LEAVING

HOME

GARRISON

KEILLOR

PENGUIN BOOKS

To my mother and father,

John and Grace

One more spring in Minnesota,

To come upon Lake Wobegon.

Old town I smell your coffee.

If I could see you one more time

I can't stay, you know, I left so long ago,

I'm just a stranger with memories of people I knew here.

We stand around, looking at the ground.

You're the stories I've told for years and years.

That yard, the tree-you climbed it once with me,

And we talked of cities that we'd live in someday.

I left, old friend, and now I'm back again,

Please say you missed me since I went away.

One more time that dance together,

Just you and I now, don't be shy.

This time I know I'd hear the music

'If I could hold you one more time.

INTRODUCTION

New York

June 4, 1988

Back in Minnesota where I come from, a good many people

look on New York City as a sinkhole of degradation and

squalor, so if you leave there and come here, they view the

move as a moral collapse. They say, "Well, we always knew

he was headed that way. He showed a lot of New York-type

tendencies. He never really was what you could call a

normal person. He didnt have us fooled.". To Christians, on

the other hand,, it's not so big a deal. What's Minnesota

to a Christian? The sun shines and the rain falls, and if

you move to New York, it's no more than a blackbird flying

up from the alfalfa and into the tall corn. Christians

take a long view.

I landed in New York in the fall of 1987, on the rebound

from a summer in my wife's country of Denmark. We rented a

walk-up flat in Manhattan, around the comer from two

Chinese laundries and two Korean fruit stands, an Iranian

newsstand, a Greek flower shop, and a half-dozen foreign

restaurants. It seemed that whenever we entered a place of

business, the proprietors spoke simple formal English to us

and a blue streak of something else to each other. A

Haitian cabdriver brought us in from the airport and a

Russian took us back out when we flew to Minnesota to close

the sale of our house and pack up our traps. I drove across

the Mississippi and into- the tremendous calm of Saint Paul

and began to miss the New York streets. It was a cool fall

day and Saint Paul was all shadows, a lovely elegiac

midwestern town where I lived for fifteen years or so and

still had a few friends, but I couldn't wait to go back to

the foreigners. Leaving home is a kind of forgiveness, and

when you get among strangers, you're amazed at how decent

they seem. Nobody smirks at you or gossips about you,

nobody resents your successes or relishes your defeats. You

get to start over, a sort of redemption.

TUSIND TAK

I liked Denmark dearly, a handsome delightful land, and

friendly,

Though when they spoke Danish, I had to say, "Excuse me,

pal. Non comprende."

They said, "Det er meget dejligt at snakke med dig. Hvordan

har,du det? Har du det godt?

Taler du dansk? Forstar du?" I said: No, thanks. I guess.

But it's all right if you don't understand the beauty of a

foreign land Is that foreign places help your mind float

free And reduce you to such simplicity, You can almost be a

child, mon ami. You only know words for Good night and Good

day  and Please. You, don't know how to say "My life is

torn between immutable existential uncertainties"

In Danish. So you say, "Thank you." Tak.

Tak for everything, tak for the evening and for the walk,

Tak for the food:

When all you can say is tak, you do feel a certain

gratitude.

Our flat in Copenhagen is a short hike from the vegetable

market in the square on Frederiksborggade where I walked,

bag in hand, down the avenue of boot s heaped with crates

of produce and felt back home in Lake Wobegon, back in the

land of tomatoes and cucumbers. Cucumbers are agurker in

Danish,: but tomatoes are tomater and I- see meloner and

nektariner, bananer, radiser, broccoli, selleri, 'and

plenty of aebler (both "Golden Delicious" and "Granny

Smith"). For vandmelon you pay ten kroner, almost $1.50,

and they're as big and thump as well as what I remember

from our vandmelon patch at home. Mais is ten kroner for

three cars, a little expensive, but when it comes to mais

who counts the cost?

Back home, our fridge was always getting full. in July. We

took tomatoes to church to give away, as Christ said we

should do, and arrived late and in the cloakroom we found

paper sacks full of Christian tomatoes and cucumbers. It

was like heaven will. be, excessive, so much that we'll

have all we can handle, we'll be filled. We'll eat creamed

peas and onions, beet greens with butter, fresh carrots

guler- and tomatoes, and cucumbers, sliced in vinegar, and

mais.

Sweet corn was our family's weakness. We were prepared to

resist atheistic Communism, immoral Hollywood,  hard

liquor, gambling and dancing, smoking, fornication, but if

Satan had come around with sweet corn, we at least would

have listened to what he had to sell. We might not have

bought it but we would've had him in and given him a cup of

coffee. It was not amazing to learn in eighth-grade science

that corn is sexual, each plant containing both genders,

male tassel and female flower, prop- in our garden after

dark. Sweet corn was so delicious, what could have produced

it except sex? Sunday after church, when the pot roast was

done and the potatoes were. boiled and mashed and a pot of

water was boiling only then would Dad run out with a bushel

basket and pick thirty ears of corn. We shucked it clean in

five seconds per ear and popped it in the pot for a few

minutes. A quick prayer, a little butter and salt, and that

is as good as it gets. People have searched the world over

for something better and didn't find it because it's not

there. There's nothing better, not even sex. People have

wanted sex to be as good as sweet corn and have worked hard

to improve it, and afterward they lay together in the dark,

and said, "Det var dejligt. " ("That w as so wonderful. ")

"ja, det var $1 "Men det var ikke saa godt som frisk mais."

("But it wasn't as good as fresh sweet corn.") "Nope."

If I had eaten more sweet corn, maybe Id still be in

Minnesota, sitting between the wall and kitchen table,

munching away line after line like a typewriter, but I lost

touch with people who raised  corn and with their church

and wasn't invited to Sunday dinner anymore and slowly lost

my bearings, and felt lost at home. In Minneapolis, they

tore down Met Stadium for a polyester ballfield with a roof

over it, a ghostly greenish plastic baseball mall, and all

those lovely summer nights were lost. The night train to

Chicago was taken off, another broken romance, and all the

little truck farms around the Twin Cities disappeared that

sold fresh tomatoes, squash, and sweet corn at roadside

stands or off the tailgate of a truck. Immense shopping

malls sprang up in their place like fungus on the grass.'

One Christmas, after I wrote a book, I stood autographing

copies of it for six hours at a chain store in the

Ridgedale complex, as large and bewildering as an Air Force

base, and felt its peculiar dementia, low and steadily

throbbing from fluorescent lights, air conditioners,, and

electronic systems including synthesized violins playing

homogenous hymns to the anesthetized people, and knew that

somewhere we had gone wrong. But all that was off to the

west in Hennepin County. Saint Paul, my home, seemed to be,

like Lake Wobegon, a gentler place, shaded from predators-

and then the worst occurred. The hometown newspaper decided

that, being a published author, I was a credit to the

community and should be paid close attention, so it snooped

around and did a big story about my courtship and while I

was off getting married it published a photograph of our

house, our address, and interviews with the neighbors. I

felt mistaken for somebody else, a big-time celebrity like

Porfirio Rubirosa or Toots Shor. It dawned on me that life

might be not so complicated elsewhere. That winter it was

warm, there was no snow, the landscape was dry and brown

and bleak. We left Saint Paul in June, as soon as school

was out.

Life is complicated and not for the timid. It's an

experience that when it's done, it will take us a while to

get, over it. We'll look back on all the good things we

surrendered in favor of deadly trash and wish we had

returned and reclaimed them. We may sit in a cool comer of

hell and wish we had kept the ballpark, built the shops

else

where, and not killed off all those cornfields.

I don't know whether anyone killed radio or it simply died

and became a phonograph, but I was privileged to get a

chance to reclaim a slice of it thirteen years ago and did

my best for that grand old cause, the live broadcast. In

fact, the stories in this book were written for performance

on the radio, on "A Prairie Home Companion," as you may see

from the tone of them. They were written for my voice,

which is flat and slow. There are long pauses in them and

sentences that trail off into the raspberry bushes.

When I burst upon the radio business in 1963 as the

friendly announcer of "Highlights in Homemaking," I badly

wanted my voice to sound like that of Orson Welles, as rich

and smooth as my mother's gravy on Sunday pot roast, and I

succeeded so far as to sound at least brown and thick and

lumpy, and then the pretense was too  hard to" keep up, and

by the time "Prairie Home" rolled along, my voice had,

drifted back toward center and sounded more like my dad's.

The show ran from 1974 to 1987, from a series of theaters

and auditoriums in and around Saint Paul, at 5 P.m. on

Saturday night, two hours of music and -comedy. The last

live show on June 13 was pretty typical. Chet Atkins and

Leo Kottke played guitar, a Hawaiian school choir sang in

Hawaiian, jean Redpath sang and Stevie Beck played the -

Autoharp and I sang with Rich Dworsky's Orchestra, Tom

Keith and Kate Mackenzie starred in an episode of "Buster

the Show Dog," and Vern Sutton sang "Stars and Stripes

Forever" with the mighty white Wurlitzer played from the

pit by Philip Brunelle as Tom made excellent rocket sounds

and the audience clapped and at the climax Vern crashed a

pair of cymbals-classic American entertainment, in other

words-and in the third half hour, I strolled out and told a

story as per usual. I stood at the microphone, looked up

into the lights, and let fly. If the crowd got restless, I

sat down on a stool, which caught their interest, and if

they rustled again, I stood up.

I stood  After twenty minutes or as soon as the story came

to an extremely long pause, I stopped and said, "That's the

news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the

men are good-looking, and all the children are above

average," and walked off.

The World Theater, our, home for half of those thirteen

years, was the right place for that sort of seance, a

classic Shubert two-balcony house from 1905, inhabited by

two bats and the ghost of a stagehand, all seats within

eighty feet of the stage, closer than first base to home.

Standing at stage center with your toes to the footlights,

you're as close to a thousand people as you can conceivably

be. Out there on the prairie where even close friends tend

to stand an arm's length apart, such intimacy on such a

grand scale is shocking and thrilling and a storyteller

reaches something like critical 'mass, passing directly

from solid to radio waves without going through the liquid

or gaseous phase. You stand in the dark, you hear people

leaning forward, you smell the spotlights, and you feel

invisible. No script, no clock, only pictures in your mind

that the audience easily sees, they sit so close. You come

to be so calm out there, it is more like going to bed than

going out to work. It is like crawling under a quilt that

my grandma Dora Keillor made for me from scraps of clothes

worn by my aunts and uncles, which is soft and thin from

years of sleep, which comes easily to me when I lie under a

smell that goes back to my earliest times lying in bed

between my mother and father.

This lovely smell is one of a broad group of delicate

smells that were lost to me for twenty-four years because I

was addicted to cigarettes. The sense of smell is not an

intellectual sense such as sight and hearing. We have so

much language to describe how things sound and lookand so

few words for how things smell and feel to our touch, our

animal senses-so a smart guy like me thinks he can give up

smell for the pleasure of smoking. A few days after I

stopped, I began to notice the vast realm of smells that

were lost all those years. I began breathing in a life I

hadn't. felt since I was seventeen, like seeing grass after

a quarter-century at the South Pole.

I smelled creamed peas and onions, wood smells, dirt

smells. Walked into an old garage, and a hundred smells

jumped out, the spirits of a hundred old men in undershirts

mixing shellac and sanding a screen door and oiling a rifle

and, patching an innertube. A hidden life came back to me,

the ordinary days of long ago when I sat with the others

and talked on the porch and had a little chow. Bushes

baking in the sun, us in the cool porch. An American flag

hanging from a pole, a, dog, old people in cane chairs, all

dead now but that day they were just tired, their feet

hurt-"Boy, these dogs are killing me," but it wasn't their

feet that killed them. They said, "Here, rub my feet for

me, wouldja." A pitcher of cold green nectar with chunky

ice cubes from ice trays. Red roses on the pitcher, green

leaves, and rocks of ice floating in the roses. White

wicker chairs, old people with sore feet, a dog with long

hair, miserable in the heat, he sighs and crawls under the

porch, and here we sit, hot and moist. This old man smells

like a garage. A sweet single-minded man who works when he

works and when he sits down to eat he eats, no fooling

around. When he's angry he is nothing but angry for one-

minute and then it's over. He isn't sweet on the outside,

angry inside. He says "dangblast it" and slams a door into

next week. Sits down to eat, first he prays in his prayer

voice, like putting on a suit ("Our Lord and Father, we

would come before Thee now . and then talks in his regular

voice: "So what was that you was sayin' about that friend

of yours then, he knew where he could get you a Chevy,

engine for bow much? Mary, get us a dishrag then, this milk

is leaking outta here." All of it comes back from the smell

of cut grass and fried potatoes.

When I was four years old, I fell through a hole in the

haymow into the bull pen, missing the stanchion and landing

in his feed trough full of hay, and was carried into the

house and laid on my grandma's sofa, 'which smelled like

this quilt, and so did a warm shirt handed down to me from

my uncle'. When I was little I didn't think of, grown

ups as having bare skin; grownups were made of wool

clothing, only kids. were bare-naked; now I'm older than

they were when I was little and I lie naked under a quilt

made of their clothes when they were children. I don't know

what makes me think I'm smarter than them.

Every time I read a book about how to be smarter, how not

to be sad, how to raise children and be happy 'and grow old

gracefully, I think, "Well, I won't make those mistakes, I

won't have to go through that," but we all have to go

through that. Everything they went through, we'll go

through. Life isn't a vicarious experience. You get it

figured out and then one day life happens to you. You

prepare yourself for grief; and loss, arrange your ballast

and then the wave swamps the boat.

Everything they went through: the loneliness, the sadness,

the grief, and the tears-it will all come to us, just as it

came to them when we were little and had to reach up to get

hold of their hand, when we knew them by the shape of their

legs. Aunt Marie had fat little legs, I held her hand one

cold day after a blizzard, we climbed snowdrifts to get to

the store and buy licorice whips. She said, "Come on, we

can make it, don't slip," and soon she was far behind, a

fat lady in a heavy coat with a fur collar, .leaning into,

the wind, wheezing from emphysema, and sometime later she

died. She knew that death was only a door to the kingdom

where Jesus would welcome her, there would be no crying

there, no suffering, but meanwhile she was fat, her heart

hurt, and she lived alone with her ill-tempered little

dogs', tottering around  her dark little house full of

Chinese figurines and old Sunday Tribunes. She complained

about nobody loving her or wanting her or inviting her to

their house for dinner anymore. She sat eating pork roast,

mashed potato, creamed asparagus, one Sunday at our house

when she said it. We were talking about a trip to the North

Shore and suddenly she broke into tears and cried, "You

don't care about me. You say

you do but you don't. If I died tomorrow, I don't know as

you'd even go to my funeral." I was six. I said,

cheerfully, "I'd come to your funeral," looking at my fat

aunt, her blue dress, her string of pearls, her red rouge,

the powder on her nose, her mouth full of pork roast, her

eyes full Of tears.

Every tear-she wept, that foolish woman, I will weep every

one before I'm done, and so will you. We're not so smart we

can figure out how to avoid pain, and we cannot walk away

from the death that we owe.

My uncle Lew was the storyteller of my family, who loved to

drive his big Chrysler around and visit with us and talk

about the old days. He drove it right up into his nineties,

when he finally wore out and died. I have a picture of him

and me from years ago when I had a beard, sitting together

on folding chairs in a front yard eating hotdish off paper

plates, he is leaning toward me and saying, "I remember

when our house burned in Charles City, Iowa, it was the

first cold day of fall, and I was in the third grade, home

from school, sick with the gripes in the big bed, looking

at Mother's photo album and the smoke and flames come out

of 'the damper on the stove and we both dropped everything

and ran for our lives, I dropped the pictures and afterward

Mother said, 'It's all right, it's all right, we can get

along without pictures, we still have each other,' but she

was crying and I felt so bad, they were gone and it was my

fault. Some of those pictures were of Mother's family, her

old aunts who had died-a picture was all she had left. We

stood looking at the ashes of our house and Dad - raking

through them for those photographs. She said, .'Oh well,

we'll- see them in Heaven,' and I stood and bawled. . . . "

He told this story so well that he made himself feel bad

all over again and he had to stop and wipe away a tear.

These stories are not about my family, and yet I hope they

carry on our family tradition of storytelling and kitchen

talk, the way we talk and what we talk about. I believe in

reincarnation only as we may experience it through our

children; I hope my parents recognize themselves in me,

just as I see myself in the tall young man upstairs playing

the blues on his pink electric guitar; and I hope that our

old radio show lives on in the homes of a few people who

recognized the people in the stories. We had to stop short

of the destination we dreamed of and we have to look to

others to cross those mountains that stopped us and make

the home that we tried so hard to reach.

Our people aimed for Oregon When they left Newburyport,

Great-grandma Ruth, her husband John, But they pulled up in

Wobegon, Two thousand miles short.

It wasn't only the dangers ahead That stopped the pioneer.

My great-grandmother simply said, "It's been three weeks

without a bed. I'm tired. Let's stay here."

He put the horses out to graze While she set up the tent,

And they sat down beside their.blaze And held each other's

hand and gazed Up at the firmament.

"John," she said, "what's on your mind

Besides your restlessness) -        I

You know I'm not the traveling kind,

So tell me what you hope to find

Out there that's not like this?"

The fire leaped up bright and high, The sparks as bright

stars shone. "Mountains," he said. "Another sky. A green

new land where you and I Can settle down to home.

"You are the dearest wife to me.

Though I'm restless, it is true,

And Oregon is where Id be

And live in mountains by the sea,

But   never without you."

They stayed a week to rest the team, Were welcomed and

befriended. The land was good, the grass was green, And

slowly he gave up the dream, And there the journey ended.

They bought a farm just north of town, pleasant piece of

rolling ground, quarter-section, mostly cleared; He built a

house before the fall; They lived there forty years in all,

And by God persevered.

And right up to his dying day When he was laid to rest, No

one knew-he did not sayHis dream had never gone away, He

still looked to the west.

She found it in his cabinet drawer: A box of pictures,

every one Of mountains by the ocean shore, The mountains he

had headed for In the state of Oregon.

There beside them lay his will.

"I love you, Ruth," the will began,

"And count myself a well-loved man.

Please send my ashes when I die

To Oregon, some high green hill,

And bury me and leave me lie

At peace beneath the mountain sky,

Off in that green and lovely land

We dreamed of, you and I"

At last she saw her husband clear Who stayed and labored

all those years, His mountains all uncrossed. Of dreams

postponed and finally- lost, Which one of us can count the

cost And not be filled with tears?

And yet how bright those visions are Of mountains that we'

sense afar, The land we never. see: The golden west and

golden gate Are visions that illuminate And give wings to

the human heart Wherever we may be. That old man by dreams

possessed, By Oregon was truly blessed Who saw it through

the eye of faith, The land of his sweet destiny: In his

eye, more than a state And something like a star.

I wrote this poem in Oregon, Wanting the leaden words to

soar In memory of my ancestor And all who lie along the

way.

God rest their souls on a golden shore, God bless us who

struggle on: We are the life that they longed for, We bear

their visions every day.

LEAVING HOME

A TRIP TO

GRAND RAPIDS

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was chilly on Tuesday and Wednesday, as a cold front

moved through, and the tomato growers stayed up late

debating, Whether to cover plants for frost or not. "Naw,"

they decided about ten o'clock, and hit the hay and lay

thinking about it: the humiliation of getting froze out,

the shame of eating store-bought tomatoes, or, worse, going

on tomato relief. "Here, -Clarence, have a couple bushels

of these-we got plenty. No, really. Bud covered ours that

night in June, of course, when it froze-you remember-it was

that night, you could tell by the birch-leaves it was going

to get below freezing ... you didn't know that?"

It rained Wednesday night. Roger Hedlund lay worrying about

his implanted corn and thinking about his daughter Martha's

new black kitten. Roger had laid down the law that a cat

stays outdoors, even when it's cold: That's what it has fur

for, put it outside, it'll take care of itself. She looked

up at him, pleading. He said, "Now. just do it." She put

the kitten out. On her way upstairs she whispered,

"Murderer." He heard her. When he went

up to bed, he heard the kitten crying on the back step.

