Crunching Gravel (13 page)

I would, for once, be the sow! I grabbed the coat my sister preferred, put it on, and flopped down in birth throes. I loved the delicious sensation of birthing. Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. When I turned to lick the piglets, Margie kicked at me and yelled. I fought back, spraining her hand. She announced she would drown herself in the lake.

I called her bluff, waved good-bye, and took the coats and chairs back into the house. Half an hour later, I began to worry, filling in time with some desultory hoeing in the flower garden. I started for the lake, near panic. No signs near shore of her shoes or clothes, no footprints, no evidence of a drowned person in the water. If she had indeed jumped, she had drifted into the cranberry marsh, out of sight.

I returned home. As I passed a hayrick, crying, Margie jumped out laughing. “Served you right,” she said. I felt both angry and relieved.

From this point on, we played few childhood games. Within a few days her menstrual cycles began. Mom was in the Rhinelander Hospital having her goiter removed. Dad sent Margie to Aunt Kate to explain the facts of life and chose the occasion for my own sex education—or at least he tried. He explained “monthlies” and said it was time I “fucked” a girl. I should cross the road and take Maxine Kula into a woods and “do it.” I was shocked. The paradox of women as both citadels of purity—this is how I saw my mother, and how my father conditioned me to see her—and licentious whores was painful.

In high school, since I was only twelve, I needed to employ my wits in complex ways. Whenever older boys threatened, I diverted hostility through a trick Osmo Makinnen taught me: Play subservient. Flatter your threatener by asking for information; for instance, what wrench does he use for loosening the lug nuts on his car? What is the largest pike he's ever hooked? What gym shoes are best? The questions were legion; the skill came in thinking of them fast enough to deflect, hostilities. Even if a gang threatened, the ploy worked: Regale the leader with a question. I never once had to defend myself physically throughout four years of high school.

 

Possibilities for Halloween were always limited, and trick or treat was not then the national ritual it has become. There were very few other neighborhood families to plague. Older boys attended dances in town. There wasn't even a good graveyard nearby to liven things up.

The Jollys and I started the evening playing pinochle rummy. We ate popcorn and raisin-filled cookies. At 9:00 we went to Hiram Ewald's. He was twenty and had quit high school, preferring to stay home, as an only son, to work the family farm. They sold milk. His dad told us to be careful; if we got our butts shot full of rock salt, he wouldn't pick it out.

We decided on two pranks—to tip over the outhouses at the school and to fling rocks at Jorgensen, the Danish bachelor. He lived alone, a victim, so it was said, of mustard gas in the trenches.

Our first action was safe, since the school was closed and there was no caretaker. The second was not so safe, since Jorgensen had a reputation for waiting with a shotgun.

We tipped the outhouses, smeared the school windows with soap, and then focused on Jorgensen. For our protection, we piled some scrap lumber over a small pit. If he blasted away, we could scurry there and hide. George, we decided, would attract Jorgensen's attention while we circled around in back and stoned his house. A dark moon made our progress easier. We crept near, shouting a medley of coyote calls, obscenities, and owl hoots and then hurling a shower of stones. Suddenly, the front door burst open, and Jorgensen emerged. There was an explosive flash.

As we scurried to our shelter, Jorgensen fired twice more and then returned to his house. The Jollys were for persisting in tipping over his outhouse. Since we'd approach from the rear, he wouldn't see us until he was too late. Hiram and I were for letting well enough alone. The old guy obviously meant business.

We settled into our bunker, cramped together. Hiram had a cigarette. We talked dirty. Hiram suggested we feel one another's erections, inside our pants. His felt like a milk bottle. We worked our way out of the bunker and stood listening; then we let out a few whoops in Jorgensen's direction and headed on up the road.

 

I dreaded gym class, so I delayed the perfunctory physical examination for weeks, hoping I would contract a disease rare enough to excuse me from class. Not only was I inexperienced at games, but I dreaded showing myself nude to strangers. The ball we had played at the Sundsteen elementary school was for kids. Even then, I could rarely catch a ball, and my balance was terrible—I had never ridden a bicycle. The only thing I did well was sprint over the rough terrain of those gravel country roads.

