Eleven Miles to Oshkosh Page 2

  So, how come I didn’t get any of those traits of bravery from my dad? How come I was born the pansy? I took biology. I knew how genetics were supposed to work. What a rip-off!

  After a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I looked around. Where was everybody? My big sister, Sally, must have been locked in the bathroom doing whatever she did for almost an hour every morning. I poked my head around the corner and spotted Mom in the living room, smoking a Lucky Strike with one hand and sipping coffee with the other. I set my gaze on the kitchen window. A thick fog had filled up the neighborhood like spilled milk during the night, and I couldn’t even see the Johnsons’ house next door. Yep, the day was starting off gloomy all around.

  The only sound came from the radio on the kitchen countertop. I took a breath between gulps of cereal and listened as the news announcer talked about air strikes, ambushes, and more soldiers coming home dead from Vietnam. Cripes, even I was getting sick of hearing all the rotten news. On top of that, according to my calculations I was just three years away from being sent there myself. Then again, who would take me? The army probably filtered out the shrimps and the cowards, and heck, I was a member of both groups.

  The radio announcer switched to the presidential election coming up. Nixon was ahead of McGovern by about a thousand light-years. I guess everybody thought old Millhouse was doing a stellar job or something. Never mind that we were still bogged down in that stupid war and that the commies in Russia had about nine million A-bombs aimed at us.

  A pair of car headlights rolled up our gravel driveway with a crunching noise. The car door slammed shut.

  Ding-dong!

  I waited to see if Mom would answer but she didn’t move. Apparently the commercial for the Veg-o-matic was just too exciting to take her eyes off the TV. I went back to eating Froot Loops and checked the second hand on my watch to see how long it would be before Sally yelled at me.

  Ding-dong!

  Her scream came from the top of the steps. “Del, open the door! Jeez! Why do you have to be such a retard?” Twelve seconds. Hmm. Quicker than usual.

  There was never any question about who was on the front porch. Every morning, Sally’s boyfriend, Kevin, picked her up in his piece of crap Pinto on his way to Armstrong High. Kevin Muldoon always started the day with an insult aimed at me. I yanked the door open and waited.

  “Hey, Minnow—did you get promoted to rat yet?”

  “I hope you didn’t injure your brain thinking up that one, Mull-goon. We wouldn’t want to wreck your future as a turd inspector at the sewage plant.”

  I returned to the kitchen and left the idiot drooling on the welcome mat. Mom never even noticed his arrival. Her attention was now welded to the Today Show, where Barbara Walters was talking about the latest trends in women’s fashion. Women’s fashion? Gee whiz. I would be happy if she would just get out of her pajamas once in a while. Needless to say, my mom was still a basket case after Dad’s death. It didn’t help that the doctor now said she might have early symptoms of something else.

  Sally came out of the bathroom, finally, with a towel wrapped around her head. She glared at me while dropping a couple of Pop-Tarts in the toaster. “Would it kill you to invite Kevin to sit down?”

  I ignored her. If she wanted to hang out with Mull-goon, that was her business. I wasn’t about to babysit the moron.

  Mom finally hollered out from the living room. “You’re on your own for supper tonight, Del. Marge and I are going out for cocktails in Oshkosh.”

  Great! Her first social activity in a month and it was some stupid shindig aimed at getting drunk and smoking even more cigarettes.

  “Better take the lake road,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Highway 41 Killer’s still out there.”

  You see, my dad wasn’t the only one shot dead on the side of the highway. Two other times men had been found lying alone in the ditch next to their cars. One was two years ago and the other just five months before Dad was murdered.

  My real motive behind that suggestion to Mom, however, was keeping her from getting busted for drunk driving on the way home. There were a lot more cops patrolling the highway than on the lake road following the west shore of Winnebago. I grabbed sixty-five cents for my lunch out of the loose change bowl in the kitchen and made my escape out the back door.

  Riding Ike through the mist was sort of fun in a science-experiment kind of way. Microscopic water droplets piled up on my face as I cruised through the gunk. Sounds seemed twice as loud through the blanket of fog. From the crest of the bridge I heard water tumbling over the dam, the low rumble of paper mills, and a train whistle in the distance.

