Coop_ A Year Of Poultry, Pigs, And Parenting Part 3

My brother Jud was mentally disabled (we simply used the term r.e.t.a.r.ded r.e.t.a.r.ded in that age) as a result of complications at birth. He was the youngest of five boys orphaned when their mother died of cancer and their father subsequently shot himself in the bas.e.m.e.nt, experiences that added a layer of psychological trouble to his preexisting problems. He was p.r.o.ne to fits of yelling and screaming, and occasionally ate his mittens. The day he arrived we celebrated with a rare stop at the A&W root beer stand in Chetek. We had a four-door Chevy Impala at the time and there were kids crammed front and back-Dad was at work, so Mom was driving. After the waitress fixed the tray to the window, Mom started pa.s.sing out hot dogs, beginning with Jud, who was seated directly behind her. When all the dogs were in hand, Mom set to divvying up French fries. When she turned to hand Jud his portion, he was swallowing the last of his hot dog, napkin and all. Another time he devoured an entire bag of unpeeled oranges. For all his voracious eating, Jud was always thin as a rail, no doubt due to the fact that he never stopped moving. He wore out a series of wheelbarrows, and used to sit sidesaddle in a little red wagon and push himself round and round the driveway with the sides of his feet until his leather boots wore through. When given a book, he would page through it compulsively until it was shredded. Since he was so hard on books, every Christmas my grandmother wrapped the JC Penney catalog and gave it to him. It was his favorite present. He'd strip away the paper and start flipping through the pages, front to back. When he reached the end of the catalog, he'd flop the catalog over and start through again. My brother John and I shared a bedroom with Jud for a while, and we remember waking at 2:00 a.m. to the sound of the pages going in that age) as a result of complications at birth. He was the youngest of five boys orphaned when their mother died of cancer and their father subsequently shot himself in the bas.e.m.e.nt, experiences that added a layer of psychological trouble to his preexisting problems. He was p.r.o.ne to fits of yelling and screaming, and occasionally ate his mittens. The day he arrived we celebrated with a rare stop at the A&W root beer stand in Chetek. We had a four-door Chevy Impala at the time and there were kids crammed front and back-Dad was at work, so Mom was driving. After the waitress fixed the tray to the window, Mom started pa.s.sing out hot dogs, beginning with Jud, who was seated directly behind her. When all the dogs were in hand, Mom set to divvying up French fries. When she turned to hand Jud his portion, he was swallowing the last of his hot dog, napkin and all. Another time he devoured an entire bag of unpeeled oranges. For all his voracious eating, Jud was always thin as a rail, no doubt due to the fact that he never stopped moving. He wore out a series of wheelbarrows, and used to sit sidesaddle in a little red wagon and push himself round and round the driveway with the sides of his feet until his leather boots wore through. When given a book, he would page through it compulsively until it was shredded. Since he was so hard on books, every Christmas my grandmother wrapped the JC Penney catalog and gave it to him. It was his favorite present. He'd strip away the paper and start flipping through the pages, front to back. When he reached the end of the catalog, he'd flop the catalog over and start through again. My brother John and I shared a bedroom with Jud for a while, and we remember waking at 2:00 a.m. to the sound of the pages going flip, flip, flip flip, flip, flip in the dark. in the dark. Flip, flip, flip...FLOP. Flip, flip, flip...FLOP... Flip, flip, flip...FLOP. Flip, flip, flip...FLOP... By the time next Christmas rolled around the catalog was in tatters. By the time next Christmas rolled around the catalog was in tatters.

In his teen years, Jud was tall and distinguished, with a shock of John Kennedy hair and a patrician jawline. When he was relaxed and his most obvious tics were suppressed, he projected an air of erudition. One evening a stranger drove into our driveway looking for directions to New Auburn. My brother Jed, then about ten years old, gave the man perfectly good directions. Just as he finished, Jud sidled up. "Go north. Two miles, take a right, then straight," said Jud, in a fractured recitation of Jed's directions. The result was utter nonsense-beginning with the fact that New Auburn lay to the south-but the way he rattled it off, it sounded believable.

Jed pointed up at Jud. "He's r.e.t.a.r.ded."

"OK, little fella," said the stranger, chuckling and patting Jed's head. Then he climbed back in his truck, drove to the end of the driveway, and, exactly as Jud had instructed, turned north to nowhere.

During much of my childhood we double-, triple-, and occasionally quadruple-bunked. When my brother John and I slept in a converted closet at the top of the stairs, we could stand erect on only one side of the "room," as the other half was transected by the roofline. Per John's request (he now owns a dump truck and a sawmill and will deny this, but I can provide photos), Mom painted a b.u.t.terfly on the slanted ceiling. It was an attempt to evoke s.p.a.ciousness, but that just meant when you stood up, you smacked your head on a flat plaster b.u.t.terfly.

With an eye to the expanding brood, Dad began to remodel the old three-bedroom farmhouse in the early 1970s and expects to finish the project any time now. There was always some wall being knocked out somewhere. Jed learned to climb ladders while still in diapers, and at one point when the ceiling was being reconstructed we amused ourselves by fis.h.i.+ng for sandwiches through a hole cut in the upstairs floor. We'd set up an ice-fis.h.i.+ng tip-up over the hole, lower the line, wait for the tug that released the flag, and then reel up a sandwich Baggie.

Eventually it became obvious that the house simply wasn't big enough, and Dad hired my uncle to help him build an addition that exactly doubled the size of the house. John and I were so excited at the prospect of having our own rooms that we would drag our sleeping bags through the second-floor window into the partially constructed addition and sleep on the subflooring with nothing but the naked stud walls separating us. Years later when I viewed reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati WKRP in Cincinnati and saw Les Nessman delineating imaginary office walls by strapping tape to the floor, it reminded me of John and me sound asleep in the unheated addition, separated only by two-by-fours on sixteen-inch centers. When the addition was finished, the upstairs hallway was over forty feet long with nine doors. and saw Les Nessman delineating imaginary office walls by strapping tape to the floor, it reminded me of John and me sound asleep in the unheated addition, separated only by two-by-fours on sixteen-inch centers. When the addition was finished, the upstairs hallway was over forty feet long with nine doors.

