Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  I looked at Mark. “Do we have any more questions?”

  “Just one,” said Mark. “If we did want to see if a gun matched the bullet, who could do it for us?”

  “The cops, if it’s a criminal matter.”

  “What if we don’t want to talk to the cops?”

  The gun shop man squinted his eyes and looked us over.

  “What are you guys hiding if you don’t want to tell the cops? I’m done helping you if you’re running from the cops.”

  “That’s not it at all,” I said.

  “Well, what is it then?” The man was looking pretty tough with his legs spread apart, leaning forward and his eyes sharp and hungry like a hawk.

  I decided to spill it all. Without being mean, I looked straight into those hawk eyes with badger eyes of my own. “My dad is the officer who was murdered last month on Highway 41. We found this bullet out where it happened because the cops quit searching a long time ago. We don’t trust them. We think they’re hiding something.”

  Right away the man leaned back and his eyes got soft again. Without saying anything, he went through a door to what must have been an office. A minute later he came back and handed me a scrap of paper with a name and phone number.

  “Give this guy a call,” he said. “He’s with the FBI.”

  Mark looked at me and nodded.

  “Thanks, mister,” I said.

  When we got outside the door, Mrs. Borger let loose a breath of air that I think she had been holding the whole time.

  “Can we go home now?” she asked.

  24

  Another church confirmation class came and went, and all I could think about during those three hours was how the white bass were probably biting at Doty Park. I skidded to a stop in the driveway, leaned Ike against the garage, and walked in the back door. To my surprise, Mom was not only dressed, she was buzzing around like a bee in a clover field, too busy even to smoke.

  “Stir this dough,” she said. “I’ve got to fix my hair.”

  I didn’t argue or even take my jacket off. I just got right to work mushing the brown stuff in a big green bowl. It smelled like peanut butter, and then I remembered that she had promised to bring cookies for the church bake sale that was coming up on Sunday morning. The oven timer beeped.

  Mom yelled from the bathroom. “Take out the cookies and put them on a cooling rack!”

  “Okay, Mom!”

  “Then get another batch ready!”

  “Okay, Mom!”

  “Remember to flatten them out with a fork and set the timer to twelve minutes!”

  “Okay!”

  Holy smokes! I was busier than a squirrel in a nut factory. I pulled out the hot pan and scraped the cookies onto the cooling racks. Then I glopped out some fresh blobs of dough and squished them down with a fork, first north to south and then east to west. After shoving those into the oven it was back to stirring again.

  Mom popped her head in the kitchen to see how I was doing. “Thank you, honey,” she said.

  “No problem, Mom.”

  I had batter in my hair, flour all over my pants, and ten fingers full of everything. I was a cookie-making machine running on full throttle, eating one and making a dozen more all at the same time. Mom looked slightly worried at the big mess, but then her eyes landed on the piles of perfect cookies on the cooling racks and she smiled.

  “Take a shower, Del. I’ll finish up here. We’re dropping the cookies off at church and then driving to Oshkosh to visit Grandpa Asa.”

  “At the jail? Today?”

  “Yes.”

  Holy Toledo!

  The jailer was a barrel-shaped guy barely as tall as my mom. Between his keys, radio, cuffs, and other stuff, he jingled with each step as he walked Mom and me back to the visiting room. We sat on metal chairs behind a metal table.

  “Wait here,” said the man.

  Mom and I looked at each other. She tried to smile but it didn’t work out, so she looked away and fidgeted with her ring. From somewhere I heard a man yelling. Then a different man yelling back. I was pretty sure neither one was Grandpa Asa because he was too old to yell that loud anymore.

  The door opened slowly, and a different, tall and skinny jailer walked Grandpa into the room and helped him sit in the metal chair. I expected him to be wearing striped pants and a striped shirt, but he wasn’t. Instead, he had orange pants and a gray sweatshirt. He looked at us and sort of half-smiled like it was all just a game. He was the same old guy.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Mom. I could tell she wanted to get up and hug him but the jail people told us that there was no touching allowed.

