Emil wasn't kidding about our evening. Fine with me. I made supper while he set up the tent. Man was I tired. Took all I had to fry up some Spam to go with a pack of hard tack my uncle had saved for a time like this. It ate dry even with the Spam on top but we'd filled our canteens on the way over. Skin and bones meal for sure but Uncle Emil also turned up a few more dried apricots. Good man. We ate in silent exhaustion.
Took a lot of gumption to get in the water for a swim. All I wanted was sleep and the water was still near ice. Not a happy combination. But it felt good to get somewhat clean. Even better to crawl into the bag. Long, long day.
Morning brought us a day of rest. With a little fishing on the side. While I pitched spinners from the island slab Emil pulled out Of Mice and Men. Also finished it that evening. I sucked back tears at the end. Emil's cracking voice said he felt the same. It was that kind of story. Also got us talking about what it meant to be a man. I'd have thrown in my two cents worth had I any change. Heck, I didn't hardly know what it was to be a kid.
"That's okay Archie me lad. If you're like me you'll be trying to figure it out 'til the day you die. About the only time I thought I had the answer was back in my twenties. Then sometime during the war the doubts snuck in. Began to think I'd wasted most of my life. It was time to sort it out. And I mostly did. Kept the parts I liked. Dumped the rest. Of course, you may be entirely different. But I wouldn't count on it. We're all pretty much alike. It takes some living to learn you're not God's gift to mankind. Took me quite a while."
That night we paddled out and fished the two closest bays. They're not big but have to be fished slow because of all the action. The shore had changed since the week before. A dozen or more pines, spruce and birch trees were now laid to rest, straddling shore and water. Many, many northerns found new homes in the trees. In the outer branches small pike perched like water hawks in hope something might come swimming by. Deeper, near the trunk, lay the big ones. Giving a tree a paddle whack invariably provoked a monster sized thrash within. More fun whacking than diddling with the outlying hammer handles. Emil called it messing with the monsters.
I caught the biggest pike of the trip that afternoon. Lost it also. We got a glimpse and Emil said it was a thirty pounder for sure. At first I thought he might be stretching his estimate a bit. Most older guys would. But my uncle wasn't the kind to fudge on a measurement of any kind.
"Thirty's the way I see it. Should someday your remembrance grow to forty pounds, I don't want to be the one who got you started on being a fishin' liar. There's enough of them around gassing their lives away in bars and standing in clusters, one hand in pocket, on fishing docks. In the other hand a beer and, of course, a belly to match. All the while remembering what fine specimens of manhood they once were. And all their deeds of legerdemain."
"It'd be one thing if what they remembered had actually happened. Yup, we all like to color our memories some. Hard not to. But the truth is the truth. See your life as it is. Remember what worked for you and what didn't. Learn from your past and let it guide your future. Most of all, be the man you were meant to be."
Those words came back to me twenty years later. My life on the inside was getting a little ragged and probably would have gone downhill from there. But it didn't. Wasn't easy breaking the fetters of illusion and learning to see the truth of my life. In fact, I'm still working on it.
My fondest memory of the trip was Emil reading aloud. Don't know if anyone does it any more. Except me. Decades later when my son and I were off on our wilderness trips, the stories we read were as much a part of them as paddling or fishing. Emil didn't have a deep, resonant, baritone voice like a James Earl Jones. No, his was a midwestern, nasal twang with a twist of Minnesota German/Swede that refused to go into hiding. When he set to emphasizing a point he could 'yah sure, you betcha' with the best of them.
His soft accent was there when Emil read aloud but not when he did a voice like Lennie's from Of Mice and Men or Long John's in Treasure Island. His take on a character's voice wasn't dead on but if you relaxed your expectations a little, Emil's voice would carry you deep into the story. Let you hear and feel the author's intent. At least that's what happened to me as the two of us sat on our slab in the bush, twenty miles from nowhere. That night I made our last pan of fry bread to the words of John Steinbeck.
Before we turned in Emil said, "You know what tomorrow's gonna be like, don't you? Think back on yesterday. Like that, only not so long. But we'll do her Archie. Home stretch don't ya know." Followed with a chuckle and a soft elbow to my ribs.
No comments:
Post a Comment