Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  Sorry if I sound like a dink. And believe me, as the boy shrimp of Shattuck High, I had no business picking on anybody. But there was a difference between Rhonda’s problems and mine. Compared to Rhonda, I had it easy. For one thing, I had friends. I felt sorry for Rhonda, really I did, but I still didn’t want to work with her on my book report project.

  When the bell rang I glanced at Rhonda and she looked about as nervous as I was.

  “I guess we’re working together,” she said.

  “Yeah, I guess.” In my brain I was trying to figure out how we could get through it without spending too much time together.

  “Where do you usually go to study?” she asked.

  “The Science Resource Center,” I said.

  “I guess that would work.”

  We decided that sixth hour on Monday was free for both of us. I sure hoped that Mark and Steve wouldn’t be there.

  In case you’ve been wondering about me and Larry Buskin, there wasn’t much to talk about anymore. He avoided me like I had the bubonic plague or something, and it wasn’t because I wore the Eaglewing steel-toed boots to school every day. The way I had it figured, Larry knew that other people knew that he was the reason for me being out with a concussion for a week. That’s right. In a weird way I think Larry was scared of me for once. Maybe he wondered why I never turned him in to the principal, and to tell you the truth, I was still wondering that myself.

  Without Buskin to worry about, and with Steve’s and Mark’s and my suspension behind us, school had turned almost normal again. Mark got back to living with his dad and actually said things were going okay. He wasn’t even using the hideout anymore, which was a good thing, because by the middle of November in Neenah, it was freezing cold almost every night. Steve was the happiest of all to be back in school. I guess he had spent the week of his suspension working for his mom, scrubbing, washing, painting, raking, vacuuming, and dusting. She even made him clean the oven.

  My life still wasn’t simple, but it got calmer than before. At least I had my regular routine again, which included school, goofing off after school, Hoot Owls, confirmation and church and, of course, helping Mom around the house. One day I stopped at Wolf’s cave under the railroad ties and dropped off a can of corned beef hash. Then I noticed that for three days in a row the cans hadn’t been touched, and I figured Wolf must have moved away. Maybe he hitchhiked to Florida or found someplace with a roof, four walls, and a furnace.

  As far as Dad’s murder investigation was concerned, it seemed like nobody even wanted to talk about it anymore. Jeepers, was it ancient history already? The newspeople had all but given up on their reporting. The Highway 41 Killer hadn’t struck again, and nobody except Mark and I even cared. If you think that didn’t bug me, you’re wrong.

  Sixth hour on Monday was bound to come up and it did. When I walked into the Science Resource Center, Mrs. Schwartz gave me her usual friendly smile. Steve sat alone at a table doing geometry homework, and a couple of tenth graders had their physics books open, solving problems with slide rules. No sign yet of Rhonda.

  “Hey, Steve.”

  “Minnow, did you get your geometry problems done yet?”

  “I’ll do ’em later,” I said.

  A section of glass separated the Science Resource Center from the real world of dirtballs, jocks, burnouts, and drama queens. I scanned the masses of people roaming the halls and spotted Rhonda in the distance as she waddled back and forth in my direction. She wore a dress that hung from her shoulders like a burlap sack that was the color of wet cement. Nothing else about her had changed from any other day—army boots, ratty hair, eyes to the floor.

  I waved as she walked in but Rhonda neither smiled nor waved back. Maybe she sensed my lack of enthusiasm. Maybe she felt unlucky too. I wasn’t exactly a prize around Shattuck High and everybody knew it.

  “There’s an open table in the back,” I said.

  “Okay.” She shrugged.

  I sat with my back toward Steve so I wouldn’t have to look at him making idiotic faces and immature gestures.

  Unlike me, Rhonda had come prepared. She brought an outline with recommended topics for the oral report as well as her suggestions on which sections each of us should present. She asked me if I had read the book and I had. She asked me what I thought it was about and I said that it was about discrimination against black people. Rhonda nodded, but then explained that it went way beyond that. It was about people who didn’t fit in, like Bo Radley. It was about people who behaved differently when they got mixed up in a mob, like Mr. Cunningham. It was about people with courage, like Atticus, and cowardly, ignorant people, like Bob Ewell, and how the forces of society prevented change for the good.

