Crunching Gravel (12 page)

With ceremonial gestures, I-Zelda smoothed her hands over her body, jangled her bracelets in a brief dance, circled the hen (now positioned between two large lighted candles), took up the fowl, and began sucking its beak. She pulled a scarlet scarf from her cincture and wound it about the hen, securing its wings. Taking the bird firmly by its feet, she placed its entire head in her mouth. The bird struggled. I-Zelda withdrew the head. Trickles of blood were visible on its throat. I-Zelda's mouth was bloody.

Margie was sick. We pushed our way through the crowd and started home.

I did not return to Brik the next evening. I stayed in the field all afternoon gathering and husking corn. I chopped wood. After supper, I lay in bed praying to Jesus. He approached with palm extended, the wounds visible. He was smiling.

 

 

 

The fair was the social event of the year, and people you seldom saw surfaced. Clubs and lodges sold beer and food. Most families attended the entire three days. Livestock had to be fed, watered, and kept clean, so boys brought blankets and slept in the straw near their animals.

On Friday morning we loaded our sow and piglets and a dozen hens into a trailer. At the fairgrounds we secured pens and cages and attached entry tags; then we returned for garden produce and canned food—string beans and peas, pints of blueberry and strawberry jams, and a strawberry-rhubarb pie.

By Saturday noon the judging was complete. My mother won firsts for jam and pie, seconds and thirds for the other entries. A plate of cucumbers, ears of sweet corn, and string beans also took firsts. The sow and piglets received a third, with a note scribbled by the judge saying that he doubted they were purebred. Our “white leghorn” pullets earned seconds. Here we fooled the judges: Before displaying the birds, we plucked black feathers, betraying their impure breed, from their bodies. Our Plymouth Rock hen took third, after a string of firsts the five preceding years. Our winnings totaled $45.

A drunken, henna-haired Chicago lady was so enamored of our piglets she suddenly reached into the pen and grabbed one. As the animal wriggled and squealed, the lady gave it a juicy, alcoholic kiss on the snout. The irate sow narrowly missed the woman's arm.

To walk through the fairgrounds at night was to walk through jewels: the lights ablaze, the smell of gasoline and oil propelling the clanging ride motors, the hawkers shouting from their booths, the melancholy music from the merry-go-round pipe organ, the odors of animals and flattened grass. How magical fairs were, so bizarre, so free. The drifters who manned the rides and the skill booths, and the scantily clad women who performed bumps and grinds on the midway were truly glamorous!

At the very top of the ferris wheel I sat suspended by fragile cable and thin steel, in a swinging wooden seat. The starry sky seemed touchable, and the people below, walking in the haze, were small dolls. When I saw my parents strolling, holding hands, with my sister Nell following, I was overwhelmed with love. Later I saw Dad pound at a target with a sledgehammer, the bell he struck ringing magically through the sky.

For the first time, I would appear in public with Dad and Charlie Mattek, playing a medley of Dad's favorite accordion tunes. We were scheduled for Saturday night, as part of the grandstand entertainment. Our fifteen-minute performance would follow a popular local singer, Helen Byington, who imitated the renowned country singer Patsy Montana. Our rehearsal times were limited to the preceding weekend and a brief run-through on Saturday.

We were guided backstage, kept from view while a juggler performed, followed by a man with trained hairless dogs. Then we were announced. Chairs were positioned. Charlie sat in the middle, the foot-high shoe lift and brace he wore visible before him.

We started with “Over the Waves.” Dad played, as he usually did, with his eyes closed. My playing was incredibly clumsy, and the mikes amplified the mistakes. Fortunately, Charlie played a complex guitar. “There's a Tavern in the Town” was our next number, followed by “Red Wing.” Charlie was halfway through his song when a wag started flinging pennies—a few at first, then a flurry. Some struck our faces. They spun like small saucers, stinging where they struck. Someone shouted “Crip!” at Charlie. Dad halted the performance, and we left the stage. The announcer expressed dismay and asked for a big round of applause. We'd been mocked for our poverty, I was sure! We should have worn cowboy clothes. Dad believed that another band we'd beaten out for the engagement was responsible. Charlie laughed, saying he wasn't in good voice anyhow.

On the way home, Dad told me not to be discouraged—I had played well. He asked me to join the band when dance-hall dates arose. He said they needed me.

