” says the reporter. “The teacher who was put on leave by the school board? Him?”
“He’s a great teacher,” I say.
“It’s total bunk that they won’t let him teach,” says Mark-Richard.
The reporter reopens her notebook and scribbles some more. “This story gets hotter by the second. I’ll get in touch with him for a quote. I’m sure he’d be very proud of you.”
I hear the gym door open and slam, like it does if you don’t know to close it softly.
I stand on my tiptoes to see. I squint.
It’s Horace Millner, leaning against the doorframe with his cap low over his eyes. When he sees me, he wags his finger at me to come over.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I say to Alkomso and Mark-Richard. “Congratulations again.”
I pass where my brothers and Gary sit under my project table, staring at the money. I pass Toivo as he’s packing up my project. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him.
He sees Millner. “Take your time.”
My heart pounds, afraid that Millner is here to deliver bad news about Ranger or to tell me that he’s changed his mind. That it’s too much work to fight the frackers. That he’s going to sell the woods. I can’t think of any reasons for him to be here except for bad ones.
“Hi, Mr. Millner,” I say.
“Got to show you something,” he says. “Okay with your dad if you come with me out to the lot for a minute?”
I look back at Toivo, who’s watching. Millner and Toivo nod at each other.
“Sure,” I say. The large gym doors swing open into the evening. The sun is already going down. Most of the cars are gone. Millner’s truck sits in the middle of the lot. Sitting next to it is Ranger.
“Ranger!” I dash to the dog.
“Careful!” Millner calls after me. “Careful. He’s all broke up inside.”
I kneel down a few feet away. Ranger’s left side is wrapped up in white cloth. At first, I think that his front leg must be bundled up inside the bandage.
“Ranger.” I raise my hand for him to smell. “Remember me?”
Millner approaches, scratches Ranger behind the ear.
A long crimson line stains the wrap from Ranger’s chest to his belly. The area there seems caved in. “His leg?”
“Had to come off,” says Millner. “Dog was a real trooper. Or Ranger, I guess, if that’s what you call him. Never named my dogs.”
I creep closer and pet Ranger between the eyes, and he stands it without complaint. Ranger’s eyes are dull, like there’s no fight behind them. When he breathes, he rasps.
Millner clears his throat. “He’s not doing too good, though. Truth is, he’s not going to make it. I thought you’d want to…”
Ranger’s going to die. Millner brought him to say good-bye. I rest my cheek against Ranger’s nose. “You’ve been a fine friend, Ranger.”
From inside the cab of the truck comes a bitty whine. Ranger perks, pants, and raises his nose.
“Brought you something,” Millner says, “if it’s all right with your dad.” He opens up the door and pulls out a box, sets it on the ground. Then he opens the top. A little wet nose, the size of a bean, pokes up and sniffs the air. “My dog had a litter.”
A German Shepherd–like pup scratches along the sides of the box to see out. Just like his dad, he’s got gray fur around his muzzle.
“This one,” Millner says, “looks just like his daddy. I thought you might like him.”
I lift him out, tiny thing, weighing about the same as a loaf of oat bread, and cradle him against me. He smells like sour milk and wet straw. Ranger sniffs him, too. And the little pup wags his tail and gets so excited he pees on me.
The gym doors open, and my brothers burst out and gush over the pup’s cuteness. They want to hold him. They want to pet him. They want to name him.
Ranger stretches out on the pavement and closes his eyes.
“Forget it, you guys,” I say. The little pup climbs up into the nook of my neck. “Partner is his name,” I say. “He’s my little Partner.”
I rub my thumb over his back and imagine him growing up, napping on a rug in my room, running wild through the woods with the boys, sitting at my feet while I do my homework, and being a pal through rich times and lean days.
Toivo comes up, with my project wrapped back up in the garbage bag. He says, “What do we have here?”
“This is our new dog!” says Alexi.
Toivo raises his eyebrows.
“If it’s all right with you,” says Millner. “I thought Fern might like him.”
Toivo nods. He and Millner light cigarettes and talk for a while as the sun goes down on Colter.