  A strange confidence surged through me as I locked Eisenhower to Randy Schnell’s apple tree once again. Parking there had saved me a lot of headaches and probably my lunch money. By the time fourth period was over I realized that I had avoided grits and dirtballs all morning long.

  The best part of my day, however, was when I learned that the black girl was in my English class. I watched her all period long, wondering what her name was and how she ended up moving to Neenah in the first place.

  She never smiled, but otherwise she seemed to have recovered from the Dinsky incident. Gosh, how I wished I could rewind the tape from yesterday. Yep, things would have turned out differently. I for sure would have helped her collect her books and stuff. Maybe there was even a way I could have popped Leon Dinsky without getting myself killed.

  Was it really in me? Maybe I just didn’t have enough bravery to do anything. Some people were probably born cowards, I figured, and maybe I was one of them. I hoped it wasn’t true, but if it was true, I hoped it wasn’t permanent.

  The bell rang and I watched the black girl gather her things and stand up, straight-backed and proud. She walked sort of like that skinny black girl in Little Rock, Arkansas, who had to go up against the governor and practically the whole world just to attend a better school. I decided that I would find a way to meet her. I didn’t know how, but one way or another I would learn her name and she would learn mine.

  After school I didn’t go straight home. It was hot and sunny, so I rode my bike down to the lighthouse at Kimberly Point. I had planned it out in advance, bringing my dive mask and swim trunks with me in a plastic bag. I changed in the bathroom of the lighthouse and put on some beat-up tennis shoes to protect my feet. Looking around for bank fisherman, I spotted only two guys. One man was bottom fishing by the downstream corner of the park. The other was casting a spinner a short distance to my south. This was good news. I had the whole stretch of shoreline, a hundred feet on each side of the lighthouse, to myself and sure as heck didn’t want to catch a number 4 treble hook in the neck.

  Before going in the water, I looked east across the choppy waters of Lake Winnebago. All the way, across eight miles, I could see High Cliff. The shoreline rose sharply to the height of the bluffs. I knew all about that place and had ridden Ike there more than once to explore the cliffs, caves, and Indian mounds. A narrow white spire marked the ruins of the old lime kiln chimney that still stood below the cliffs. To the south, the shoreline almost disappeared to nothing as the thirty-mile length of Lake Winnebago swallowed it up like an endless sea.

  I walked carefully into the greenish-brown water until I was waist-deep. Then I spat in my mask and smeared it around to keep it from fogging. As I lowered myself in, the chill shocked me worse than usual. I shook it off and pulled myself to the bottom with an underwater breaststroke.

  The waters of Lake Winnebago and the Fox River, which it fed, were almost as murky as chicken broth. The only question was whether visibility would be ten inches or ten feet. The view beneath the surface was almost never any greater than that. On this day I was fortunate enough to be able to see four feet in front of my mask before the clouds of silt and algae caused everything to disappear behind a curtain the shade of green olives. The bottom of the Fox River by the lighthouse was my own private place where nobody else ever went. I
knew the fish, rocks, and buoy anchors. To me it felt like my own private property and I didn’t even have to pay taxes. As far as I knew, I was the only idiot who explored the bottom of the Fox. The pollution and algae scared most would-be swimmers away. And diving for lost treasure? Well, it just wasn’t done.

  What I was after were fishing lures, sinkers, hooks, and other gear lost by fishermen who snagged them in the rocks. The trick to finding these plums was learned through experience. I shouldn’t tell you the secret, but I will. Here it is. Look for the trail instead of the treasure. In the case of the Fox River bottom, that meant looking for the fishing line, usually clotted up with algae, and following the line to the lure. In a matter of seconds, I was on the trail of my first stray fishing line until it reached a dead end in the crevice between two rocks. I shoved one of the rocks aside and it made a deep, metallic thunk to my submerged ears. There it was, a blue-and-silver Little Cleo, almost new with just a little rust on the hook. I shoved it in my plastic bread bag, took a breath of air, and dove again.

