“Are you here for a haircut, Judge? I brought my trimming shears.” She drew a pair of scissors from her purse and snapped them in the air. I felt like telling her she could do anything she wanted to me. I am pretty sure she read this in my expression and took pity. She put the scissors down.
“Do you like to fish?” I asked her. Maybe it was an odd way to get to know a woman, but I was suffering.
“No,” she said.
“Would you like to go fishing anyway?”
“All right.”
So the next day we went out together in a cousin of mine’s fishing boat, a little aluminum outboard with a 45-horsepower motor. She had on rolled-up jeans, a starched plaid shirt. Her hair was a curled graceful shape that brushed her shoulders. She wore a deep red lipstick and no other makeup, and I thought that if she let me lean toward her in the boat I would hold her face, graze her lips with the side of my thumb, look into her eyes, and slowly kiss her. I was picturing just what I’d do, when she said, “Watch out,” sharply. We’d just missed a rock, which I knew was there, and she shook her head.
“You’ll hang us up, Judge.”
“I’m not a hanging judge.”
“You know that story?”
“Sure.”
I told her that the two older brothers of Cuthbert Peace, Henri and Lafayette, had long ago saved my grandfather’s life. We reached what looked like a good spot, cast our lines out, reeled them in, cast out and reeled in without talking. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. We knew where we were from. After a while, we began talking in a general way of exactly that. We talked of history, mused a little on the future. Our reservation as it stands now is bordered by three towns—Hoopdance, Argus, and Pluto. That last—being closest, but on the western boundary and so off the most traveled roads—has ended up not benefiting from the slight stability and even occasional prosperity brought to the reservation by light manufacturing. Since the government offers tax incentives for businesses to locate here, we’ve begun to switch our economic base away from farming, even as the towns surrounding us empty out and die. It’s a shame to see them go, but Geraldine and I agreed that we were not about to waste our sympathies. In the winter of our great starvation, when scores of our people were consumed by hunger, citizens of Argus sold their grain and raffled off a grand piano. More recently, when we traveled to Washington to fight a policy that would have terminated our relationship with the United States Government guaranteed by treaty, only one lawyer, from Pluto, stood up for us. That was my father. And in 1911, when a family was murdered savagely on a farm just to the west, a posse mob tore after a wandering bunch of our people. They chased down three men and a boy and hung them all, except Mooshum. The story Geraldine had just referred to. I told her that later on the vigilantes admitted that they probably were mistaken. She hadn’t known that.
“But it happened in the heat of things, one of them said, I think Wildstrand. In the heat of things!”
Geraldine said, “What doesn’t happen in the heat of things? Someone has seized the moment to act on their own biases. That’s it. Or history. Sometimes it is history.”
I caught a few small sunnies, and threw them back. Geraldine got a bite and her pole bent double.
“Bet you it’s a turtle.”
“Reel it in slow, let it swim to you. Coax it along.”
Geraldine, of course, knew how to catch a turtle better than I did. We didn’t have a net, so she was going to have to maneuver the creature alongside the boat. When she dragged it closer, I saw the bullet head and rounded humps and knew it was a giant snapper. I was surprised it hadn’t bitten the line and dived. Big as a car tire, it floated just beneath the water. I carefully stowed my fishing pole and tried to figure just how I would pull the monster out of the lake. I would rather have cut the turtle free than drag it in, not because I had sympathy for it, but because snappers bite with tremendous force. When I suggested we let it go, Geraldine gave me an excited look and said, “No, Clemence will make French turtle soup!” So I resigned myself, flexed my fingers, and hoped I’d keep them.
“Now, now! Reach over and grab onto him!”
Geraldine’s snapper swam alongside the boat and I leaned over, grabbed its shell, but failed to secure my grip. Twice I lost him, which exasperated Geraldine.
“Here, take this. I’ve caught lots of snappers before.”
She set the fishing rod in my hand and pulled it in by the tail, right over the side. It was the biggest snapper I’d ever seen, with olive green slime growing in patterns on its back and that strange, unreconstructed dinosaur beak. The neck was massive, slack, and the nose came to a delicate, creepy point.
