Spoonwood (12 page)

I leave the town offices heady and dangerous. From the pay phone in Ancharsky's Store I call the Florida number I plucked from the tax report. The “hello” on the other end of the line sounds like an old woman.

“This is long distance calling. May I please speak to Walter Sturtevant?” I say.

“Who is this?” the woman says.

“My name's Latour,” I say, the name slipping off my tongue so readily and without premeditation that I understand that it was in my mind all along, hiding. It doesn't sound like a lie, and now that it's out, I feel giddy. “I'm interested in Mister Sturtevant's Darby, New Hampshire, property on Lonesome Hill.”

“I see.”

“Is this a bad time?” I ask.

“Both my Walters have passed away.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Sturtevant,” I say. “Are you the current owner of the property?”

“I suppose I am. Mister, what was it, Mister . . . Laetrile?”

“Latour.”

“Mister Latuna, I don't believe I'm ready to think about this right now. Call me back in the spring—maybe.”

She hangs up, I hang up. I figure I have a year, perhaps more, before I'll have to do any serious worrying about being evicted from Forgot Farm.

I am frustrated by the complexity of my father's speech, though I'm expanding my musical knowledge of his voice, major chord when he works, minor chord when he mumbles to himself in thought. But the meaning—what is the meaning? And how to shape the sounds for my own lyrics? I cannot do it. At the very time when I need intelligence to formulate my own words, I feel my IQ decline by imperceptible measure day by day. My telepathic powers are so weakened that my old nemesis, Spontaneous Combustion, severs the connection between us. I wail in the night for the loss of brain power.

For solace, I turn my attention to other, more immediate speakers: the birds, the wind, the crunch of footfalls on snow, the howls of coyotes at night. In all of them I hear mainly vowel sounds. I pull myself up in my playpen and practice—
a, e, i, oh, you, wy, uh, ah, oo.
I also hum a little—
ummmmm
—a voiced vowel that pleasantly buzzes in my nose. I usually fall asleep to the sound of my father's knives on spoonwood—
sip, sip, sip.
It's a reassuring sound, a sound of love. I practice the sound—
sss, sss, pt, pt, pt
—and drift off.

Into the spring and summer and forever after, Dad makes spoons. He ties strings around them and hangs them from pushpins on our stick walls. He develops a formula for finishing a spoon that includes raw linseed oil, beeswax, and a couple of secret ingredients I am not at liberty to divulge, even to you, Mother. He loves to look at his spoons and contemplate them. He keeps detailed notes on each spoon—season, azimuth of sun, weather conditions, notes on the tree it comes from, soil, problems encountered in making the spoon, anecdotes relating to its creation.

.   .   .

We will not celebrate Birch's first birthday. I do not believe in birthdays or holidays, which are excuses for the unnecessary congregation of individuals. I do not believe in keeping track of time. Let the sun and stars measure the day. Let the moon measure the month. Let the seasons measure the year. Let us celebrate the good moments as they come to us. Hard winter gives way to something like a low-grade southern winter, our usual pattern. Just when I think the winter will never end, the days warm and the hardwoods, as if in secret collusion, all bloom the same week, producing a pastel version of fall foliage. It's spring, the best argument for the existence of God.

“Birch, this is my favorite time of year,” I say. I'm in a good mood, happy even to give blood to the black flies. Our road dries out, and after I have lugged the truck battery to Ancharsky's Store for a charge (a tradition in the making?), it's now possible to drive to town instead of walking.

A week after the trees blossom the leaves appear, and as if by magic the forest is bright green. Another week of perfect weather and then it rains—a warm rain—and the humidity sets in and stays. Spring is gone; it's summer.

Dad visits his orchard in the trust almost every day, not usually to do work but just to be there. Sometimes we come only for a minute or two. Dad gazes at the trees and then we walk on. Other times he'll work for an hour, pruning the apple trees, knocking down some weeds, or moving rocks. I have to explain that Dad isn't satisfied where God put the rocks, so he keeps rearranging them to suit his own idea of design.