Well, he thought, it'll go away. It cried pitifully and

then it did go away, and after a while he went out to look

for it. "Kittykittykittykitty.." He walked naked except for

his long T-shirt, barefoot across the cold wet grass, his

big dog, Oscar, with him. He pulled the T-shirt down to

make himself decent, and thought he heard the kitten under

the house. Bent over to look, and Oscar sniffed him. Roger

jumped straight into the side of his house, hitting the

faucet with his thigh. He groaned and sat down in the

grass. "Ohhhhhhh" And saw the flashlight. "Dad?" she said.

"Dad? Is that you?"

"Go back to bed," he said, "everything is all right." But

his voice sounded funny, like a man who'd run into a

faucet. "What's wrong, Dad? Are you all right?"

. No, he wasn't. Much later he was not so bad, after the

pain subsided and he had a shot of bourbon, but he wasn't

all right. He lay awake listening for the kitten. He fell

asleep, and in his dreams something chased him to hell and

back-it might have been a cat. In the morning the kitten -

came back. Martha said, "Don't you think it'd be less

trouble if we kept him in the house? 'Men you wouldn't have

to get up in the middle of the night and go find him, Dad.

You see, if you keep something-" "All right," he said. "-if

you keep something indoors, then you know where it is."

"All right," he said, "we'll try it and see how it works."

Thursday night he was glad the kitten was in. It rained

buckets, one of those summer thunderstorms when the sky

turns black and clouds boil up and the wind blows the grass

flat. Trees bend in half and sheets of rain fall like in

the Old Testament, and then it's over.

The. wind took hold of the Quaker State oil sign at

Krebsbach Chev, the one that hung on the Pure Oil sign, and

ripped it from the bracket and whipped it down Main Street

like a guillotine. It sliced into the ground in front of

the Unknown Norwegian and buried itself halfway in. When it

came whistling down the street, Mr. Lundberg had just

emerged from the Sidetrack Tap to make sure his windows

were rolled up. The wind almost bowled him over, and then

he heard a hum like a UFO and ran inside. It was the sign

whizzing past so fast he only saw a blur, it could've cut

someone in two. Such as him, for example. He is a hefty man

and half of him would be almost as much as all of just

about anyone else you could think of, but that sign

would've done the job. It had not been a good week for him

anyway, and then to get sliced in two on top of it-not a

week you'd care to live through again.

Tuesday night a chunk of plaster fell from the bedroom

ceiling, crashing on the bureau dresser and waking him and

Betty out of a sound sleep-. It was it chunk they have

noticed for two years-first its outline, shaped like the

state of Illinois, then the shadows where it pulled away

from the lath. The force of gravity being what it is, it

was clear what would come next, and they both looked up and

said, "Looks to me like that plaster's coming off." So when

it finally fell on the bureau, there were recriminations on

her part, after they got, over the scare. They lay in the

dark, little bits of plaster falling, and she said, "If

you'da just done it when you said you were going to." He

knew better than to reply. She said, "I kept telling you

to."

He lay, smelling the perfume on the bureau that got busted

by the -chunk. A dozen different perfumes, sickening, and

when he opened the window, the wind blew all the perfumes

directly at him. She said, "But oh no, you wouldn't listen

to me, would you. Oh no. You wouldn't listen to me for one

minute."

He lay and listened to her, remembering the awful nights

out when she wore the perfume he bought her, such as the

Sons of Knute Syttende Mai Ball, which he spent in a suit

at least three sizes too small for him. He was too proud to

have it let out, although it meant he couldn't

dance, couldn't sit, had to stand, and when he dropped his

wallet he had to kick it into a closet and close the door

and ease himself down so he could pick it up, but when he

eased back up, his pants split anyway, and then he could

only stand in certain areas.

She said, "Well, maybe you'll listen to me the next time.

I'm not wrong about everything, you know."

The perfumes were gifts from him, bought at K Mart in Saint

Cloud for anniversaries and birthdays, in a panic at the

last minute, him sneaking-over to Notions while she was in

Women's Wear and asking the clerk to give him something

nice. He should have known, looking at the clerk, that her

taste wasn't right on the mark. She looked like someone he

played football with, except she piled her hair up high on

her head and sprayed it to stay, so when she gave him a

bottle of Nuits de Oui, he might've guessed it wasn't what

Betty would wear. Smelling the perfumes made him think What

a dope he was, and he couldn't even fix a ceiling before it

fell either.

lie lay in the dark thinking it over. Her last words were

"And you can clean it up too." At six-thirty he got up and

made toast and coffee and brought it up to her in bed. To

confuse her. Then he got the vacuum out. He picked up the

big pieces and the broken bottles, vacuumed the plaster

bits and dust on the floor and under the radiator and on

the. bureau, as she sat and drank her coffee, speechless.

He swooshed around with the vacuum, a new Japanesemade

model more powerful than what he was used to, and it sucked

up some money off the bureau, including a few quarters that

banged around in its bowels, and it almost swallowed a

picture of Donny Lundberg. As he rescued Donny from the

vacuum's maw, it ate a tiny plastic bottle of superglue

that clattered around inside it and then made a popping

sound. He felt something wet on his bare foot. He wiped it

off with his hand. Then it dawned on him that it was

superglue. He said, "Oh for dumb," and clapped his hand to

his forehead.

He was in that pose when Betty drove him to the hospital:

The Thinker, hand to his forehead. He remained in serious

thought until the nurse found the correct solvent and sat

with a Q-tip and slowly pried his hand loose from his

forehead and the bedspread from his foot. He. had gotten so

mad about putting his hand to his forehead, he kicked the

bed with his sticky foot, and the spread came along

attached to his ankle.

The hand-forehead separation, the bedspreadectomy, were

carried out with professional gravity befitting an open-

heart operation. Betty drove him home without a word about

anything except the rainy weather and -things other than

getting stuck to yourself, but still he had to go to work

at the Co-op elevator with an angry red mark on his

forehead and another on the heel of his palm. They said,

"What happened to you?"

He said, "I hit myself in the head with my fist."

"Boy, you hit pretty hard."

"Yeah, I guess I don't know my own strength."

It was a week when a person would rather not be sliced in

half, because you'd want your family to remember you as a

better man than what you were most recently.

The rain was good news for lawns and gardens; some of them

turned so green, you look at them and see green for the

rest of the day-your kids look green, your food, even your

thumb.

Some kids turned green Friday night after the juniorSenior

Prom. The theme was "Caribbean Escapade," and the gym was

decorated to look like a beach house under palm trees and

an illuminated tropical moon. And a Plexiglas lagoon on a

night in June. With a macaroon by the old spittoon. Couples

of seventeen-year-olds in evening

dress, dancing close, and the visions of elegance led to

delusions of invincibility when the bottle was passed in

the parking lot. Some kids learned that although vodkaand-

apple-juice is tasteless going down, it's quite memorable

on the return trip. That night, in and around town, a few

sailors had to weather heavy seas. If any preachers had

been awake at 3:00 A.M., they could've converted them to

temperance, Methodism, Masonry, yoga, or Japanese yen; the,

fields were ripe for harvest.

The rain was more than farmers needed and came at the wrong

time' keeping them out of the fields, and now planting is

late. Farmers are in enough trouble as it is, and even if

they could run the weather as they please, they still might

not make it. Roger got so nervous he couldn't sit down, for

two minutes. He'd start to say something, jump up in the

middle, look out the window, and forget what he said. Cindy

said, "You're driving us crazy, let's get out of here. You

can't do anything until it dries up, so let's go away and

do something this weekend." He said, "You must be crazy."

"No," she said, "not yet."

I-cave before we get the corn in? "We'll go to Grand Rapids

and stay with my sister," she said. What about Cathy and

Martha? "They're old enough," she said, "it's only for a

couple days." "Yeah," the girls said, "you need a break,

Dad. You ought to go.

It was the eagerness in their eyes that Roger kept thinking

about as he and Cindy drove north toward Grand Rapids

Thursday evening, and how pleasant his girls were, how

helpful as they saw their parents out to the car. "Here,

Dad, let me carry that. In you go. Okay, you two have a

good time and don't worry about us." Driving north, he

could hear Cathy's voice saying, "Don't worry about us,

don't worry about us," and just north of Aitkin he turned

around and headed south. "Are you crazy?" Cindy said. 'Yes,

he said-"as the father of two teenage daughters, I'd be

crazy not to be crazy."

When they turned onto the county road a half-mile east of

their place, they noticed more cars than you normally see,

all heading west. They came over the hill. Up ahead their

house was blazing with lights. All the traffic was turning

in at their driveway. They could hear the music quite

clearly from the road as they cruised past. "You don't want

to go in?" she said. Roger said, "I don't know. Maybe it's

something we don't want to know about." "Then let's turn

around and forget we ever saw this, whatever it is. God

help us, I hope it isn't what I think," she said.

At the crossroad, he parked on the shoulder and they got

out and looked at the farm. Across the muddy field, with so

much standing water the house looked like a cruise ship

with a big party on board. More cars drove up the

gangplank.

"Probably it's not what we think," she said. "If we're

going to trust them, then we have to trust them and not go

around spying on. them to see if they do what we want or

not."

"I'm curious. I'm going over and see what's going on. Want

to come?"

"Of course I do," she said.

It was hard going. They took off their shoes and socks and

waded through mud up to their ankles, straight -across the

field in the dark, toward the carnival in their farmyard.

Headlights, loud, music: he didn't know there were this

many teenage kids in the county. They got to the edge of

the windbreak. It didn't seem like their place with the

music blasting. Voices screeching, drums pounding. "My

gosh, they're going to kill the chickens," she said. She

looked in the coop, and the chickens did look dazed. Some

of the hens seemed to be turned upside down in their nests.

Where was Oscar the faithful watchdog? Oscar, who goes

crazy when the mailman turns around in the yard.

Roger peeked around the 'corner of the coop. Kids milled

around, went in the house, came out. More cars pulled up,

kids got out. Two kegs of beer by the back door. Kids moved

around, restless, hanging around, watching other kids

hanging around, watching to see if there was more fun

somewhere else, boys circling, girls waiting-a lot like a

party he sort of remembered from twenty-five or so years

ago.

Oscar lay by the back steps, an empty beer cup by his head,

his head on his paws. Some kids lit cigarettes, took long

drags, big clouds of smoke. Lighting up-Roger remembered

that.. Kids passing their cigarettes around. That's

generous, he thought. And there was his own little girl,

Martha-reaching for a cigarette. No! No! he thought. Don't.

She put it in her mouth, his sweet little daughter. Oh

darling child,, don't. A boy lit it and out of her sweet

lips came smoke. Roger had taken two steps out from behind

the coop. He wanted to run to her and yet he really didn't.

Cindy was right behind him, her hand on his back. "This is

ridiculous. I can't believe they'd do this. Are we going to

allow this?"

"I don't know."

"You don't? No? Well. I don't know either," she said. "I

was hoping you'd know. You're always so-so-"

"Strict?"

"Yes."

"You know something?" he said. "I'm getting tired of being

a dad." He didn't want to march in and be the cop, have

everybody get quiet and him make a speech while sullen kids

slink away cursing him under their breath. He wanted to

take his lovely wife by her cool hand-Come away, come away,

my love, my sweet slim darling, mother of my children, come

away.... She said, "Look! They're tramping on my petunias."

"Come," he said.

"You're going to just walk away and leave them?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure this is right?"

"No."

He took her hand and they stepped carefully over old lumber

in their bard feet and past the wreck of the old corn

planter, under the box-elder trees and Grandpa Steen's

Model A, sunk down to the hubcaps.

"You know, that party at the gravel pit was like this," she

said.

"What party?"

"Roger, honey, you know very well."

There were fast footsteps behind them, and a snarl and a

bark. It was Oscar coming straight at them-"Oscar! Good

boy!" Oscar stopped, growling. "Oscar! Oscar-my boy, good

boy." Roger took a step toward him; the dog barked. He

backed up and barked and barked. He followed them across

the field, barking.

How strange! To spy on your own house and be chased away by

your own dog and then-to find that your own car is parked

too far down in the ditch, and when you put your foot, on

the gas to come away my love, come away my dear one, your

rear end slips to the side and you're stuck. What then?

They made it to Grand Rapids at 4:00 A.m. and tumbled into

bed. Before he went to sleep, he saw it all, over again:

his long hike back to the house, up the driveway; the

silence when he came around the comer; someone shut off the

tape, there was a lot of shuffling and muttered hellos, and

he said, "Can somebody give us a push?" And when Martha

said, "What were you doing parked on the road?" and he

said, "None of your business," she said, "Oh Daddy, you

didn't," and he said, "Well, I'm just human, you know," and

she said, "You're so sweet. I had no idea," and smiled at

him. "Huh?" he said. He said, "I meant

that-you mean you thought that-you really thought that your

mother and I-?" And then, after the Tollerud boy pulled

them out with his old pickup, Roger had a bad feeling in

his rear end: no billfold. He must've dropped it when they

ran through the mud with Oscar on their tails. Maybe it,

was in the field, but he didn't think he'd look for it

right then. He said to Cindy, "You got some money?" She

said she thought that he had money. So he said to Martha'

"Would you happen to have some money you could let me have

until Monday?" "Hey!" she said. "My dad needs some money."

They passed a hat and collected sixty dollars. "I'll pay

you back!" he said to them all. "No problem, don't worry

about it," they said. And the quiet ride to Grand Rapids in

the middle of the night. He thought Cindy was asleep and

then she said, "Sure, you remember that party, that's where

we met.' You were with your cousin, and he spilled beer on

my pedal pushers, and you wiped it off with your hankie. I

had, beer running down my leg and you tried to clean it

up."

Later she said: "What do you think your grandpa would have

thought if he'd come home and found a hundred kids hanging

around his house?" He said, "He woulda been darned

surprised to be alive in 1986, I'll say that."

Her sister left a note on the door: "We went to bed.

The rollaway is made in the -basement, help yourself to

anything in the fridge. Will wake you up at 7. XXX

Gloria."    I

I Settling down on the rollaway, he thought again: I'm

getting tired of being a dad. Love my girls, but I've been

a parent long enough, I did what I could. I can't go on

being in charge much longer. These kids, this world, are

going to continue long after Fm- gone, and I should get

used to that and even enjoy it. I can't run them. I can

only love them and this good life.

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if

we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for

the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing:, I

thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful

then.

Good night, my sweet wife, sweet dreams. He kissed the back

of her neck and lay, full of love, and fell asleep.

A TEN-DOLLAR BILL

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Senator K. Thorvaldson writes from Florida that he is

coming home. He had trouble with his prostate last fall

and now he's having more and he'd like Dr. DeHaven to

fool with it and not somebody he doesn't know. A prostate

is personal. He had to decide by March I whether to keep

his condo for April or lose $215 in deposit, and he decided

to keep it. But now he's thinking $215 is cheap, he'd

rather

get out of there and escape his three roommates, his cousin

Frank and Frank's wife, Eunice, and their mangy spaniel,

who bit him in the Greyhound bus depot one sweltering

day when Senator was returning from a trip to the dog

track and was groggy from the long ride. When the dog

sank his teeth in his calf, the old man folded up and fell

down, but Eunice said, "Oh, it's not all that bad, it's

only

a scratch," and gave the beast a tug and said, "Oh, Nicky.

Shame." In the car driving out to the condo, she said, "It

takes him a while to get used to people. " That was in

January.

Two weeks ago, Eunice's aunt came to stay for an

unspecified length of time in the two-bedroom condo, and,

without so much as a beg-your-pardon, Eunice moved

Senator's clothes to the hall closet and made up the hide-

a-bed for him. She said, "Aunt Louise is depressed from her

blood-pressure pills, I couldn't ask her to sleep in the

living room," so there he was, paying $2 15 a month for a

couch and one-fourth of a bathroom, and enduring a surly

dog, now surlier because the couch hid been his bed. Aunt

Louise took long hot tub baths to treat her depression, so

Senator couldn't get in the bathroom until late at night,

when, even if he hadn't drunk a drop of anything, he felt

like his prostate was coming off at the hinges. When he got

back to his bed, he heard an embittered growl from Nicky,

who had crawled into it. He said "Get out!" and folded up

the bed on top of the dog to get the message across. But

the dog seemed satisfied with that, even pleased, and

finally Senator sat on top and squeezed the dog and

(probably) squeezed the dog's prostate to where he yelped

and crawled out. Senator got in, but it, wasn't a happy'

night of sleep, lying in a bed where an old dog had been.

It felt damp and hairy and rank, like, the floor at the bus

depot. The dog lay on the carpet and ever so often he'd

hoist himself up and growl in a strange, dreamy way;

Senator was afraid the dog might have a dream and do some

sleepwalking and sleep-biting, so he was awake most of the

night, listening to the mutt's heavy stuffed-up breathing

and feeling the hide-a-crossbar in the small of his back,

unless he turned over onto his stomach, when it caught him

right smack across the prostate.

So he's thinking of coming home early. His grandnephew Jim

Tollefson was the one who got this news from him, in a

letter, along with a money order for a hundred dollars for

his birthday, though Jim's birthday-his eigheenth-is in

July. Senator K. said, "Just in case this dog goes for my

throat and I die in my sleep, I want you to have your

birthday present." But really he sent it because he knows

Jim's dad is such a tightwad. Every time the

boy collects his allowance, Byron peels off the ten like

it's the last one around. He says, "I don't know where you

think this stuff comes from, but it sure doesn't grow on

trees, I'll tell you that."

There is a photograph on' the wall over Byron's chair of a

husband and wife perched on white kitchen chairs in a dirt

yard in front of a sod house, and eight children, one tall

boy with shoes on and five little barefoot kids and twins,

a boy and a girl, on their mother's lap. On his lap the

father holds a portrait of a girl who died a year before of

influenza. Next to the tall boy is his dog, who jerked his

head as the lens opened, and so in the picture he has two

heads, and there is a cow grazing on the roof It was the

summer of 1876. In August the twins perished of diphtheria.

To look at the parents, you might guess their ages as late

fifties, but Karl is twenty-eight and Sophie is two years

younger. He is her second husband, the first (who was the

tall boy's father, Bjorn) died six years before. Sophie was

Bjorn's second wife, the first (the tall boy's mother)

having died in childbirth. The tall boy is Jim's great-

grandfather, Jacob. The youngest ones in the family have no

blood relation to the oldest. You can see from the picture

where people got their philosophy that life is hard.

"Dad," Jim says, "I need some money." It's after supper,

his dad is eating a bowl of ice cream.

"What do you need money for? I gave you money a couple

weeks ago."

"I spent it."

"What for?"

"Things. You know."

"No, I don't know. Tell me."

He bent over the kitchen table, clearing the dishes. "Well,

I went out with some people and we went into Saint Cloud

and we went to a movie and we had pizza."

"Pizza! I buy food for the house and then you want me to

pay so you can go out to restaurants-?"

"Well, there were ten of us, so we couldn't very well eat

here."

"Who were they?"

"Just some kids from school."

"Don't they have names? Or you ashamed of who you're

keeping company with?"

"No."

"I don't see why you expect me to fork over cash every time

you decide you want some-"

It was a ballet, not a movie and pizza, that Jim had gone

to with his friend Stanglund and Stanglund's girlfriend,

Susie, driving to Minneapolis and back on Tuesday night. A

memorable night. It cost almost the entire hundred dollars.

His down jacket was shorter than his sportcoat, which

looked dumb. He pronounced ballet "ballot" and tried to

convince Susie he'd been to numerous ballots"What kind of

dancing do they do?" she asked. "Oh, a lot of different

dancing. Different styles. You know. Spanish and French,

Italian, Mexican." The ballet was good. He sat in the dark

and never took his eyes off it. One ballet after another,

short ballets, and the lights came up and people clapped.

He didn't know how much to clap, so he did what the people

behind him did, though they didn't like it as much as

people ahead who shouted and whistled. The people behind

said, "They don't have the sense of line they used to."