  Holy smokes! Rhonda Glass was one smart cookie. On top of that, I actually had fun talking to her. Heck, she had all sorts of interesting ideas. We talked and worked together for over an hour and when we were done we had a nifty outline ready to hand in for part one of the assignment.

  “I’ll type it up,” she said. “It’ll look nicer that way.”

  “Thanks Rhonda. You’re a natural at this. Maybe you should be an English teacher someday.”

  I guess it was the right thing to say, because an actual smile popped up on Rhonda’s face. “Thank you,” she said, and at that moment I realized that she could be pretty if she wanted to be.

  26

  Thanksgiving Day was my second favorite holiday, after Christmas. I jumped out of bed and flipped on our black-and-white Zenith to watch the Macy’s parade in New York City. The gigantic helium balloons had just started floating down the avenues between the skyscrapers as millions of people and thousands of cops crowded around. All the cartoon characters were there—Mickey Mouse, Bullwinkle, Snoopy, Popeye the Sailor Man, and even Underdog, flying with his arms and legs outstretched. Guess what happened to Donald Duck. A gust of wind caught him and swung him into a tree where his wing got punctured on a branch. As you can imagine, that created a fuss on the ground and brought a string of dumb jokes from the announcers.

  Like many families, the Finwicks had a long tradition of inviting relatives over for a big Thanksgiving Day dinner. We always had a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, squash, pickles, and the kind of cranberry sauce that came in a can. That was usually followed by about three different pies, all with ice cream. After dinner, Uncle Kermit held court in the living room with his card tricks and Grandpa Ed told war stories in the kitchen. All the while, Aunt Judy would mix up brandy old-fashioned drinks, which kept everybody smiling. That was back when all the relatives were still alive, of course, and as you can probably guess, it was a pretty raucous time.

  It all reached a peak in about 1966. The following year we lost Grandpa Ed, Aunt Judy, and my mom’s cousin, Felix. A year later, both of my grandmothers died and Uncle Kermit passed away. Now with Dad gone, our house was getting to be like a danged echo chamber. Heck, with Grandpa Asa still in jail, we didn’t even have enough bodies to surround a single table.

  When nine o’clock rolled around and neither Mom nor Sally had made a peep, I walked upstairs, knocked on Mom’s door, and poked my head inside.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.”

  “Is that today?”

  Oh-oh. Not the response I was hoping for. “Yeah, the parade is on TV. You should get up and watch. And shouldn’t we put the turkey in the oven soon?”

  Mom lifted her head off the pillow like it weighed five hundred pounds. Her bottom eyelids drooped so much that I could see the pink insides.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” It was scary. She looked almost as bad as the night Dad died.

  No response.

  “Should I call the doctor?”

  “No. I just want to rest.”

  “But, what about the turkey?” Okay, I know what you’re thinking. That was a selfish, boneheaded thing to say while my mom wasn’t feeling well. It just came out, okay? And of course it was too late to take it back.

  Mom looked at me like I had just pulled t
he plug on her batteries. Her head plopped back on the pillow and she closed her eyes.

  “I didn’t buy a turkey,” she said.

  “Does Sally know?” Okay, I shouldn’t have said that either.

  “I think she’s going to Kevin’s house,” whispered Mom. “Sorry, honey, but if you check the freezer there should be something in there you can heat up.”

  Thank goodness Mark came over. Otherwise I would have spent the day eating TV dinners all by myself. Mom never did get out of bed, Sally disappeared without a word, and of course Grandpa Asa was finishing out his sentence in the hoosegow.

  I cooked those TV dinners for Mark and me, and luckily, the main course was turkey. Two slices of breast meat in gravy steamed away in the aluminum tray. The other compartments held mashed potatoes, peas, and something called cranberry cobbler that we figured was supposed to be a dessert. Okay, so it wasn’t the way the pilgrims feasted with the Indians, but what the hay. It sure as heck beat leftover broccoli casserole.

