Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  “You can’t run forever!” he yelled.

  I pounded Ike’s pedals with something like nitro in my veins, hammering toward the island. By the time I got there the streetlights were blinking on. My stomach practically did a flip, it was so hungry. The garage door slammed shut, and the screen door twanged open. The kitchen was quiet. I opened the fridge in search of leftovers. Nothing. I peeked around the corner to the living room. There was Mom, sleeping on the couch in her pajamas next to an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

  “Jeez,” I said aloud. I was mad at Mom for having MS. I was mad at Sheriff Heiselmann for being a prick. I was mad at Larry Buskin for chasing me, and I was mad at myself for running away. My thoughts went to the Eaglewing steel-toed boots that Grandpa Asa had ordered. I needed them more than ever.

  15

  Grandpa Asa wouldn’t let me and Mark take the truck to the murder scene, but he agreed to drive us there himself. From the reports in the newspaper and on TV we knew exactly where to go on the side of Highway 41 between Neenah and Oshkosh right next to a big billboard that advertised Fine Dining at some joint in Fond du Lac. The sun dangled low in the sky, and the clouds sprayed orange and pink. Grandpa parked the truck, and we all got out on the gravel shoulder.

  All of a sudden, my dad’s murder became very, very real again. I felt his presence in the cool breeze that cut through my jacket. Shivering, I pulled the zipper up all the way to my collar. What had actually happened here? Did Dad see the person who shot him? What did he feel? The cops said that the bullets passed straight through him. Where were those bullets? How much of Dad’s blood soaked into the ground? A sick feeling sank into my gut.

  “Over here,” said Asa. “This is where the newspeople were standing.”

  Mark and I walked over. “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  “Clues,” said Mark. “None of them are going to be obvious, Delmar. Let’s take our time and see what we can find.”

  I stood by the truck. Mark squinted his eyes and slowly turned in a full circle. He walked to the north, studying the gravel as hundreds of cars zoomed by. Then he did the same thing to the south. He came back to the truck and leaned against it with his eyes still almost closed.

  “What do they say happened?” asked Mark.

  “They say my dad pulled over to investigate an abandoned car. He was shot three times in the chest. When the other cops got here, Dad was dead on the roadside and the other car was gone.”

  “Did he call in a license plate number or describe the car to the dispatcher?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do they have any shell casings from the bullets?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Was there any gunpowder residue found on your dad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mark looked directly at the billboard at the edge of a cornfield. “Those posts holding up the billboard could be a hiding place,” he said.

  “But they said it happened right by the car,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to go look.”

  I looked over to Grandpa Asa, standing there with his cane. “Check it out if you want. I’ll stay by the truck.”

  Mark and I jumped a fence and wandered over to the corn field.

  “Let’s walk the edge of the corn first,” said Mark.

  “Okay.”

  “You walk inside the first row of corn and I’ll walk inside the second. Look for anything, even if it’s just a piece of trash.”

  Side by side, we walked the corn. The wind made a rattling sound in the dry leaves and stalks. We shifted over to the third and fourth rows of corn and walked again. Still nothing. Mark signaled for us to walk over to the billboard. We waded into the tall grass and explored each wooden post that held up the sign. At the third post, Mark held up his hand to signal me to stop.

  “The grass looks like it was flattened out here,” he said.

  I shot him an unbelieving sort of look. To me the grass didn’t seem any different. “It’s the same as everywhere else,” I said. “Besides, the murder happened three months ago.”

  Mark pushed some of the tall grass to the side, and I had to admit that it did look like a matted-down spot underneath.

  “Keep looking for clues,” he said.

  On our hands and knees we scrounged all around. For ten minutes we poked our fingers down to bare dirt, raking the ground for anything, but came up empty.

  “Expand our perimeter,” said Mark. He pointed with his finger in a larger circle around the matted grass.

  We walked slowly in circles that got bigger and bigger as we moved out. I was getting frustrated at the whole idea that a couple kids could search the area any better than the cops. I kicked around in the tall grass with my tennis shoes, knowing that there was nothing there. Then I thought I spotted something small. I bent over and picked it up.

  “I found a cigarette butt,” I said, holding it up.

  Mark hurried over and studied it with me. The whole thing was sort of old and gross, but we could still make out some of the details. The paper was brown around the filter and white further up. The word Winston appeared in blue letters on the white part just above the filter. Whoever had smoked it burned it down only halfway, and then pinched it off.

  My mind flipped back to the day I saw Sheriff Heiselmann and the Cadillac Man together at the Neenah Lighthouse. I remembered picking up the cigarette butt that the Cadillac Man tossed out his car window. It had brown paper around the filter too, and blue letters that spelled out the word Winston.

  “We better keep this,” said Mark. “Keep looking, there might be more.”

  We looked and looked for another five minutes but found nothing else. Back at the car, Grandpa Asa was interested in the cigarette butt too.

  “Now why would somebody sit under a billboard by the highway and smoke half of a cigarette?” he asked. We all looked at each other with the same idea that nobody wanted to say out loud.