Everything he saw went into his memory whole. One dance: a

man in black tights, a woman in tights and skirt; when they

danced together, the way he held her and lifted her and she

arched her long back, and the way when he danced by

himself, so alone-so graceful and full of tears-he took

three steps and a tremendous leap and hung in air and you

saw his face so clear, illuminated by grief, and then he

vanished.

"Why can't you look at me when you talk to me? What's the

matter with you?"

He looked at his father's forehead.

"When I was your age, I sure never went looking for a

handout and I'll tell you why-because I knew that the world

does not owe you a living. Do you know that?"

Jim said that, yes, he did know that, but Byron wasn't

sure. He peeled off the ten and talked more about having a

sense of responsibility. A young cat sat on the chair next

him, fascinated by the ten-dollar bill that swooped

overhead when Byron, gesturing broadly, said, "My father

never woulda put up with one-half of what I put up with

from you, not for one minute." The green bird fluttered and

the cat crouched.

"There was discipline then, I'll tell you, and a

willingness to sacrifice, to wait for what you wanted, not

to have everything handed to you right away on a silver

plate." The bird dove and fluttered and the cat-waiting for

what he wanted, not expecting it to come on a silver

platetensed for the leap, winding his mainspring, as the

bird flung itself through the air. "I don't know how many

times I have to say this before you finally get it through

your head-" Byron shrieked.

It was a tremendous leap for a little cat. He -hung in mid-

air and then hung on to the man's hand-and then flew,

catapulted halfway across the room, landing perfectly on

his feet, to dash away into the dark.

EASTER

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

The children are back to school aftera riotous week of

Easter break. The -weather was so lovely when the children

were released from confinement, the fresh air went to their

heads. Air has a different effect on children: what we

merely breathe, children are ignited and launched by. At

Our Lady on Sunday morning, Father Emil felt as if he was

speaking to a convention of rabbits instead of the usual

herd of turtles. Constant movement in the pews. The homily

was on new life and it was all around to be seen.

When I was a kid, we sat quietly on Sunday morning

sometimes for forty or fifty seconds at a stretch. Fidgety

kids were put between two grownups, usually your parents or

sometimes a large aunt. Like tying a boat to a dock. Every

time you moved they'd grab your shoulder and give you a

sharp shake and hiss at you, Sit. Death will be like that.

I'll be in bed and think, "Well, I think I'll get. up and

five a little," and death will grab me, shake me, say,

"Shhhh. Be quiet. Lie still." I used to think about death

on  Sunday morning. How hard it would be to lie in your

coffin for

years with nothing to read, nothing to do, but some

grownups I knew probably could manage quite well.

Some former children returned for Easter, bringing their

children with them, and some children were shipped earlier

to spend the week with grandparents, some of whom are

starting to recover to the point where they can sit in a

chair and sit back all the way, not lean forward ready to

jump when, they hear the crash. The grandparents imagined

the kiddos leaning against them-on the sofa listening to

Uncle Wiggily: they forgot how explosive kids can be.

Something in the air sets them off. A kid can go all day

and hardly eat, then the moon shifts and he's eating like a

farmhand. You served baked horse and he eats all of it.

Children can lie around for a long time, then a herd of

them bursts in the front door and gallops through the

kitchen and outside. Children-are always on the verge of

bursting. They burst six, seven times a day and think

nothing of it.

Virginia Ingqvist had two grandkids with her last week,

Barbara's two oldest, Doug and Danielle. Hjalmar worked

late at the bank. He loves them, but he knows his limit,

and it's about thirty minutes. One is four and the other

five, an age when you want to find out everything in one

day. "Why don't buildings fall?" asked Doug two minutes

after he arrived. "Because," Virginia explained, "because

they're built to stand." "How?"

Thirty seconds, and already she was into architecture, and

knew that biology and astronomy and physics were coming

right up. Then theology. "Who's God?"' 'God is God." "Yeah,

but who?" It's never a subject you know something about,

such as etiquette.

Barbara came up on Friday with her two-year-old and took

all three of them to her friend Ruthie's house to visit.

Ruthie has three of her own. Her three and Barbara's three

sniffed each other for a moment and then two cats made the

mistake of coming around the comer of the house into

the backyard. The cats realized it was a mistake and backed

away, saying, Uh, sorry, didn't know you were here. We'll

come back later. But the kids grabbed them, hauled them

indoors, got them dressed and into a doll buggy, two little

cat children. The cats went limp, waiting for a chance to

break out, which they did-two cats in full regalia, one up

the tree, one on the garage roof, trying to remove their

clothes, five children in pursuit, and the two-year-old

investigating the back porch.

Barbara and Ruthie sat in the yard talking about child

rearing. Barbara's philosophy is more relaxed than her

mother's, less restrictive, a hands-off approach, allowing

children freedom to explore and find their own boundaries.

As she said this, she watched the little boy climb the

porch steps, stand at the top, turn around, and when he

took a step forward straight out into space, she leaped up

and made a dash for him, too late to catch him, but she

almost stepped on his head. When she scooped him up, she

came close to spraining his neck. A major cause of injury

to children is parents rushing to the scene. The panic

reflex. Some children love to scream for the thrill of

making immense people move fast. I remember that, on a

quiet day, my sister and I in the backyard wondered,

"Where's Mom?" Upstairs, we thought. So I screamed, "MOM."

She made it down in two seconds. A good pair of wheels for

an old. lady.

Grandma Tollefson turns off her hearing aid when

descendants are around, so a crash is only a whisper to

her, boys thundering around upstairs are a distant tapping.

One afternoon a sound came out of her house like jets

taking off, her grandson practicing his guitar. She was

there, knitting, rocking, saying to him, "You know, there

was a boy I knew who played the guitar-whit was his name?

Oh dear. He moved away in 192 1, 1 think. He played his

guitar on his porch, and I sat in our porch and listened. I

don't think he knew. The screens were so dark, and I

could hear him so clear, just like I can hear you.* I was

in love with him for a whole summer and he didn't know it."

Kevin didn't hear a word she said, and she didn't know the

music was blowing her hair back.

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You

don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you.

Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their

troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely

nearsighted gaze.

The Buehler boy celebrated a birthday last night and ten of

his closest friends came over for a party. They danced to

alarming music and ate an alarming amount of pizza and told

alarming jokes and there were periods of alarming dead

silence, which the Buehlers heard from the kitchen, where

they remained in quarantine. They whomped up armloads of

chow, and passed it to their son, who carried it to his

guests. Stayed in the kitchen for five hours, except for

one trip to the bathroom, averting their eyes, and the

mister snuck up front once to have a look, and when he

looked he wished he hadn't. He was dying of curiosity. The

party was so quiet and then burst into laughter, and then

silence and then whispering and screams of 'laughter. He

tiptoed down the hall and peeked and saw they were huddled

over the Buehlers' wedding album.

Nineteen fifty-nine was a funnier year than he had realized

and he was a little hurt. He was quite handsome then 'in

those half-rim glasses, his hair carefully oiled and combed

back on the sides, like an ocean wave about to break, and

piled high in front. He misses that pompadour. There's not

much left where it rose from his head, a little tuft as a

souvenir of what a stylish- devil he used to be. He was

hurt when he heard them laughing about his hair. He

thought, "What are these people doing in my house? Why am I

feeding them?"

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not

to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom

offer thanks, but what we do, for them is never wasted. We

know that as we remember some gift given tous long ago.

Suddenly it's 195 1, I'm nine years old, in the bow of a

green wooden rowboat, rocking on Lake Wobegon. It's five

o'clock in the morning, dark; I'm shivering; mist comes up

off the water, the smell of lake and weeds and Uncle Al's

coffee as he puts a worm on my hook and whispers what to do

when the big one bites. I lower my worm slowly into the

dark water and brace my feet against the bow and wait for

the immense fish to strike.

Thousands of gifts, continually returning to us. Uncle Al

thought he was taking his nephew fishing, but he made a

permanent work of art in my head, a dark morning in the

mist, the coffee, the boat rocking, whispering, shivering,

waiting for the big one. Still waiting. Still shivering.

CORINNE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Senator K. Thorvaldson arrived home from Florida on Tuesday

morning. He wanted to come sooner but he was flying on a

special low rate for old Norwegian bachelors and the ticket

had complicated restrictions, so he could only fly on a

Monday or a Thursday after sunset by way of Dallas, Texas.

In Dallas he got, bumped and his bag went to Phoenix. He

got on a later plane that sat at the gate for an hour and a

half, so the trip took eleven hours, and when -the old man

landed in Minnesota at 8:45 A.M., most of the Christian

patience and good humor were drained out of him. When

Corinne lngqvist picked him up at 9:30, he was mumbling to

himself. "What's the matter?" she said. "You look like

You're about to shoot somebody."

She looked fresh and lovely. She had come from teaching her

poetry class. She is Senator K.'s second-niece once removed

on his mother's side of his father, she lives near the

airport, and she was going up to Lake Wobegon anyway to ask

her father for a loan.

They got in her red VW and headed north on Lyndale Avenue,

through the city of Minneapolis, and he said he

would never patronize that airline again or speak to anyone

else who did. They coasted along the West River Road,

through the cornfields and truck farms, the long plots of

rich black dirt plowed toward the Mississippi, and saw a

girl and her father trotting down a road on two black

horses. In Anoka they turned left onto Highway 10. She

stopped for ice cream cones at Santa Claus Land and by

Monticello he was cooling down. Through Saint Cloud he was

telling her how young and beautiful she looks and if she's

been waiting all these years for him, she shouldn't wait

any longer.

She said, "What happened to that lady from Maine you were

in love with?" She turned and looked at him. "Are you going

to marry her or not?" He said, "Keep your 'eyes on the

road. You're the pilot, I'm the copilot, I'm the one who

gets to look at scenery."

He said, "Look at that. The Holiday Inn sign says

'Congratulations Myrna and Marvin.' You don't think that

could be your cousin Marvin, do you? He still lives in

Tulsa, I thought. So why would the Holiday Inn here know

about him? But I suppose maybe he's traveling and he's a

guest here tonight. But I thought his wife's name was

Marcie, so why would it say Myrna and-unless he's traveling

with another woman, of course! But then why would they say

'Congratulations'? It doesn't seem to me like the sort of

thing that a national motel chain should be encouraging,

does it, 'Corinne?"

"You go right ahead and have your fun," she said. "And

someday you're going to need my advice in matters of the

heart, and I may not be there to give it to you. So tell

me. You going to ask her to marry you or not?"

"I already asked," he said, "and now it's up to her, I

guess. Funny, when I was young I thought a lot about love,

thought too much-at least I think I did. I loved so many

women, -all so splendid and lovely, and I thought about

each one and how she might not be the one for me,

and eventually convinced myself. Now I'm older and wiser, I

finally fell in, love and didn't think about it, just.

asked her to marry me, and now she's thinking about it."

The sky was turning dark with clouds as they drove north.

She put her foot on the brake and veered left onto the

turnoff toward Lake Wobegon. The turnoff is just before a

sharp bend in the highway and when you brake for the turn,

you think of the speeding truck that might leap from the

bend and roll you flat as a pancake. This turn might be

your last. You brake and at the last moment you hit the gas

and swerve left, as if crossing a forbidden border. Where

the county road leaves the highway, there's a dip in the

road and a bump that lets you know you're back in the land

of where you come from. You hit the bump and see George,

Washington's face on the schoolroom wall and hear the

Nicene Creed, "I believe in one God the Father Almighty,

Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and

invisible," and smell tunafish casserole.

Corinne doesn't believe in God, but there is some evidence

to show that God believes in her. She has a gift to teach,

a sacred gift. Fifteen years in dreary bluish-green

classrooms, pacing as she talks, this solid woman carries a

flame. She cares what she says, if it is precisely truthful

and if it can be heard correctly; her dark eyes flash, her

hands flutter, she lifts her head and stands on tiptoe to

give the sentence coming out of her mouth a little more

arc. Now she is driving home to do research on her dad. She

wants him to loan her fifty thousand dollars to buy a

house. Hjalmar is president of First Ingqvist State Bank,

and he and his daughter have had their differences. Some of

their arguments made the glasses rattle in the pantry and

the family dog cringe behind the couch.

"So how's your dad doing?" Senator asked as they came over

the hill and around the curve into town. She said, "He

looks a lot older all of a sudden. He's got me worried.

Re's so stubborn, he won't see a doctor." Senator is a year

'Older than Hjalmar. He, sat up straight. "Anyway, I hope

be gives me this loan. If he doesn't, I'm going to marry

some rich old man-some rich old black man-some rich old

black gay man-and buy the house next door to him."

Past the grain elevators and over the tracks and into 'town

they cruised, past the traffic light, flashing amber, and

she dropped him at his sister-in-law's little green house.

"Good luck, goodbye, God bless you," he said, and ducked -

his head and trudged up the walk toward bed.

Hjalmar was waiting for her in his office, sitting in his

swivel chair, his skinny old legs up on his desk, the pink

socks and two-tone shoes. His thin white hair was combed

across his old pink head. She pushed the application across

the desk and he studied it. "Is all of this', what you list

here, is that credit-card debt? Mmmm-hrnmmm. You made

a mistake here-nine times eight is seventy-two, not twenty-

seven." He swung his legs down and sat up. "Is this all

your income? Mmmm-hmmmm. I thought I gave you

some bonds about five years ago."

"I sold them."

"Mmmmmm. Emergency?"

"No, I went to France for the summer'. Remember?"

No, he didn't. You sell bonds to go to France? It doesn't

make sense, does it? You sell bonds to buy otber bonds.

Bonds don't have anything to do with France. Togo to France

you save money in a Vacation Savings Account, you don't

sell your se-, curities to take a trip.

He grunted, hnnnh. "What's this house like?"

"It has big windows across the front of the living room,"

she said, smiling beautifully. "Actually, it's like one big

window that looks down the hill toward the river. Actually,

the hill is two hills, with a big lawn between, like ,a

terrace. There's an old stone water tank by the house, a

handsome stone tower like something the Romans might have

built except newer. It's covered

with vines, and birds

nest there. Toward the road is a field, already fenced in

almost, I could keep a horse there. There are eight or ten

magnificent oak trees. It's peaceful and gorgeous. The

river flows by-",

"How old is the furnace?" She didn't know. "How about the

plumbing? Good water pressure? How old is the roof? Any

leakage in the basement?" The house was in reasonably good

shape, she thought. It wasn't sound plumbing that attracted

her to it, however. "Of course not," he said.

"So? Do I pass?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know," he said, "I have to make sure it's a

good loan." He hesitated. He had the check in his pocket,

made out to her. He intended to give it to her. He was

unsure of his timing. Should he seem more reluctant? Was he

being too easy on her? Would she respect him more if he

made her wait until tomorrow?

"I guess I could try a bank in the Cities," she offered.

"It's too late to take your business elsewhere," he said.

"I'm your father. It's too late to shop for another one."

He gave her the check. A personal check for fifty thousand.

"Pay me back when you can," he said, the old smoothie. He

offered his hand. They shook hands. And he took. her out to

lunch. Meg loaf, whipped potatoes, string beans, bread, and

tapioca pudding-a lunch you can seal a bargain on and know

it'll stay sealed.

A GLASS OF

WENDY

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was awfully quiet Tuesday when the news. got out that

Father Emil is stepping down as pastor after forty-some

years at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. He didn't

mean to announce it until further on into Lent, afraid

people might slack off with a lame-duck priest, but the

DeMolay was going around selling garden seeds on Tuesday to

send themselves to summer camp and Father Emil, always a

great customer of theirs, said, "Boys, I won't- be planting

a garden this spring," and they went home and told their

parents. In Lake Wobegon, if a person doesn't plan to

garden in the spring, they plan to be planted themselves.

Margaret Krebsbach called him up and said, "You're not

putting in a garden; what's wrong?" He said, "I'm retiring

on the 3 1 st of March, the day after Easter. "

"Oh," she said, "you're just tired. You feel bad, you need

a vacation. You can't leave us." "You know," he said, "this

last January I baptized the child of a girl who is the

child of a couple I married. Three generations is about

enough. When I get to where I'm burying people I baptized,

I don't know but what I'll get confused and mix em up." He

said, "People here need somebody who's got all his marbles,

because, God knows, a lot of them don't. So it's time to

retire."

Margaret told her mother-in-law, Myrtle, and then the news

spread across town within an I hour. Myrtle is one of the

mass media. Father Emil retiring-amazing news: a man there

so long, like part of the landscape, a work of

architecture, a tree, in a town where tradition is

important and sometimes all that we have. To think of him

being gone-it's hard to imagine. Even if you're not

Catholic, and here, if you're not Catholic, you're

absolutely not Catholic. We don't go in for

nondenominationalism and tolerance. In the Bible we don't

find the word "maybe" so much, or read where God says, "On

the other hand, uh, there could be other points of view on

this." So we go in for strict truth and let the other guy

be tolerant of us. But even if you're not Catholic, in a

town like Lake Wobegon, when the priest clears his throat,

the dogs stop barking. When the priest walks down the

street, everybody's quiet.

Clarence Bunsen stopped by to visit him. Clarence had been

in the Cities over the weekend, attending a Ford dealers'

banquet where Bunsen Motors got a plaque as one ,of the

oldest Ford agencies in Minnesota. It wa's a seventeen-

pound bronze plaque you could put on your front step and

use for a boot scraper. Clarence said, "I don't know why I

went or why I brought it back, I hate to die and leave this

junk for my kids to think about. We got a wallful of

plaques for being one of the oldest, and as long as we stay

around we'll get more of them. To me they're no more

attractive than a concrete block., I know that when I'm

dead my kids are going to want to heave this junk into a

hole but they'll feel guilty, so they'll keep it in a box

somewhere and pass it on to their kids. Damn souvenirs are

like mercury in the bloodstream, except they're hereditary

too. You suffer from it and then give it to your kids.

"Oh I don't know," said Father Emil, "it may be ugly

to you but tastes change. He knew it wasn't true: he

only said it in his pastoral capacity. He squinted at the

plaque. It was ugly all right. "I hope they're not going to

give me one of these," he said.

"We'll give you a trip to Florida."

"Why not Jamaica?"

"I don't think old priests are supposed to go farther south

than Florida.. Unless they're missionaries, of course.".

"Then maybe the parish would send me to Florida, and you

Lutherans could pay the freight from there to Jamaica and I

could be a Lutheran missionary."

.You'd make a good one, Father. You sure have the

intelligence for it. With your background, we could

probably train you in a couple of years."

Father Emil smiled a sweet tolerant smile. "Being a

Lutheran is my idea of a vacation," he said. "I can't

imagine anything more relaxing. To take those truths that

are too hard for you and change them a little to make it

easier on yourself-just like, if you're tired of falling

down, you turn down the force of gravity-I tell you, Luther

was a great man all right."

On the, way home Clarence dropped in at the Sidetrack

to see if Wally was there. Wally was, of course. Being the

proprietor, he had to be. He said, "Clarence, what can we

get you?

"Oh nothing for me, Wally. I just dropped in to see if you

were here."

"Of course I'm here. Where else would I be?"

"Well, I wanted to make sure. But as long as I'm here, I

might as well have a beer."

"You want a Wendy?"

"Of course I want a Wendy. What else would I have.

"Just wanted to make sure."

Saint Wendell's beer, brewed by the Dimmers family at the

old Dimmers Brewery in nearby Saint Wendell's

for five generations, since their ancestor evaded the

selective-service system of the Prince of Prussia and fled

to the New World. He also skipped out on some debts in the

process and broke the hearts of three young women who had

the impression they. would become Mrs. Dimmers as soon as-

he paid his debts and finished military service. The young

rounder came to Minnesota and became rich and distinguished

making beer. He thought at first of calling it Dimmers beer

but listened to good advice and called it Saint Wendell's.

For as long as anyone remembers, men in the little taverns

around Mist County have said, "Gimme a Wendy," and some

bartenders don't ask, they just give you a Wendy, and if

you say, "I didn't ask for that," they say, "Where'd you

say you were from?"

