Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  “I have a good mind to find you in contempt,” said the judge.

  “What’s stopping you?” asked Asa.

  The judge banged the gavel hard on his desk. “That’s a two hundred dollar fine.”

  Grandpa Asa stared him down. “I’m not paying a nickel,” he said.

  None of it worked out well for Grandpa. The judge tossed him in the Winnebago County Jail for thirty days, one day for his part in the Volcano incident and twenty-nine days for contempt of court. The sentence was to start immediately. The bailiff took him away in cuffs, just like one of the bad guys on Dragnet.

  Mom looked right at me and seemed about ready to die. Her eyes were red and watery and her skin, a pale gray. “This is your fault,” she said in a voice that sounded eighty years old.

  I dropped my head and we walked to the car. Neither of us said anything all the way home. After we got there I ran to my room, shut the door, and fell in the corner like a bag of dirt. Maybe Sally was right about me. Maybe I should have crawled back into that hole on the Menasha football field and just stayed there. I was a juvenile delinquent all right, and now my elderly grandpa was paying for my crime. My thoughts went to movie scenes with dark cells, iron bars, and rats crawling on the floor. I imagined meals of stale bread, water, and no ice cream—ever.

  I cried myself sick and finally puked in the toilet. Then I walked downstairs to talk to my mom. I couldn’t see her but heard her quietly sobbing, so I changed my mind. I walked out the door and found my stack of 232 Hoot Owls waiting for me. Rain had started to fall. I sat on the cement under the porch roof and started rolling and banding Hoot Owls. It would be a long, cold ride.

  19

  I woke up the next morning wishing my life was just a bad dream, and quickly realized that it wasn’t. Dad was still dead. Grandpa Asa was still in jail. Mom was lying in bed, and Sally was pretending I didn’t exist. To top it off, I was cold, hungry, and facing day three of my suspension as a juvenile delinquent. I looked out the kitchen window. The slate-colored sky and drizzle fit my mood. A yellow school bus rumbled past my house and picked up some kids at the corner. It would soon be moving on to pick up Opal Parsons, who surely wouldn’t be talking to me ever again once she learned I had been suspended. Cripes! Who the heck was I kidding, thinking she could be my girlfriend? Even her mom would hate me once she heard the news.

  I opened the fridge and spied the pan of leftover chili. Thank you, church ladies. My stomach gave a little groan as I heated it up, stirring until it bubbled and splattered little drops all over the stovetop. I wiped up my mess, sat down at the table, and scooped the steaming chili into a bowl. In the cupboard I found some Saltine crackers, which I crumbled on top. I stirred up a glass of Tang, cut a thick slice of bread, and slathered it with butter.

  Five minutes later I felt okay again. I slipped out through the screen door, careful not to let it slap shut. In the garage, I grabbed a shovel and a tin can out of the garbage and proceeded to dig up worms from the moist soil in the area that had once been Mom’s flower garden. A few minutes later I was sailing across the bridge by the hospital. Just then the sun peeked out from behind the clouds.

  I decided to fish for mooneyes, but I’m not sure why. They were neither big nor common. On top of that, they were only good to eat if you smoked ’em, and I wasn’t set up for that with Dad gone. The dock behind the Neenah library was the best spot I knew of for mooneyes, so instead of turning left on Wisconsin Avenue, I wheeled right, behind the public library, and slammed on the brakes.

  Dang! Somebody was in my spot. I stopped and just stood there, straddling my bike. Without even seeing his face, I could tell that he was poor. He wore a coat so raggedy that the collar was halfway torn off and the elbows worn through such that the cream-colored insulation was falling out. He wore a hunting cap with the flaps folded down over his ears, but it was in rough shape too. And for a fishing pole? Shoot. The man held nothing more than a willow stick with a string tied to the end, and it wasn’t proper monofilament fishing line either. Good grief! The guy was fishing with kite string. With a rig like that, his chances of catching a mooneye were in the neighborhood of zero percent.