  As I searched for the next line, a sheepshead swam in front of me just beyond the length of my arms. The fish wasn’t afraid, just playing a game with me. Around the back side of a bowling ball–sized rock, I found a coppery walleye lying in the gravel. It bolted at the sight of me, seeking a new place to ambush a minnow. I knew every type of fish in the lake and river, and they were many. Once I saw a spotted gar with its whip-thin body and alligator snout. Another time I saw a weird-looking paddlefish with its bucket-sized mouth and canoe paddle bill. A lamprey eel once slithered under my leg, and I was glad that the bloodsucker didn’t latch on. What I really wanted to see, but never had, was the biggest monster of them all, the sturgeon. With its prehistoric face, ridged back, and shark-like pectorals, it would be a shocker for sure, especially if I happened upon a seven footer. I knew it would be scary and that maybe I would freak, but I knew they were in there and I really, really wanted to see one.

  I had been in the water for almost an hour when I stumbled out with my bag of goodies. I shivered as I dumped the load onto a wooden picnic table. It had been a good take. For starters, I had two Cleos, including one old one with the naked lady stamped on the back side. I also had a Gypsy-King, a gold Rapala, a red-and-white Daredevil, and at least a dozen hooks and lead sinkers of various sizes and shapes. Between these and the others at home, I had accumulated enough to fill a Hughes candy box, and hopefully make some serious cash.

  4

  The sun was a big gold coin over the river as I stood on Ike’s pedals by the hospital and climbed the bridge for about the millionth time. At least three dozen sailboats clung to their moorings by Riverside Park, and the big, seventy-five-foot lake cruiser, Pilgrim, lay asleep at her dock. I knew I would never cross Lake Winnebago in that gleaming hull, but nobody could stop me from dreaming about it.

  My legs churned like an egg beater as I bombed past the mansions of the paper barons on Wisconsin Avenue. I zoomed by the stack of tiny pram sailboats where I had once taken lessons, then whipped a right turn onto Pine Street. On a whim I decided to treat myself to some baseball cards and a pack of Twinkies at Mertz’s at the corner of Lauden and Congress. I slid two quarters on the counter and the old man returned a dime for my pocket. For the third day in a row, I parked my bike in Randy Schnell’s backyard and helped myself to an apple. Not a single person gave me any crap as I walked through the big oak doors and jostled toward my locker. The prospects of surviving until the weekend were looking pretty good.

  I walked into English class right at the sound of the third-period bell. The desk next to the black girl was open and I quietly slid into it, checking to see if she saw me. I felt almost invisible. Her serious face and dark eyes stared straight ahead. Her super curly black hair seemed to defy gravity, puffing out except where a blue bandana held it in place. She sure wasn’t like any of the other girls in school and was the first black person I had ever seen close up. Her skin looked like liquid chocolate. Her nose turned up a little like a miniature ski jump and her cheeks were a pair of perfect, round pitcher’s mounds. Those eyes never wavered as she kept on looking straight ahead. They were bright and dark at the same time and her mouth was . . .

  “Mr. Finwick, are you with us?”

  “Huh?” My head snapped around and my eyes landed on the not-smiling face of Mrs. Borger.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Finwick.”

  “Could you repeat it, please?” I was pretty sure that Mrs. Borger already hated me, and the current situation wasn’t helping matters.

  Her face tightened up like a knotted rope as she looked over the top of her glasses. She cleared her throat for effect. All eyes were on her. “What is the rhyming scheme in the Shakespearian sonnet form of English poetry?”

  Heads snapped around and all of a sudden every eye was on me. I gave a quick glance in the direction of the black girl. Even she was looking at me now, apparently concerned for my survival.

  “Mr. Finwick? Do you have an answer? This was in your reading assignment.” Mrs. Borger pushed her glasses to the top of her nose and stretched her long neck like she was the Queen of Sweden or something.

  I squinted my eyes and looked toward the ceiling. Around me the giggles and snickers began to rise. I mined my brain for the answer that I had seen somewhere. Then, very slowly, I spoke: “a b a b c d c d e f e f g g.”