“They go back over a million years unchanged,” I said. I planned to whack the turtle with the emergency oar if it attacked, but it lay there passively. Geraldine was staring hard at the shell, sitting stiffly with her hands folded in her lap. Her arrest became prolonged and her face went ash gray.
“Should I throw it back?” I asked. She didn’t answer. I kept talking.
“The one my cousin kept as a pet tried to lay eggs after two years alone in the tank. I guess the female can conserve sperm for quite a long time, if the need arises.”
I tried to stop myself, wondering how idiotic a man could be, but her silence rattled me.
“I know,” she said at last. “My brother-in-law studies reptiles.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked, after we’d both sat for much too long looking at that turtle in the bottom of the boat.
“Don’t you see it?”
The turtle was becoming more responsive now. It opened its muddy eyes and poked its head out like a snake, then slowly stretched its jaws wide. The inside of its mouth was grotesque, ornately fleshy, and there was the low reek of turtle musk.
“We scared it,” I said, feebly, holding the paddle out. The thing moved toward it and struck, crunching down hard on the wood. I cried out, but Geraldine ignored me.
“Can’t you see? Take a good look,” she said again.
Now that its jaws were solidly clamped down on the paddle, I was less distracted. But I still couldn’t see until she traced the initials in air just over the turtle’s back. G R.
“Roman and I caught this turtle a long time ago, when it was small,” she said. “He carved our initials in its shell. I was mad. I said he was going to kill it anyway, so we might at least have soup.”
“So,” I said stupidly after a few moments, “you’ve been fishing here before.”
“So to speak.”
I damned Roman for dying and the turtle for living on; I damned the turtle for biting her hook; I damned it for letting itself be pulled over the side. With this sign from the past, my courtship might be delayed another ten years. By now, I knew how the Milk romantic streak could turn fatalistic.
She took my pocketknife and cut the line. Although I felt at this point I could have eaten the turtle raw, we lifted it (still gripping the paddle) over the side. I steadied the boat. Geraldine held one end of the paddle and the turtle floated at the other end, eyeing us in a weirdly doglike way, until Geraldine commanded, “Let go now.” It sank obediently and she sat frowning at the place it vanished. After some time, I started up the motor.
All is lost, I thought, definitely lost, more the luck. I wasn’t surprised, though. Losing women is a trait inherited by Coutts men.
That night, as I put together my bachelor dinner (cans of this, cans of that), I tried to counsel myself in persistence. I thought of my grandfather’s loves and hideous trials. He was part of the first, failed, town-site expedition, the youngest of a bunch of greedy fools, or venture capitalists, who nearly starved dead but eventually became some of the first people to profit financially from this part of the world. The lucky capture of a turtle had saved them way back then, a thought that cheered me now. I’d read his old journals. Some of his other books were piled deep in the other bedroom of my house, waiting for shelves. The living room walls were already stacked two volumes deep. Box
es of files and more books filled the basement. Although these books were valuable, I wasn’t fanatical about the way I handled them. Yes, they were very old, but they were meant to be read by a living human and I did them that honor. As I held one of my other favorites open with one hand and read, I slowly spooned up hot beef stew and baked beans. Finally, I found the passage I was looking for. The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger.
For dessert, as usual, fruit cocktail.
Town Fever
THEN AS EVER it did not pay well to teach, and the youth of St. Anthony did not sufficiently appreciate the writings of Marcus Aurelius to make Joseph J. Coutts’s vocation a labor of love. And besides, there was real love to think about. He felt that he should be traveling with more assurance in that golden realm as he was nearly twenty-six. But, tossing at night in the room he surely paid too much for in the home of Dorea Ann Swivel, widow, his prospects only gave him a galling headache. He had visited himself for a short time upon a woman named Louisa Bird—small, pretty, some four years older and unfortunately Presbyterian, but she certainly hadn’t kissed him and was stolen away during a sleigh ride by a young St. Paul minister with a set of fabulous whiskers. That theft erased any hesitancy on Joseph’s part, and now he could not get her out of his mind. So he burned, secretly enough, though sometimes as he walked through the chill early morning dark to light the stove in the former lumber mill office that served as a schoolhouse, he could almost feel the air scorch around him, and he wondered if the widow, for instance, understood the nature of his burden.