The house was now officially bigger than the barn. We treated it as a combination amus.e.m.e.nt park and gymnasium. Mom had a no-running-inside rule, but beyond that she pretty much turned us loose. We tore apart the couch and used the cus.h.i.+ons to build forts, and we used a cardboard refrigerator box to construct a submarine in the living room. Donning the flippers and snorkel masks Grandma Perry brought back from her vacation in Aruba, we'd belly-crawl out through the imaginary pressurized porthole and frog-kick across the linoleum, scanning the murky depths with the miniature flashlights that same grandma put in our Christmas stockings (Grandma Perry ignored the No Christmas rule and Mom and Dad let us). Mom kept the house stocked with art supplies, and often mixed up finger paint, which we swabbed across giant chunks of waxed paper torn from one of the rolls Dad got at surplus when he worked at the Port Edwards mill. I sat for hours at the play table looking at the bird feeder outside the picture window, drawing blue jays and evening grosbeaks, with Mom's copy of Birds of North America Birds of North America as my guide. We had a Visible Man (his halves held together with rubber bands) and we studied his visible liver, but like most kids, we were mostly interested in stripping out his skeleton, as it reminded us of Halloween. We used our Tupperware Build-O-Fun kit to cobble up Dr. Seusslike vehicles, and pa.s.sed s...o...b..und winter mornings inhaling the scent of wood smoke from our Temp-O-Matic Woodburner set. When the wood-burning got tedious, we would "accidentally" jab the red-hot Wonder Pen into the Styrofoam packing and sniff the poisonous yellow smoke. We dumped out our Lincoln Logs, strewed our Tinkertoy Master Builder set from kitchen to porch, and used Mom's saucepans for army helmets. On winter nights when it got dark early Mom let us turn out all the lights in the house and play hide-and-seek. I remember the giggly-scaredy feeling of trying to hold super-still when you were just about to be found, and the clatter of pots and pans as one of my siblings bailed out of the cupboard and made a beat-feet break for the in-free post. as my guide. We had a Visible Man (his halves held together with rubber bands) and we studied his visible liver, but like most kids, we were mostly interested in stripping out his skeleton, as it reminded us of Halloween. We used our Tupperware Build-O-Fun kit to cobble up Dr. Seusslike vehicles, and pa.s.sed s...o...b..und winter mornings inhaling the scent of wood smoke from our Temp-O-Matic Woodburner set. When the wood-burning got tedious, we would "accidentally" jab the red-hot Wonder Pen into the Styrofoam packing and sniff the poisonous yellow smoke. We dumped out our Lincoln Logs, strewed our Tinkertoy Master Builder set from kitchen to porch, and used Mom's saucepans for army helmets. On winter nights when it got dark early Mom let us turn out all the lights in the house and play hide-and-seek. I remember the giggly-scaredy feeling of trying to hold super-still when you were just about to be found, and the clatter of pots and pans as one of my siblings bailed out of the cupboard and made a beat-feet break for the in-free post.

When you grow up following a religion called the Truth, surrounded by the friends, and guided by the workers, some austerity is a given. At the top of the list, our church forbade the possession of televisions, which were condemned as the leaky end of Satan's sewer pipe. Prodigal though I am, I largely retain the sentiment, although honesty compels me to admit this has not stopped me from partic.i.p.ating in the medium at both ends of said pipe, and compared with high-speed Internet, the b.o.o.b tube has all the turpitude of worn-out View-Masters. Despite leaving the church in my twenties, I went for years without a television. When I got married there was backsliding, as my wife's dowry included a combination VCR/TV unit with rabbit ears that pull in four fuzzy channels. I justify its presence by citing PBS, but given half an hour, the snowy Seinfeld Seinfeld rerun triumphs every time. We go through fits of self-revulsion during which we banish the set to the closet and pull it out only to let Amy watch rerun triumphs every time. We go through fits of self-revulsion during which we banish the set to the closet and pull it out only to let Amy watch The Magic School Bus The Magic School Bus or a Lightnin' Hopkins doc.u.mentary on or a Lightnin' Hopkins doc.u.mentary on DV DVD ("Mom!" she said when Anneliese walked in the room, "Lightnin' is dead! dead!"), but then Anneliese has another couple of sleepless pregnant nights or I am feeling sorry for myself over some deadline or other, and whammo, it's Scrubs Scrubs at midnight. By the time you read this the new digital format will be in play and our set will be worthless. We have sworn a solemn vow not to purchase a converter box and can use your prayers in this regard. The flesh is weak, particularly that mushy area directly behind the eyeb.a.l.l.s. Church precepts were fuzzier regarding use of the radio, but Dad drew a firm line against it. One of our Volkswagen buses came equipped with an AM radio and I recall sneaking out for a listen, but in the process of trying to improve reception I reached beneath the dash and wiggled some wires, whereupon there was a blue flash, a whiff of scorched electronics, and the radio was forever rendered mute. at midnight. By the time you read this the new digital format will be in play and our set will be worthless. We have sworn a solemn vow not to purchase a converter box and can use your prayers in this regard. The flesh is weak, particularly that mushy area directly behind the eyeb.a.l.l.s. Church precepts were fuzzier regarding use of the radio, but Dad drew a firm line against it. One of our Volkswagen buses came equipped with an AM radio and I recall sneaking out for a listen, but in the process of trying to improve reception I reached beneath the dash and wiggled some wires, whereupon there was a blue flash, a whiff of scorched electronics, and the radio was forever rendered mute.

Perhaps allowing the devil a toenail in the doorjamb, Mom kept a phonograph in the house, and with her permission we were allowed to play it. The cabinet contained alb.u.ms by Pete Seeger and the gospel singer Evie, a Reader's Digest Presents 50 Beloved Songs of Faith Reader's Digest Presents 50 Beloved Songs of Faith collection, and five or six mariachi alb.u.ms from her time in Mexico, which would explain why someone pa.s.sing through rural Chippewa County in the early 1970s might have heard the sounds of a collection, and five or six mariachi alb.u.ms from her time in Mexico, which would explain why someone pa.s.sing through rural Chippewa County in the early 1970s might have heard the sounds of a guitarra guitarra and our preadolescent Scandihoovian voices yodeling, " and our preadolescent Scandihoovian voices yodeling, "Ai-yi-yi-yiii!" These were the only words we knew, although my brother Jud, whose mental disabilities were leavened with certain savantisms, including the ability to memorize entire record alb.u.ms after just one or two listens, sang along in phonetically serviceable Spanish. When we put on Stan and Doug alb.u.ms, Jud switched effortlessly to a Scandinavian accent and recited the goofball tunes word for word. We had a smattering of 45s-I remember distinctly "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis and "Green, Green," by the New Christy Minstrels. Many of these were leftovers from the day my teenage Aunt Sal brought her shotgun to the farm and practiced skeet shooting, using a stack of her "old" 45s in place of clay pigeons. I know there was more Elvis and plenty of Beatles in that stack, and shudder to think that somewhere in the subsoil out behind Dad's barn are the irretrievable shards of an eBay bonanza sufficient to finance Amy's pending orthodontia.