  I set up a card table in the living room and got us each a glass of milk. All in all, we had a pretty good time, and I know it was a lifesaver for Mark to get away from his dad for the whole day. We jabbered and joked around while eating our meals. Mark talked about girls and teased me about Opal Parsons, which I didn’t mind. I talked about fishing and told him he couldn’t catch a walleye if the whole world depended on it.

  Mark dumped the empty TV dinner trays in the trash, and I made a big batch of popcorn on the kitchen stove and splashed it with salt and melted butter. Then the two of us sat around on the couch with our feet up on footstools like a couple of big shots, drinking root beers from the bottle while watching the Cowboys get waxed by the 49ers on TV. After the football game we played about fifty games of Nok-Hockey until our knuckles were so scraped up that they ached. Somewhere in all of that, I told Mark about Wolf living under that pile of old railroad ties.

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah. He fishes behind the library. I’m pretty sure he’s trapping rabbits too. Sometimes I leave food and other stuff to help him. I feel sort of bad for the guy.”

  Mark slugged me in the shoulder. “And you’re not even in Boys Brigade.”

  I smiled.

  Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon Mark wanted to see Wolf’s cave. We grabbed our jackets and went out the back door without letting it slam. It was an easy walk and the day was warm. Cars rolled in and out of the parking lot at Theda Clark Hospital. The yellow water of the Fox River tumbled over the dam and the paper mills still churned big clouds of white steam into the sky. The city didn’t come to a stop just because it was Thanksgiving.

  When we got to Wolf’s cave I noticed my cans of food, still sitting there, untouched. Mark poked his head inside. “Anybody home?” he asked.

  No answer.

  “He could be fishing for mooneyes,” I said. “Either that or he moved away. If I was him I’d have hitchhiked to Florida by now.”

  Mark nodded. “Well, he must be pretty tough if he lasted this long.”

  We screwed around on the railroad tracks for a while, chucking stones in the river and looking for returnable pop bottles that we could bring back for two cents each. Eventually, the conversation got back around to my dad’s murder.

  “We should call the FBI man,” said Mark.

  “Let’s wait for my grandpa to get out of jail first.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to call though. Then when your grandpa is back he can drive us to where we need to go. The way I see it, Delmar, the trail to finding whoever killed your father keeps getting colder every day. Let’s call the FBI guy tomorrow.”

  Mark had a good point about the trail getting colder. And one thing was for darn sure. That crime wasn’t going to get solved by itself.

  The following day we made the call from a telephone booth on the corner outside the bowling alley. That way Mom wouldn’t find out when she looked at the phone bill. She had enough things to worry about without knowing that her son was making long-distance calls to the FBI. Mark dialed the operator and told the lady that he wanted to place a telephone call to Milwaukee. He gave her the phone number and she said we had to deposit five quarters to talk for ten minutes. Mark and I dug the coins out of our pockets and put them in the slot, where each one made a clanking sound that the operator must have been listening for because the next thing we heard was the phone ringing.

  I decided to let Mark do all the talking, partly because it was his idea and also because he had a deeper voice and knew how to sound confident around adults.

  “FBI, Agent Culper speaking.”

  “Hello, sir. My name is Mark Marmotti. I’m calling from Neenah, and my friend Delmar Finwick is here with me. His father is the deputy officer who was murdered last month on Highway 41. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about it.” His voice was deep and serious.

  “Sir, we’re calling you because we need help figuring out what happened and catching the murderer. The local cops aren’t getting anywhere.”

  “Why do you say that? From what I hear, they’re on the trail of the Highway 41 Killer and the investigation is still underway. How old are you, by the way?”

  “I’m sixteen, sir, and Delmar is fifteen. Sir, the cops are blowing it off like yesterday’s news. They haven’t found any evidence and they did a lousy job on the crime scene. Besides that, we have a pretty strong hunch that Sheriff Heiselmann is hiding something.”