Shortly after Louisa flew to the arms of the minister, he realized that the widow did. One night, there was a rap on his door and Mrs. Swivel, who was large-hipped, plain, and shrewd, entered his cold little room. His bedstead did not seem sturdy enough to bear the weight of them both, and though the warmth and bread-dough fragrance of her body was sweet, he worried as he made his way toward bliss which one of them would pay for the bed if it collapsed. Their nights grew frequent and the bed more frail. He strapped the legs to the frame with strong rope and braced the base of the bed with river stones. She fed him better than her other boarders, which got their suspicions up. But real fear did not enter him until the first day of November, when she gave back half his rent and told him with a glint of tooth that she’d reduced it. So Joseph Coutts was ready to make a change in his life when he met up with Reginald Bull, who was looking for a man to join a town-site expedition heading for the plains.
Reginald was enough like his surname for that alone to stick. Bull was thick, wide-necked, powerful, but had the prettiest bashful brown eyes and a red bud of a mouth, which he was often teased for. As Bull laid it out, two land speculators, Odin Merrimack and Colonel LeVinne P. Poolcaugh, were getting up a party of men, which they would outfit at their own expense, and sending them out past the Dakota-Minnesota border to survey and establish claim by occupancy on several huge pieces of land that would most certainly become towns, perhaps cities, when the railroad reached that part of the world. The men would be paid in shares of land, said Bull, and there was already talk of millions in it; he’d heard that phrase. But they were not the only ones with town fever. Other outfits were making plans. They’d beat everyone by heading out in the dead of winter.
“I’ve seen men get richer out here,” said Joseph, “but I never have seen a man poor to begin with obtain much wealth, not yet.”
“It’s a going proposition,” Bull insisted. “And we’re outfitted with the best. Two ox teams and a cook. Not only that, but we’ve got the cleverest guides in this country, Henri and Lafayette Peace. They’ll get us through anything.”
At this, Joseph was impressed. Henri Peace was known by reputation, though he’d never heard of Lafayette. There was also a German named Emil Buckendorf and three of his brothers, all excellent ox-team drivers.
“Give me one night,” said Joseph. But when he thought of going back to his room and remembered the state of his bed legs, he changed his mind and agreed right there on the spot. That very afternoon, he visited his school district officer and put in his resignation; that night, he gave his landlady notice. He’d thought Dorea might be downcast to see him go, perhaps even angry, but when he explained his plan and told her of the interest he’d earn in the town-to-come, her face grew radiant, almost beautiful. The thought of so much money to be made just by camping out in a place made her so excited that she almost wanted to go herself. Alarmed, Joseph mentioned that they would be guided by bois brl or Metis French Indians, and her features shut tighter than a drumhead.
She left him alone that night and he was surprised at how much he missed her. Unable to sleep, he lighted a candle stub and paged through the Meditations until he found the one he needed, the one that told him no longer to wander at hazard or wait to read the books he was reserving for old age, but to throw away idle hopes (Louisa!) and come to his own aid, if he cared for himself and while it was in his power. He blew out his candle and put the book beneath his pillow. He had made the right decision, he was sure of it, and he tried not to think of Dorea Swivel’s plush embrace. But the night was cold, his blanket thin, and it was impossible not to long for the heat she generated or to wish his head was pillowed on the soft muscles of her upper arm. There would be more of this deprivation, he told himself; he’d best get used to it. For the next year, he would be hunkering down for warmth with hairy men who soon would stink. What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery. Joseph Coutts knew this, intellectually at least, already, and so that night he tried to discipline himself to put away all thoughts of Dorea’s two great secrets—a mesmerizing facility with bad words, which she would whisper in his ear, and a series of wild, quick movements that nearly made him faint with pleasure. He would not think of these things. No, he would not.