The principal, Mr. Kracht, known for his violent temper as “The Bull of the Woods,” demanded to know why I was not attending gym. He was unimpressed when I said I lacked money for clothes. His ultimatum: “Attend on Monday! I will personally see you do!”

While the other students suited up, I stalled, removing my shirt as carefully as if it were glued to burn scabs. The locker door hid my lower body from view, and I faced the wall, preferring to show the world my rear rather than my privates. Once in the gym, I stood about with my arms awkwardly folded, intimidated by the prowess and agility of the other boys, especially those from town. When it came time to choose up sides for games, I was always chosen last. I avoided showers until the gym teacher threatened to strip and scrub me himself “We don't want you stinking in class,” he said. Again, I lingered, disrobing slowly, waiting for the other boys to finish. Draping my towel in front of me, I'd make my way to the end shower, face the wall, and bathe. Weeks elapsed before I was able to linger and enjoy the hot spray, a treat indeed considering our primitive bathing conditions at home.

Eventually, one of the flashiest town boys, Augie La Renzie, took an interest in me. I helped him with Latin declensions. He was curly-haired, funny, incredibly agile, and popular with both girls and boys. In his freshman year he made varsity basketball. During free periods, we would meet at the gym, where he gave me pointers on basketball. I was soon fairly adept at free throws. Augie also gave me health advice: Never wear someone else's jock strap; keep the venison out of your teeth; stop using brilliantine. He grew up to marry the county judge's daughter and became a World War II ace and a commercial pilot.

 

The subject I did poorest in, math, was taught by my favorite teacher, Esther Austin. She was a short brunette in her thirties, unmarried, the daughter of the county superintendent of schools. Her standards for thoroughness and neatness were high, and she sought out students for special attention, especially those with adjustment problems. I was one of her favorites, although I did not know it then. My almost pathological shyness struck her—she was working on a masters degree in psychology at the University of Wisconsin. After algebra one day, she asked me if I would like to compete for the regional oratory competition. I harbored fantasies of being a lawyer or a teacher and knew that speaking skills mattered. And the grade school teacher had said I had a gift for public speaking.

Three times a week, during lunch hour, I would sit in Miss Austin's classroom rehearsing my oration, “Europe and the Jews,” procured from a forensics bureau. Miss Austin mouthed the phrases while I recited them. She struggled to convince me that oratory does not mean shouting.

I brought Miss Austin flowers and fruit. I told her secrets I wouldn't have told my own mother. Years later, I discovered she had kept an ongoing “behavior journal,” actually awarding points for my victories over shyness. She had set up special opportunities in class for me to gain self-confidence and she gave positive marks for those weeks when I confided in her less than I had earlier—evidence that I was maturing. She recorded whatever I told her of my feelings, my family, and other students. She encouraged me to think of girls. We had three-person committees who occasionally conducted class, having worked out in advance some difficult algebraic problem. She always appointed me to serve with girls.

One summer I worked for her father installing new insulation in the Austin attic. Mr. Austin got me a job cutting lawns and trimming bushes at the Ellis mansion, a huge lumber baron's home being converted into a hospital. Once I had graduated and was in Madison at the university, I realized the extent of Miss Austin's devotion. She hired me to type her master's thesis, When the draft arrived, I was stunned to see that I was one of three former students observed and analyzed in her meticulous journals. Her behavioral study was greatly influenced by the progressive ideas of John Dewey and Alexander Meiklejohn. Setups of the sort she designed for us in her classes could be used to modify behavior and plot maturity.

Years later, whenever I visited Eagle River, I saw her. She never married, and she kept her body vigorous by daily summer swims in Eagle Lake. In her seventies, she fell senile. The last time I saw her, she did not know me. She remained in a time warp of reveries supervising interminable high school cafeteria lunchroom hours. When she was found wandering a few blocks from her home, thoroughly lost, the court appointed her friend the Congregational minister as her guardian. He sent her to a nursing home, where she lived for ten years before dying.