"I don't believe I said."

"Good. I don't want to know."

Wendy's is the beer a man drinks because it is the best.

It's made from the deep wellwater from the town of Saint

Wendell's, there's no water like it. People from all over

the world have said so: it's good water. Saint Wendell's

has a municipal faucet, and people drive up with a trunk

full of plastic bottles and get a month's supply. A

Frenchman came and got two gallons and took it home. This

is true. French customs wasn't going to let him take it

through, but then they tasted it and said "Ahhhhh," and

those men were French, and the French make great water

themselves. Wendy's is made from it, using an old German

recipe, by people who have worked for Dimmers Brewery so

long they don't remember if they were hired or if they took

a vow. The old brick brewery was supposed to resemble a

Bavarian castle, but when it was built, in 1879,

bricklayers had beer rights: there was two-fisted day-long

drinking on the job. When the layers got on high

scaffolding, it made them dizzy. So the building starts out

to be a castle and rises royally for two stories and then

it quits and becomes a sort of barn. The bricks for the

towers were used to'

make a brick road because the layers felt more comfortable

on their hands and knees. The brick road is a hundred feet

wide for about seventy-five feet and then it's seventyfive

feet wide for one hundred feet and then it becomes a path.

You think of this as you sit in an old dim bar and drink a

Wendy, and you think of how the beer wagons kept rolling in

Saint Wendell's through Prohibition. They trained the

horses to make the deliveries, and these smart Percherons

memorized complicated beer routes-stop here, skip two

houses, stop there-and when they stopped, a guy ran out of

the house and grabbed his beer. The horses didn't make

change but they did everything else, but of course if a

horse got on the sauce himself, he might get mixed up, but

usually they did the job and if the sheriff came, all he

found was a wagon and a horse with red eyes and bad breath.

A man thinks of the Dimmerses" history when he drinks a

Wendy, especially the first Dimmers, who ran away from

responsibility, shirked his duty to his country, reneged on

his debts, seduced women and lied to- them-but, hey, who's

perfect? Those are the very sins a man goes into a tavern

to contemplate committing.

You think of history while sitting in a bar unchanged in

your lifetime, and you feel peaceable: the long mirror, the

neon beer signs, the old oak back bar with glass doors and

columns and dark figures (angels or trolls) at the top,

brooding, and below them the Minnesota Twins scoreboard

(that's what they're brooding about) and the old Swancrest

radio, the fancy cut glasses in the cabinet for drinks

nobody knows how to make, drinks with swizzle sticks-they

don't use those here. Wally's nephew tended bar once and

put ice and sweet vermouth in Mr. Berge's whiskey and said,

"Here, try this." Mr. Berge didn't see the swizzle stick,

though it had a big fleur-de-lis on the end. When Mr. Berge

removed the fleur-de-lis from his

left nostril, he bled a little, but he was peaceable. He

only said, "Sonny, don't do that again unless you tell me,

and then don't do it anyway. Gosh, it hurts."

In Minneapolis, you go to any hotel or shopping mall and

find an English pub or a Western saloon or small-town

tavern with a name like BILLY BOB's, but the, antiques come

from the antique factory and the concept was developed by a

design team-the city is full of new places made to look

old, but those aren't the same as a joint where people have

sat for fifty years, and all of them people you know. It's

the difference between a lie and the truth. It's not true

that Wendy's is the best beer in the world, actually it's

not that good. And it gives me terrible gas. The fact that

we can sit and say it's the best and defend it against

superior brews is one more reason why it is the best, and

maybe the gas helps us do that.

Father Emil appeared in the Sidetrack once, when Wally and

Evelyn celebrated -their twentieth anniversary. He walked

in, wished them well, had a sip of brandy, and said

goodbye. That was twenty-seven, years ago. Wally kept the

glass and wrote Father Emil on it and put it on the shelf.

One day he was washing glasses and left it sitting two

minutes on the counter and somebody saw Father Emil and put

in two bits, so there it sat, a collection glass, for years

and years. If you told a priest joke you had to put a

quarter in the glass, and for, Norskie jokes, moron jokes,

jokes about drunks' any bad joke, the jury at the bar

assessed a fine, and so, over the years, comedy helped

support the church.

"So, Clarence," Wally says. "We should go in on a gift for

him-maybe some kind of A ... What's the word I'm trying to

think of?"

"A plaque."

"Yes, a plaque. We could glue the Father Emil glass onto

it, and think of a humorous inscription. You're humorous.

You should do it."

"Naw, we oughta send him on a trip to someplace like

Jamaica. Or just send him to Jamaica itself."

"How much would that run us, do you think'

"I don't know. Couple thousand, maybe."

"Gosh, you'd have to tell some pretty rank ones to get a

couple thousand. You care for another?"

"No, I'm going to have to get on out of here, it's getting

late."

THE SPEEDING

TICKET

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

The only news was that Gary and Leroy gave out a speeding

ticket last week, their first in a month or more. If there

was a law against pokiness, they could have made a mass

arrest of the entire town-people have been feeling low

since the Swedish flu struck. It's the usual flu with

chills, fever, diarrhea, vomiting, achiness, and personal

guilt, but it's accompanied by an overpowering urge to put

things in order. Before you collapse into bed, you iron the

sheets. Before you vomit, you Plan your family's meals for

the upcoming week.

The Bakkes got back from two weeks in Florida. Jeanette

said it was cold and miserable there and they almost went

crazy staying with Jack's sister Judy and her husband D.J.

and their four kids in their mobile home near Winter Green.

D.J. smokes so much Jeanette said it was like she was

smoking herself. It made her nervous and she ate more

greasy food and gained six pounds and split a seam on her

new red Spandex bathing suit, That depressed her, so she

gained three more. The food tasted of smoke. She could

smell every puff coming from Judy and D.J.'s bedroom at

night, and she could hear them fighting like they were in

the room with her. So Jack and Jeanette couldn't sleep.

Their mattress smelled of smoke too. Judy's oldest boy

worked in a supermarket until 3:00 A.m. and the youngest

one sleepwalked and was a bedwetter (as Jeanette and Jack

discovered one night when he crawled in with them). On the

drive home from Minneapolis, they had the bitterest fight

of their eighteen-year marriage over whether, it had been a

good vacation or not and why, and it upset her so she

started coughing and she could see smoke coming out of her

mouth, but, she told Dorothy when she got back, that wasn't

the worst of it. The worst was that she set off the metal

detector in the Miami airport. So it's true what she read,

that a faulty can opener makes steel filings that fall in

your food. She's had the same opener since 1969. Jack's

mother gave it to her, along with a sarcastic remark about

cooking. Shards of steel in her tunafish, creamed corn,

mushroom soup, for eighteen years: how was she supposed to

know? If you can't trust your can opener, then what? Is

your wastebasket going to get you? Your slippers give you a

disease? (Deadly Foot & Mouth Virus Traced to Pink Scuffs,

Doctors Reveal.)

"If you set off the metal detector, how'd you get on the

plane?" asked Dorothy. "Oh, when I took off my cinch

belt, it didn't buzz anymore, but that cinch belt never

used

to set off alarms. It's these filings building up that-

finally

pushed me over the limit," Jeanette explained. "Good gosh!

how could I eat for all these years and not notice pieces

of steel? I must not've been chewing my food good enough."

So she ate more potatoes to try to absorb the filings,

although the same magazine that warned about can openers

also warns about a virus from unclean potato eyes that can

cause hair loss, and now Jeanette has gained so much weight

she's afraid to climb on a scale.

Jack is still mad at her. As justice of the Peace, he

married a couple last Sunday that looked so happy he told

Jeanette he wanted to tell them what it was really like.

"If they'da stayed around here fifteen minutes, they'da

changed their minds about matrimony," he said sardonically.

It was an older couple, in their fifties. They drove up

during breakfast. Jeanette was still in her bathrobe. She

could tell by their embarrassment that they'd come to get

married. When she got them. a cup of coffee and they said

they were from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and she said,

"Oh. That's a long way to drive, isn't it. Where'd you

spend the night?" they looked, down at their shoes, like

teenagers. He was heavy, bald as a bowling ball, and

perspiring, and she was skinny and had a little mustache,

and the backs of her hands were red and flaky; Jack called

up Leroy, who lives next door, to come over and witness.

He. said to the man, "That'll be twenty-five dollars. I

always ask for it in advance because, you know, some people

are in a hurry to get away. Heh heh heh heh heh." The man

turned crimson and -fished out the money. Leroy came over.

He was sick, he said, so if he had to depart suddenly, that

was why. They got married and Jeanette put on a record of

Perry Como singing "True Love" and Jack said good luck to

them, and out they went, another story that we'll never

know the ending of.

Leroy was sick, he thought, because of exhaust fumes. in

the police car, a 1984 Ford. He and Gary sit in it with the

engine idling and they get severe, headaches. Clint Bunsen

checked it and said it was perfectly all right. But Clint

himself has been under the weather, so maybe he missed

something. Clint is the sort who doesn't get sick until

everyone else has had their turn, then if he has a day or

two free he'll be sick too but not quite as much.

They had just had the car checked and resumed patrol when

they gave out the speeding ticket to a green 1987 Lincoln

Continental. Leroy said it was going at least sixtyfive

down Main Street and never even touched its brakes. Myrtle

Krebsbach was about to cross the street in front

of the Clinic and heard the engine whine and looked up,,

and a sheet of water hit her amidships. She thought it was

a heart attack. Gary and Leroy tore after it, almost

running into the rear end of Rollie Hochstetter's manure

spreader, and it took them two miles to catch up. They

pulled the Lincoln over and walked up alongside and the man

rolled down the window and said, "Just a moment. I'll be

right with you." He was talking on his car telephone. They

had never seen one before.

They waited. Leroy stood, his arms folded, and Gary leaned

down by the window, looking in. The man was about sixty,

with silvery hair and blue suit. He was talking in

numerals, it was amazing, the figures he had in his head.

They couldn't figure out what he was saying. A minute

passed and Gary cleared his throat. "Let's go, we don't

have I all day," he said. But he wasn't quite as angry as

he was before.

They told him what he'd done and he almost collapsed from

horror. "Oh no," he said over and over, "oh my gosh-thank

goodness nobody was hurt. I don't know what happened to me.

I didn't even see a stop sign. I don't remember seeing

stores or anything. Houses. Schools. I was concentrating

on-you see, I have a carton of belost alone I'm supposed to

deliver to the University of Chicago tomorrow-that's who I

was talking to-but I should've been paying attention. It's

my own fault. Take me in, it's ,all right. I'll get these

drugs there some other way. It's my responsibility."

Gary rode in the Lincoln, Leroy following in the cruiser.

Leroy noticed that Gary and the guy were talking pretty

friendly when they arrived at the Chatterbox. They all sat

down in a back booth and Leroy called Jack to come. A lynch

party had gathered, including Myrtle and Dorothy, but it

didn't hang him right away. It asked questions, that was

its first mistake. "Who in the hell are you?" said Myrtle!

He gave them his card: Dr. Walter W. Ingersoll, Saint

Luke's Biomedical Laboratory, Saint Francis, Ontario. A

Canadian! "That's right," he said.

Leroy said, "What do you think you're doing, going sixty-

five miles an hour through a town with children! You're a

doctor! A doctor ought to have some sense!"

"You're absolutely right," he said, "and there is no excuse

for what I did. All I can say is that I'm supposed to be at

the U of Chicago hospital at eight tomorrow morning with a

carton of belostalone. It's an experimental drug that we've

been, testing in Canada and now they're about to introduce

it in America. I don't know how to explain it to you, it's

kind of technical for the lay person."

Jack and Jeanette had arrived. Jeanette said, "Well, I

think you'd better explain, and, you know, we're not as

dumb as you might think. We know about medicine."

"Well, then, you've probably heard of the experiments with

Compazine in Alaska-" Yes, she'd read a little bit about

that. "Well, fine' Compazine was a chemotherapeutic drug

that showed some effectiveness against myoplasmia, but it

made people lose their hair, so belostalone was developed

to combat that side effect, and it turned out that not -

only did people not lose hair, it... I don't know how to

say this," he said, "but if Chicago knew I was telling you

this, I'd lose not only my license to practice medicine but

my doctorate in genetic cybernetics as wellso you have to

promise . They promised. "Belostalone not only prevented

hair loss, it also reversed the effects of aging in every

respect."

"It makes you younger?" said Jack.

"No, sir. I didn't say that. Your chronological age cannot

be changed. But you don't have to show it. I'm seventytwo.

But you'd think I was sixty-five, wouldn't you?"

Actually he looked more like fifty-five.

"If anyone got hold of that carton in my trunk, it would

have a street value of approximately sixteen million

dollars. " He looked them straight in the eye. He said, "I

know that what I did was terribly wrong, and I don't think

I'm going to sleep well for a long time thinking about how

I could've killed someone, a child. . . . There's only one

way I can make it up to you, and it's wrong too, I suppose,

it's stealing, but it's the lesser of two evils I'll give

you each a bottle of belostalone. It's in my trunk."

His trunk was full of blank brown cartons and a black bag

and boxes marked "Fragile: Pharmaceuticals." It smelled of

disinfectant, the kind you find in doctors' offices.

"How long did it take to develop this, Walter?" Gary asked,

putting a big foot up on the Lincoln's bumper.,

"It was found utterly accidentally," he said. "The amazing

advances all come about that way. They were looking for a

simple booster for spring chicks and started with root

extract from Jerusalem artichokes and- This is all natural,

by the way..." He fished out a box of tiny glass bottles

carefully packed in cotton. He handed a bottle to each of

them: Gary, Leroy, Jack, Jeanette, Myrtle, Dorothy, and

Floyd, Dorothy's son-in-law, who was helping her paint the

cafe. Everyone looked embarrassed. "Listen," Gary said, "we

can't have you stealing these for us. Let us pay you

something." Walter wouldn't hear of it, but they insisted.

"At least your cost."

"Well," he said, "that's the thing, it's so expensive,

medical research, these new drugs are sky-high: just the

cost on this is twenty dollars a bottle."

To reverse the effects of aging, this seemed like a good

deal.

They pressed their money into his hand and he gave it back

and they handed it to him again but he waved them away and

finally they stuck it in his shirt-pocket. There it stayed.

They stood by the green Lincoln and talked for a while

about Canada and good fishing places up there, and finally

he drove off. Only then did Leroy realize that he had never

actually written Walter the ticket for speeding.

When Clarence heard the story, from Leroy, he almost lost

his balance and fell over. "Reverses the effects of aging!"

he said. "Oh that's good. That's just about perfect. I

guess we know what his monologue is going to be about this

week. You boys ought to copyright this yourselves, so you

can charge royalties."

Yes, they knew it themselves: they were had, in broad

daylight, swindled by a smooth talker into buying twenty

dollars' worth of swampwater, and they were ashamed of it,

but the odd fact is that they all look better this week.

Jeanette feels terrific. No more flu, and she's losing

weight, and her skin color is back. Leroy's headaches have

stopped. Gary had another problem from sitting too much in

the patrol car, and those have cleared up too.

Jack called the University of Chicago hospital and they'd

never heard of Dr. Ingersoll or belostalone, and 'neither

had anyone in or around Saint Francis, Ontario. Who else

could he call? The problem with a fake like Dr. Ingersoll

is that when he does you good and you want more medicine,

you don't know how to reach him. There is no place to go. A

fake takes you to where you start to get well and then

leaves you there, on your own.

SEEDS

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was cloudy most of the week, and a cold wind blew in

off the lake and picked up some dust off the street and

blew it right in your face. You walk around in dim light

carrying ten pounds of wool and look down a cold gray

street lined with miserable yards and taste dust in your

mouth and then get some dirt in -your eyes, it brings your

life to a halt. You've got to find your mother, your

teacher,

Sister Arvonne, to wipe your eyes, but you can barely

see, standing helpless,, weeping, cold; it's no wonder at

that moment you think, "Albuquerque. Why didn't I think

of Albuquerque? Why didn't my parents think about Al

buquerque before I was born? I'd be a native Albuquer

quian, or Albuquerquer. I'd be an Albuquerquite. " It never

gets cold and you don't grow old because you just stay

young lying in the sun, oh the sky is never murky in

Albuquerque.            1.

Do Albuquerquians ever long for Minnesota? I imagine they

do. I imagine they would envy us even more than they do if

they knew more about us. I imagine that atheists like it

fine in Albuquerque, but the ones who know God

and talk to God have' asked God, "God, what is your

country?" And God told them, "Well, I don't like to single

out one place over another, because of course there are

good people everywhere, but if I had to pick one place,

based on what I know, which is everything, I guess I'd have

to say Minnesota." Those Albuquerquians (and God knows

there must be a few of them) must want to live here in the

worst way. And March is a month when you can do that.

It was a quiet week. josh, a salesman for Inspirational

Systems, visited Pastor Ingqvist's tiny office in the

Lutheran annex on Wednesday, selling a worship program for

Advent called "Actualizing the Child in Ourselves." Bud

took the snowplow off the truck Wednesday evening, being

tired of driving around with it banging up and down. He

said, "It's sure to snow now, but it'll just have to melt,

I'm through thinking about it."

My attitude exactly. I put away my parka in April and put

on a jacket. If it turns cold, that's not my problem, I

refuse to accept winter anymore. If we get a blizzard, let

someone else worry about it, I won't. There, comes a point

where you have to stand up to reality and deny it. Rain,

rain, go away, come again another day. O-U-T spells. Out.

When I got fed up with weeding the garden, I'd look at the

weeds and say, "That's not weeds. I say that's spinach, and

I say let it stay where it is."

When Ruthie had her baby out of wedlock (actually not "out"

of wedlock, just not quite far enough into wedlock, about

six and a half months), as the wedding approached people

said, "Oh, I don't think she's heavier. She - always was

big-boned, you know." As if we had bones 'in our bellies.

When the baby came, people fussed over it and said, "My, I

can't believe how big it is." At eight pounds four ounces,

it was the most gigantic baby ever born two and a half

months premature.

Aunt Mary Thorvaldson the sister-in-law of Senator K.,

ventured downtown on Thursday, seeing the ice is gone.

Senator went to Johnsville, Florida, in January to pick up

seashells and suck on oranges, and he offered to take her,

but she said it wouldn't look right, a widow on a trip with

her brother-in-law, what would people think? For one thing,

they would think she was seventy-nine and it was awfully

nice of him to take her. But she stayed home.

She gets around in most weather, but she keeps off ice.

When it's icy, Ralph sends one of his boys up to her little

house with her groceries, but she looks forward to when the

sidewalks are clear and she comes down to shop, which she

likes to do every day. She brings her five or six things to

the counter and Ralph rings them up and says, "Nine dollars

and eighty-four cents, Mary." She looks down at the little

group of things and says, "Nine eighty-four? Are you sure?"

"You got $1.19, 1.59, 2.79 twice, 1.25, and 13 cents:

$9.84."

She can see all the numbers of the prices on the labels.

But $9.84? For these few things?, Two jars of Taster's

Choice, a can of tuna, a can of pears, a can of corn, and a

packet of marigold seeds. It's impossible for this to cost

$9.84. She looks at Ralph. She surveys the labels. He

counts the items on the register slip, and the items on the

counter. But $9.84? How can that be?

Ralph has acted in this play for years. He knows his part.

He waits as she goes down the list again, adding it up

slowly in her head. Then Ralph says, "Ah! That should be

$1.49. That's $9.74." Well. That's more like it. "I'm

sorry. This is one of those days." She gets a quarter and a

penny change. She puts the goods in her shopping bag. She

walks home, feeling a little better.

Down the block, at the Feed 'N Seed, Harold has set up the

old wooden bins to put seed packets in that've

arrived from the Milton Seed Co. in Northrop, South Dakota.