We also had six alb.u.ms by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Bra.s.s. They were easily my favorites. My father still had the trumpet he played in the Eau Claire Memorial High School band; I would pull it from the case and blow air-trumpet in sync with "A Taste of Honey" and "Bittersweet Samba." I have those alb.u.ms now, and sometimes I load them on the old console stereo I keep in my office just for the pleasurable rush of memory the vinyl gives-"Green Peppers" puts me back in the old farmhouse, the bra.s.s notes echoing from the cool plaster walls, as the barnyard lies still beneath the noonday sun. I note that all three of the songs I cite are from the alb.u.m Whipped Cream & Other Delights Whipped Cream & Other Delights, which featured on its cover a lady wearing nothing but confection. The alb.u.m was released in 1965, and millions of young boys have yet to recover. It was quite a deal to be riffling past the original cast Sesame Street Book & Record Sesame Street Book & Record alb.u.m and Mitch Miller's alb.u.m and Mitch Miller's Sing Along with Mitch Sing Along with Mitch only to come face-to-face with such dairy-based profundity. If you held the cardboard sleeve at an angle you could make out just the hint of the curve of one of her mysterious naughty bits, and the naked implications blew my youthful fuse. I'm surprised Mom didn't cover the woman in duct tape, because when she discovered that the version of "Bill Grogan's Goat" included on an anthology of train songs featured a mild expletive, she took a stick pin and cut a groove from the beginning of the song to the end so when the needle hit that track, it skidded right past with a scratchy rumble. If you were to confront my mother and accuse her of censors.h.i.+p, she would reply, "Exactly." only to come face-to-face with such dairy-based profundity. If you held the cardboard sleeve at an angle you could make out just the hint of the curve of one of her mysterious naughty bits, and the naked implications blew my youthful fuse. I'm surprised Mom didn't cover the woman in duct tape, because when she discovered that the version of "Bill Grogan's Goat" included on an anthology of train songs featured a mild expletive, she took a stick pin and cut a groove from the beginning of the song to the end so when the needle hit that track, it skidded right past with a scratchy rumble. If you were to confront my mother and accuse her of censors.h.i.+p, she would reply, "Exactly."

Still: Whipped Cream & Other Delights Whipped Cream & Other Delights. When I learned some thirty years later that the whipped cream was actually shaving cream, it did absolutely nothing to cool my jets.

Dad didn't care for the music, and when we heard the porch door open we turned it off, but he did sit at the upright piano sometimes after milking to plunk out hymns and then send us up the stairs with a remarkably groovy interpretation of "On Top of Old Smoky." For several years I rode my bike two miles for piano lessons over on Highway F with Mrs. North. My parents hoped I might one day be good enough to play hymns at gospel meeting, but I peaked with a workmanlike version of "Let There Be Peace on Earth" at the elementary Christmas concert, and when I discovered football the piano lessons petered out. To this day, however, thanks to Mrs. North I can read the treble clef just well enough to help Amy with her her piano lessons. piano lessons.

My mother taught me to read when I was four years old. Mom is a compulsive reader. She reads for pleasure, she reads to edify herself, but more often than not, she reads because she can't help it. I understand. The minute I find myself sitting still, I start rummaging around for printed material. Pretty much anything will do-a book or magazine, sure. But also cereal boxes, the weekly shopper, the underside of the Kleenex box, or the back of the toothpaste tube. (I can recite by heart: "Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.") As a toddler, whenever I saw Mom reading, I bugged her to read to me. And she did. Every day. One day as I pestered her with my copy of Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh while she was settled with a book of her own, Mom set down a rule: She would read one chapter of while she was settled with a book of her own, Mom set down a rule: She would read one chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh aloud (this was the original text-heavy version, not the picture-book version), but then I had to sit there quietly holding my book while Mom read a chapter of her book to herself. It worked, and became standard procedure. It took me years to recognize the power of this gift: Mom taught me to love the idea of sitting quietly with a book long before I could make out the words on the page. aloud (this was the original text-heavy version, not the picture-book version), but then I had to sit there quietly holding my book while Mom read a chapter of her book to herself. It worked, and became standard procedure. It took me years to recognize the power of this gift: Mom taught me to love the idea of sitting quietly with a book long before I could make out the words on the page.

In time I began to recognize letters and make attempts at small words, so Mom sent away to a Chicago newspaper for a phonics book. When it arrived, she started at the beginning and worked through page by page (sample lesson for C C and and K K: "This cat has a bone caught in his throat and he is trying to cough it up, so he says K-K-K as in Cat and Kitty"). Soon I could read on my own, although not infallibly. Dad tells the story of me pointing at the tailgate of the neighbor's pickup and saying, "F-O-R-D...TRUCK!"

During that same tumultuous third-grade stretch when I was getting religion with the help of Hazel Felleman's poetry collection, Mom was sorting through a box of secondhand clothing when a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front tumbled out. I took it to the porch, settled into a chair, and dove in. I'd love to say reading Erich Maria Remarque at the age of nine stood as evidence of a precocious literary bent, but I'm afraid it had more to do with a young boy's fascination for all things war. Whenever Mom took us on our regular trips to the Chetek Public Library, my brother John and I headed straight for the aviation section, raiding the stacks for everything we could get our hands on about the Red Baron, the French-American hero Raoul Lufbery, and our Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker of the Hat-in-the-Ring squadron. We put together glue-splotched and imprecisely decaled plastic models of Sopwith Camel biplanes and Fokker triplanes and strung them from our bedroom ceilings using black thread from Mom's sewing box. We entertained visions of ourselves running across the green gra.s.s of a sun-soaked British airfield, prepared to buzz into the fluffy white clouds where war seemed to be a romantic romp in the clouds, with a tip of the hat to the hail-fellow-well-met set to shoot you down. tumbled out. I took it to the porch, settled into a chair, and dove in. I'd love to say reading Erich Maria Remarque at the age of nine stood as evidence of a precocious literary bent, but I'm afraid it had more to do with a young boy's fascination for all things war. Whenever Mom took us on our regular trips to the Chetek Public Library, my brother John and I headed straight for the aviation section, raiding the stacks for everything we could get our hands on about the Red Baron, the French-American hero Raoul Lufbery, and our Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker of the Hat-in-the-Ring squadron. We put together glue-splotched and imprecisely decaled plastic models of Sopwith Camel biplanes and Fokker triplanes and strung them from our bedroom ceilings using black thread from Mom's sewing box. We entertained visions of ourselves running across the green gra.s.s of a sun-soaked British airfield, prepared to buzz into the fluffy white clouds where war seemed to be a romantic romp in the clouds, with a tip of the hat to the hail-fellow-well-met set to shoot you down.

I was drawing a lot of ornate battle scenes at the time, often at the elbow of another recently acquired pal of mine, Eric Jakobs. Yin to Hardy Biesterveld's yang, Eric was the well-behaved son of the local Lutheran pastor. He arrived partway through third grade and moved away not long after when his father was called to another parish, but for a stretch there we were best friends to the point that we created our own hieroglyphic secret code, the key to which we sketched out and buried in a tuna can near the culvert just up the road one evening when Eric was visiting. I hid it good, because when I returned on a decoding mission a week later, I couldn't find it. The culvert has long since been replaced, so who knows where the can wound up. Perhaps one day it will surface to baffle interstellar archaeologists.