  “I have a better question,” said Mark. “Why did a tenth-grade kid find this clue instead of the cops?”

  “Tell you what,” Grandpa Asa said. “I’ll make a visit to the Sheriff’s Department tomorrow and talk to the investigator assigned to your dad’s case. I’ll get the latest update. If we’re not satisfied, then we can come back.”

  “Good idea, sir,” said Mark. “Are you going to tell them about the cigarette butt?”

  “No.”

  An hour earlier, I had figured that going to the murder scene was just a waste of time. I still wasn’t so sure that a cigarette butt really meant anything, but it did seem odd that somebody smoked it just halfway down underneath a billboard on the roadside. And it sure felt like more than a coincidence that the cigarette was a Winston.

  I didn’t talk much on the way home from Highway 41. While Mark and Asa jabbered about my dad’s murder and the investigation, my mind drifted off in a completely different direction. I was worrying about my mom. My still-breathing—not-dead-yet—mom.

  16

  Sunday morning came around again and I got an idea in my head that I should go to church and have a heart-to-heart talk with God. I had a bone to pick. If he really loved us, then where was he when we needed him? Some days I actually wanted to yell up at the clouds: Can we get a little help down here, please?!

  But I wasn’t just planning a crank call either. In many ways I realized that we had quite a bit to be thankful for, so I figured on including a long-overdue thank-you note. Thanks for giving me a best friend named Mark. Thanks for our good home on the island. Maybe I would even thank God for my little four-person family, even though it felt like we were hanging on by a thread.

  I locked Eisenhower to a bike rack and walked up the stone steps to the big wooden doors outside Ebenezer Lutheran. Suddenly, a surge of angst hit me.

  Do I really want to go in there? What does God want to see me for anyhow?

  I almost chickened out as I thought it all through. Nobody in my family had been to Su
nday church service in six months, and I wasn’t actually sure that we were even welcome anymore. On top of that, I was supposed to be taking confirmation but hadn’t attended a single class. I was just about ready to unlock Ike and dash home when I heard a voice, and it wasn’t God.

  “Good morning, Mr. Finwick.”

  My head snapped around. Oh-oh!

  “Good morning, Mrs. Borger.”

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I didn’t even know you were a member.”

  “I’m not sure if I’m a member or not.”

  “This is a Lutheran church, Mr. Finwick. Everyone is welcome, and that includes you. Have you been here before?”

  “Last Easter.”

  She didn’t even flinch. “You’ll join me this morning, won’t you?”

  My antennae went up in search of a way to wiggle out of the predicament. After all, I was having my doubts about coming in the first place and sure didn’t want to sit with Mrs. Borger. Holy Moses! How was I going to escape this one? I glanced left and found the gray stone walls of the church. I glanced right and my eyes landed on a big, thick hedge. Blocking the sidewalk in front of me stood Mrs. Borger.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I would love to join you this morning.”

  She smiled—a rarity for Mrs. Borger. Then she grabbed my elbow like I was her date to the prom and together we walked through the big wooden doors.

  It was tough duty being Mrs. Borger’s church date, let me tell you. She made me visit with all sorts of old codgers. At first she introduced me as Mr. Finwick, but that made everybody squirm because they knew right away that I was the son of the murdered deputy.

  Since I didn’t want to be treated like a lost orphan, I whispered in her ear. “Maybe you could just introduce me as Del.”

  “Good idea,” she whispered back.

  The chitchat got easier after that—easier for a while, anyhow. Then I spotted Marsha Charboneau and Lynn McGivens from my geometry class. They smiled and acted friendly, but I could tell that underneath they were each splitting a gut. Yep—soon enough, everybody at Shattuck High would know that I was Mrs. Borger’s church date at Ebenezer Lutheran Church on Sunday. I shrugged it off. Maybe I had bigger worries.

  Once we got our programs and found a pew I finally relaxed a little bit. The choir sat in three rows at one side of the pulpit. Their gowns were bright blue and so shiny that they could have been metal armor. Then the music leader stood up in front, lifted his hands, and nodded to the organist. I wasn’t expecting much. Then POW! Who knew that white-haired coots could belt it out like that?

  They sang two hymns, and all of a sudden we were invited to stand and sing the last verse along with them. Mrs. Borger had the page already bookmarked in the red book, and we held it together, singing loud and strong. I was feeling pretty good by the end of it. Then those blue robes brought back a vision of my sins at Menasha High. I squirmed and shifted my eyes, but they landed on the stained-glass windows where Jesus Himself stared back.

  When the music wrapped up, everybody settled into their seats and the pastor walked up behind the pulpit. He announced the chapter and verses from the Bible that he was about to read from, and I could hear a few people behind me flipping to find the right pages. Mrs. Borger opened her Bible and we followed along together. After the reading, the pastor invited everyone to bow for a moment of silent prayer, and that’s when I decided to have my private chat with God. As near as I could tell, he just listened and didn’t say anything back. We sang a couple more hymns and Mrs. Borger put the red book back in the rack.

  “Time for the sermon,” she whispered.