Big corn and bean packets, plain yellow envelopes, and this

year he's ordered more of the packets with color pictures

on them and is even hanging up green and yellow crepe paper

that the Milton salesman gave him and sips saying "Festival

of Gardens" and "Top Quality, Best Value." The salesman,

Ritche, says this, could almost double seed sales, he's

seen it happen. He says to Harold, "You got to build

excitement, make a visual appeal to the passer-by, and your

walk-ins, you got to make them think seeds the minute they

come through the door. Did you know that one-third of all

seed sales is pure impulse? People walk in-BAM-they gotta

have some seeds right now!" Mass displays, more color, and

these new seed packets with the Scratch 'N Sniff pictures:

they were a big hit in the test markets last year.

But seeds are all the Feed 'N Seed sells-that and feedsso

if you weren't already thinking seeds you probably wouldn't

come in unless it was to hang around with Harold and talk

about the basketball tournament. Anoka won, and Harold won

twenty-four dollars when they did. It's spring itself that-

builds excitement and makes a visual appeal for the passer-

by, and if prospects of spring don't excite you, probably

crepe paper won't have a big effect. But Ritche believes

this-is going to be it, the big year, the great garden

boom, when Milton triples tomato-seed sales-big growth in

the carrot-and-beet sector, cucumbers up this year, beans

up, pole beans way up, gross national kohlrabi, eggplant,

everything up this year. Ritche is twenty-five. Already he

is one of Milton's best. Richard is his name but he uses

Ritche because it gets noticed. People see it, they

remember you. Name recognition is important in sales.

He lives in Marshall: he, and Cindy bought a town house on

the edge of town; they're expecting a baby in July, and' he

believes that in seed sales and in his own life, things are

starting to turn around. Driving on to the next call,

ten, twenty, thirty miles away, he gets excited when he

sees the town, its big grain elevator on the horizon. He

says, "Come on. Let's go. Let's go, big team. Let's go,

sales!" He's on the road for Milton six days a week,

crisscrossing the district in his '78 Rambler wagon. It's

full of crepe paper, Styrofoam cups, and burger cartons.

The carpet is ripped and the floorboards are mulched with

dirt from a hundred little towns. Old seed samples take

root there. The Rambler has almost a quarter-million miles

on it, and soon it'll go to a junkyard and sit. Corn and

beans will grow up in it and muskmelon vines come out of

the seats. All the seeds he spilled in there will blossom

into a little forest of flowers on wheels, vines trailing

out of it. The plants will reproduce for years. All the old

seed salesmen's, cars become pots for plants. And the most

luxuriant ones grow on the seat where he sat. It's all

waiting for spring to happen.

CHICKEN

It  has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was cool and rainy, no good for farmers to pick corn, so

some of them came and sat in the Chatterbox Cafe for a

while and tried to be a comfort to each other by telling a

few familiar jokes. Roger and Rollie and Harold and Virgil

Berge, sitting in the back booth, began with a few clean

ones about animals walking into a bar and asking for a

drink, and a cannibal joke, and the pig-in-the-apple-tree

joke, and the ventriloquist who spends the night at the

sheep farmer's, and the one about the Norwegian trying to

get into heaven. Then Harold started one about a seed

salesman who was traveling through. His voice dropped as he

came to the part where the lady tiptoes out to the privy in

the moonlight and her dog follows her, and everyone leaned

in close, and Mr. Lundberg and Bud and Russell came. and

huddled over the booth, waiting to be killed by this

beloved old classic, and he said, "So Clarissa seen a

petunia growing near the path and bent down to pick it up

... and the dog he . . ." and Harold, who has been under a

lot of pressure lately, began to slowly explode. He leaked

air out of his nose and his ears. He gasped and

whinnied, tears running down his face, he grabbed on to the

table, out of control, he stood up and motioned to be let

out, but they were starting to leak too and couldn't move.

He attempted to climb over them but was too weak. He tried

to say the punchline, but it wouldn't come out. So he fell

down on the floor and crawled out under the table.

Uncle Al was there, having a bite of meat loaf. He told me

later, "You know, some people only know how to tell a joke,

but Harold knows how to make people laugh."

Strange for my uncle Al to eat in a commercial

establishment, seeing as he is married to Aunt Flo, whose

cooking can make the lame walk, but this was a cool fall

day when we were butchering chickens in her backyard, and

Uncle Al is a gentle man who has no stomach for killing. He

loves to eat fried chicken but not one whom he knew

personally, so he killed a couple hour's uptown as the rest

of us executed forty-seven chickens that Dad brought in

from Uncle Larry's farm the night before. There had been

forty-eight chickens but one got loose when we emptied them

out of the gunny sacks into Al's garage to spend their last

night. She flew up in my face, a burst of feathers that

made me let go, and took off like a bat out of hell. Dad

went after her but he is seventy years old. The chicken

tore around the trash barrel and down the alley. The others

milled in the garage all night, mumbling to themselvesthat

it wasn't fair that she got to go when they had to stay,

that if anyone got to go, then everyone should go-and

finally the sun came up and a young rooster sang and about

nine o'clock we arrived and sat down to have coffee. My

mother had been up since four and had drunk three cups of

coffee already, on account of a dream in which someone was

chasing her. "I always have bad dreams -when we butcher

chickens," she said.

"Your problem is, you drink too much coffee," said my dad.

"Coffee makes you sleep light, so a bad dream wakes

you up. Me, I sleep right through my bad dreams, they don't

bother me at all, not even the worst nightmares."

But it isn't that. My mother feels bad about butchering and

so do 1. Dad and Aunt Flo are country people, and in the

country you do as you like, but Mother and I grew up in

town, so we worry more about what people think, and when

you have forty-seven chickens in the garage, you know the

neighbors are talking. People in Lake Wobegon don't

slaughter chickens anymore, not in their backyards; it's

not considered decent. Oh, you might do one or two, in the

evening, but forty-seven in broad daylight, a chicken

massacre---people would think you're common. People buy

chickens at Ralph's; they come in plastic bags, big white

cold oblong things.

For our sake, to accommodate squeamishness, Aunt Flo tried

to give up butchering and be content with storebought

chicken, but it was against her principles. She cooks, to

bring happiness, it is part of her ministry, so to put

tasteless chicken on the table is to preach false doctrine.

She believes in the goodness and worth and beauty of

chicken. Any fool can cook a hunk of cow, whack off a slab,

slap it on -a platter, and call it dinner, but chicken is

delicate and has got to be done right. The chickens in the

store were pumped full of feed and kept drugged and in the

dark and you could taste the misery of the bird in its

meat. Aunt Flo's philosophy is to let them run free, to

feed them table scraps and delicacies and talk to them

while you feed them, to keep them in chicken bliss right up

to the moment their heads hit the block.

Once, on a trip to Minneapolis to visit relatives, she was

,dragged by them to a swank restaurant where she sat

dazzled by crystal and silver and white linen, and ordered

... chicken-or La Poulet Alla Cacciatore de Jardinera A la

Estragon con Pifia Colonna-and it was borne to the table,

in a golden dish and served with a flourish, but

underneath, the hoopla and publicity was a

pitiful corpse of an unhappy creature, which to her

represented the wretched dishonesty of these times, and

she' pushed it aside and decided it would either be

vegetarianism or butchering. And there we were on a fall

morning about to do business in the backyard.

"Well," Aunt Flo said, standing up to rinse out her coffee

cup, "I don't think those chickens are going to butcher

each other."            I

My mother already had two big pots of water on to boil, my

dad had sharpened the ax blade, and out we went, into the

wet cold yard. The chickens fell silent in the garage when

the back door slammed. I looked in the alley for the forty-

eighth chicken. "Well," we said, "we might as well get

started. "

I My parents and Aunt Flo have been butchering chickens

since long before I was around to help, so they don't

really need me. My dad kills them, my mother plucks them,

and Aunt Flo cleans them. When he's done killing, my dad

helps with the plucking, and then they all help clean. My

job hasn't changed since I was a child: I help out here and

there doing this and that, but mainly my job is to select

the chicken and catch its legs with a long wire hook and

grab its ankles and carry it to my dad, who takes care of

the rest.

When I opened the, side door of the garage, a volunteer

chicken flew up and I grabbed it and there was the first

one. I turned and walked back to the garage and put my hand

on the knob and heard the whack and went in for the next

one.

All the chickens had to die, so it wasn't like I had any

real power; I was only a lower-level bureaucrat trying to

keep things going smoothly. I didn't have the power of

clemency, so why did they look at me that way-why did I

feel cheap? I closed the door behind me and stood in the

dim light with my hook and work gloves, the chickens

milling away from me, and I took a deep breath and snagged

one and it cried out, "Oh no, gosh no, please no, don't do

this," and I took it to my dad and handed it over and

turned my back, not wanting to watch as this creature, who

had been alive in my hands just a moment before, now-whack-

was gone. I didn't want to see the blood or watch my mother

at the big boiler on the back step or smell the hot wet

feathers when she dipped the carcass in boiling water, the

hiss, the ripping of feathers. Didn't want to look and

didn't want the neighbors to see me, so

strolled back and forth from the garage to the block, as if

I was taking them to the doctor, as the crowd in the garage

got smaller and smaller, and then I thought: You really

ought to kill one yourself before they're all gone. This is

something you should know how to do if you eat meat,

otherwise you better stick to celery. You're dishonest, I

said to myself. you come from an honest family that faces

life and death, but you live like it's a, story and you

made it up-it's time you become an adult and kill a

chicken. Eight chickens left, and then six, and the fifth

one, I watched my dad do it.

He's a one-handed butcher. Holds it by the legs in one

hand, flops it down, and the ax in the right hand is

already up high on the backswing and down whack and the

head drops like a cut flower and the blood runs out in the

dirt. My uncle Larry paints a line on the chopping block

and places the chicken gently down on its belly with its

beak on the line, and that line hypnotizes the chicken-it

lies very quietly, staring cross-eyed at the yellow lint,

thinking about infinity, and then suddenly it stops

thinking. Uncle Larry. likes to swing the ax with two

hands. My dad uses one.

We were down to two chickens unless No. 48 walked in, so

when I took out the next-to-last one; I said, "Maybe I'll

do the next one. " Okay, he said. I caught the last

chicken. I was glad to be getting rid of it, the last

witness to the massacre. My dad said, "'Want me to hold it

for

you?" I shook my head. My mother said, "You be careful,

now." Imagine going to bat against your first chicken, you

cut your own foot off, and walk funny the rest of your

life, a stiff walk, like a chicken.

I got a grip on the chicken's legs and swung it up on the

block and hauled off with the ax and hit down hard and

missed by two inches. I had to pry the ax out of the wood

and now I was mad. I swung again and down it came dead

center whack and at the same time I let go and the chicken

took off running. It had no head. It dashed across the yard

and out in the street and was gone- I never saw a chicken

move so fast. I guess without the extra weight they can

really go.

My dad explained afterward that when I missed the first

time and planted the blade in the block, the blade got hot.

So when I cut the chicken's head off, the blade cauterized

the wound and stopped the flow of blood, and you had a

running chicken in pretty good shape except with no brain.

We took off after it down the street and around the corner

and up and across the neighbor's yard. A highspeed chicken.

It raced through flower beds and bounced off fences, pure

energy, no thought, kept going-fast. Ran over two little

kids in a sandbox. Ran past a couple of dogs, who looked up

and decided not to get involved with it. My dad and me

trotting along far behind. We heard the squeal of brakes

when two cars stopped and the headless chicken tore across

Main Street by Bunsen Motors, just as Harold came tottering

out of the Chatterbox Cafe, weak from his privy joke. It

sped past him and he vowed to give up coffee from now on.

It went up behind the cafe toward Our Lady Church, losing

speed. Mrs. Mueller was standing by her garbage can and she

has a face that would stop a clock. It slowed down the

chicken to where she was able to trip it and grab it. She

took it in and rebutchered it and plucked and cleaned it

and put it in her fridge, but my dad and I didn't know that

until hours later. So when

we came wheezing along the alley and saw a chicken walking

toward us with its head on its shoulders, we were

momentarily confused.

It wa's the forty-eighth chicken, of course, and we chased

it in behind the church and cornered it against the fence

and snatched it and took it home. Then Mrs. Mueller called.

We said, "You can keep it." We put on a pot of water to

boil and drove out to a cornfield my dad knows about where

it's shady and the corn has matured more slowly. We picked

three dozen ears of sweet corn and raced home to the

boiling water and put in the ears and had a wonderful

vegetable dinner along with potatoes and beets and some

squash. It was delicious. That was Thursday. I imagine that

tomorrow we may try some fresh chicken.

HOW THE

CRAB APPLE GREW

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was warm and sunny on Sunday, and on Monday the

flowering crab in the Dieners' backyard burst into blossom.

Suddenly, in the morning, when everyone turned their

backs for a minute, the tree threw off its bathrobe and

stood trembling, purple, naked, revealing all its innermost

flowers. When you saw it standing where weeks before

had been a bare stick stuck in the dirt, you had to stop,

it made your head spin.

Becky Diener sat upstairs in her bedroom and looked at the

tree. She was stuck on an assignment from Miss Melrose for

English, a 750-word personal essay, "Describe your backyard

as if you were seeing it for the first time." After an hour

she had thirty-nine words,, which she figured would mean

she'd finish at 1:45 P.m. Tuesday, four hours late, and

therefore would get an F even if the essay was great, which

it certainly wasn't.

How can you describe your backyard as if you'd never seen

it? If you'd never seen it, you'd have grown up someplace

else, and wouldn't be yourself, you'd be someone

else entirely, and how are you supposed to know what that

person would think?

She imagined seeing the backyard in 1996, returning home

from Hollywood. "Welcome Becky!" said the big white banner

across McKinley Street as the pink convertible drove slowly

along, everyone clapping and cheering as she cruised by,

Becky Belafonte the movie star, and got off at her old

house. "Here," she said to the reporters, "is where I sat

as a child and dreamed my dreams, under this beautiful

flowering crab. I dreamed I was a Chinese princess." Then a

reporter asked, "Which of your teachers was the most

important to you, encouraging you and inspiring you?" And

just then she saw an old woman's face in the crowd, Miss

Melrose pleading, whispering, "Say me, oh please, say me,"

and Becky looked straight at her as she said, "Oh, there

were so many, I couldn't pick out one, they were all about

the same, you know. But perhaps Miss-Miss-oh, I can't

remember her name-she taught English, I think-Miss Milross?

She was one of them. But there were so many."

She looked at her essay. In my backyard is a tree that has

always been extremely important to me since I was six years

old when my dad came home one evening with this bag in the

trunk and he said, 'Come here and help me plant this'-"

She crumpled the sheet of paper and started again.

"One evening when I was six years old, my father arrived

home as he customarily did around 5:30 or 6:00 P.m. except

this evening he had a wonderful surprise for me, he said,

as he led me toward the car.

"My father is not the sort of person who does surprising

things very often so naturally I was excited that evening

when he said he had something for me in the car, having

just come home from work where he had been. I was six years

old at the time."

She took out a fresh sheet. "Six years old was a very

special age for me and one thing that made it special was

when my dad and I planted a tree together in our backyard.

Now it is grown and every spring it gives off large purple

blossoms.

The tree was planted by her dad, Harold, in 1976, ten years

after he married her mother, Marlys. They grew up on Taft

Street, across from each other, a block from the ballfield.

They liked each other tremendously and then they were in

love, as much as you can be when you're so young. Thirteen

and fourteen years old and sixteen and seventeen: they

looked at each other a lot. She came and sat in his

backyard to talk with his mother and help her shell peas

but really to look at Harold as he mowed the lawn, and then

he disappeared into the house and she sat waiting for him,

and of course he was in the kitchen looking out at her.

It's how we all began, when our parents looked at each

other, as we say, "when you were just a gleam in your

father's eye," or your mother's, depending on who saw who

first.

Marlys was long-legged, lanky, had short black hair and

sharp eyes that didn't miss anything. She came over to

visit the Dieners every chance she got. Her father was a

lost cause, like the Confederacy, like the search for the

Northwest Passage. He'd been prayed for and suffered for

and fought for and spoken for, by people who loved him

dearly, and when all was said and done he just reached for

the gin bottle and said, "I don't know what you're talking

about," and he didn't. He was a sore embarrassment to

Marlys, a clown, a! joke, and she watched Harold for

evidence that he wasn't similar. One night she dropped in

at the Dieners' and came upon a party where Harold, now

nineteen, and his friends were drinking beer by the pail.

Harold flopped down on his back and, put his legs in the

air and a pal put a lit match up to Harold's rear end and

blue flame came out like a blowtorch, and Marlys went home

disgusted and didn't speak to him for two years.

Harold went crazy. She graduated from high school and

started attending dances with a geography teacher named Stu

Jasperson, who was tall and dark-haired, a subscriber to

Time magazine, educated at Saint Cloud Normal School, and

who flew a red Piper Cub airplane. Lake Wobegon had no

airstrip except for Tollerud's pasture, so Stu kept his

plane in Saint Cloud. When he was en route to and from the

plane was almost the only time Harold got to see Marlys and

try to talk sense into her. But she was crazy about Stu the

aviator, not Harold the hardware clerk, and in an hour Stu

came buzzing overhead doing loops and dives and dipping his

wings. Harold prayed for him to crash. Marlys thought Stu

was the sun and the moon; all Harold could do was sit and

watch her, in the backyard, staring up, her hand shielding

her eyes, saying, "Oh, isn't he marvelous?" as Stu

performed aerial feats and then shut off the throttle and

glided overhead singing. "Vaya con Dios" to her. "Yes, he

is marvelous," said Harold, thinking, "DIE DIE DIE."

That spring, Marlys was in charge of the Sweethearts

Banquet at the Lutheran church. Irene Holm had put on a

fancy winter Sweethearts Banquet with roast lamb, and

Marlys wanted to top her and serve roast beef with morel

mushrooms, a first for a church supper in Lake Wobegon.

Once Irene had referred to Marlys's dad as a lush.

Morel mushrooms are a great delicacy. They are found in the

wild by people who walk fifteen miles through the woods to

get ten of them and then never tell the location to a soul,

not even on their deathbeds to a priest. So Marlys's

serving them at the banquet would be like putting out

emeralds for party favors. It would blow Irene Holm out of

the water and, show people that even if Marlys's dad was a

lush, she was still someone to be reckoned with.

Two men felt the call to go and search for morels., Harold

put on his Red Wing boots and knapsack and headed out

flashlight. He was in the woods all one evening with aof

the trunk of a

night. Morels are found near the base dead elm that's been

dead three years, which you can see by the way moonlight

doesn't shine on it, and he thought he knew where some

were, but around midnight he spotted a bunch of flashlights

behind him, a posse of more lists bobbing along on his

trail, so he veered off and hiked five miles in the wrong

direction to confuse them, and by then the sun was coming

up so he went home to sleep. He woke at 2:00 P.m., hearing

Stu flying overhead, and in an instant he knew. Dead elms!

Of course! Stu could spot them from the air, send his

ground crew to collect them for Marlys, and the Sweethearts

Banquet would be their engagement dinner.

Stu might have done just that, but he wanted to put on a

show and land the Cub in Lake Wobegon. He circled around

and around, and came in low to the west of town,

disappearing behind the trees. "He's going to crash!" cried

Marlys, and they all jumped in their cars and tore out,

expecting to find the young hero lying bloody and torn in

the dewy grass, with a dying poem on his lips. But there he

was standing tall beside the craft, having landed

successfully in a-field of spring wheat. They all mobbed

around him and he told how he was going up to find the

morels and bring them back for Marlys.

There were about forty people there. They seemed to enjoy

it, so he drew out his speech, talking about the lure of

aviation and his boyhood and various things so serious that

he didn't noticeHarold behind him by the plane or notice

the people who noticed what Harold was doing and laughed.

Stu was too inspired to pay attention to the laughter. He

talked about how he once wanted to fly to see, the world

but once you get up in the air you can see that Lake

Wobegon -is the most beautiful place of all, a lot of warm

horse manure like that, and then he gave them a big manly

smile and donned his flying cap and scarf and favored them

with a second and third smile and a wave and he turned and

there was Harold to help him into the cockpit.

"Well, thanks," said Stu, "mighty kind, mighty kind."