  For a second I contemplated a U-turn. My cowardly instincts had always told me to get away from people like this man. Nothing good could come out of it. And what if he wanted to talk?

  Just as I was fixing to jump on the pedals and peel out of there, the man looked directly at me. It startled me as he turned his gaze on me with dark eyes that reflected nothing back. His skin was dark too, like an Indian. Holy smokes, I thought. He is an Indian. My mind recalled the rumor I had heard on my Hoot Owl route about an Indian living on the island somewhere near the train tracks.

  “Plenty of room for you,” he said.

  Great. I’ll look like a jerk if I leave now. Not knowing what else to do, I propped Eisenhower up against a tree and slowly walked out on the dock.

  “You can fish off the right side,” said the Indian.

  I shrugged my shoulders, acting cool like I didn’t care one way or the other, and sat down just an arm’s length away.

  I dug into my bait can for a worm. It squirmed wildly as I cut it in half with my thumbnail and stabbed it twice through with the hook. I had left a half inch dangling—the perfect way to attract those fussy mooneyes. With a flip of my wrist on my spin-casting rig, the baited hook and bobber sailed out thirty feet and the sinker pulled it down to a preset depth of six feet that I had memorized from previous visits.

  I watched the bobber with anticipation. Come on, fish. I’m ready. Five minutes came and went and I casted to a new spot. In the meantime, I kept an eye on the Indian. He twitched the bait occasionally. Yeah, yeah. Nothing new there, I told myself. Then the guy got a bite and pulled in a ten-inch mooneye by dragging the string in hand over hand. I redoubled my focus and cast my bait in a new spot. Well danged if he didn’t catch another mooneye two minutes later on that same, crude fishing rig.

  He looked at me and smiled. Then the Indian reached in his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a tiny white flake.

  “Put this on your line right above the hook,” he said.

  He handed me the object and I could see that it shimmered like a pearl on one side, reflecting faint shades of pink and yellow. It was no bigger than the fingernail on my pinky and had a tiny hole on one edge. The thing looked like it was made from clam shell.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I may have been a stubborn mule about some things, but when it came to catching fish I used whatever worked. I tied the clam shell decoration near the top of my hook and cast the line back out to my spot.

  Right away the bobber twitched a couple times and finally went under. I set the hook and cranked on the reel. With a splash, I pulled up the wriggling nine-incher, a shimmering bar of pure silver. The eye was a big golden circle around a black dot that took up practically the entire head of the fish.

  My plan was to toss the mooneye back, but then I considered my new acquaintance. For everything I had learned about Indians, and that includes movies, books, and even a drive through the Menomonie Reservation, I had never actually known one.

  “Do you want it?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I dropped the fish in his metal pail. He responded with a nod, then stoically faced the river again.

  I couldn’t help but study the man. Close up, he was a puzzle—hard edged like stone around his eyebrows and chin—soft and curved like deer leather around the mouth and nose. With his eyes on the horizon he looked like a warrior. When he dropped his gaze to the water, it felt like maybe he could be my friend.

  From that point I had a mission. I started by cutting the worms down to thirds to extend the life of my bait and even asked the man if I could fix up his willow branch with monofilament and a properly sized hook. He was happy to accept the improvements, and right away started getting even more bites. Between the two of us the bucket filled up, and by the time the clock tower at city h
all rang noon, the man’s pail was dang-near brimming.

  “Time for me to go,” I said.

  He gave a little wave.

  I was feeling pretty good as I picked up Eisenhower and prepared to wheel away. Then something nudged me to ask the man a question I had been wondering about.

  “Where do you live?”

  Without looking, he pointed across the water. “On the island,” he said.

  “I’m Del,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  The Indian turned his head and looked directly at me. Those black eyes weren’t empty any more. They blasted me with an electricity that was neither anger nor frustration, like the man was trying to figure me out.

  “Why do you want to know my name?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “No reason.”

  “Wolf,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My name is Wolf.”