  “Hi, sweetheart, everything okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hi, Grandpa,” I said a little too quietly.

  “Del, how we doing?”

  “Good.”

  That’s sort of how the whole visit went, mostly quiet talk with Grandpa being the only one who didn’t seem sad. There was a lot of “How’s this?” and “How’s that?” Asa grumbled about the food and the idiots in the jail cells who kept screaming all the time. We talked about stuff that didn’t matter, like how the Packers were doing and about Thanksgiving coming up soon. Mom told him we made cookies for the church and about my enrollment in confirmation class. I could tell that Asa didn’t really care about those things, but he smiled a little bit.

  Toward the end, Grandpa looked hard at me like he was wondering about the important stuff. I could almost hear his brain spinning with questions about what Mark and I had learned about my dad’s murder or whether or not the Eaglewing boots had seen any action. Part of me wanted to jump across that table and tell him all about the bullet. Another part of me never wanted him to find out that I got thumped by Larry Buskin.

  “Time’s up,” said the jailer, and we said some speedy good-byes.

  “Hang in there, Grandpa,” I said.

  “Two more weeks,” he said. “Then hot fudge sundaes and I’m buying.”

  I worked the math in my head about those two more weeks. Grandpa would be spending Thanksgiving Day in jail. I didn’t say anything.

  Mom didn’t say much either on the way home. I guess seeing her dad in a jailbird uniform had yanked something out of her. When we got in the house, she sank into a big, soft chair and lit up a cigarette without even turning on the TV.

  “I’m going fishing,” I said.

  There were no words from Mom.

  Before heading out the back door, I slipped three cookies into my jacket pocket. In the garage, I looked for my best fishing pole before remembering that I had given it away. I grabbed one of the old ones and a small box of tackle and made my way to Doty Park. Picking a spot was always the first task. I checked with the fishermen along the riverbank. A few perch and white bass flopped in buckets. A few more hung from metal stringers in the river.

  I walked to the bridge side of everyone, tied a swivel to my fishing line, and clipped on a yellow-and-silver Cleo. As I worked my way, casting along the shore, a million thoughts raced through my brain. Is Mom going to get better? Is Mark going to survive living with his father? How much does Opal Parsons like me? Did Sheriff Heiselmann and the Cadillac Man kill my dad?

  The list of things to worry about seemed endless, and I hadn’t even got to Larry Buskin or Grandpa Asa yet. I heard a squeal of happiness from a little kid as he pulled a perch out of the river and flopped it onto the grass. For some reason it made me think about Wolf. I jumped on Ike and stood on the pedals, heading toward the hospital and across the bridge. When I turned the corner behind the library I spotted the guy right away wearing the same ratty clothes and shredded hat. I walked out on the dock.

  “Hi, Wolf,” I said.

  He nodded, tapping his hand on the fishing pole that I had given him. “It works good,” he said.

  Walking up to his bucket, I saw three decent mooneyes and a rock bass and gave the man the thumbs up signal. “What are you using for bait?” I asked. He held up a pickle jar containing a few s
mall leeches in an inch of water. “Where did you find them?”

  “Under some rocks along shore.”

  “Are you having fish for supper tonight?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Do you have a frying pan?”

  He shook his head before turning away. The thought of Wolf trying to cook fish without a pan bothered me. Then I wondered if he was eating them raw and it bugged me even more. I put my hands in my pockets, felt something, and pulled it out. It was one of mom’s peanut butter cookies that I had snatched as I left the house.

  I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. “This is for you.” He took the cookie, looked at me with those coal-black eyes, and nodded. He took a bite and his eyes closed as he chewed. A gust swirled around the library building and chilled me right through my jacket.

  My mind was made up as I wheeled into my driveway at top speed and skidded to a stop in the garage. The camping supplies were on the second shelf. I rummaged through a wooden box and pulled out a heavy, black frying pan with the number 8 molded into the bottom. I found a box of wood matchsticks and a metal spatula too and threw in the little salt and pepper shakers while I was at it. The old sleeping bags were in an army duffel bag. I yanked one out and shoved it inside a dark-green lawn and leaf bag that we used for grass clippings. Before entering the kitchen I peeked through the screen to make sure Mom wasn’t in there. Quietly, I walked in and opened the food cabinet, helping myself to a half-dozen cans of corn, beans, and soup. From a drawer I found an extra crank-style can opener and dropped it in the bag.