The Expedition
THE NEXT DAY, Bull came around with papers to sign and brought him over to Colonel Poolcaugh’s establishment, where his outfit garments were being sewed and where, also, two Icelandic women were completing an enormous blanket of thickly quilted wool batting made expressly for the nine men to sleep together underneath. Emil Buckendorf was there, dark-haired, with fanglike teeth and eyes so pale that there seemed to be a light burning in his skull. He was a quiet, efficient young man; he was helping the women sew and doing a nice job of it, too. The two guides were very much unlike each other. Lafayette was fine-made and superbly handsome, with a thin mustache, slick braids, and sly black eyes. Henri was sturdy as Bull, though shorter and with an air of captivating assurance. There was also the cook, English Bill, a man whose brown muttonchops flew straight out from his face and would soon droop to cover his neck. Joseph had developed a suspicion of grand whiskers, but he liked English Bill’s riveting energy as he dickered with and worried Colonel Poolcaugh. Bill was adamant about the necessity of provisioning the outfit well. He also insisted on bringing his dog, a stubby little brown and white short-haired terrier, and he made Joseph try on each garment. There were so many that Joseph was inclined to simply accept the pile, but when he put on the three woolen shirts and three woolen drawers, the three pair of stockings and moccasins over them, there were adjustments to be made. There was an overcoat of Kentucky jean to repair and his elkskin overshoes needed additional lacings as well. A grand-looking helmet made of lambskin came down over his shoulders with flaps to each side to draw over his nose and, last, there was a pair of fur mitts. When it was all on, Joseph was so hot he could hardly breathe, as it was a warm day for December. But, by the end of the month, when the party started out, the weather was already being called the worst and coldest in memory.
When he left Dorea Swivel, she gave him a picture of herself. He almost gave it back, thinking it unfair of him to accept it when he loved the heated bolster of her body but did not see a future with someone who didn’t know how to read and could write little more than her
name, though she was good at adding and subtracting. But something made him keep the small locket photograph of her, so plain and steadfast, her broad face symmetrical beneath a severe middle part in her hair. It was as though he had an intimation that he was embarking on a journey that would bring him to the edge of his sanity, and that he’d need the solid weight of her gaze to pull him back.
The Great Drive
WITH FIVE YOKE of oxen and two sleds built for rough haul, the men started from St. Anthony. The only personal possessions Joseph brought were the locket and the book that contained the writings of Marcus Aurelius. One sled was loaded with corn and cob for the oxen and the other with provisions for the men, plus all of the tools that Bull, Emil Buckendorf, and Joseph Coutts would need to garden and live out a year. The other men were to be fetched back as soon as the prairie dried out in the spring, and at the same time those who stayed would be reprovisioned. Within two days, the road disappeared and Joseph, Henri, and Lafayette broke the trail with snowshoes before the oxen, who either foundered in the deep snow or cut their fetlocks on the burnt-over prairie where the wind had swept a vicious crust. By placing one step before another, they progressed about eight miles a day. At night, they raised their tent, built a good blaze, cut slough grass for bedding, piled it on the snow, then spread their buffalo coats and oilcloths over the grass and got into their huge communal bed fully clothed. The two guides took turns sleeping with their most important possession, a fiddle, which they kept in a velvet-lined case and kissed like a woman. Once they lowered the great woolen comforter over themselves, the men began to steam up under the batting, and they slept, though every time one rolled over so did the rest. The nights were lively that way, but not, at first, unbearable, thought Joseph. But this was only January and there wouldn’t be a chance for any of them to bathe before spring. He had never been an overly fastidious person, but the food that English Bill prepared sat heavy on the gut and one night the men grew so flatulent they almost blew the quilt off. Halfway through the concert, Henri Peace began to laugh and cried out in the dark, praising the men for playing so loudly on their own French fiddles. Joseph started laughing too, but Emil Buckendorf took offense.