  As I pedaled across the bridge my mind was a whirlpool of questions. If he lived on the island, why hadn’t I seen him? Where was his home, exactly? What tribe was he from? How long had he been here? I looked back over my shoulder and saw him stand up from his place on the dock, pick up the pail of mooneyes and his makeshift pole, and start walking.

  I skidded to a stop on the other side of the bridge and ducked behind one of the spruce trees along the edge of Theda Clark Hospital. I would follow the Indian and figure out where he lived. For all I knew he could be on my Hoot Owl route. Curiosity burned inside me. I just had to know.

  As Wolf walked across the bridge I watched through the branches. He turned into the park and walked along the river’s edge before climbing and crossing the railroad tracks. I jumped on Ike and followed. At the top of the embankment, I caught sight of him just as he approached a pile of abandoned railroad ties. I watched from behind a clump of brush as he scanned the horizon and climbed into a hole beneath the pile.

  “Holy smokes,” I whispered.

  As I skidded to a stop in my driveway, I was full of the excitement that comes with having a secret. On the one hand, it felt good to know that I did a good deed, helping Wolf catch a bucket full of fish. On the other hand, I had no business spying on the guy.

  My thoughts skittered around like a pond full of water bugs as I pulled down the garage door.

  The sting of cigarette smoke hit my nose and eyes before I even opened the screen door. I let it smack shut so Mom would know I was back.

  “Is that you, Del?”

  “Hi, Mom. Should I heat up some leftover chili for you and me?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I almost had a heart attack, but in a good way. Mom was going to eat a meal with me? She walked into the kitchen. Holy kamoly, she wasn’t wearing pajamas. Mom had dressed in a nice pair of gray pants and a navy-blue shirt and she even had her hair fixed up fancy.

  “Mom!”

  “What?”

  “You look great!”

  She tried not to smile but couldn’t hold it back. “I told Mrs. Samuelson that I would help out at the church rummage sale today.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes, then pointed a finger at me. “Tomorrow it’s your turn,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Confirmation.”

  Now my eyes were rolling. I really didn’t want to go to confirmation. It was worth it though—a fair trade. Thank you, church ladies!

  Mom was already gone when Mark called after lunch, itching to snoop around some more out on Highway 41. He hinted at us borrowing Grandpa Asa’s truck. I actually thought about it for a second because I knew where the spare key was hidden under a rock. In the end I told Mark that if we went there, it would have to be on bikes. He grumbled but finally agreed. Then he reminded me that he wanted to use my neighbor’s metal detector.

  Crap! I thought to myself. First it was Mrs. Borger, then Mom and the church ladies, then Wolf behind the library. Now I was bugging Mr. Johnson to borrow his metal detector. All this dealing with grown-ups was practically killing me.

  I rapped gently on the door. Mr. Johnson worked shifts at the Banta Mill and if he was home, I worried that I might be waking him up. I heard heavy footsteps on a wood floor—definitely not those of his wife. Mr. Johnson’s eyes got big when he saw me.

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I got in a little trouble and they gave me three days off.”

  He nodded and gave me one of those been there myself looks.

  “Would you mind if I borrowed your metal detector? A friend of mine is looking for something that was lost.”

  If it had been Mrs. Johnson I’m pretty sure she would have asked about a hundred questions. Who was the friend? What was lost? Where did we lose it? That and everything else that I didn’t want to get into. Mr. Johnson, on the other hand, just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sure,” he said. “Put it up against the garage when you’re done.” In case you haven’t figured it out already, Mr. Johnson was a pretty good guy.

  Getting to the crime scene on Highway 41 by bicycle while carrying a metal detector was tougher than we thought. For one thing, it was almost an hour away from my house. For another thing, it was technically illegal to ride bikes on Highway 41, since it was a four-lane road. The hardest thing, though, was carrying that clunky metal detector that weighed about twenty pounds. Mark and I took the lake road toward Oshkosh, then zigged west on County G and bombed the last couple miles on the 41 shoulder to get to the billboard that marked the spot. We were gassed by the time we got there, so we ditched our bikes in the corn and flopped down in the grass until our hearts quit pounding. Then we got to work.