I don’t know if Kloche’s will cut down Millner’s woods. I don’t know if Toivo’s new job will last or if he’ll keep it or if we’ll always feel poor. I don’t know if Ranger will last one more hour or one more day.
Even though I just met him, I know Partner’s got Ranger’s grit, and I make a promise to Ranger and to his pup to raise Partner right, with mettle.
I stroke him on the ears, and in the sunset, his fur glows silver.
Chapter 25
It’s springtime again, and the fiddleheads are uncurling in Millner’s woods. Partner races out ahead of the boys and me. Partner’s only as high as my knees, but he thinks he’s a big dog. He barks at every bird and butterfly he sees, as though he’s the boss of the grove. When we’re out walking, his yapping draws the rest of Millner’s wild pack of family dogs into the woods. The rest but Ranger, of course.
Ranger died before Christmas. Millner picked at the freezing ground until a deep-enough grave was dug and buried him out here near the pond, where the ducks like to flock in fall. Millner thought Ranger would like that.
“Partner!” Alexi says. “Get back here!” He races after Partner, waving his arms and shouting. Millner’s dogs come howling through the trees.
“They’re going to trample the mushrooms,” says Mikko.
I’m scouring the forest floor. “Oh, let them be,” I say. “You were wild like that, too, when you were little.” Mikko shakes his head as though he doesn’t believe it. He’s grown an inch in height but a leap in sense since last fall. He’s been easier to mind. He helps with Alexi, who is still wild.
Tonight, after Toivo gets home from work, we’re having a little party, a cookout, with Gramps, Mark-Richard’s foster family, Alkomso and her family, and Millner. Even Mr. Flores might come if he can get his grading done.
Last fall, after the STEM fair, the Colter Crier ran a big article about fracking, Millner’s woods, and Mr. Flor
es. Since then the town has put a moratorium on Kloche’s wastewater pond. Moratorium, I learned, means “a pause while we think about it.” Anyway, enough people supported Mr. Flores that he got his job back.
I have Mom’s recipe book. While we can afford to buy more groceries now, there are some ingredients you just can’t get at the store. I need morels. I need fiddleheads. I need ramps, and no grocery store stocks those.
Duck Breasts and Fiddleheads
Get somebody else to grill the duck on the grill to rare. Duck is so fussy. Never been able to do it. In the meanwhile, heat the saucepan with olive oil or butter. Toss in the sliced morels (make sure you’ve rinsed them in a salt bath first to chase out all the slimy and buggy critters) and fiddleheads. Fry for three or four minutes. Toss in the ramps for another minute. Done. Lay aside the grilled duck on a nice white plate. A dinner for those in heaven.
Mom named me for fiddleheads, the tight curls of the early fern plant. They are jade green with a slight silver sheen. They rise up out of the dirt about the same time as the morel mushrooms and ramps do.
I stop and kneel down. Sometimes it’s best if you get as low as possible. You start to see things in a different way. Mikko trudges on ahead. He stops beneath a dead ash tree and turns back to me. He gives me a thumbs-up. That means he’s found the morels. Soon he’s bent over, picking them and tucking them into his sack.
I push aside some of last autumn’s dead leaves. Sticks and dirt underneath. I can smell them. Fiddleheads have a fish odor. I know they’re here. I carefully scrape away more dead leaves. They’re wet and soggy, and I begin to wonder if I’m mistaking that smell for fern babies, until my fingers feel new growth.
Carefully plucking away the old maple, oak, and ash leaves and tossing them aside, I see them: little grayish-green sprouts coiled up like small galaxies. I pinch one off and pop it in my mouth. It’s an explosion of fresh wildness.
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Author’s Note
A few years ago, despite an organized effort to protect it, a prairie near my house in southern Minnesota was partially excavated for frac-sand (silica-sand) mining. While silica sand had been mined here for years, the boom of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in North Dakota and Texas and elsewhere dramatically increased demand for this type of sand. During the fracking process, silica sand, along with water and chemicals, are forcefully injected into the earth to fracture bedrock and prop open the fissures. Oil and gas are then released and captured.