 

With their usual reticence about personal matters, particularly sexual ones, my parents obscured the fact of my brother's condition: His foreskin was nonretractable and required an operation. My own ignorance of such matters smacked of an embarrassing naïveté. Not until I learned about sex from the Jollys was I aware that you could retract your foreskin without harming your penis, like peeling back your eyelids. Nor had I thought much about circumcision—I had read the word in the Bible, but I had no real idea of its meaning. I interpreted the ancient Hebrews' propensity for chopping off their foreskins as yet another instance of tribal mayhem, a violation of God's creation: If He had not meant for men to have foreskins, He would not have made them.

When Everett returned home from Dr. Oldfield's office, he was in pain, and when he took off his pants to go to bed, I saw the bandage. My dad, in a matter-of-fact tone, embroidered the truth: “The doctor,” he said, “cut off the end of his peter.” My brother was probably the first member of my family to be clipped since progenitor Tunis Peters came to America in the eighteenth century.

Two days later, my uncle appeared with a set of knives, ready to castrate our bull, dropped by Lady the previous summer. Gelded, he would be gentle, increase his weight fast, and produce sweeter meat. I was to hold the ropes that secured him to his stall.

Dad and my uncle wrestled the bull to the floor, roping him. “Hold on hard,” my uncle said. He knelt near the exposed belly, held up a knife, tested its sharpness with his thumb, and then brought it swiftly down and slit the bull's scrotum. As the bull bellowed and writhed, my uncle loosened the large, bean-shaped gonads and flung them into the chicken yard for the hens to eat. He poured turpentine and oil over the incision. Once untied, the bull rose and stood near the barn with his legs spread. “Fetch him some water, Bob,” said my uncle.

 

We inspected the house for deterioration, scraped off old plaster, and rechinked the logs with moss, which we secured by nailing small pincherry branches over it and smeared the whole with plaster. The roof required new tar paper. We rechinked the windows. Since we lacked storm sashes, the heat loss was enormous. On those parts of the house not built of logs, we nailed shiplap over defective boards. We cleared the cellar of debris and took out the old sand in buckets, replacing it with fresh sand for burying carrots, turnips, and potatoes. Finally, we banked an earth and straw mixture all around, covering a foot or so of the outside walls. This would prevent cold drafts from coming in under the floorboards.

After winterizing the house, we proceeded with the farm buildings and the outhouse. There was not much one could do to insulate the latter. Tar paper gave some protection, but on many mornings, after a blizzard had swept the seats with snow, you cleaned the seat with your glove, dropped your trousers, and planted your hams on the icy boards. We never used chamber pots unless we were ill. The smaller children, afraid of the dark, had to be accompanied to the outhouse by parents or older children holding flashlights.

By autumn we had cut the winter's hay. Much of it Dad mowed with a scythe, sweeping practiced swathes through stands of timothy and clover. He cut marsh grass also, mixed with domestic grass. Marsh grass blades were like razors. Cattle loved their seeded heads. Dad also bought two tons of alfalfa from Kula, who always had a surplus. And my uncle gave us hay for helping him harvest his. I loved riding on the horse-drawn wagon, stacking hay as it was pitched up. We fashioned large mounds near the barn, covering it with tarps. Stacked properly, these formed their own watershed, the rain seldom permeating more than an inch or two. For bedding we bought oat straw from Kula.

The most demanding autumn chore was gathering firewood. After the first heavy snow, in early November, the woods would be impassable.

Starting in midsummer we spent hours in our woodlands cutting, trimming, and piling poplar, birch, and pitch pine. The largest trees were about six inches in diameter. Most were smaller. Poplars, the softest of the woods, grew almost as fast as grass. White birch were slower, and oaks and maples slower still. A mix of birch, poplar, and pine produced the hottest fires.

We piled trimmed branches to dry for spring burning. We dragged the trees to the road and loaded them on a stoneboat; then, using my uncle's horses, we drew the wood home. Each year Dad sawed some forty cords. We were piling the last chunks into ricks during the first snowstorm.