Around Forgot Farm Dad has taken up what he calls subtractive gardening. He cuts firewood trees at ground level. On these low stumps he stacks rocks, arranging them until they please his eye. He treats some plants as weeds, pulling them. Others he leaves be to grow—the early-season wonders of jacks in the pulpit, star flowers, violets, trillium, and various ferns. He makes walking paths paved with flat stones that wind between rock formations,
flowers, greenery, and trees. Later in the summer wild daisies, lupin, and various grasses grow. Dad pulls out the plants that compete with the flowers. Soon there are flowers everywhere. Dad also weeds around the wild strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. We and the birds are grateful and gorge ourselves in celebration. Dad calls moments like these Forgot Farm Holidays.

Dad does some additive gardening, too. We grow tomatoes, string beans, peas, carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cucumbers, and various squashes. Most of the veggies are eaten by deer. They never bother us in the daytime because in nice weather Dad brings his shaving horse outside to work. The deer come at night. With moonglow or starlight you can see them. They move cautiously, like the thieves they are. I learn to scan the woods to pick out the deer, two, three, or even more. They are brown with white on their tails. They move easily and gracefully. Dad prefers to watch them feed than to chase them out of the garden. I hear his breath catch, my breath catch, feel his heart beat faster, my heart beat faster. I think it's the way he used to respond to you. Maybe your spirit comes down from your ledges in the body of a deer to put some love in Dad's lonely heart.

One day I decide we should picnic at the orchard. We eat a lunch of yogurt and tomatoes. Afterwards, we lounge on the blanket and I watch Birch crawl and inspect bugs. He's quite busy these days learning about the ground, which is far more inhabited by living creatures than the air. He's inquisitive and meditative, broods over his discoveries rather than celebrates them.

I contemplate the winter to come. I have all my wood in and then some. I am prepared. I should be content. However, a financial crisis looms. I spend very little money, but I had very little to start with. I have no medical insurance for myself and Birch. I haven't been to a dentist in a year. Birch has never seen a doctor. I haven't paid the insurance on my truck. It needs tires and the engine is starting to burn oil. Even if I can manage to live without the truck, eventually I will have to generate some income for food and medical costs. I wonder about Birch, his future. His
education. His health care. His social life. The condition of his future teeth.

“You should take a job, you lazy bum,” says Old Crow.

“I'm not lazy.”

“You're afraid of the world.”

“Not the world, of the temptations: drink, anger, carnality, confusion, losing control, hurting someone. You, Old Crow; I'm afraid of you.”

“How long do you think you can live on no income?” Old Crow says. “How long do you think it will be before Persephone and Garvin Prell find a way to spirit off our child?”

I pick up a ripe tomato and bite into it as if it were an apple.

I study ants and for the moment have nothing to say to my father. For one thing he is trying to wean me from nursing and I am resentful. For another I have nothing to say because I still cannot voice my thoughts. Vowels are not enough. Any day I will speak. I will not babble like a baby. I want to speak clearly and beautifully in complete sentences and in context. Dad has constructed a life based on simple living, clarity and beauty of expression. I know no other way. I await that moment of knowledge when I can converse on the terms he has set for me.

I identify with the ants, because they don't walk a straight line. They stagger the way I stagger. Perhaps I am an overgrown ant. When the time comes I will suddenly shrink, six-legged and armor-plated, all my tender parts on the inside. I will crawl down the ant hole, where, finally, I will speak in brilliant ant language, giving inspirational talks that will mesmerize my audience of thousands. They will bring me their young to eat, which will make me grow strong. The ants will be intoxicated by the eloquence of my marvelous speeches. At a final moment, I will pupate, crawl out of the ant hole, spread my wings, and fly away. See? I am not an ant after all. I am really a butterfly.

My musings are pretty intense and eventually I break down.

“It's okay, come to Daddy.” Dad picks me up, brings me to the blanket. He pulls his t-shirt over his head and lies down on
his side. I lay beside him. He puts his hand on my back and draws me toward him. I am instantly calm. All the difficulties of the world, all the worries go away for both of us.

On that particular day the Darby Development Committee is walking in the woods. The principles include Selectman Lawrence Dracut, town clerk Dorothy McCurtin, a consulting landscape architect, and three members of the Salmon Land Trust, Garvin Prell, Monet Salmon, and the chair, my grandmother Persephone Salmon. If Dad had kept up with Darby business affairs he would have known that the committee would be in the woods this day, making preparations for a land development that will change Grace Pond and the Salmon trust forever. Dad and I are in a state between wakefulness and sleep when the committee comes upon us.