Harold jumped to the propeller and threw it once and twice,

and the third time the engine fired and Stu adjusted the

throttle, checked the gauges, flapped the flaps, fit his

goggles, and 'never noticed the ground was wet and his

wheels were sunk in. He'd parked in a wet spot, and then

during his address someone had gone around and made it

wetter, so when Stu pulled back on the throttle the Cub

just sat, and he gave it more juice and she creaked a

little, and he gave it more and the plane stood on its head

with its tail in the air and dug in.

It pitched forward like the Titanic, and the propeller in

the mud sounded like he'd eaten too many green apples. The

door opened and Stu climbed out, trying to look dignified

and studious as, he tilted eastward and spun, and Harold

said, "Stu, we didn't say we wanted those mushrooms

sliced."

Harold went out that afternoon and collected five hundred

morel mushrooms around one dead elm tree. Marlys made her

mark at the Sweethearts dinner, amazing Irene Holm, who had

thought Marlys was common. Harold also brought out of the

woods a bouquet of flowering crab apple and asked her to

marry him, and eventually she decided to.

The tree in the backyard came about a few years afterward.

They'd been married awhile, had two. kids, and some of the

gloss had worn off their life, and one afternoon, Harold,

trying to impress his kids and make his wife laugh, jumped

off the garage roof, pretending he could fly, and landed

wrong, twisting his ankle. He lay in pain, his eyes full of

tears, and his kids said, "Oh poor Daddy, poor Daddy," and

Marlys said, "You're not funny, you're ridiculous. "

He got up on his bum ankle and went in the woods and got

her a pint of morels and a branch from the flowering crab

apple. He cut a root from another crab apple and planted

the root in the ground. "Look, kids," he said. He sharpened

the branch with his hatchet and split the root open and

stuck the branch in and wrapped a cloth around 'it and

said, "Now, there, that will be a tree." They said, "Daddy,

will that really be a tree?" He said, "Yes." Marlys said,

"Don't be ridiculous."

He watered it and tended it and, more than that, he came

out late at night and bent down and said, "GRow. GRow.

GRow. " The graft held, it grew, and one year it was

interesting and the next it was impressive and then

wonderful and finally it was magnificent. It's the most

magnificent thing in the Dieners' backyard. Becky finished

writing 750 words late that night and lay down to sleep. A

backyard is a novel about us, and when we sit there on a

summer day, we hear the dialogue and see the characters.

TRUCKSTOP

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach left for Minneapolis on

Tuesday, a long haul for them. They're no spring chickens,

and it was cold and raining, and he hates to drive anyway.

His eyesight is poor and his '66 Chevy only has 47,000

miles on her, just like new, and he's proud of it. But

Myrtle had to go down for a checkup. She can't get one from

Dr. DeHaven or the doctors in Saint Cloud because she's had

checkups from them recently and they say she is all right.

She is pretty sure she might have cancer. She reads

"Questions and Answers on Cancer" in the paper and has seen

symptoms there that sound familiar, so when she found 'a

lump on the back of her head last week and noticed blood on

her toothbrush, she called a clinic in Minneapolis, made an

appointment, and off they went. He put on his good carcoat

and a clean Pioneer Seed Corn cap, Myrtle wore a red dress

so she would be safe in Minneapolis traffic. He got on

Interstate 94 in Avon and headed south at forty miles an

hour, hugging the right side, her clutching her purse,

peering out of her thick glasses, semis blasting past them,

both of them upset and

scared, her about brain tumors, him about semis. Normally

she narrates a car trip, reading billboards, pointing out

interesting sights, but not now. When they got beyond the

range of the "Rise 'N Shine" show, just as Bea and Bob were

coming to the "Swap 'N Shop" feature, a show they've heard

every morning for thirty years, they felt awful, and

Florian said, "If it was up to me, I'd just as soon turn

around and go home."

It was the wrong thing to say, with her in the mood she was

in, and she was expecting him to say it and had worked up a

speech in her mind in case he did. "Well, of course. I'm

sure you would rather turn around. You don't care. You

don't care one tiny bit, and you never have, so I'm not

surprised that you don't now. You don't care if I live or

die. You'd probably just as soon I died right now. That'd

make you happy, wouldn't it? You'd just clap your hands if

I died. Then you'd be free of me, wouldn't you-then you'd

be free to go off and do your dirty business, wouldn't you.

11

Florian, with his '66 Chev 'with 47,003 miles on it,

wouldn't strike most people as a candidate for playboyhood,

but it made sense to her-forty-eight years of marriage and

she had finally figured him out, the rascal. She wept. She

blew her nose.

He said, "I would too care if you died."

She said, "Oh yeah, how much? You tell me."

Florian isn't good at theoretical questions. After a couple

minutes she said, "Well, I guess that answers my question.

The answer is, you don't care a bit."

It was his idea to stop at the truckstop, he thought coffee

would calm him down, and they sat and drank a couple cups

apiece, and then the pie looked good so they had some,

banana cream and lemon meringue, and more coffee. They sat

by the window, not a word between them, watching the rain

fall on the gas pumps. They stood up and went and got in

the car, then he decided to use the men's

room. While he was gone, she went to the ladies' room. And

while she was gone, he got in behind the wheel, started up,

checked the side mirror, and headed out on the freeway. Who

knows how this sort of thing happens, he just didn't

notice, his mind was on other things, and Florian is a man

who thinks slowly so he won't have to go back and think it

over again. He was still thinking about how much he'd miss

her if she was gone, how awful he'd feel, how empty the

house would be with him lying alone in bed at night, and

all those times when you want to turn to someone and say,

"You won't believe what happened to me," or "Did you read

this story in the newspaper about the elk in Oregon?" or

"Boy, Johnny Carson is looking old, ain't he? And Ed too,"

and she wouldn't be there for him to point this out to-and

he turned to tell her how much he'd miss her and she wasn't

there. The seat was empty. You could have, knocked him over

with a stick.

He took his foot off the gas and coasted to a stop. He

hadn't noticed her crawl into the backseat, but he looked

and she wasn't there. She hadn't- jumped-he would've

noticed that. (Wouldn't he?) It couldn't've been angels

taking her away. He thought of the truckstop. He was a good

ways from there, he knew -that. He must've gone twenty

miles. Then, when he made a U-turn, he noticed he wasn't on

the freeway anymore. There was no median strip. He was on a

Highway 14, whatever that was.

He drove a few miles and came to a town named Bolivia. He

never knew there was a Bolivia, Minnesota, but there it

was. Went into a Pure Oil station, an old man was reading a

Donald Duck comic book. Florian asked, "How far to the

Interstate?" He didn't look up from his comic. A pickup

came in, the bell dinged, the old man kept reading. Florian

went down the street into a cafe, Yaklich's Cafe, and asked

the woman where the Interstate was. She said, "Oh, that's

nowheres around here." "Well, it must

be," he said, "I was just on it. I just came from there."

"Oh," she says, "that's a good ten miles from here."

"Which way?"

"East, I think."

"Which way's east?"

"What way you come in?"

"That way!"

"That way is northeast. You want to go that way and then a

little southeast when you get to the Y in the road. Then

keep to your left. It's about two miles the other side of

that old barn with Red Man on the side. Red Man Chewing

Tobacco. On your left. You'll see it."

There was a funny look about her: her eyes bulged, and her

lips were purplish. Her directions weren't good either. He

drove that way and never saw the barn, so he turned around

and came back and looked for the barn on the right side,

but no bam, so he headed back to Bolivia, but Bolivia

wasn't there anymore. It was getting on toward noon.

It was four o'clock before he ever found the truckstop. He

had a long time to think up something to tell Myrtle, but,

he still had no idea what to say. But she wasn't there

anyway. The waitress said, "You mean the lady in the blue

coat?" Florian didn't remember what color Myrtle's coat

was. He wasn't sure exactly how to describe her except as

real mad, probably. 'Ja, that's the lady in the blue coat,"

she said. "Oh, she left here hours ago. Her son come to get

her."

Florian sat and had a cup of coffee and a piece of apple

pie. "Can you tell me the quickest way to get to Lake

Wobegon from here?" he asked. "Lake what?" she said. "I

never heard of it. It can't be around here."

But it was, not too far away, and once he got off the

freeway he found his way straight home, although it was

dark by then. He stopped at the Sidetrack for a quick bump.

He -felt he owed it to himself after all he'd been

through and what with what he was about to go through.

"Where's the old lady?" asked Wally. "Home, waiting for

me," he said.

He -headed south and saw his house, and kept. going. Carl's

pickup was in the driveway and he couldn't see facing the

both of them. He parked on the crossroad and sat, just

beyond Roger Hedlund's farm, where he could watch his

house. It was dark except a light was on in the kitchen and

one in the bathroom. Roger's house was lit up. What if

Roger should see him and come out to investigate? Out here

in the country, a parked car stands out more than a little

bit, you might as well be towing a searchlight behind you.

It's considered unusual for a man to sit in his car in the

evening on a crossroad an eighth of a mile from his own

house, just sit there. If Roger came out, Florian thought

he'd explain that he was listening to the radio and it was

a Lutheran show so the old lady wouldn't have it in the

house-Roger was Lutheran, he'd like that.

He ducked down as a car came slowly past, its headlights on

high beam. The preacher on the radio might be Lutheran, he

didn't know. It sure wasn't the Rosary. The man was talking

about sinners who had wandered away from the path, and it

seemed to Florian to fit the situation. "Broad is the road

that leadeth to destruction, and narrow is the path of

righteousness"-that seemed to be true too, from what he

knew of freeways. The preacher mentioned forgiveness, but

Florian wasn't sure about that. He wondered what this

preacher would do if be had forgotten his wife at a

truckstop and gotten lost; the preacher knew a lot about

forgiveness theoretically but what would he do in Florian's

situation? A woman sang, "Softly and tenderly Jesus is

calling, calling for you and for me. See by the portals

he's waiting and watching. Calling, 0 sinner come home."

Come home, come homeYe who are weary come home.

Florian felt weary. Seventy-two is old to get yourself in

such a ridiculous situation. He waited as long as he could

for Carl to leave, and then the coffee inside him reached

the point of no return and he started up the engine. Taking

a leak in another man's field: he drew the line at that. He

turned on his headlights, and right when he did he saw

Carl's headlights far away light up and the beams swung

around across the yard and Carl headed back toward town.

Florian coasted up his driveway with the headlights out. He

still did not have a speech ready. He was afraid. He also

had to pee. Outside, on the porch, he smelled supper:

breaded fish fillets. He was surprised that the door was

unlocked-they never have locked it but he thought she might

if she thought he was coming.

He hung up his coat in the mud room and looked around the

corner. She was at the stove, her back to him, stirring

something in a pan. He cleared his throat. She turned. She

said, "Oh thank God." She dropped the spoon on the floor

and ran to him on her old legs and said, "Oh Daddy, I was

so scared. Oh Daddy, don't ever leave me again. I'm sorry I

said what I did. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to make

you so angry at me. Don't leave me again like that. "

Tears came to his eyes. To be so welcome-in his own home.

He was about to tell her that he hadn't left her, he'd

forgotten her; then she said, "I love you, Daddy. You know

that."

He was going to tell her, but he didn't. It occurred to him

that leaving her on account of passionate anger might be

better than forgetting her because of being just plain

dumb. There wasn't time to think this through clearly. He

squeezed her and whispered, "I'm sorry. I was wrong.

I promise you that I'll never do a dumb thing like that

again."

She felt good at supper and put on the radio; she turned it

up when she heard "The Saint Cloud Waltz." Sometimes I

dream of a mansion afar but there's no place so lovely as

right where we are, here on a planet that's almost a star,

we dance to the Saint Cloud Waltz. That night he lay awake,

incredulous. That she thought he was capable of running

away, like a John Barrymore or something. Seventy-two years

old, married forty-eight years, and she thought that maybe

it hadn't worked out and he might fly the coop like people

do in songs? Amazing woman. He got up at six o'clock, made

scrambled eggs and sausage and toast, and felt like a new

guy. She felt better too. The lump on her head felt like -

all the other lumps and there was no blood on. her

toothbrush. She said, "I wonder if I hadn't ought to call

down there about that appointment." "Oh," he said, "I think

by now they must know you're all right."

DALE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Commencement was Wednesday evening at the football field,

the eighty-seven members of the Class of '86 were ushered

into the next chapter of their lives to the sweet strains

of Elgar. Carla Krebsbach was one of them, and earlier that

day, while she looked at the pictures of her classmates,

autographed, in her copy of The Sbore, she thought,

"Wouldn't it be nice if there were eighty-six people in the

Class of '86? It would be like a good omen," and then it

struck her that she had wished someone dead, just as her

eyes fell on Dale Walters's picture, where he had written,

"If you get to heaven before I do, just drill a hole and

pull me through- Lots of love and good luck to a great kid,

that's you!"

She thought, "Dale is going to die because of my terrible

thought." With his black hair combed like he never combs

it, serious eyes looking straight out, he looked like he

might be dead already, hanging in his basement from a

rafter, or drunk and crashed into a tree, or his head blown

off.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. She put on her eye shadow

and prayed for God to save his life.

That night, at seven o'clock sharp, the eighty-seven moved

in processional formation out of the gym door, across the

dirt lot, and onto the cinder track around the field where

the Leonards won two games last fall. To the sad and

elegant cadence of "Pomp and Circumstance," the Class

passed before the bleachers and the sharp tiny flashes of

light here and here and here like parents' heads exploding,

and filed into the eight rows of folding chairs between the

forty- and fifty-yard lines, and, on a signal from Miss

Falconer, they sat down in unison. She had them practice in

the lunchroom on Tuesday. She said, "Don't flop down like

that, don't just collapse like a pile of bricks-let

yourself down gracefully-no, not like that!-you look like

you're an invalid."

She worked with them on the correct method.of sitting and

they got worse at it, until she threw up her hands in

despair. She is a small, utterly elegant woman, so

perfectly groomed and neatly dressed that if she dropped

dead the undertaker wouldn't have to fix her up a bit-she's

ready to go right straight in the coffin for reviewal. So

elegant, and she clapped her elegant hands and cried,

"What's the matter, with you people? This is simple! Don't

flop, don't poke around or grope or waggle your seats,

just-sit. Dale? Dale, are you part of this, or what is your

problem?"

Dale had reason to be distracted. He was fairly sure that

he'd flunked Dentley's final in higher algebra and that any

moment there'd be a knock on the door, Mr. Halvorson would

come in and say, "Dale, could I see you ... out here ...

for a moment," and his, classmates would turn and look and

think, "Heroin. Heroin and car theft and sex acts too awful

to mention." He'd follow the principal out to the hall and

hear him say, "I have bad news, Dale. You can't graduate,

you'll have to come back next year." He waited all day for

the knock, he felt like he was floating.

Tuesday afternoon they got their copies of The Shore and

sat on the grass where they used to sit talking after lunch

all those years and signed each other's yearbooks. He

wrote, "Dear Allen, remember all the good times we had-"

"I will always remember this," he thought, "this very

moment; years from now I'll always be able to remember

exactly how this looked and how I felt. I'll remember her

face"-looking at Carla Krebsbach---;.and he looked where

Carla had written in his book:

When darkest night surrounds you Look up and see a star And

know that you have one true friend No matter where you are.

Algebra ordinarily was a good subject for him but on Monday

he couldn't remember anything the first twenty minutes. He

kept saying, "Relax," and relaxed and got panicky in a

relaxed sort of way. The last thirty.minutes he wrote down

anything he could think of that made sense. On the last

problem, in the last panicky minutes of the hour, he caught

a clear view of Barbara Soderberg's testthe problem solved

in big block lettering-and looked up at the top of

Dentley's head behind his desk, looked at Barbara's test

again, and then looked up at the minute hand just about to

jump to the twelve so the bells would ring, and thought,

"This doesn't matter that much, it's just not that

important to me." And set his pencil down. The bell rang

and Dale stood up and walked away. That was Monday.

There are no Walterses in Famous People of the Great

Plains, Dale has checked. He imagined how his name'd look

in there and wrote it down on an index card that is pasted

inside his blue folder where he keeps his school stuff.

WALTERS, DALE. b. Lake Wobegon, Minn. March 4, 1968.

BA Harvard, 1990. MA Yale, 1991. Ph.D. University of Paris,

1993. Married, Danielle Monteux, 1992. Three children:

Antoine, Mimi, and Doug. Elected to the Institute of Arts,

1994, and L'Institut Nationale Acad6mie de la Honneur et

Gloire et Heroroisme, 1995. Author of numerous scholarly

and artistic works, frequent lecturer here and abroad,

recipient of more prizes than you could shake a stick at.

He thought of it again in the minute before the bell. He

thought, "Life is so wonderful that it is all we can do

simply

to experience it, and all the things people think are im

portant-none of it matters if it makes us less able to

live."

Did I think of that myself? he wondered.

He wrote it on the front page of The Sbore under a

photograph of the school: I AM ALIVE. I AM A LIVING FEELING

PERSON AND WHAT I USED TO THINK WAS SO IMPORT ANT, IT

ISN'T. TESTS AND GRADUATION DON'T MATTER BECAUSE NOW

I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO KNOW, THAT THE IMPORTANT THING IS

LIFE ITSELF.

How glorious to fail-and, in this moment of humiliation,

discover the meaning of life.

It was the greatest day and a half of his life, and then it

ended sadly. Dentley called him in and said, "Dale, your

final Wasn't so good, but I've been looking at it and I'm

going to give you a C minus on it and a C for the yearI

think that basically you understand the material, you just

didn't know exactly how to use it."

"But I didn't solve the problems," Dale said.

"Yeah, but I could see where you were headed on most of

them, and anyway I'm going to give you some extra credit

for class participation."

He looked up, a sad man with thin dry hair, smiling, and

Dale said, "That's not right. I flunked your test. I don't

want to sneak out of it. I failed."

"Dale, you had a bad day. I'm not going to nail you for

that.

He didn't feel right about it but he let Dentley write down

a C, then he felt worse. It was like he had refused to

cheat, only to allow someone else to cheat for him. He

talked to Mr. Halvorson, who thought Dale was complaining

that the grade was  low. He kept saying, "Dale, there's no

shame in getting a C-it's a passing grade."

When he sat with the others Wednesday night, he felt good

again. The night so clear, the smell of grass and damp, the

music and voices drifting across the field, so many faces-

how could a lover of life not be elated with so much to see

as this? Carla won the Sons of Knute 'Shining Star

scholarship and they all jumped up and clapped. She was

valedictorian too. "When we look back on this night years

from now we will see it as a great moment when our lives

turned and our future course was determined," she said. At

the end, the band played and they stood up together in a

whoosh of gowns and walked out, heads high. Someone called,

"Dale! Dale!" and the camera flashed. He went with Allen to

Martha Hedlund's, whose parents weren't home, and drank

beer and smoked a cigarette. Carla said, "Hi, Dale," and he

put his arm around her. They talked about what they would

do in life. "I'm going in the Navy," he said, which sounded

good to him. A great night, drinking a can of beer, one arm

around a girl, talking. And then she said,, "I'm awfully

glad you're alive."

"It's enough to be alive," he said, "a person doesn't need

anything more."

"The Navy!" said Allen. "I thought we were going to go to

Saint Cloud State together. How can you go in the Navy?"

"Just do it. That's how."

Drinking a beer, one arm around a girl, talking about life-

on the verge of leaving all this behind, on the very edge,

the last moment before the door shuts, the last trem

bling moment-when she said that strange wonderful thing,

"I'm awfully glad you're alive."

So was he, so glad he was awfully sorry to say goodnight.

2.

Beautiful summer weather the week after graduation, a good

week for fishing, when farmers got a lull in their field

work and could go out and sit and rock in a boat and work

on their sunburn. Rollie Hochstetter pulled in a

stringerful of sunnies, fishing in Sunfish Bay, about

twenty yards off the end of Kruegers' dock, not far from

the weeds, with his brother-in-law Don Bauer in Don's

aluminum boat (61/2-horsepower motor), with 2 1/2-to- 3

3/4-inch worms, about two feet off the bottom using a 3/4-

inch red plastic bobber.