  I nodded and settled in for what I figured would be twenty minutes of head-bobbing boredom. Well, guess what. It wasn’t boring at all. Actually, it was really, really good.

  Believe it or not, Pastor Olson talked about being in World War II. He told us about the terrible things he saw during the Battle of the Bulge. Fellow soldiers getting killed. Captured German soldiers being shot, point blank, because there was no way to take prisoners. Even when they weren’t fighting, it was pure misery as they camped outdoors in the terrible cold. And then he talked about coming into the Buchenwald concentration camp, where thousands of men and women lay dead or starving. He told us all about the sickening sensation of hopelessness that he felt for the whole human race. Things were so bad, he said, that he almost lost faith in God.

  “Why did God allow it?” he asked.

  I was on the edge of my seat. I could hardly wait for the answer. It was a question just like the one I had just asked God about my mom. Then Pastor Olson looked at us sort of meekly. “I don’t know why,” he said.

  Could I believe my ears? Pastor Olson didn’t know. In his white gown, standing there on the fancy wooden pulpit behind the banner with the silver cross around his neck, how could he, of all people, not know? All I could think was—Wow! That took some guts.

  The pastor went on to remind us of all the good that God stands for in the lives of people. He told us that God is a beacon of light for everyone to follow, and he encouraged us to not lose faith during times of pain, because through thick and thin, through all our sins and suffering, somehow God still loves us.

  After that he led us in another hymn and a prayer and benediction. You probably won’t believe me, but it’s true. I was sorry when it ended.

  For a second there I even forgot that I had a church date. Mrs. Borger looked at me and smiled. Then she took my elbow again and I walked her to the back. She went for the coffee. I went for the cookies. Then I looked around for the other reason I came there in the first place—to find the church ladies from Dad’s funeral to ask them if they could help my family one more time.

  Since I was already nearby, I jumped on Eisenhower and spun over to Emerald Gardens to see Grandpa Asa and have a bowl of ice cream. We talked about this and that, and he showed me a copy of the Post-Crescent that had an article about the volcano at Menasha High. Then he showed me some letters from the opinion section, and I realized that not everybody thought it was such a funny prank. Some folks were pretty angry, and I was happier than ever that we never got caught—or not yet, anyhow.

  I was fixing to ride Ike back home when he handed me a sack with a heavy box inside.

  “They came yesterday,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Eaglewing steel-toed boots for your friend.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Tell your friend to practice,” said Grandpa. “He knows where to aim, right?”

  “The shins?”

  “Yep, right on the bone.”

  As I rode Eisenhower back home my mind drifted to the Battle of the Bulge and Buchenwald. Then I thought about Dad, shot dead for no good reason. And then, there was Mom, still messed up from MS, which was chopping her down a little bit more every day. I thought about Mark and his struggles at home. I thought about Opal and the loneliness of being the only black kid in the whole entire county. I thought about Grandpa Asa, getting old and weak just when we needed him most. And I remembered everything he told me about the Eaglewings. Then I wondered how God fit into all of it, and I came up with the same answer as Pastor Olson. I didn’t know either.

  17

  Tuesday was Halloween. The cafeteria, study hall, and library were decorated with fake cobwebs and the usual pictures of green-faced witches and Frankenstein’s monsters. Guess what else happened on that day. We got caught. That’s right. Somebody remembered seeing Steve working on his volcano plans and reported him to the principal. Well, as soon as word got out that Steve was caught, other kids started talking about how they saw me and him scheming in the Science Resource Center, and then somebody else realized that we had been seen together with Mark. Pretty soon half of the kids in school were bragging about how they helped get us captured.

  We were hauled, one at a time, into Principal Baggert’s office for interrogation and by the time Steve was done, he had spilled his guts about the whole thing, including the
parts that involved Grandpa Asa. When I got in there, the principal had the whole story memorized, including the part about me driving the truck through Neenah-Menasha in the middle of the night. All I could do was nod my head.

  After Baggert finished with me, he pointed to a chair outside his office where I sat down next to Mark and Steve. “What are they going to do to us?” I asked.

  Mark looked at me calmly. “One week suspension for you guys. Two weeks for me. They’ll probably call the cops on your grandpa.”

  After a few minutes of discussion with a counselor and the vice principal, Mr. Baggert returned with a grim reaper look on his face and called us all back into his office. He drummed his fingers on the desk like it was the countdown to our never-ending doom.

  “Your delinquent actions have certainly cast a pall of disgrace upon our fine school, and I for one am disgusted with such behavior.”

  We said nothing.

  “I spoke with the principal of Menasha High School about the three of you, and he encouraged me to let him select your punishment. You may be interested to know that he used the terms yardarm, shackles, and flogging in his recommendations.”

  “I’m pretty sure flogging is unconstitutional, sir?” Mark couldn’t resist.

  “Shut up!”

  We did and the principal glared back at Mark.

  “You of all people, Mr. Marmotti, should have learned by now to keep your mouth shut prior to the dissemination of your sentence. If I’m not mistaken, you have visited my office before.”