We must be quite a sight: a large, bearded, half-naked man in the middle of the woods with a baby nursing at his chest. The man suddenly stands, glances at them with wild frightened eyes, and runs off into the woods with his charge.

Back at Forgot Farm, Dad tries to pretend nothing unusual has happened. He goes on with his spoonmaking and chores.

A week after Dad is caught inflagro delectable, or whatever that foreign phrase is, we are outside, Dad splitting firewood, me brooding on the nature of Reality (the universe, I've concluded, is shaped like a boomerang), when we hear a vehicle working its way up the last leg of Lonesome Hill Road.

I recognize the sound of an ancient glass-pack muffler, and I flirt with the idea of running off into the woods with Birch. In the end, I stay, bracing myself. Why is my domineering father paying me a visit?

As Howard steps out of the cab of his pickup truck, what surprises me is how much he and I resemble one another—wide-bodied, thick-necked men, both wearing white t-shirts in the late summer heatwave.

“Everything okay at home?” I ask. I know that my father would not come alone to visit unless he has good reason, such as
a family disaster. I worry that something has happened to my mother.

“Just fine,” Howard says. “The problem is . . . you. You.”

“Me—it's always me, isn't it?” I flash with the old anger, the old resentment.

“Yah, you. I mean, you got caught with your pants down.”

“My pants were never down,” I say.

“Well, I didn't mean it that way,” Howard says. “Look, Garvin is going to put a warrant out for you. Or so I heard.”

“I didn't break any laws, except for living here, maybe, and nobody cares about that,” I say.

“Yes, you did break a law. They're going to get you for cutting down trees on the trust land. And another thing.”

“Another thing.”

“Yah, another thing. I know for fact that Mrs. Salmon has filed a complaint that you're an unfit father.”

I pause for a moment. “Well, I guess I should thank you.”

“Well, I guess you should. You need any money?”

“No,” I snap.

Howard turns his back on us, strides to the pickup, gets in like John Wayne mounting his horse.

“Don't say you weren't warned,” he growls through the open window, and he rides off, the spinning tires kicking dirt in our faces.

10

GRACE POND

O
ur last day on Forgot Farm it's unseasonably hot and sultry, and I hear little creatures who live in the ground peeping and squealing, carrying on in business we humans cannot fathom. Dad takes a long walk around the farm, just looking at things for the last time—his favorite trees, the garden, the berry patch, the rotting frames of hippie housing, the fire pit, the outdoor cook shed. He loves it all, and goodbye. But he does not act that sad.

Though he'll never admit it, he knows it's time to start something new. The road trip he's always wanted to take is ahead of him for real now. Years later he'll admit this much to me: he was forming a plan for our getaway even before Howard warned us about the threats from Garvin and Persephone.

He puts the boat on top of the pickup truck and drives off, headed for Grace Pond. He's brought along his fly-fishing rod, day pack, camp stove, and toiletry kit.

With me in my car seat, tied down with bungy cords in the stern, Dad slides the boat half into the water. He steps carefully into the boat and sits in the middle seat. He makes no attempt to push the boat away from shore. We listen and look around.
After a few minutes, we hear birds in the forest. The pond itself is quiet, almost flat, with only a few riffles in the middle. Water lilies lie on their leafy pads, sleeping, it seems. I have a memory of smelling their fragrance, but probably it's only my imagination. I'm looking around, practicing focusing on objects at various distances. And still Dad does not row. This is how it is every time we come to the pond.

Our friend the great blue heron laboriously comes out of her nest in the tall dead pine in the marshy end of the pond. The bird makes an arc, as if to show off for us, flying low and with effort, her long feet folded underneath her belly. The heron lands ungracefully in some reeds, then stands patiently, waiting for a fish to come by. We watch her for what seems like a long time, and the heron does not move, and the time is not long at all. What is it for a bird just to wait without moving? What do you think about, bird? What do you feel?

Dad pulls an oar out of the oarlock and sticks it in the shallows and poles the boat free. The boat slides loudly off the gravelly beach into the pond. The heron jerks her head sideways toward the direction of the noise, up-flaps a single wing, then returns motionless to the sentinel position. Because of the aluminum, the boat rows loud, oarlocks clanking when wood ones would creak. As always, the metallic noise annoys Dad. He wants everything to be just so. I look ahead to distant waters, vast in my mind; Dad watches the widening wake of the boat and the receding shoreline.