Dad built our saw rig from a Model T engine with a large circular saw blade. The engine had to be throttled. A movable six-foot rack attached to the motor by leather strips fed logs to the saw. By pressing his thigh against the rack and guiding the log, Dad worked efficiently, estimating lengths suitable for the fireboxes. When released, the rack fell back, caught by the thongs. Some of the sawdust we sprinkled over the henhouse floor. The rest we used for burying ice. In the spring, the sawdust mulched the garden.

My sister and I piled the wood into ricks. I split the larger chunks, cross-piling them as rick ends. The object was to keep the rick as even as possible. If chunks held stubborn knots, you tried to find a place for the knot to fit snugly so as not to weaken the wood piled above it. The first ricks we stored under a quasi-shed, a corrugated tin roof mounted on poplar logs embedded in the ground. At least some of the wood would stay dry. We sorted pieces, reserving the largest blocks for the living room heater.

 

At least twice a month we played music at Sam's Tavern, a roadhouse on the outskirts of Eagle River. Yet another of the low-timbered structures indigenous to the area, Sam's flourished outside the city limits, immune to raids from law enforcement officers. During Prohibition, the owner, Sam Capich, carried on a lucrative bootleg business there, or so it was rumored.

Capich was a short, rotund Czech in his late thirties who wore his black hair slicked. Generous-minded patrons said he deserved to be rich because he had an insane wife living at the back of the tavern. Occasionally we heard her screaming. Barring illness, Capich was behind his bar from 10
A.M
. until 2:30 or 3:00
A.M
. He seldom said much, smoked endless cigars, and showed his fondness for my dad by sending him rounds of beer between musical sets.

When we arrived at 9
P.M
., a few patrons were gathered near the dance floor, waiting. Dad and Charlie had a beer at the bar, while I drank soda pop. We were scheduled to play until 1
A.M
. Of the $30 we received as wages, Dad gave me $7. We wore slacks and plaid wool shirts. Our tunes, played on fiddle, accordion, mandolin, and guitar, were always the same—folk songs and popular songs from Dad's youth. He'd say that people liked the “old” music best. When we were ready to perform, Capich disconnected the loudspeakers, limiting the jukebox music to the bar area. The hall, paneled with knotty pine, was oblong, with an upright piano at the far end.

By 10:00 the floor was crowded. Among the regulars were Vic Barnes and his wife, Rosie. They were in their late twenties and poor. Rosie was slender, tall, somewhat horse-faced, with masses of brunette curls piled on her head, set off with flapper bangs. She wore much makeup. By 11:00 Vic was dead drunk. Rosie then had a good time, mainly with Ira Castleton, a fiftyish bachelor with a reputation as a lecher, who rarely missed a dance. Occasionally, Rosie would disappear from Castleton and trip out to the cars with another man. When Castleton found her, he would drag her off to his place, leaving Vic to fend for himself On one outrageous evening, an Indian “had” Rosie behind the piano. A cluster of people gathered to observe. I got a glimpse before Dad drew me away

Playing at Sam's Tavern produced dilemmas in my life. First, there was my religiosity. I was superintendent of the Lutheran Sunday school; prayed with fervent regularity and was thinking of the ministry as a career. Pitted against all this were my strong sexual impulses. My prudishness won out. I saw the town as a Sodom or Gomorrah, and I appointed myself guarantor of my mother's interests. Dad was not to flirt with other women, and he must not drink too much. When he seemed about to hoist the telling glass of whiskey or beer, I nagged him. He was patient, and I don't recall his ever being drunk.

My own libido, on its silver chain, threatened to break loose as some handsome youth or maiden waltzed by Was I doing the Devil's work? Whenever I expressed my doubts, Dad said we were not responsible—people chose their lives, and we had no business criticizing them. We were there to make the best music we could.

We played for Capich until I was a junior in high school, when he closed his dance hall, pleading poor receipts, too many fights, hassles from the sheriff and his mad wife's cancer.

 

To stifle the numerous quarrels Margie and I had that summer, my mother would declare, “Just wait till you get to high school. Those guys are tough. They'll knock your block off.”

My worst quarrel with Margie occurred a week before high school, the week after the county fair. To play pig family we formed a circle of kitchen chairs on the grass. Our conflict was over which of us would play the sow. Margie felt that a male should always play the boar, lingering at the back of the pen digging up roots while the lucky sow lay on her side squirting forth piglets. For a convincing porcine look, we wore Dad's heavy winter coats.