  At that point, Agent Culper got mad at Mark. “Listen, kid, you can’t just call the FBI because you’ve got a hunch and you’re mad at the cops. You need facts. You need evidence. Otherwise I can’t help you. Do you understand?”

  “We’ve got one of the bullets, sir.”

  The whole conversation changed after that. By the time our ten minutes were used up, we had an appointment with Agent Culper in his office. He told us that we needed to come with a responsible adult, so we signed up Grandpa. We didn’t tell him the part about Asa being locked up in the Winnebago County Jail.

  Grandpa got out the very next day. He yawned as he hobbled to the car between me and Mom.

  “That’s the noisiest damned place I’ve ever stayed,” he said. “People yelling, doors slamming, toilets flushing. I barely slept a wink.”

  “Was it scary?” I asked.

  “No. It was noisy, cold, and boring.”

  “Did you meet any crooks?”

  “Of course,” said Asa. “We were all a bunch of crooks. I told them I robbed a gas station.”

  “Why did you say that?”

  Grandpa Asa looked at me sort of cross-eyed. “What was I gonna tell ’em? That I was part of the baking soda and vinegar volcano caper?”

  “Can we please talk about something else?” begged Mom.

  “Okay,” said Asa. “Let’s go get some hot fudge sundaes. I’m buying.”

  27

  Grandpa Asa fixed it so that we could go to our meeting in Milwaukee with Agent Culper on Tuesday. He wrote me a note that said I had to be absent from school all day to visit a sick relative. He wrote Mark a note too, saying he had to have minor surgery on his thorax, whatever that was. On that one he used different paper and ink and wrote left handed so it would look like a drunk guy did it. Then he signed it Robert Marmotti.

  It worked, and at nine in the morning on a chilly December Tuesday, we all piled into Asa’s pickup and headed south on Highway 41. I had only been to Milwaukee once before, two years ago, when my dad took me to a night game at County Stadium for the Brewers very first season. Dad said it marked the end of the baseball drought in Wisconsin that began in 1965 when the Braves moved away to Atlanta.

  As we crossed Big Lake Butte des Morts on the edge of Oshkosh I looked down on the dark water that was already freezing up at the edges. Swamp grass lined the south shore and I could see the abandoned duck blinds, now frozen in place.

  Further south we came to Fond du Lac and the big Mercury Marine outboard motor factory. It wa
s a giant-sized building and modern—nothing like the paper mills. Man-made ponds sat between the factory and the highway. We weren’t sure, but Mark and I figured that maybe they were for testing the boat motors.

  “Wouldn’t that be a cool job?” asked Mark. “Buzzing around on speed boats all day long?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And you probably wouldn’t even have to go to college for it.”

  “That’s radar hill coming up,” said Grandpa.

  “What’s that?” asked Mark.

  “You’ll see.”

  Mark and I craned our necks as Grandpa Asa kept his speed right at fifty-five. Sure enough, at a gravel road going east, in a cutout through a shallow hill, a state patrol car popped into view. Another mile down the road, a different state patrol car had somebody pulled over. His cherry-red lights flashed as the officer wrote out a ticket.

  As we kept going, we got into a few more rolling hills and finally, the first signs of the suburbs of Milwaukee. Without saying anything, Grandpa Asa pulled over at an exit ramp and stopped the truck.

  “Why are you stopping?” I asked.

  “I don’t like driving in the city,” he said. “You’re taking over from here.”

  “What?!” My brain was about to explode.

  “You did fine around home.”

  “That was different! This is Milwaukee!”

  “Just a bigger version of Neenah,” he said. “You drive. I’ll navigate.”

  The conversation was over and, before I knew it, I was sitting behind the steering wheel with Grandpa on the passenger side and Mark still in the middle. Grinding through the gears and working the clutch pedal, I got it up to fifty-five as we zoomed onto the highway. Now I’ll tell you something you probably already know. Your first time driving on a highway feels a lot faster than being a passenger. I gripped the wheel like I was choking it.