Nearby sat Clint Bunsen in his boat, contemplating the sun

on the cool water, the rod and reel in his hand. His

serenity was disturbed by the activity at Rollie's

stringer, so he called over, "You going to keep those puny things?

I'm going for-the big ones. I'm not sure those are

legalsize, are they?"

Rollie said, "You know, to tell you the truth, I don't go

for those big ones, they're too damn bony. These mediumsize

are the good eaters, you know that."

Clint contemplated the wisdom of Rollie: if you can't

have something, find a reason why you wouldn't want it.

He imagined Rollie as a monk in a boat, praying, "Lord,

do not send me any of those big ones as they are too bony,

Lord, as Thou surely must know. Grant Thy servant a

little fish, one of the good eaters.'

Clint knew why Rollie was out on the lake, though; it was

because his heart was breaking. His grandson Dale

Walters decided to join the Navy, and who could say whether

he'd come back or not?

"Why so soon?" his mother said. "How do I know you've even

thought about it? Four years! Dale! What's the big rush?

You haven't signed anything yet, have you? Honey. You

didn't. Oh, Dale. How could you do this? Honey, you don't

even know how to swim. You'd be out in the ocean

someplace."

"Ma, they carry life preservers."

"How do you know that?"

"It's the law. They have to."

"Who's going to enforce it? This is the government, they

make the law, they don't have to obey it, they don't'hafta

take care of you one bit-they could throw you over the side

and who'd know it?"

Bobbie was scared and upset. Dale is her youngest boy, then

it's Deb, and then they're all gone. She stood against the

stove, crying into a dish towel. (This was a week ago

Friday.) Everyone was there, an emergency family meeting,

Rollie and Louise and Jack and Bobbie and Dale's uncle

Carl. Bobbie said, "Talk to him, Jack." "I can't tell him

anything, I gave up telling him anything a long time ago,"

said Jack. Bobbie said, "Talk to him' Dad, " and Rollie

just looked away. He was hurt because Dale hadn't asked his

advice.

Bobbie was making lasagna. "What am I doing this for?" she

said through her tears. It was eight o'clock in the evening

and everyone had eaten supper and she was making four big

pans of lasagna, to freeze, she said, but with Dale leaving

and, taking his appetite with him, why such big pans?

"This is the craziest thing you ever did and you did some

crazy ones," she said. She laughed. "Remember when you went

after the groundhogs?" He certainly did. It was only a year

ago. Something was harvesting their garden

as the plants came up out of the ground, and one day Jack

noticed six groundhogs: hiking through the yard en route to

the lunch program and thought, "Six is too many. One or

two, yes (if they're married), but six is pushing charity

too far," so he told Dale, "Dale, get out there and wipe

out those groundhogs."

Dale got his .22 out of his closet and was coming

downstairs when he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

He wasn't wearing a shirt, and standing there, nice tan,

fairly good pectoral development, rifle, he looked like a

hero. He found a red bandanna and tied it around his

forehead. Looked better.

Outside, leaning against the tree behind the corncrib,

waiting for groundhogs in the scorching heat, he could

imagine how good he looked, and he moved out through the

weeds, imagining other men-Bravo Company - following him

(though he couldn't hear them, that's how good they were).

He nailed the first groundhog by the milkhouse. It flopped

twice and he heard others scurry into the weeds at the end

of the garden. One of them made a run for it. He fired and

missed, and chased it, and then saw one at eight o'clock

and turned and crouched and fired, but it was a big rock,

not a groundhog, and the bullet hit it and then he heard a

chunk and there was a hole in the side of their green

Chevy.

She laughed at the thought of it, her boy at supper that

night saying, "Dad, I was going after groundhogs today and

I put a shell in the Chevy." The reason Dale waited until

supper to confess was that his mom was 'weeding begonias on

the other side of the car. He stood on the rock and looked

at the hole and saw that if the car hadn't been parked

there he would've killed her. He put the rifle back in his

room.

She laughed. "Oh honey, I'm sorry, but it was so comical,

the look on your face-" He might have killed her

that afternoon and been in all the newspapers as a wacko

teenager.

She said, "But what are you going to do with the nice car

Grandpa gave you?"

"Well," he said, "it'll be just as nice in four years,

except it won't have so much mileage on it."

Rollie didn't say much that night, because he felt too bad.

He had looked after Dale since he was six-Rollie saw how

those older brothers ganged up on the little boy and he

knew what a hard man Jack could be, so he went out of his

way for Dale and tried to show him things. He taught him

how to drive a tractor when he was seven, and how to handle

pigs, and took him fishing, and was close to him, as close

' as Rollie knew how to be, close enough that Dale came

over to talk to his grandpa every single damn day, so he

was hurt that the boy would now turn away and be secretive

and, this Friday night, not even look at him. Rollie sat

and studied his coffee. "You know," he said, "there never

was a war we fought that we had a good reason for. None of

them made sense. Not a goddamned one."'

Jack cleared his throat. Everyone was quiet. Nobody spoke.

About eleven, Bobbie said she was going to bed. They walked

out in the yard and stood around the cars for a while,

talking. To Dale it was like a dream. Under the yard light

and the stars in the sky, his family talking in the evening

breeze, the big barn half full of hay bales like a cargo

ship docked at the house, looming above them in the night.

Saturday he and his dad went out and cut more hay, and

Sunday more relatives came over. He tried to call Carla but

she was at her grandparents' fiftieth anniversary in Cold

Spring, and in the evening -she was gone, her mother said,

to Saint Cloud with friends, to see a movie.

What friends? What was his name? Dale didn't dare-ask, but

he did drive past her house about eleven o'clock. The

lights were on, but he didn't dare go in. He was afraid

that if he said, "I came to say goodbye, I'm going into the

Navy, who knows if I'll ever come back," she'd say, "Oh,

that's interesting. Weill, good luck."

Monday he cleaned out his room. He threw out all his school

stuff, most of his letters, and his 4-H project on pork

(Nature's Perfect Food), and selected the pictures he'd

take along, including Carla's graduation picture, an

enlargement. Most other people she gave a billfold-size but

to him she gave an enlargement, one more way he knew she

had feelings for him.

He called the Navy the next day and went to Saint Cloud and

took all the tests and made up his mind that if they wanted

him he was going.

"You seem almost happy about it or something," Allen said.

"It's like you don't even care or anything."

The reason he felt happy was the Navy physical. As

the doctor sat and asked him questions, Dale was making

up his mind to ask him one, and finally, after he lowered

his underpants and coughed and was checked for a hernia,

Dale said, "I, uh, was always wondering why, uh, my

Pennis, you know, it hangs crooked. I always wondered

what was wrong with it." The doctor looked. He said,

"First of all, it's pronounced 'penis,' and secondly, it's

perfectly normal."

Perfectly normal. What a gift. He took it home with him.

Perfectly normal. He had worried about this since he was

sixteen. He wanted to call Carla and tell her somehow, or

at least be with her and feel perfectly normal. He was glad

he had never discussed it with her and mispronounced

"penis." Somehow the subject had never come up.

And suddenly it was Wednesday noon and Dale was leaving at

one. His mother sat and wept over breakfast and then she

got busy. Jack drove the Pontiac in to All it

up with gas, a sort of going-away present, a full tank.

Dale sat in the living room. Debbie sat there, reading

Parents magazine. Everyone came in for a little lunch, the

Walterses and Rollie and Louise and Carl. They squeezed in

around the kitchen table, where his mother had laid out a

big spread. She didn't use the dining room, because it

wasn't Sunday and they weren't company. And she felt too

bad. She felt so bad she had spent all morning fixing

lunch. There were platters of meat, hot and cold, and tuna

salad and potato salad and hamburger hotdish and tuna

hotdish and breads and pickles-even Fran could see it was

too much-and then she reached into the oven for the big

one, a baking pan. She held it out to him-"For you, Dale"-

and she took the tinfoil off. It was pigs in blankets,

wieners baked into a biscuit crust. He had liked them when

he was eight but she still thought it was his favorite

dish. She watched him take two. She studied his face for

signs of pleasure. "Mminnimmin, those are very very good.

Thank you," he said.

And then it was one. "Well," he said. He stood up. "I can't

stand it," she cried, and she ran into the bathroom. He

hugged his grandpa and grandma, he shook hands with Uncle

Carl, he looked at his dad and shook hands with him. He

said, "Ma? Come on, Ma. " And then he set down his duffel

bag. "Did you give me back the car keys?" he said to his

dad. Jack said, "I gave em to you, of course I did, you

musta put em. in the kitchen."

But they weren't anywhere in the kitchen. Everyone helped

look except his mom, who was crying in the bathroom about

her boy leaving. Except he wasn't leaving. "Look in your.

pants," Jack said. "Dad, I didn't put em. in my pants. You

had em."

"I gave em. to you, Dale. I come home and got outta the car

and come in and give em to ya. Look upstairs, look in the

living room. Where were ya sitting? Try and think."

Grandma was crying now, and Debbie had an arm around

her and was sniffling. Oh Dale, we may never see him again.

Dale thought: I may never get out of here. His dad standing

by the fridge saying: "This is stupid. This is the craziest

thing I 'ever heard of." Carl: 'Just calm down, jack."

Jack: "What are you talking about? I'm calm. " Rollie:

"Take it easy. "Jack: "Why don't you take it easy, Dad?"

"Ma, come on out of there. Open the door."

"I can't. I feel too bad."

"Ma, are my car keys in there?" "No."

"Ma, are you sure?" "No."

"Ma, please. I got to go. Help me find them." "But I don't

want you to go." "Ma, did you take my keys?" "No." "Ma! "

His grandma crying. "I just know I'll never see you again."

Debbie crying. "I'll be here, Grandma."

"Oh I know, honey, but it's not the same." Debbie went up

to her room to cry.

jack said, "Maybe you gave em to someone. Maybe you left em

out on the lawn somewhere. Maybe you left em in the car."

When he said that, a thoughtful look came over his face.

"You know," he said, "I wonder if they wouldn't be up over

the visor."

And of course they were.

And so, he left.

He drove past Carla's on the odd chance she'd be out

side, and she. was mowing the lawn and he got out to say

goodbye and she hugged him. "I'll sure miss you a lot,"

she said, "so I hope you'll write me once in a while."

And away he went. It's a wonderful thing to push on alone

toward the horizon and have it be your own horizon and not

someone else's. It's a good feeling, lonely and

magnificent and frightening and Peaceful, especially when

you leave someone behind who will miss you and to whom you

can write.

And so the blue Pontiac rose over the rise and zoomed aroun

the curve by the grain elevator and up the long grade to

the hill and disappeared into the future.

HIGH RISE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It turned hot on Tuesday and Clarence got the Crosley

electric window fan out from the basement. But it was cool

in the basement, so he sat down for a while to catch upon

some old magazines. 1958 was a hot year too. He brought the

fan up and took the quilts down and read some more.

Eisenhower: quite a man. And those tailfins. I don't

believe you ever see, a car in that exact shade of green

these days. And white sidewalls. Do they still exist?

Questions like those keep him awake at night: Audie Murphy,

alive or dead? What happened to Mary Miller of the 42nd

Street Gang on "Sunday in Manhattan"? What a great show

that was. It's hot and you kick off the blanket in your

sleep and then you're aroused by your indecency and wake

up, and cover yourself and think about Mary Miller for a

while and go to sleep.

There was a thin high-pitched whine in the air from clouds

of mosquitoes and gnats; but we're used to that. It's

summer and this is Minnesota, and mosquitoes are part Of -

our heritage, going back to the seventeenth century when

French explorers searching for the fabled oilfields of

the north, canoeing through swamps and streams on the

sweltering muskeg, stopped and looked at each other covered

with black insects and red welts and dizzy from slapping

their heads and said, "What do (you) say (we) try Quebec

first and leave this for later?" And so our fabled

oilfields remain safe and secure. Mosquitoes are what don't

show up in the gorgeous color photographs of Minnesota and

we're not supposed to complain, but you ought to admire us

for living here, it's an accomplishment, not everybody

could do it.

Ella Anderson was in her garden digging up a patch of

elderly irises, coated with mosquito lotion, Nuits de la

Nord, which smells like ripe bananas. Father Emil was in

the rectory garden putting in his onions-he has resigned

as pastor of Our Lady and is only staying temporarily to

help Father Wilmer get settled, but Sunday after Mass,

Wilmer had his bags packed for two weeks of vacation.

"How can you?" said Father- "You just started. I put in

almost fifty years, I got to retire." Wilmer said he had

thirty-seven vacation days coming from the diocese. Father

never heard about a vacation policy. "Oh yes," Wilmer

said, "and we got profit-sharing. IRAs for clergy. It's new

this year." Father Emil thought, Next thing they'll have

a Frequent Prayer program with prizes, put an odometer

on the Rosary. So Wilmer went - to San Francisco. He said,

"No mosquitoes there, you know." Father Emil walked

behind him out to the car, carrying Wilmer's gym bag.

"They got sharks," he said, "they got snakes, they got mad

dogs come down out of the hills on hot days and bite you

in the hinder, you'll be sick for a week." Wilmer just

laughed. No mosquitoes in California, and that's a vacation

for him. That's why Father put in his onions. Green onions

are a mosquito preventative. In forty-four years, he has

yet to be bitten on the lips.

"It doesn't seem right," Myrtle said to Sister Arvonne, up

in the Our Lady basement, planning the picnic for the

'Daughters of Martha in June, "that we have the God-given

beauties of nature and can't even enjoy them for the

Goddamned mosquitoes, it doesn't seem fair." Myrtle is

seventy-three and she has talked that way all her life. Her

husband, Florian, you couldn't get a swear word out of him

if you squeezed him with a pair of pliers, but Myrtle has a

gland in her neck next to the thyroid that secretes

profanity, especially when mosquitoes get bad. She sits in

her yellow lawn chair in the shade and slaps and swears,

and now she's talking about moving to a senior citizen high

rise in Saint Cloud. "Mosquitoes don't go higher than the

third floor unless there's an updraft. I read an article on

it. You live above the sixth floor, you're free and clear."

She's campaigned for the move to the high rise for almost

two years, going back to when she got in a fight with her

sister-in-law Beatrice over a blue Bavarian crystal vase

Beatrice chose from Myrtle's mother's things after she

died. Myrtle thought it was odd to let an in-law pick over

Mother's things but she didn't. want to say anything, and

then Beatrice drew the short straw and reached out and

picked the one precious thing out of the lot, the blue vase

that to Myrtle had been since early childhood the most

beautiful object she could imagine, left by a princess as a

token of a gay life to come. Saturday, when the girls

cleaned the worn-out little house, they shined up the

crystal vase and walked around to see the diamonds that it

made from a beam of light. It was magical. Fat Beatrice

clutched it to her tremendous bosom and sighed for

happiness, who knew nothing about this vase, hadn't grown

up with it, she could buy one in a dime store and it'd be

the same to her-but Myrtle didn't want to say anything, so

she hauled off and slapped her across the face hard, and

Beatrice squeezed the vase and it shattered and one shard

pierced her left breast. She jumped up and tore off

Myrtle's wig and the other sisters fell in between them.

They cried and picked

up the broken glass - They said they were sure glad Mother

wasn't alive to see this, it woulda killed her. -They made

Beatrice and Myrtle kiss and make up. Myrtle gave Beatrice

a peck on the cheek and whispered into Beatrice's right

ear, 'Jesus goddamn you fat old bitch." Six lowdown nasty

words from the mouth of a grandma. There's been a poisoned

courtesy between them ever since, fourteen years of saying

hello between thin hard lips, and two years ago, when

Beatrice became president of Catholic Mothers, Myrtle

wanted to leave town.

Myrtle'd like to live someplace exciting. Lake Wobegon is

boring. She almost moved to Minneapolis in 1937. She was

going to go and then she didn't and she's been talking

about it ever since,_ how she came this close to going and

if only she had, well, she wouldn'ta ever had to put up

with this horseshit. Whenever her kids were rotten, she

told them how she'd almost gone away in 19 3 7 and wished

she had. She's been putting up with. it for fifty years.,

She's sick and tired of it.

To Florian, the idea of moving to Saint Cloud is

unthinkable. Myrtle says, "I seen a article in the Times

about a new high rise opening up. We oughta get our names

in for that-you know some people -have to wait two years on

the waiting list before they get in, that's how much people

our age want to live in one, two years you got to wait.

That's how desirable they are. Two years." Florian gets up

to put toast in the toaster, make another cup of Sanka,

stalling for time, wishing she'd forget it. "Well)," she

says. "Well?"

"I just don't think it's realistic," he says. Living in a

tall building, seven, eight stories up: he went up the

Foshay Tower once, thirty-one stories, and couldn't stand

near the edge because there was suction from the ground

trying to pull him off. So if you lived on the eighth floor

and couldn't go near the windows and had to walk around

next

to the inside wall and maybe tie your left ankle to the

bedpost at night, what kind of life would it be?

He's lived there at the Krebsbach place since before he was

born. His mother had him in the downstairs bedroom,

presumably conceived of him there too and the six others

before him, four of them dead now. The latest one, dear

Ruth, his favorite sister, how funny and dear she was and

yet her taste in men, my God! four husbands, the first of

whom was a disaster and they went down from there. But as

long as she lived and as bad as she felt, she could always

come back home because Florian lived here. He rents out the

land to Roger, but he still has the house and every

Thanksgiving and Christmas and Memorial Day and Fourth of

July there are some Krebsbachs there, depending on how they

feel about each other that year.

"Give me one reason," Myrtle says, "give me one good reason

why we wouldn't be better off in an apartment in Saint

Cloud."

That's why, a few years ago,' Florian started raising

ducks. At first a dozen and now a flock of thirty-six.

,"It's good meat," he said, "and you know, they do eat

mosquitoes. "

"Ducks don't eat mosquitoes, don't be dumb."

"Oh yes, they eat their weight in mosquitoes. I read that

in an article."

Myrtle looks at him. What is he talking about? She's the

one who reads the articles. She never read word one about

ducks.

"If they eat mosquitoes, how come we got so many we can't

even sit in the backyard?"

"If they didn't eat them, we'd have a lot more, we wouldn't

be able to sit, period."

Since Myrtle started talking high rise, Florian has bought

a number of old Farmall tractors at auction and a corn

drill and an old combine. He talks about fixing them up.

Since

she started talking about how nice a three-room apartment

would be, he's been picking up old dressers cheap and

antique bedsteads and washstands. As an investment. And

expanding his duck herd.

So when she says to give her one reason, he says, "What can

I do with the ducks?"

He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the'

ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand

and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up

and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come

in this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the

bartender was pretty surprised, he says, "You know we don't

get many of you ducks in here." The duck says, "At these

prices I'm not surprised." And he tosses out the popcorn

and they laugh. Wak wak wak wak wak.

I was shot in the leg in the war.

Have a scar?

No tbanks I don't smoke.

Senator K. Thorvaldson saw Father Emil planting onions

behind the rectory, he walked over and said, "I thought you

were retiring and moving South."

"Well, I thought you were going to marry that woman out in

Maine and move East."

"Well, maybe I will, I don't know. It's hard to leave here

though when I'm so curious to see what's going to happen

'to you. I want to find out how the story ends before I go

away."

Father mentioned Myrtle and Florian. "Telling jokes to

ducks!" says Senator K. "Has Florian lost his marbles or

what, then?"

"He has forgotten an awful lot of jokes but the few he

remembers the ducks enjoy them over and over."

Florian sits out back and just about falls over, some of

them are so good.

Hey, call me a taxi.

Okay, you're a taxi.

"Give me one reason," she says, "why we shouldn't pack up

and leave this town."

He says: So this couple went to get a divorce, she was

eighty-nine and he was ninety-two - the judge said, "Why?

You've been married seventy years and now you want a

divorce?" "We hate each other," she said. "We haven't been

able to stand each other since 1932." "Why did you wait so

long?" he said. "We wanted to wait until the children were

dead. This woulda killed them."