  It was a heavy load on my bike, but not much different from delivering Hoot Owls. At the train tracks I ditched Ike in the tall weeds, climbed up and over the rails, and followed the trail to Wolf’s hiding place. The first thing I noticed was a wire mesh cage holding mooneye carcasses, drying in the cool sunshine. The fish were lined up like miniature soldiers. The bellies had been slit open and the guts removed, but the heads and tails were still attached. I thought it was pretty nifty how Wolf knew how to preserve fish without a freezer. Finally, I bent down and looked into the hole.

  “Are you in there, Wolf?” I asked.

  No answer. I looked around and saw nobody as I thought about going inside. It was wrong and I knew it but couldn’t resist. On my hands and knees I crawled into the small cave. The air smelled stale. An old blanket and three empty brandy bottles lay scattered on the dirt floor. As I inched in further my right hand touched something smooth and soft. What was that fuzzy thing? A mitten maybe? I picked it up for a closer look in the dim light and reality hit me like the blast from the 12 gauge. I dropped the dead rabbit and jerked my head away, banging it into something hard. Panic surged through me, and all I wanted to do was get back out of that cave, but as I tried to back out my butt hit something hard, and I got the sickening feeling that I could be stuck in there—permanently. At last my knees and hands found traction and got me out of the hole. I jumped to my feet, wiped my nose with my sleeve, and tried to brush the dirt off my clothes. Then I shoved the frying pan, sleeping bag, and everything else into the hole and ran away without even leaving a note.

  The smell of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup hit me as I walked through the screen door. Mom smiled and gave a little spatula salute. I tried to smile back but my mind was still in that cave with the dead rabbit. For the first time in my life, I really, really, really needed to wash my hands. I scrubbed them with soap all the way up to my elbows and rinsed them off.

  Mom sat in her chair at the kitchen table waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom. Just as I was starting to feel normal again, she hit me with a question.

  “Will you say grace?”

  “Umm . . . sure, Mom.”

  “Just a few words of thanks for this food and our family,” she said. “And could you please include something about Grandpa?”

  Just like at the Parsons’ house, it wasn’t that difficult. I said the words and ended with “Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Mom. She took a big breath and I could see that her eyes were damp.

  Mom scooped tomato soup into my bowl first and then her own. We each grabbed a grilled cheese sandwich off the serving plate. It was warm, greasy, and perfect.

  “Did you catch any fish today?” asked Mom. I knew she didn’t really care but was trying to make small talk.

  “No.”

  “The Green Bay weatherman said we could get snow flurries tonight.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes, and the Farmer’s Almanac says it’s going to be a cold winter.”

  “That’s good for early ice fishing,” I said. My mind was still on Wolf in his cave—the dead rabbit, the brandy bottles, the tattered blanket.

  After we finished eating, Mom tapped a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and blew smoke across the kitchen. Her eyes were on the ceiling.

  The smoke stung my nose and eyes and I needed to get away from there. I cleared the dishes into the sink and escaped to the quiet and clean air of the garage. Hoses, rakes, and shovels all hung from hooks, every object in its place just like Dad had arranged things. My head rested up against a wooden ladder that hung on two hooks screwed into the wall. I said one more prayer—a silent one. It started out asking God to help Mom get away from those cigarettes and went on to asking for help getting Wolf out of his hole. After that I got selfish and asked something about Opal Parsons, but you don’t need to know everything.

  Mom was watching Lawrence Welk on TV when I walked past her toward the stairs. Halfway up the steps I paused. Mom leaned in toward the screen, studying the dancers intently as they swayed and twirled.

  “Can you dance like that, Mom?”