Eric was a talented draftsman. In fact, his arrival knocked me from my position in the cla.s.s as "best draw'er." I clearly remember looking at his stuff and feeling a seeping twinge of envy, but also thinking, Wow, he's better than me. Our works were sweeping panoramics in which the skies were clogged with ball-turreted B-29s, Luftwaffe dive-bombers (the Stuka was a favorite-we loved the aggressive geometry of the inverted gull wings, plus we thought it funny that a warplane might be branded a "Junkers"), P-51 Mustangs (consistently sporting shark teeth), and P-38 Lightnings. We scrambled a lot of those P-38s strictly because we fancied the exotic twin-booms look. On the ground, Panzers squared off with Shermans, and the guys in green sniped, machine-gunned, and lobbed grenades at guys in gray or black. We perfected our rendering of the German helmet with its visor and dropped rim (we secretly found it sharper-looking than the standard American GI soup pot) and carefully labeled every piece of enemy equipment with a swastika-an emblem we memorized with creepy a.s.siduousness so as not to have the arms bent in the wrong direction. Every visible muzzle-on the planes, on the tanks, at the end of each rifle-spouted jagged flame. On an optimistic note, if a plane was smoking toward the earth, its pilot would be visible in the sky, parachuting safely to the ground. Perhaps an accidental archivist will one day prove me wrong, but as I recall there were few if any dead soldiers, and none of them wore green. War poured from our colored pencils not as h.e.l.l, but as a circus plus fireworks where at worst the good guys suffered nonterminal flesh wounds. It was in this mind-set that I first read All Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front. I still have the actual book. It's a 1930 hardcover edition and the gray fabric is splotched with some unidentifiable spill. From the first page, I cherished the characters. I loved the rough Tjaden and his lice-popping oven. I hated Himmelstoss. I couldn't wait to see what the witty scavenger, Kat, scrounged next. But I especially cared for the narrator, Paul Baumer. He seemed calm, thoughtful, and strong. I read him as just another steady Louis L'Amour cowboy. Then I got to chapter 9, and Paul stabbed an enemy soldier to death. He said the soldier was French. This did not compute. I backed up and reread the pa.s.sage. From reading all those air ace books I knew the French were on our side. And were thus the good guys. But I had been operating under the a.s.sumption that the narrator was the good guy. He seemed like the good guy. He was was a good guy. I puzzled over the section, rereading it several times to see if I had missed something in the chronology. And then it slowly dawned on me. Paul Baumer was one of the a good guy. I puzzled over the section, rereading it several times to see if I had missed something in the chronology. And then it slowly dawned on me. Paul Baumer was one of the bad bad guys. guys.

From an adult standpoint, my misread seems ludicrous. After all, three paragraphs into the book Baumer speaks of the "English heavies" hitting his company with high explosives; there are all the German names and surnames; and there are battle scenes with the French earlier in the book. I remember some of this niggling me at the time, but I was reading full speed ahead and pushed it aside, figuring I had missed some twist of history. But when I got to the scene in the sh.e.l.l hole, I could no longer get around it: Paul Baumer was a German German soldier. He had killed one of the good guys. What did that make Baumer? soldier. He had killed one of the good guys. What did that make Baumer?

I don't keep a chart or anything, but to the best of my recollection I have read All Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front seven times. As a boy raised on Bible pa.s.sages, I can't say that it is the most important book in my life. But the impact of Paul Baumer's story was profound, if subtle. When I opened the book, I possessed the vocabulary necessary to read the book, but until that section in the sh.e.l.l hole I lacked the insight required to see it as anything but a good yarn. I began the book a third-grader believing all the good guys played for the right team. Now I was faced with the knowledge that a good guy might wind up on the wrong team. seven times. As a boy raised on Bible pa.s.sages, I can't say that it is the most important book in my life. But the impact of Paul Baumer's story was profound, if subtle. When I opened the book, I possessed the vocabulary necessary to read the book, but until that section in the sh.e.l.l hole I lacked the insight required to see it as anything but a good yarn. I began the book a third-grader believing all the good guys played for the right team. Now I was faced with the knowledge that a good guy might wind up on the wrong team.

I'm glad I had a friend like Eric Jakobs. He taught me a nice lesson in humility. He was a better draw'er than me. Period. He taught me what it's like to realize you aren't the best at something, and no amount of positive thinking or self-esteem building will change that fact, and you better figure out a way to live in light of that fact because other instances are pending.

A woman recommended by our midwife has come to the house to give us birthing instructions. It is a cold day, but the sun is s.h.i.+ning warmly through the window and spotlighting the carpet of the living room floor, where we are pretending to have a baby. The instructor has been very thorough, and it is neat to receive instruction right here in our home. At one point she puts Anneliese on all fours in a stance intended to relieve lower back pain during labor. Then she rotates me around back in a ma.s.sage position, and Anneliese and I get the giggles because, without putting too fine a point on it, the maneuvering reminds us of how we wound up in this situation in the first place. When the instructor leaves, I fear she may be upset with us over our lack of seriousness, but what she may not realize is that this hour on the carpet has been the best date Anneliese and I have had for months. It has been too long since we had a conspiratorial giggle. Last month I bought a card with a line drawing of a beautiful lady in a red backless gown. Today I took colored pencils and put a round red belly on the lady, then two valentine hearts-one hovering above the lady's chest and one tinier one above the curve of her belly.

When we married, I was a bachelor of some thirty-nine years. Anneliese was a single mom raising a three-year-old while teaching Spanish at the university. We met in a public library when I was seated at a table selling books. I carry an abiding image of Amy's pale blue eyes looking up at me and her mother's matching pair just above. For our first official date we met in a coffee shop, talked forever, and then took a long walk that is currently approaching its fifth year. While I took some ribbing about the evaporation of my singletude and gave up my New Auburn address, it is Anneliese who is bearing the brunt of change: leaving her teaching position, carrying the baby, homeschooling Amy, and tending our new place the many days I am away or sequestered in the office. I love my wife for her willingness to take these leaps, her strengths where I am weak, the way when she smiles it is utterly without reserve, and yes, her clear blue eyes, as startling this morning as when I saw them in the library that first day.

She has been caught off guard by the difficulty of this pregnancy. When she was carrying Amy she spent a month hiking in Central America-at one point climbing a volcano. She experienced none of the persistent weariness, or the spates of contractions that come and go. Her belly is big now, and she walks with her shoulders back to counter the weight. I watch her sometimes when she doesn't know, and just like when I sit down to write her a card, the close study precipitates a sense of pleasant wonder that I have a wife and this is her. Last night we went out to eat with friends, and it was good to see Anneliese laughing in conversation. While we were waiting for the food to arrive, Anneliese and I held hands beneath the table, and at one point she gave my wedding ring a little wiggle just like when we were first married and couldn't quite believe it. When we left the restaurant we held hands again and she leaned her head against my shoulder as we walked to the car and I opened the door for her like any good boy on a first date would.