  “We’re looking for the brass casing from one of the bullets,” Mark said.

  He turned on the battery-powered detector and started swinging it side to side as he walked the grassy area along the highway. That sounded easy, but it wasn’t. The ground was uneven, and the detector ring kept getting hung up in the goldenrod and milkweed plants. I started stomping down the weeds in front of Mark as he moved along. After a long twenty minutes we finally got our first beep signal. I dug around with my pocket knife and found the pull tab from a beer can that had been buried for about a thousand years. Then it was back to stomping weeds and swinging the detector back and forth again.

  After a while, Mark worked his way out of the weeds and onto a patch of bare ground. Since Mark didn’t need my help anymore, I decided to snoop around again where we had found the cigarette butt. I walked through the corn toward the big posts that held up the Fine Dining billboard. Just like last time, I got down on my hands and knees, feeling under the weeds with my fingertips.

  I felt the object before I saw it. Something very smooth, unlike the hundreds of stones and pebbles that my fingers had touched. I picked it up and brought the thing close to my face. It was a black plastic button about the size of a quarter with four holes in a square pattern. When I held it up to the light and looked closer, I noticed that it had a white streak running through it. It had to be a coat button. I tightened my fist around it and walked back to the edge of the road where Mark had just clicked off the metal detector.

  “Bummer,” said Mark. “All that work for nothing.”

  “Maybe we should go further along the highway,” I said.

  “Maybe, but where do we stop?”

  I shrugged.

  “Let’s try something else,” said Mark. “The killer must have picked up all the casings. Let’s see if we can find one of the actual bullets.”

  I sort of cringed at the thought. “The bullets that killed my dad?”

  “They had to end up somewhere.”

  “But will the detector even find lead bullets?”

  “Maybe not,” said Mark. “But if they were the kind with a copper jacket, then it might still work.”

  “Where should we look?”

  Mark squinted his eyes and scrunched up his face as he looked all around.

  “If the person was hiding where we found
the cigarette butt the other day, and he was shooting toward the road, then a bullet could end up on the other side,” said Mark.

  We both looked across the highway and saw the raised bed of the Soo Line tracks.

  “I know it’s a long shot,” said Mark. “But, I think a bullet could be in that embankment.”

  “We came all the way out here,” I said. “Let’s try it.”

  Mark and I dodged traffic as we ran with our bikes across the highway. The button was still pinched between my thumb and finger. Should I tell Mark about this? I didn’t know but something felt right about keeping the black button with the white streak as my own personal clue about my dad’s murder. I slipped it into the front right pocket of my jeans and caught up with Mark.

  We had been searching for over an hour, finding everything from rusty nails to bottle caps to aluminum chewing gum wrappers, but no bullet. On top of being tired and hungry, we were all scratched up from thistles, and the sun was getting low.

  “Five more minutes,” said Mark.

  At that very moment the detector beeped again, and I started digging on hands and knees. On my first scrape with my jackknife blade, something shiny and copper-colored popped out from the dirt. Whatever it was, the thing was all bent up and smooshed, not round and pointed like a bullet.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Mark studied it, up close to his face. “A bullet,” he said quietly. He turned it over and over in his fingers. “It’s all smashed up from impact, but it’s a bullet.”

  We had found the needle in the haystack, as they say. So did we jump around and celebrate like the Packers winning the NFL Championship? Did we slap each other on the back and whoop it up? Nope, we didn’t.

  In my hand, I was holding the thing that had killed my dad. As you can probably imagine, I didn’t feel anything like celebrating. I slid the bullet into my right front pocket alongside the button. My thoughts shifted all of a sudden to Grandpa Asa still sitting in the county jail. Mark and I rode home together but hardly even talked.

  It was dark when I quietly closed the screen door and snuck upstairs. I dropped that bullet and the button into the Eskdale gallon-sized milk bottle with the metal handle. They lay in the bottom along with the cigarette butt and the taped-together scraps of yellow paper. And no, I wasn’t going to show any of it to Sheriff Heiselmann.