  She looked in my direction, embarrassed to have been caught in a trance. Then she smiled softly and said, “There was a day when I could dance exactly like that. Not anymore.”

  I looked again at the brightly dressed couple swooping all over the stage. The lady’s dress flew weightlessly. The man guided her as easily as if he were lifting a twig. They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled, obviously having great fun while entertaining millions of people along the way.

  “Could you show me how?”

  Mom’s eyes grew wide and round. “Why are you so interested in dancing all of a sudden?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “It just looks like fun . . . that’s all.”

  “If you want to learn, I’ll teach you what I can. I think the Neenah library has music we could check out. Should I pick up a couple records this week?”

  “Sure.” I smiled at her and she smiled back. Then I went upstairs to my room.

  You know that thing I said to my mom about dancing? . . . “It just looks like fun, that’s all”? . . . Well, that was actually a white lie. The Shattuck High Snow-Ball dance was coming up in January and, believe it or not, I had ideas about asking Opal to go with me. Imagine that. A stupid, little, scared minnow like me thinking about asking the prettiest girl in the whole school to the dance. Okay, so it was a long shot, and the thought made me nervous, but I still wanted to try.

  After the ten o’clock news and a glass of milk, I lay down on my bed and started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Mrs. Borger said we would be working in teams again on the book reports. If I had my way, Opal would be my partner again—dance or no dance.

  It didn’t take me very long to figure out that To Kill a Mockingbird was no ordinary book, and if you haven’t read it you should, and that goes for white and black people both. It was especially good for folks like me who never lived anywhere else except the all-white town they were born in. Neenah was like that—like a white cake with white frosting and white sprinkles spread all over the top. Just the thought of a few colored sprinkles getting mixed in made some folks uneasy, like the cake wouldn’t be good anymore.

  The story in To Kill a Mockingbird was about people in a small, Alabama town during the Great Depression. It talked about day-to-day life, but there was a lot more to it than that. Some of the character
s practically popped right off the pages, they were so real. The book was sad in some ways and sort of funny and heartwarming in other ways. It was weird, but while reading through the chapters, I kept seeing the faces of people I knew. I saw Opal and her mom and dad in there. And it seemed like Grandpa Asa and Mark and Mrs. Borger were in it too. Even Wolf, in his hole under the railroad ties, was in the book. With all those real characters mixed up with the pretend ones, my brain was practically spinning with every page.

  25

  In English class on Tuesday I was excited about getting teamed up with Opal again on my To Kill a Mockingbird report. Guess what. It didn’t exactly work out that way. Mrs. Borger said that everyone had to choose a different partner this time, and if we didn’t have a partner by Thursday, she would assign one for us.

  Right away, Kathy Marks asked Opal to be her partner. Then football players picked other football players and cheerleaders picked other cheerleaders and dirtballs picked other dirtballs. Well, pretty soon everybody was partnered up except me.

  When Thursday came around, I figured I would be doing the book report on my own. Oh well, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, and it sure beat getting teamed up with some grit.

  Mrs. Borger faced the class in her usual, drill-sergeant stance and cleared her throat. “If you do not have a partner for your book report, raise your hand.”

  My embarrassed hand went up about as high as my right ear. I looked around the room. Just as I had guessed, mine was the only one. I’ll just do it alone, I thought. That’s when I saw another hand pop up like the flag on an ice fishing tip-up.

  My eyes zeroed in. Oh no! Not Rhonda Glass.

  “Mr. Finwick and Miss Glass. I shall put you down as partners.”

  It was done. I had Rhonda Glass as my partner—and it was irreversible. I avoided eye contact and stared at my hands. Rhonda was unusual in many ways. For starters, she was as big as a house. Maybe Rhonda had trouble finding clothes that fit, because she never wore nice-looking pants or blouses. It was always the same baggy dresses that looked like they came from a used tent store and big clunky shoes from military surplus. And her hair—sheesh—just a brown, greasy mess on top of her large head, like she never washed it or brushed it or anything. But maybe the worst part was how she carried herself—head down, never smiling, and dragging her feet as she walked.