I enjoy the rock-a-bye-baby experience of boat-on-water and think of you, Mother, that time that seems so long ago when you and I were one.

After a few minutes the heron pokes her bill into the marsh water and comes up with a perch about six inches long. The bird then flap her wings, splashing water as she transitions from settled to flight and carries the fish back to her nest. Even at that young age, I sense the concept of nest, but I cannot imagine what might go on inside it. The contemplation of such mysteries is what makes my life bearable.

.   .   .

I row out to a rock that juts out of the water, too small to call an island, only slightly larger than the boat itself. I step out of the boat onto the rock. For a second or two, I'm detached not only from the boat but from myself, and I let the pond carry the boat away and watch it, transfixed; for a split second I'm the man who stuffed his son into a dumpster. Meanwhile, the grin of freedom spreads across Birch's face. He enjoyed the sudden jolt as the boat jerked away from the rock. I pull off my shoes and socks, jeans and underwear. Naked, I step into waist-deep water.

The boat has drifted thirty or so feet from the island and into a finger of wind. Moving faster now, me panicky. I dive into the water and swim hard until I catch the bow line of the boat dangling in the water. I swim, towing the boat slowly. Only ten Birch lengths from the rocks my feet touch bottom and I pull the boat up on the ledge, metal scraping against rock and sounding like the lament of some prehistoric creature.

Dad takes me out of the boat, strips off my clothes and diaper. He walks into the water with me in his arms. He releases me to see if I'll float, which I do more or less. From the very first I can swim. I know to hold my breath when my face goes underwater. I know to flap my arms and legs toward the light at the surface. I know to breathe when I break through. I am back there with you, swimming. It is quite a heavenly feeling.

Back on the island Dad makes a little bed with a blanket from the day pack and puts me down. In the water I was able to move up, down, and sideways. Here the rough rock makes crawling hard on the knees. I nap in the sun while Dad fishes. He doesn't catch anything for half an hour, and then a school of perch comes by. In five minutes he has ten fish, two of them pretty chunky, as perch go. Dad has enough for our supper, so he stops fishing.

He sits naked on the rocks for a few minutes. Telepathy tells me that he is thinking that this will be our last good moment in this place. He reaches into his toiletry case and pulls out a mirror
and looks at himself. I lose contact with his mind, so I have to make do with analysis. He's lost a few pounds, though he certainly isn't svelte. With his hairy body and hairy face and overly hairy head he appears more Sasquatch than human. Dad grew a beard when he turned eighteen to spite Grandpa Howard. Beardless he'd been “Freddie”; the beard had made him into “Frederick.” In his fishing box he carries a filet knife, very thin, very sharp.

He comes over to me. I sit up and watch the knife in his hand. Little white sparks of light issue from the blade.

“I want you to see this, so you don't get too freaked out,” he says.

He waves the knife blade in front of my eyes, then brings it to his face and slices off a hunk of beard. Dad works very carefully and meticulously, cutting hair from head and face. With the help of the mirror he gives himself a pretty fair haircut, and slices out most of the beard. Meanwhile, he heats some pond water on his camper stove. He works up some nice suds with bar soap and lathers his face. With a Bic, he shaves until his face is smooth. Then he shampoos what is left of the hair on his head and combs it straight back.

So this is the new Dad. The difference in the face hardly strikes me as important. It's his attitude that is threatening. He seems more interested in himself than in me.

I'm surprised by this face. Clean-shaven I look almost boyish. Though my body might be thick, my nose, lips, and ears are delicate. All the vulnerability and shaky self-esteem, hidden by the beard, is now on display for anyone to see. It isn't exactly like the face of a stranger, more like that of a long-lost brother, home after a decade of wandering. The face full-on in the mirror is wide, almost brutish in appearance. But from the side it's like a girl's. I look at Birch, look at my face. Is there a resemblance? Perhaps. I can't be sure.

My last act at Grace Pond is to capsize my boat just off the boat landing in about six feet of water and load it up with rocks
until it sinks to the bottom. From shore I triangulate the location of the boat for future retrieval and use.

That night we eat the perch, the tiny fillets dredged in flower and cooked in bacon fat on my fry pan, our last meal together on Forgot Farm.