What convinced many people here to accept the overseas company’s operation were the promise of jobs and the proposition that when the mining was over, the company would restore the environment to the best of its ability. Smart people made reasonable arguments on both sides. But the ecological cost from the loss of animal and plant habitat throughout the duration of the mining is striking. The long grasses where foxes, coyotes, turkeys, pheasants, and deer used to roam are gone, replaced by a deep, open pit with trucks and cranes and noise, surrounded by fences and signs warning trespassers to stay out.
And surrounded by a lot of mystery, too. How many jobs, exactly, did the operation create, for instance? Do the jobs pay a living wage? Is silica-sand mining safe? Is the fracking that the sand is used for safe? Is fracking really a bridge from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources? What are the unintended consequences?
Like Fern, my main character in this story, I’m a nosy person. I wanted answers to all those questions. But the answers, at this moment, depend upon whom you ask. Initially, before the prairie was cleared, the answers from the company and the policy makers seemed vague but positive: A lot of jobs. Good-paying jobs. We don’t know of any long-term environmental consequences. Many people, desperate for improved economic situations for their families and towns, took them at their word.
But “a lot of jobs” is a relative measurement. “Good-paying jobs” to communities with nearly 30 percent of people living in poverty is also a qualified response. Is mining safer for workers than logging, agriculture, and construction, where more people are maimed or killed every year than in any other occupation? Yes. But is that a good enough reason to keep doing it? Is fracking a cleaner source of energy than, say, coal? Maybe. But some might argue that it’s not even possible to predict the long-term environmental impacts of large-scale fracking because we haven’t seen it at this scale before. Is fracking a “bridge” to cleaner energy? To some, it is. To others, it is simply another way for companies owned by wealthy people to further exploit natural resources and desperate communities. And to others still, both of those things are true at the same time.
As I visited our local mining site and talked to my neighbors who were also directly affected by the operation, the inspiration for this story was born. I placed my characters in a rural community in Michigan, rich in natural resources but embattled with poverty. Rural poverty is real. Rural food deserts are real. Rural joblessness is real. The struggles of Fern’s family are ones I see often, which is why there’s sometimes a rush to embrace any new industry promising employment, even when it is temporary, even when the downside is environmental destruction. The economics of the home usually come before people’s public positions on energy, environment, and climate change.
For Fern’s family, the presence of a fracking site has an immediate impact on her family because it threatens to clear an area she relies upon for food to make room for a wastewater pond. For her family, foraging is a necessity, not a precious or quaint hobby. For my family, foraging is a fun activity. While you should never, ever eat anything from the wild unless you and an informed adult have done enough research to make absolutely certain what you find is safe and won’t make you sick, exploring the natural world and learning about the bounty of edibles out there is something I wish American children experienced more.
I’m deeply concerned by how profit-seeking businesses can distance us from understanding how the natural world works, or worse, destroy it completely. A close connection to the plants, animals, bugs, soil, and water helps us appreciate our role on the planet and be more respectful of it. You cannot spend a day in the woods or at the river without being deeply humbled by the awesomeness of nature. And you cannot spend a day in the wild without becoming just a little bit smarter than you were before. The original teacher is out there.
We must bring our children back to the trees. We must get right with our environment. We can’t make informed decisions about food, water, or energy from a position of ignorance.
Too many people insist upon pitting economy and environment against each other, as though each being healthy at the same time is not possible. I disagree. We can do better. We just have to want to.
To learn more, I recommend these websites:
Natural Gas Extraction/Hydraulic Fracturing, US Environmental Protection Agency
https://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing
Department of Environmental Quality, Michigan
http://www.michigan.gov/deq/
Midwest Forage Association
http://midwestforage.org
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Faye Bender, Andrea Spooner, Deirdre Jones, and all the wonderful people at Little, Brown and Company. Thanks to Mark Richard for “Strays.” And, most heartfully, thanks to Isabella, Mitchell, Phillip, Violette, Archibald, Gordon, and Erik Koskinen, my real-life wild family pack.
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The End of the Wild Page 15