The big farmhouse in Chippewa County is mostly empty now. Mom and Dad still provide respite care for profoundly disabled children, and they have full-time responsibility for Tagg, a boy who was two months old when his drunken uncle shook him violently. Tagg's injuries were devastating-he cannot dress, feed, or care for himself, he cannot speak, and he is p.r.o.ne to outbursts of hitting and biting. The county asked my parents to provide temporary care until the court case was resolved-eleven years later he remains in their home.

The last kids to leave the old-fas.h.i.+oned way-by graduating from high school-were my sisters Kathleen and Migena. Kathleen joined the family when she was three months old (I remember her foster parents handing her through the door of our Volkswagen bus in a basket). Migena's route was far more circuitous. When her brother Donard arrived in New Auburn as part of a foreign exchange program, well-meaning citizens bunked him with another Albanian exchange student, not realizing they were from opposing factions in Albania's rapidly escalating civil war. To preserve the peace, Donard moved in with Mom and Dad, after which they discovered his paperwork had been forged as a means of moving him safely out of the country. One night after Don had settled into school and become a familiar face at the table, Mom and Dad's phone rang. It was Migena, in tears and calling from Michigan. She had made it to the United States with another student exchange program, only to discover upon arrival that the Michigan program would not provide her with graduation credits, and thus no opportunity to continue her education in the United States. Mom and Dad drove to Michigan and brought her home.

Today Don and Migena have both gone to college and found good jobs. They have endured tortuous paper chases in order to maintain their legal status, with my parents filling out form after form and vouching for them with government officials as necessary. They show up at birthdays and holidays, and once even managed to get some of their relatives into Wisconsin to go deer hunting with us. I am proud to call them brother and sister. "How many kids are in your family?" people still ask, and now you know why I never have a number. We're all spread out now, over geography and vocation. I have a sister Lee in Montana. My sister Suzy served in the army and is now raising a son and taking college cla.s.ses. Jud lives in a group home and I haven't seen him in years. Somewhere out there I hope Eve is well and Larry is walking strong. Back home, Mom and Dad are living the empty-nest syndrome writ large. Dad doesn't seem to mind. Shortly after Kathleen and Migena graduated, I visited the farm. "I got up the other morning and a miracle happened," said Dad. "For the first time in forty years, I was first in line at the toaster!"

Once I asked Mom what drove her and Dad to start taking in children all those years ago. I was expecting some philosophical and possibly faith-based answer. Not so. "When we were still dating, your dad told me he wanted sixteen kids," she said. I chuckled. "No, really!" she said. "I said, No sir sir! Six Six, maybe, but not sixteen sixteen! So we decided we wanted to have some of our own kids, adopt some, and take some in through foster care. It was just always our plan." Her own parents had begun taking in foster children when their youngest daughter-my aunt Annie-said she wanted a younger sister. Mom says she was reading the newspaper at the time and found an ad seeking local foster parents. She showed it to her mother-my grandma Peterson-and shortly they took in their first foster child. Grandma kept a photo alb.u.m of each child she and Grandpa fostered, and when she died there were twenty-eight children in the book.

Even with the baby yet to be born, Anneliese has brought up the subject of adoption and foster care. I once heard a man say that when a woman asks, "Honey, do you think we should have another baby?" he might as well start setting up the crib, but I'm not sure where this will go, or if. It has not been one long gauzy shot for my folks. You cannot take in that legion of children over the years and find joy with every one. Many arrived with their own history of troubles. There were the runaways. There were the children returned to abusive homes through error and faulty oversight. On the upside, I think my siblings would mostly agree that our full house seasoned us to accept the unusual as usual. We were often perplexed by people who were uncomfortable or even fearful in the presence of an obviously mentally disabled individual, since we had learned to a.s.sume that if someone was barking at their macaroni, they always always barked at their macaroni. Then again I also learned hard lessons about my own character, angrily sticking up for my one of my sisters when a kid in the library teased her about her disfigured eye one day, then mocking and tripping her cruelly the next. In the ever-changing cast of tykes carrying damage-congenital, traumatic, physical, emotional-we came to see that even in the midst of our own warm childhood, all was not well everywhere. barked at their macaroni. Then again I also learned hard lessons about my own character, angrily sticking up for my one of my sisters when a kid in the library teased her about her disfigured eye one day, then mocking and tripping her cruelly the next. In the ever-changing cast of tykes carrying damage-congenital, traumatic, physical, emotional-we came to see that even in the midst of our own warm childhood, all was not well everywhere.

There is every reason for me to emulate my parents, but I am hesitant because after watching them for my lifetime I know exactly what the workload entails, and I'm not sure I'm up to it even on a small scale. I am keenly aware of what it cost to provide us that rich life. My sister Rya arrived on a day when we were making lumber. I remember walking in for lunch with the rest of the sawmill crew, standing on the porch steps sweeping sawdust off my jeans, then walking into the kitchen to find a tiny blue-tinged baby asleep in a ba.s.sinet beside the table. Rya had Down syndrome, and the blue tinge was caused by a congenital heart defect common in Down syndrome children. In Rya's case, the cardiac issues were further complicated by a lung disorder.

For the next five years, as Rya underwent a series of surgeries and hospitalizations, our house took on the trappings of a pediatrics ward. Green oxygen bottles lined the porch. A lazy Susan on the counter was covered with medication bottles and there was digitalis in the refrigerator. Mom was forever coming from and going to doctor appointments and blood draws. Some of Rya's more serious surgeries were done in the University of Wisconsin teaching hospital in Madison. I accompanied Mom on many of these trips while Dad stayed back to milk the cows and care for the rest of the crew. Once when Rya took a precipitous turn for the worse I remember holding oxygen on her as Mom drove through a blizzard to the emergency room. In addition to changing Rya's diapers, we kids learned how to change her dressings and inspect the sutures for signs of infection. When my sister Kathleen was a toddler in footie pajamas she would tip Rya across her lap, cup her hands, and clap up and down Rya's upper back to loosen the congestion, just as she had seen Mom and Dad do.

Rya learned to speak only a modest few words, and even those were difficult for anyone outside the family to understand, but Mom expanded her ability to communicate by teaching her some sign language. She loved to clown-after going to a high school track meet, she would stand by the kitchen sink, raise one finger to the sky, go "bang," and then do a high-speed toddle across the kitchen floor, laughing all the way. She entertained us as much as her heart and lungs would allow.