  Silence filled the classroom as all heads whipped back around to Mrs. Borger, who now looked at me with her mouth hanging slightly open. Apparently, the Queen of Sweden didn’t like to be shown up.

  “That is correct, Mr. Finwick,” she said without smiling.

  I glanced at the black girl, who was trying very hard not to smile but losing the fight, and for one very brief microsecond, she looked at me in a way that made me feel very, very good.

  The remaining forty-eight minutes of English class were spent by me trying to work up the courage to talk to her. The bell rang and the commotion began. It was now or never.

  “Hi,” I said. (That was my opening line after forty-eight minutes of thinking about it.)

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I’m Del Finwick.”

  “I’m Opal Parsons.”

  She paused and smiled, but only with her eyes. Then she was gone.

  My mom and sister were still asleep on Saturday morning when I snuck out the door with my Hughes candy box full of fishing lures, an empty pickle jar, and a folded-up card table. The box and jar fit neatly enough in Eisenhower’s front basket. The card table posed another problem. Lacking any better ideas, I ended up carrying the thing by holding it with one hand alongside Ike while steering with the other. It wasn’t easy, and Fox Point Shopping Center was two miles away, but, with rest stops every few minutes, I finally made it there by eight in the morning.

  The flea market at Fox Point was really just a ragtag operation with nobody in charge. A few dozen tables had been set up in the parking lot in two rows, back-to-back. The usual arrangement was a car or pickup truck backed in to the spot so the merchandise could easily be moved from the trunk or truck bed to the tables. People were selling all sorts of assorted junk. They had record albums, dishes, old coins, radios, used clothes, antique door knobs, and pumpkins just to name a few. I was the only one who came by bike and the only one selling fishing lures.

  I set up my table and organized my stuff by category. In the first row I had my spoons and spinners. In row two, my various plugs and plastic worms. Backing up the display were the accessories, such as sinkers, hooks, swivels, and bobbers. My prices ranged from a nickel to fifty cents.

  An old, bald-headed man at the table next to me was set up with antique milk and pop bottles. I thought they were pretty neat and told him so. I had found a few old bottles on the river bottom myself and had a genuine interest. The old man’s bottles were mostly small, but the best one was a gallon-sized, clear job with green letters that said Eskdale Dairy on the side. It was clean as a whistle, with a built-in metal handle and every
thing.

  “How much for that one?” I asked.

  “Two dollars,” he said. “But I’ll give you a discount if it’s still here at noon.”

  Things started off slow, but by nine o’clock, customers started rolling in at a pretty good clip. Like any boy in Neenah, I had done my share of lemonade stands and door-to-door wreath sales, but this was different. I was sure glad I went to the bathroom before leaving home because the bargain hunters just kept coming.

  It was weird listening to people insulting my stuff as if I wasn’t even standing there. “Looks like a lot of junk to me,” said a father to his son. “You’re better off going to the hardware store.”

  A gray-haired man in coveralls walked up with a rusty toaster under his arm. “Used fishing lures?” he said. “Bunch of crap.”

  Well, crap or otherwise, some people seemed to like my stuff. By ten o’clock I had sold an Abu-Reflex and all but two Little Cleos. At 10:15 a lady in pink pants gobbled up my red-and-white daredevil with plans to give it to her husband for his birthday. Five minutes later, a man in a sweater vest offered a buck for two Rapalas and every sinker on the table.

  All this time I kept stuffing the money into the glass pickle jar that I had washed out at home and brought along for the purpose. I was rolling in dough and wishing I had more merchandise to put out.

  Meanwhile, the old man with the milk bottles was scratching his head in amazement at my success. “Looks to me like you’ve found yourself a vocation,” he said with a smile.

  By eleven in the morning, my merchandise was pretty well tapped out and all I had left was a plastic crayfish, a half-dozen swivels, and a cork bobber the size of my fist. It was time to pack things up. I looked over at my friend with the milk bottles who was still trying to make his first sale of the day. I picked up the gallon-sized Eskdale with the metal handle and admired it once again.