 

Dorothy Canfield stood for culture; Myron Goldgruber did not. Canfield taught Latin and English literature, was a former actress, resembled Marlene Dietrich, and loved emoting. She took all the parts of
Romeo and Juliet
during two weeks of classes. To most of us, her hamming was sheer artistry. She painted her face in a florid manner to emphasize her high cheekbones and smeared kohl around her eyes. She wore enormous topaz bracelets, rings, and a scimitar of brass around her neck. She wore gypsy blouses, usually white trimmed in delicate flowers, and colorful wool skirts bought from Indians on a trip through the Southwest. Only six students took her Latin I, which was more of a club than a class.

Goldgruber, the manual arts instructor, was a bitter contrast. One chose either his biology or his woodworking classes. I chose the latter, thinking that my farm experience would help and that I might acquire more useful skills. Moreover, I feared science.

I was a disaster. Goldgruber ridiculed my birdhouse built of birch branches, on which I had spent hours trimming, tacking with finishing nails, cutting an entry hole, and even drawing a window on colored paper. He held the flimsy creation up before the class and said, “A girl must have made this.” His voice was latent with rage. He held it between his palms and crushed it. “Now, Robert,” he declared, dumping the mess on my desk, “have your mother build you a real birdhouse! No bird would live in this one!” Flushed with disgrace, I never returned to his class. I tried to soothe myself by saying that birdhouses have nothing to do with art. I would be an artist! My hunger was enormous. Ignorance floated in my mind like so much jetsam.

My awareness of classical music came unexpectedly. Another freshman, John Roesch, whose family were aristocratic Germans and whose father lost a lucrative business in Chicago during the 1920s, lived on Cranberry Lake. He seemed to have read everything; and he recited Shelley and Keats. His primary enthusiasm was for Richard Wagner. His mother was a professional musician, and he had trained for tenor roles. He loaned me an album, “Great Moments from the Ring Cycle,” which I kept for a month, playing it daily on our wind-up Victrola. The album included synopses of the operas, the text of the arias, and notes on the singers. I loved “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

 

High school intensified my desire to write, but I had no idea what, when, or how. Shortly, I busied myself writing a “novel” on the plight of the Czech town of Lidice. The Germans had taken the entire town hostage, killing everyone.

My image of myself was romantic. Not only should I fashion beautiful word patterns, but the physical properties of my book must be beautiful. I wrote “Lidice” in an old wallpaper book given to me by the owner of the hardware store. Each page, according to my fantasy, would be beautiful. It didn't matter that reading would be difficult, depending on the intricacies of the wallpaper designs. My opening pages screamed drama as the Germans calmly lined up all the women and children for slaughter. They wanted the men to witness the carnage before they died. I focused on a young mother with babe in arms, a figure calculated to engender pity and terror in my readers. Like many of my projects, this one never came to fruition. How to sustain and complete a novel? Was it a matter of inspiration? Or of diligence and labor? Again, my romantic notions placed inspiration far ahead of sweat, and once the inspiration ebbed I was unable to go on, although “Lidice” reached some fifty wallpaper-book pages.

I believed that if I had a typewriter, I would write more, and better. The Sears catalogue featured a rebuilt Underwood for $30, complete with typing manual. I saved money, primarily from playing guitar with Dad at dances, and sent for one.

When the Underwood arrived, my enthusiasm outran my diligence. I meant to start typing as soon as I had unwrapped the machine, but I felt stymied. I detested the time-consuming and boring drills outlined in the manual. I did start to peck away at fundamentals, though it was not until I took typing at school that I developed speed and accuracy. I discovered, too, what I should have known all along: The Underwood made no difference to my writing; there were no shortcuts. I never typed any of “Lidice.”

Fortunately, the typewriter was durable, unlike the tiny movie projector I had earned as a premium for selling salve the preceding spring. The premium catalogue had promised great fun with this “indestructible” projector, touting it as “much more than a toy.” To get it I had sold twenty boxes of salve. Since we had no electricity, it would run on kerosene. Filmstrips were included.