In the end, it was her lungs that failed her. She needed more and more oxygen. When she could no longer get enough air to sleep lying down, Dad built her an inclined bench from boards he had sawn himself and she took to sleeping sitting up, resting her head on her thin arms, her favorite doll by her side with its own oxygen mask. In the background the oxygen humidifier bubbled with a sound that suggested a brook in a meadow. The doctors said there was nothing more to be done, and finally they were right. Soon she required round-the-clock care. Dad sold the cows-the family's only source of regular income-so he could split s.h.i.+fts with Mom. The night before she died, we were all in the living room around the couch that had become her bed. She was smiling widely and enjoying our company. At one point I went to the kitchen, and when I looked back in the living room I saw that she had removed her oxygen mask and clambered down from the couch. She was making the rounds of the room, spending a moment with each sibling. Eventually she toddled into the kitchen and found me. We went back in the living room then, and that is what I remember, our whole family gathered around and Rya with her mask back on, her breath a pulse of fog against the transparent green plastic, and in the morning she was gone.

On August 8, 1977, I rose from a metal folding chair in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Moose Hall in Barron, Wisconsin, during the closing verse of "Close Thy Heart No More," and committed my life to Christ. Sometimes when folks professed they rose with joyful weeping. Other times their faces would be twisted in some combination of relief and holy fear like Sam at the end of Robert Duvall's The Apostle The Apostle. But although my heart was beating high I was composed, because I had been thinking about this for a long time, and I was ready. The conversion had been under way since the day I read "The h.e.l.l-Bound Train" and gave up cussing, and was herded to its conclusion by the Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse during a stretch when I got to reading The Revelation of St. John the Divine in bed alone at night. To paraphrase Townes Van Zandt on the blues, after Revelation, everything else is just zippity-doo-dah zippity-doo-dah.

I believed, and believed fully. And when-many years later-my belief turned to doubt, I left the church the same way I came in-quietly, over time. I have no cataclysmic story to tell, no single precipitating crisis. I can summon a little residual crankiness over the usual anecdotal complaints-workers running folks off over matters of hemline and haircut, pious elders with televisions hidden in the armoire-but I would never cut it as a bitter heretic. By and large, the people I wors.h.i.+pped with were a humble, tolerant bunch, content to pursue quiet example over thunderous harangue. So much so, in fact, that when in my wandering I hear someone snarking on fundamentalist Christians, my first thought is, Hey-those are my people you're talking about.

When you drift as I have, the Friends call it "losing out." Lately I wonder if I was out before I was in, if the voice of Paul Baumer put an existential whisper in my ear, casting shadows between black and white. I wonder too what sort of self-pitying train wreck I might have become had I not been raised by two people whose daily actions transcended my dogmatic quibbles and still do. Sometimes Mom apologizes to us kids, saying she and Dad took on too much, and that we suffered as a result. She says this, and I think of all the books, and prayers before meals at the big table, and the parade we made trooping up the stairs to bed while Dad played "On Top of Old Smoky" one more time, and how cozy it was with ten of us crammed in the Volkswagen after gospel meeting on a winter night. Or how after twenty years of opening my emergency medical kit, the first thing I think of when I see that green bottle is Rya on her last night bravely beaming.

Anneliese and Amy have bundled up and gone cross-country skiing out the ridge. Two days ago we had a blizzard that laid down a thick batting of snow. The spruce tree limbs remain bent beneath daubs of white, and the wind has pushed a four-foot drift around the garage and right up to my office door. While the flakes were still dropping, Amy celebrated with repeated swan dives from the top step of the office stairwell, planting her face in the peak of the drift and chewing snow.

I can see them now from my office window, gliding back to the yard in the fading light. Amy is leading in her blue snowsuit and goggles and Anneliese coming up behind, her current state betrayed by just a hint of top-heaviness beneath all the bundling. Moments like this, when I see the two of them together at a distance, I often think of the three years of history they have on me. It's not unsettling; it's just one of those hiccups in perspective that can leave me momentarily disoriented. I shut my computer down and head for the house. We've planned an evening together, watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on Satan's glowing box. In the kitchen Amy is apple-cheeked and giddy. "Watching" is a rare treat, and she bounces back and forth between the refrigerator and the counter, helping me put together a tray of cheese and vegetables while Anneliese pops corn. on Satan's glowing box. In the kitchen Amy is apple-cheeked and giddy. "Watching" is a rare treat, and she bounces back and forth between the refrigerator and the counter, helping me put together a tray of cheese and vegetables while Anneliese pops corn.

Upstairs we settle in on a mattress, our backs propped against a stack of pillows. Amy snuggles in between us, trilling with happiness. After three years of being a visitor in this house, I'm still getting used to the idea that we live here now. I think of my parents in that '56 Chevy, leaving Nekoosa. As the movie begins and Amy turns her attention to the screen, I reach an arm around Anneliese and pull her closer, squeezing Amy between us.

CHAPTER 4.

Winter is on the fizzle, and Mister Big Shot is looking for love. and Mister Big Shot is looking for love.

Mister Big Shot is a c.o.c.k pheasant. He has been appearing at the edge of our yard nearly every morning for several weeks now, and he is plainly addled by love. He sports a glorious set of head feathers: blood-splash eye patch, bottle-green Batman cowl, a pristine white collar. The colors startle the eye, bright in the brown weeds like sc.r.a.ps of birthday balloon. Sadly, once he follows his beak out of the weeds, Mister Big Shot reveals the limits of his machismo, because somewhere along the line the poor bird lost his tail feathers. You have to figure the bobtail is a drawback on the dating scene. Like a bachelor with a bald spot, he must find ways to compensate. And so he inflates his chest, struts the perimeter of the yard, and crows bl.u.s.terously.

Thus we call him Mister Big Shot.

The first time I saw him, I was stepping out the front door after breakfast. He had emerged from the row of spruce trees beside the pole barn. I froze and whispered over my shoulder to Amy, "Come here, look, look!" I cautioned her to move stealthily, not wanting to scare him off. I cautioned her to move stealthily, not wanting to scare him off.

Turns out we couldn't scare him away short of a shotgun. The relations.h.i.+p has gone from breathtaking Animal Planet moment to There's that knuckleheaded pheasant again There's that knuckleheaded pheasant again. For all my would-be woodsy knowledge, it took me a few sightings before I caught on: Wait a minute...isn't he supposed to have tail feathers? Wait a minute...isn't he supposed to have tail feathers? We didn't have a lot of pheasants around when I was growing up, so I tracked down some pheasant photographs on the Web to check myself. Sure enough. Most male pheasants have grand plumage sprouting out their hinders-sweeping quills of the sort you might use to sign ceremonial parchment, or to accessorize your Robin Hood cap. I wrote to a wildlife biologist and asked what might have gone wrong. He told me the feathers could have been s.n.a.t.c.hed by a predator in a near-miss. Also, he said, sometimes the tail freezes to the ground during cold snaps, and when the pheasant takes flight, some of the feathers remain fixed. I picture the pheasant windmilling like mad, getting zero lift, then- We didn't have a lot of pheasants around when I was growing up, so I tracked down some pheasant photographs on the Web to check myself. Sure enough. Most male pheasants have grand plumage sprouting out their hinders-sweeping quills of the sort you might use to sign ceremonial parchment, or to accessorize your Robin Hood cap. I wrote to a wildlife biologist and asked what might have gone wrong. He told me the feathers could have been s.n.a.t.c.hed by a predator in a near-miss. Also, he said, sometimes the tail freezes to the ground during cold snaps, and when the pheasant takes flight, some of the feathers remain fixed. I picture the pheasant windmilling like mad, getting zero lift, then-puh-luck!-he blasts wide-eyed skyward. The biologist also said if the pheasant was pen-raised, it might have broken its tail feathers while tussling with other pheasants. Mister Big Shot does seem a little too tame for his own good (we can get pretty close before he bolts), so perhaps he was raised by humans. On the other hand, the biologist said only 10 percent of released birds survive the winter, so in that case Mister Big Shot would have earned the right to strut.

In the process of our speculation about the missing tail feathers, I tell Amy the legend of how the bear lost his tail: Bear's friend Fox convinces him he can catch a fish by dangling his tail through a hole in the ice. Bear sits there all night long. In the morning he feels a nibble, but when he leaps up, his tail-which has frozen in the ice-is pulled off. A gruesome story, as many fables are. Amy draws a connection to the plight of Mister Big Shot, and we discuss whether or not he might have been ice fis.h.i.+ng. Then Amy asks me to pretend I am Mister Big Shot at the moment he did the power-molt. I flap my arms, wince with feigned effort, then holler "Yee-owch! "Yee-owch!" and look behind me in dismay and wonder. Amy laughs and asks me to do it again. But then she goes sober on me. "Will he ever get his feathers back?" I tell her the biologist said they would grow back in August. Until then, we will know the bird when we see him.

Long before my father had cows, he was a shepherd.

One of the Friends by Nekoosa had sheep, and Dad says that's where he got the bug. When he moved to the farm in 1966, he began to gather the flock. He got four ewes from his brother-in-law over by Hillsdale, and bought another four from a local man named Earl. Earl wanted thirty-six dollars. Dad wrote a check. Earl looked at the check and then he looked at Dad, and then Earl said, "This better be good." Dad reminded me recently that this used to be sheep country. "Lots of people used to have sheep," he said. "The Mareses, Norths, Skaws-they all had sheep." He's right. I tend to recall my farm childhood through the frame of my youth-when it was dominated by cla.s.sic family dairying. I had forgotten the early days when farming was still a patchwork endeavor holding the line against the narrower specialization to come. I start working my way around the repurposed or vanished farmsteads all around the towns.h.i.+p, and sure enough, I do remember these people having sheep. "You sold your milk all year round, in the winter you logged, and in the fall you sold your lambs," says Dad. In other words, you kept a diversified portfolio.

Ask my father what he "does," and nine times out of ten he will reply, "I'm just a dumb sheep farmer." But listen to a dumb sheep farmer for long, and you'll realize the self-deprecation (rooted in the relative unlikelihood that sheep will put you on the fast track to the Forbes 500) does a poor job of masking some underlying affection for husbandry. My dad, a man not given to pet names, often refers to his "woollies," and once when someone suggested that sheep weren't too bright, Dad responded with a question and answered it himself: "Y'know what you get when you inflate a sheep, paint it black and white, add two faucets, and remove its brain?"

He waits a beat. "A cow."

From my largely oblivious childhood perspective, Dad's sheep were a sideline, whereas cows required our daily attention. When you weren't working with the cows you were working on ch.o.r.es predicated on cows. The sheep were just always there. Gray lumps in the distant pasture, only remembered a couple times a year when we rounded them up for worming, or shearing, or when we cut the buck from the flock.

In the early part of the year, however, the sheep begin to wedge their way back into the schedule until they dominate. In February Dad sets up the pens and feeders and gathers the flock to be shorn, after which-having lost their winter coats-they take up permanent residence in the lambing shed until spring and the gra.s.s return.

Lambing season amounts to a month of insufficient catnaps. You tromp to the sheep shed every couple of hours, around the clock, four weeks straight, until the last ewe delivers. The thing you're looking for is a sheep showing signs of imminent birth. She may be pawing the straw, circling, or simply looking distracted. A ewe experiencing the early twinges of labor will sequester herself off along a wall or in a corner. At the onset of a contraction an otherwise placid animal will extend her neck, raise her head, roll back her upper lip, and wrinkle her nose. A laboring ewe will grunt softly, as if she is being nudged in the belly (I hear a chorus of female voices: As she is, Einstein! As she is, Einstein!). Another means of early detection: Put out fresh hay. As her compatriots rush the feeders like woolly pigs, watch for the ewe who remains apart-she's next.

Midwifery-wise, your basic job is to stay out of the way. Observe from a quiet remove and let nature take its course. Recede. Wait.

Anneliese is having a rough time of it. She just can't find her way to sleep. The weariness shows in her eyes every morning, and the best I can come up with is a hopeful "How did you sleep?" This is only forces her to confirm that she didn't sleep well, while I stand there like a fence post. Tonight when I come in the house Anneliese and Amy are watching a video, which is a sign to me that Anneliese is worn out. We put Amy to bed. She closes her eyes and wriggles happily when I tuck the quilt beneath her chin. She is getting so long, so tall. I follow Anneliese to bed, where I rub her neck and lower back. Then I ma.s.sage the area over her uterine ligament on the left side, and when my hand crosses over, I feel the little being within hiccup. It makes me chuckle aloud, but it's also a jolting reminder of how while I meander around thinking of the baby in largely exterior terms, Anneliese lives daily with this life nestled inside her. I kiss her good night and turn to my side of the bed. Our midwife has lately recommended Anneliese drink valerian tea, much revered by the herbal set for its soporific properties. So far it hasn't helped, but there is a mug of it cooling on the nightstand. This I know: valerian tea smells like bad feet and overheated muskrat.

Lying in the dark, trying to ignore the valerian stench, I wonder how I'll do when the baby arrives. Whenever people find out we hope to deliver at home, someone invariably brings up the fact that I am a registered nurse and have worked as an emergency medical responder for twenty years. "You'll be fine!" they say. Then I tell them that in all those years, I have never seen a baby born, let alone delivered one. The only babies I've ever caught emerged from a pair of truncated plastic hips strapped to a library table during our biannual emergency responder testing. Those babies are plastic, and their umbilical cords are attached with a metal snap. Anneliese has stacks of beautifully written home birth books she wants me to read, but so far I've spent most of my time reviewing the very straightforward ill.u.s.trations included in the obstetrics chapter of Nancy Caroline's Emergency Care in the Streets Emergency Care in the Streets.

I spent four years in a fine nursing school, but my maternity rotation was a bust. Every time I went to the hospital, I got all prepped and ready, but never once was a baby born on my s.h.i.+ft. The only significant experience I recall was when my instructor asked a woman who had already given birth if she would agree to allow a student nurse to perform her "five-point checks." Five-point checks are an examination performed on the mother in the hours following childbirth to detect any abnormalities or problems. Three of the five points qualify as personal and specific, and a uterus ma.s.sage is included.

"Hi," I said, walking into the room. "I'm here to do your five-point checks." The woman's eyes widened.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your student nurse."

"Oh. My. G.o.d."

I retreated half a step. "If you'd rather..."

"I said I didn't mind a student nurse, but I..." She trailed off. Then she took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. "Oh, what the h.e.l.l," she said, hiking up her gown. "It's my third kid. Get it over with."

These mornings as soon as breakfast is finished and before I head up to the office, Amy and I collect maple sap. It's a small operation-just six buckets on four trees-and it doesn't take long to make the rounds. Amy bounds ahead, eager to lift each lid and gauge the overnight acc.u.mulation. While I dump the clear sap into buckets, Amy touches her finger to a droplet hanging from the tap, breaking the surface tension so it melts across her fingertip before she licks it clean. We've got a pretty good deal going here-a couple named Jan and Gale have all the equipment and do the boiling. They have agreed to give us half the syrup in exchange for allowing them to tap the trees. All we have to do is gather the sap and store it in two plastic barrels. When the barrels are full, it is Amy's job to call Jan and Gale and tell them so.

We've had a good stretch of weather for the sap run-warm, sunny days, freezing at night-and when Amy lifts the galvanized lids she finds most of the hanging buckets are full and capped with a crust of cloudy white ice. Sometimes when we get to the last tree, however, there is only an inch or two of frozen sap at the bottom of the bucket. Amy backs off and shakes her head at the tree sadly, as if it is an underperforming child. Then she scoots ahead to the garage, where she steadies the funnel as I decant the day's collection. The whole job gives us maybe ten minutes together, but as she skips back toward the house to begin her school day, I am hoping in memory she will recall it as much longer.

As I walk to the office the sun is warm but the wind is cold. This seasonal contrast always evokes memories of my friend Ricky. A neighbor kid who began hanging around our farm one spring when I was five or six years old, Ricky was a dark-eyed boy of about twelve who didn't seem to have friends his own age. At first, Mom says, that worried her. But Ricky and I struck up a fast friends.h.i.+p, aided by the fact that by country standards Ricky lived right around the corner: two flat miles from his driveway to mine. And blacktop all the way. Nothin' at all for a boy on a bike.

Not forty yards from Ricky's mailbox, a pair of corrugated culverts punched north-south through the east-west berm of Beaver Creek Road, carrying Beaver Creek itself beneath it. Two steel tubes and a middling stream might not sound like much, but as far as I was concerned, Ricky was the luckiest boy in the world. My father's farm was all swamp and flatland. This left me easily bewitched by moving water. Water that flowed flowed-that didn't just seep seep, or sit still and fester up mosquitoes-gave me Huck Finn fevers. Those first warm days coming out of winter, my siblings kept our ears c.o.c.ked for the sound of trickling water. Then we'd track the trickle down and do what we could to speed the flow-kicking snow into the channel, where it melted even as it floated, or widening the channel by stomping the overhanging edges of ice, which snapped beneath our boots with a satisfying crunch. When a true thaw came, rivulets broke loose everywhere, and we spent hours gouging channels from one puddle to the next, delighting in how the dirt crumbled into the clear water, spinning mud clouds downstream to form cream-in-coffee eddies. When the sediment swept clear and again the water ran transparent, miniature rapids sparkled in the sun. If we churned the puddles to mud with our boots beforehand, the drawdown left mocha-foam striations along the sh.o.r.eline. It seems the urge to control the flow of water is innate-rare is the child not born prequalified for the Army Corps of Engineers. Workable parallels are found in the urge to shovel square corners into freshly fallen snow. A man on a local radio show cla.s.sifies the snow-handling fetish as a form of "s.p.a.ce management." This is apt, but I propose freelance hydrology as a subcategory.

The water often melted faster than it could dissipate. The low spot in the middle of last year's cornfield became a pond, complete with paddling ducks; a dip in the road became a flat stretch of water hazard-a mirage that wasn't a mirage; over where the Keysey Swamp drained, the culverts submerged leaving no trace but a whirlpool that spun narrower and narrower until the gabbling swirl sucked shut and left the swamp water to rise in silence above the hummocks and muskrat houses to the very shoulder of Five Mile Road and sometimes across it so bullfrogs might laze unmolested above the centerline. Children love the idea of transformation and alternate worlds, and the delayed spring runoff transformed our landscape as completely as any fairy-tale Merlin. Once I sat very still against a white pine and watched as an early-returning mallard couple paddled within six feet of me on what in dry times was a deer trail. I was transfixed by the drake's iridescent head, so close I could see the wet s.h.i.+ne of his eyeball. One sodden spring when I was older, the road flooded by Oscar Knipfer's place and we took the canoe over. We paddled back and forth from one blacktop sh.o.r.e to the other, giddy with the anomaly of it. Every summer we canoed the Red Cedar River, but for some reason it was twice as exciting to paddle above the roadway, as if we had been gifted with a magical boat.

One surreal spring day my brother John spotted a northern pike in the cow pasture. It was just a snaky little hammer handle-if we had caught it while actually fis.h.i.+ng, we would have tossed it back without a thought. But here on the back forty, in a drainage ditch ten navigable miles from the nearest habitable lake, it was an event on par with the birth of a white buffalo. We hatched fantasies of summer afternoons spent casting Daredevils from the hay wagon. John fetched his fis.h.i.+ng rod and managed to land the fish. Tiny as it was, he released it immediately. Then the ditchwater receded, and with it the dream of battling lunkers in the clover.

But Ricky-Ricky didn't have to wait for magic water-when the ice let loose over his way, he had himself a real honest-to-goodness crick crick, and it lasted all summer long! How I envied him this exotic proximity. During the spring of our friends.h.i.+p I was always eager to pedal over his way when Mom gave the OK. We'd meet at the culverts, choose one, clamber to opposite ends, then hang head-down to whoop back and forth. Our voices echoed flatly before dampening against the corrugations. We tossed pebbles at each other. They fell short and went ploop! ploop! or ricocheted off the ribbed steel with a compressed or ricocheted off the ribbed steel with a compressed ping! ping! Sometimes we played Poohsticks, simultaneously dropping two different-sized branches in the upstream end of the culvert before running across the road to the downstream end, hoping the stick we picked came through first. Sometimes we played Poohsticks, simultaneously dropping two different-sized branches in the upstream end of the culvert before running across the road to the downstream end, hoping the stick we picked came through first.