COLLECTION

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Sunday morning Clarence Bunsen stepped into the shower and

turned on the water-which was , but he's Norwegian, he

knows you have to take what you get-and stood until it got

warm, and was reaching for the soap when he thought for

sure he was having a heart attack. He'd read a Reader's

Digest story about a man's heart attack ("My Most

Unforgettable Experience") and this felt like the one in

the story-chest pain like a steel band tightening. Clarence

grabbed the nozzle as the rest of the story flashed before

his eyes: the ride in the ambulance, the dash to the

emergency room, unconsciousness as the heart team worked

over him, the long slow recovery and the discovery of a new

set of values. But as he imagined what was about to happen,

the heart attack petered out on him. The story said it felt

like an elephant stepping on you, This felt more like a big

dog, and then somebody whistled and the dog left. So it

wasn't a heart attack, there was no story, and Clarence

felt better.

(The storyteller is disappointed, of course. A full-blown

heart attack would be a reasonable test of his ability,

perhaps leading to death itself, a narration of the last

moments, the ascent of the soul through the clouds, an

exclusive report.)

It wasn't a heart attack, but for ten or fifteen seconds it

could have been one, and in the depths of his heart he

thought it was-so in a way it was. When you believe you're

dying, ten or fifteen seconds is like a lifetime, and when

the false attack was over, he nonetheless felt he sort of

had a new set of values. For one thing, he wasn't sure he

should waste, time taking a shower, life being so short,

having come so close to death in the sense that when death

comes it might come exactly like this. It was Sunday

morning, but he wasn't sure he wanted to go to church and

sit through a sermon, life being so short. If you knew you

had twenty minutes left to live, why, then, church would be

the place you'd head first; you'd turn yourself in, no more

fooling around, no kidding, pour the sacred oil on me,

Jack, say the words, and pluck your magic twanger I don't

have all day.

He thought instead of going to church, he'd like to go for

a walk (good for your heart) and worship God in the singing

of birds, the sunshine, green grass, and flowers, which,

this being Minnesota, we don't have yet. He thought: Life

is short, so you should do something different. He dried

his old body off and put on underwear-maybe, life being

short, you ought to get new underwear, but what can an old

man wear except boxer shorts? Can't go around in those

bikini things you see in stores. What if a robber with a

gun forced you to strip down to your underwear ("Hey you-

old guy!-hear me? I said, strip"), and there you be, an old

geezer in tiny purplish briefs, robber'd take one look

("Hey, man, you are ridiculous"), bam, you're dead. Dead

because you did things different because life is short. He

stood at the dresser, shopping for socks (black, brown,

gray, gray-black, Argyle). Arlene called up the stairs,

"It's almost nine-thirty!"

He wanted to yell back that he was feeling delicate from

what he'd thought at the time was a heart attack, but it

was hard to yell something so vague, so he yelled, "Be

there in a minute," and in not many minutes he appeared in

the kitchen in full Sunday regalia: brown suit, black

shoes, white shirt, and one flash of color, the tiny red

flecks in his dark blue tie. He appeared through the door

in a cloud of bay rum.' poured himself a cup of coffee,

drank some, then kissed his wife (in that order-he is

Norwegian), and looked in the frying pan on the stove and

saw food that whenever you read about cardiovascular

disease you read about that stuff.

He put a pan of water on to boil, for oatmeal. Arlene

watched, spatula in hand. "What's the matter? Breakfast is

ready. I got your eggs." Hard to explain: a semi-

heartattack. A heart that wasn't attacked but heard

footsteps in the weeds. Maybe it was only a twig, maybe the

whole aorta about to fall off.

"I don't feel like bacon and eggs this morning."

"Well, I guess I'll have to throw them out, then."

"Yeah ...

"Are you feeling all right? Are you sick?"

He's Norwegian; he said, "No., I'm just fine." A

Norwegian's dying words: "I'm just fine." On the field of

battle, tom to a red pulp except for your mouth: "I'm just

fine." Wreckage of a car, smashed to smithereens, a bloody

hand reaches out the window and writes in the dust: "0. K.

"

It was warm out, and on the way to church they smelled mud,

a sweet smell of rot and decay, and a whiff of exhaust as

the Tolleruds cruised by with their carload of kids.

Clarence used to walk to Sunday school with his four little

kids; Now, having almost had a heart attack, he I misses

their sweaty little hands for one heartbreaking instant and

misses how, before going in to worship the Lord, -he ran a

quick bladder check and a nose check to see where blowing

was needed. The kids' always cured him of the sort of

morbid mood he felt this morning-he never had these long

grim thoughts about death when the kids were little, but

then he was younger, of course.

Church was half full and restless. Pastor Ingqvist's Lenten

sermons have gotten longer. Val Tollefson has been after

him to liven up his preaching. Sunday morning before

church, Val tunes in "Power for Tomorrow" on TV from the

Turquoise Temple in Anaheim, and there is a gleam in

Reverend La Coste's eye that Val wishes Pastor Ingqvist

would emulate and also use more dramatic inflection,

rising, falling inflection, cry out sometimes, use long

pauses to give solemnity to the sermon.

Clarence. checked out of Pastor Ingqvist's sermon early. It

was about the parable of the -laborers in the vineyard, the

ones who came late getting the same wage as those who came

early and stayed all day, a parable that suggests you need

not listen carefully to the whole sermon from the beginning

but can come in for maybe the last sentence or two and get

the whole point. Besides, the pastor's long pauses were

hypnotic. Clarence's mind drifted away to other things,

until suddenly he was startled by his own heavy breathing:

he opened his eyes; the sermon yVasn't over, it was only a

long pause. The pastor's inflection suggested he was coming

toward the end and the offering was next. Clarence eased

his wallet out and saw he had no cash. He got out a pen and

hid the checkbook in his Bible (next to Psalm 101) and

quietly scratched out a check for thirty dollars, more than

usual, because he had almost had a heart attack and also

because his offering was personalized. He wrote

surreptitiously, trying to keep his eyes up and ahead-

knowing you're not supposed to write checks in church, it

isn't a grocery store.

He glanced to his right, and Mrs. Val Tollefson was

glaring at him. She thought he was writing in the Bible.

(In the old Norwegian synod you didn't write in a Bible,

not even little comments in the margin like "Good verse"

or "You can say that again," because every word in the

Bible is true and you shouldn't add any that might not be

true, not even in pencil, because it undermines the

authority of Scripture.) Meanwhile, the sermon ended and

Pastor Ingqvist launched into prayer. Clarence tried to

tear the check quietly out of the checkbook. There's no

worse sound in the sanctuary than a check ripping. His

check wouldn't come quietly, the first half-inch rip

sounded like plywood being torn from a wall, so he waited

for the pastor to launch into a strong sentence of fervent

prayer to cover up the check removal, but Pastor Ingqvist

was pausing at odd points, so Clarence couldn't tell when

it was safe or when suddenly he would be ripping in the

middle of pure holy silence. Clarence folded the check back

and forth until it almost fell off. Mrs. Tollefson was

about to get up and snatch Scripture out of his hands. At

prayers' end, as they said the Lord's Prayer, he eased the

check out ("And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us

from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power,

and the glory, for ever. Amen"), and when Elmer passed the

basket, Clarence laid down the check folded neatly in half

in the basket and bowed his head and suddenly realized he

had written it for three hundred dollars.

He had written with his eyes averted and he knew he had

written three-zero-zeio on the short line and threezero-

zero on the long line. Could a man sneak downstairs after

church and find the deacons counting the collection

and say, "Fellows, there's been a mistake. I gave more than

I really wanted to"? He now felt fully alive for the first

time all day. He felt terrifically awake. He had given all

he had in the checking account and a little more. What

would they do until the end of the month to keep body and

soul together? Maybe they would have to eat beans and,

oatmeal. What's a man gonna do? A man's got to live.

'LIFE IS GOOD

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Lightning struck the Tollerud farm Tuesday, about six

o'clock in the evening. Daryl and his dad were walking 'the

corn rows, talking, and the clouds were dark and strange

but it Wasn't storming yet, -and Daryl said, "If I were

you, I'd take Mother out to Seattle tomorrow and enjoy the

trip and not worry about this." Right then it hit, up by

the house: a burst of light and a slam and a sizzle like

bacon. They. ran for the house to find her in the kitchen,

sitting on the floor. She was okay. but it was close. It,

hit a crab apple tree thirty feet from the kitchen window.

Some people in town were reminded of Benny Barnes, who was

hit by lightning six times. After three, he was nervous

when a storm approached, and got in his car and drove,

fast, but it got him the fourth time, and the fifth time it

was sunny with just one little cloud in the sky and, bam,

lightning again. He had bum scars down his legs and his

ears had been ringing for years. After the fifth, he quit

running. The sixth one got him sitting in the yard, on an

aluminum lawn chair. After that he more or less gave up.

When the next thunderstorm came through, he took a long

steel pipe and stood out on the hill, holding it straight

up. He had lost the will to live. But just the same it took

him fifteen more years to die. It wasn't from lightning: he

caught cold from the rain and died of pneumonia.

Daryl wished the bolt had come closer to his dad. His. dad

has a character flaw that drives Daryl crazy: he hates

Plans. The trip to Seattle was planned before Thanksgiving,

letters were written to relatives, calls were made; June

30th was the date set to go, but the old man gets uneasy

when plans are made and feels trapped and cornered, even if

the plans are his own, so one night after chores he said,

"Well, I don't know about that trip to Seattle, I might be

too busy, we'll have to see about that," which made

everybody else want to shoot him.

Daryl jumped up. "How can you say that? Are you crazy?" No,

just nervous about plans. Always was. To agree to do

something and have people expect you to do it: it bothers

him. When his kids were little, he'd tell them, "Now, I'm

not promising anything, but maybe next week sometime I

could take you swimming, up to your uncle Carl's, but don't

count on it, it all depends." As next week came around,

he'd say, "I. don't know about that swimming, we're going

to have to see about that. Maybe Thursday." Thursday the

kids would get their bathing suits out and he'd say, "We'll

see how it goes this morning, if I get my work done we'll

go." Right up to when they got in the car, he was saying,.

"I don't know. I really ought to get to work on that drain

pipe," and even when he stuck the key in the ignition, he'd

hesitate. "Gosh, I'm not sure, maybe it'd be better if we

went tomorrow." He couldn't bring himself to say, "Thursday

we swim," and stick to it. Daryl and his brothers and

sisters learned not to look forward to things because Dad

might change his mind.

The old man is the same with his grandkids. He says, "Well,

we'll see. Maybe. If I can." But the Seattle trip beats

all. Ruby got the train tickets and had the suitcase

packed three weeks ago, then he said, "I don't know how I

can leave with the corn like it is." Ruby put her head in

her hands. He said, "You know, the Grand Canyon is a place

I always, wanted to see, maybe we should go there." She

sighed, and he said, "You know, I never agreed to this

Seattle trip, this was your idea from day one." And then

Ruby went to Daryl's to talk to Daryl and Marilyn. They sat

drinking coffee and getting madder and Ruby said, "Oh well,

you have. to understand Dad." Marilyn stood up and said, "I

do not have to understand him. He's crazy. He doesn't just

have a screw loose, the whole top has come off."

She is reading a book, Get Down and Garden, about get

ting tough with plants. She has yanked a bunch of slow

movers out of her flower garden, the dullards and the dim

bulbs, and it's improved her confidence. Now she often

begins sentences with "Look," as in "Look. It's obvious."

She used, to begin with "Well," as in "Well, I don't know,"

but now she says, "Look. This is not that hard to under-,

stand."

She said to Ruby, "Look. It's obvious what he's doing. He

wants to be the Grand Exalted Ruler and come down in the

morning and hear his subjects say, 'What is your pleasure,

sire?' and he'll say, 'Seattle,' so they head for the

luggage and then he says, 'No, we'll stay home,' so they

sit down, and then 'Grand Canyon' and they all jump up. As

long as you keep jumping, he'11 keep holding the hoop 'up

there."

Not only does Old Man Tollerud hate to commit himself to

trips, he also likes to stay loose in regard to drawing up

a will or some other legal paper that gives Daryl and

Marilyn some right to the farm that they've worked on for

fifteen years. When Daryl mentions it, his dad says, "Well,

we'll have to. see. We'll talk about it in a few months."

Daryl is forty-two years old and he's got no more ownership

of this farm than if he'd gone off and been a drunk like

his brother Gunnar. Sometimes he gets so mad at the old

man, he screams at him. But always when he's on the tractor

in the middle of the field with the motor running. Once he

left a rake in the yard with the tines up, hoping his dad

would step on it and brain himself.

Last April he saw a skunk waddling toward the barn and got

a can of catfood and lured the skunk into the tractor shed,

hoping his dad would start up the John Deere the next

morning and get a snootful. He fed the skunk day after day,

waiting for it to do the job for him. Sweet justice. Blast

the old bastard with skunk sauce at close range so nobody

would care to see him for about a year. Then the skunk

started following Daryl, who fed him such rich food, so

Daryl quit and the skunk disappeared.

Daryl got some satisfaction at the Syttende Mai dinner at

the Lutheran church in May, Norwegian Independence Day,

where his dad went through the buffet and loaded up and was

heading for a table when his paper plate started to

collapse on him. He balanced his coffee cup on his wrist to

get his other hand under the. plate, and it was hot-the

meatballs had sat in a chafing dish over a candle. The old

man winced and looked for a place to dump the load; then

the hot gravy burned right through the paper plate and he

did a little tango and everything sloshed down the front of

his pants. Daryl watched- this with warm satisfaction.

But that was months ago, the satisfaction has worn off. The

day after the lightning strike, Daryl drove up to the house

to have it out once and for all. He practiced his speech in

the pickup. "You don't treat me like I'm your son at-all,

you've never treated me like a son." He got to the house

and found a note on the door: "Gone to Saint Cloud for

windowshades. Back soon. Clean the haybarn."

Clean the haybarn! He ripped the note off and wadded it up

and drop-kicked it into the peonies. He stalked to the end

of the porch and back and stood, and yelled at the door:

"You don't treat me like I was your son, you bastard,

you treat me like I was a-" And, then the terrible truth

dawned on him. His mother had said, "If anything happens to

us in Seattle, I left you a letter in my dresser drawer.

I've been meaning to give it to you for years." So he

wasn't their son. He was adopted. That's why his dad

wouldn't make out the will.

Daryl had wondered about this before, if he was his

father's son. He thought, "I'm forty-two, it's time to find

out." He walked in and climbed the stairs, step by deep

purple step, and turned and entered his parents' bedroom,

the forbidden chamber, and walked to the dresser and heard

something move on the bed. He turned-it was their old tabby

cat, Lulu, on the bed-his hand hit a bottle and it crashed

on the floor. She didn't jump at the crash, she sat up and

gave him a long look that said: "You're not supposed to be

in here and you know it. You ought to be ashamed of

yourself. You're no good, and you.know it. Shame on. you."

He clapped his hands-Hal Git!-and she climbed down and

walked away, stopped,  looked over her shoulder, and said:

You'll suffer for this, you just wait.

He picked up the shards of perfume bottle and opened both

dormer windows to air out the room. Unbelievable that: his

mother would ever, smell like this, it smelled like old

fruit salads. He dug down into the dresser drawer where

he'd seen her stick old pictures, under her stockings and

underwear. There was a book, Sexual Aspects of Christian

Marriage: A Meditation by Reverend E. A Mintner, that he'd

read when he was twelve and he dug beneath it to a packet

of envelopes tied with a thick rubber binder, tight. He

slipped it off- they were his dad's pay slips from' the Co-

op; each envelope held a year's worth, there were more than

thirty envelopes.

He sat on the bed, feeling weak. Of all his parents'

secrets, this was the darkest: how much money did they

make? They would no more talk about that than discuss

sexual aspects of marriage. One Sunday little Daryl piped

up at dinner and asked, "Dad, how much money do you make?"

His dad has several different voices, a regular one ("So

how come you went down there then when I told you I needed

you? I don't get it") and a prayer voice ("Our Father, we

do come before Thee with hearts filled with thanksgiving,

remembering Thy many blessings to us, and we do ask Thee

now When he discussed money he used the second voice- and

he said, "I don't care to discuss that and I don't want you

to discuss it with anyone else. Is that clear?"

Oh yes. We don't talk about money, that is very clear.

Except to say, "I got this window fan for four dollars;

it's brand-new except for this scratch, and you know those

things run -ten, twelve dollars."' Bargains yes, -but

salaries no.

So here was the secret. He opened the first envelope, 1956.

Forty-five dollars. That was for a whole week. Not much for

a good mechanic. Forty-five dollars and five kids: it

explained all that scrimping, his mother darning socks and

canning tomatoes. When the old man forked over their

allowance, he counted the two quarters twice to make sure

he wasn't overpaying. It explained why he was such a pack

rat, 'saving tinfoil, string, paper, rags-once Daryl looked

around for string and found a box full of corks, another of

bits of wire, and one box with hundreds of odd jigsawpuzzle

pieces, labeled "Puzzle: Misc."

It dawned on him that he wasn't adopted, he was their boy

all right. He'd inherited their frugality and stoicism. If

his paper plate fell apart, he'd try to save it, even if

his hand was burning. Same is his dad. They raised him to

bear up under hardship and sadness and disappointment and

disaster, but what if you're brought up to be stoic and

your life turns out lucky-you're in love with your wife,

you're lucky in your children, and life is lovely to

youwhat then? You're ready to endure trouble and pain, and

instead God sends you love-what do you do? He'd been

worried about inheriting the farm, meanwhile God had given

him six beautiful children., What happens if you expect the

worst and you get the best? Thank you, Lord, he thought.

Thank you for sending me up here to the bedroom. It was

wrong to come, but thank you for sending me.

He heard Lulu tiptoe in, and when she brushed against his

leg he was sorry for chasing her out. He scratched her

head. It didn't feel catlike. He looked down and saw the

white stripes down its back.

The skunk sniffed his hand,wondering where the catfood was,

Then it raised its head and sniffed the spilled perfume. It

raised its tail, sensing an adversary. It walked toward the

window. It seemed edgy.

"Easy, easy," he said. If he opened the window wider, it

might go out on the roof and find a route down the oak tree

to the ground. He was opening the window wider when he

heard the feet padding up the stairs. He hollered, "No,

Shep, no!" and raised his leg to climb out the window as,

the dog burst into the room, barking. The skunk turned and

attacked. Daryl went out the window, but not quite fast

enough. He tore off all his clothes and threw them down to

the ground, and climbed back in. The bedroom smelled so

strong he couldn't bear it. The skunk was under the bed. He

ran down and got the shotgun and loaded it. Daryl was

almost dying of the smell, but he crept into the bedroom.

He heard the skunk grunt, trying to squeeze out more juice.

Daryl aimed and fired. Feathers exploded and the skunk

dropped down dead.

He carried it out on a, shovel and buried it, but that

didn't help very much: the deceased was still very much

a part of the Tollerud house when his parents arrived home

a little while later. Daryl sat on the porch steps, bare

naked

except for a newspaper. He smelled so bad, he didn't care

about modesty. Ruby said; "Oh dear. Are you all right?"

She stopped, twenty feet away. She thought he looked naked,

but he smelled so bad she didn't care to come closer.

His dad said, "You know, Daryl, - I think you were right

about Seattle."

And they left. They didn't take clothes with them. They

went straight out the driveway.

That was Tuesday. Daryl has been living at his parents'

house all week. But life is good. I'm sure he still

believes this. Life is good, friends. It's even better if

you stay away from Daryl, but basically life is good.

LYLE'S ROOF

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

On Tuesday, Carl Krebsbach's brother-in-law Lyle tried to

start his lawnmower, which had died because the grass was

so high that he hadn't cut sooner because itd rained so

much, and a shingle fell off his roof. He looked up and

another one slid off and almost creamed him. There was

white mossy -stuff on the underside of the shingles, and

though it was asphalt, it was soft, like a living thing,

and it crumbled in his hands. It had held on to the roof as

long as it could and then it died. A dead shingle.

People have been mentioning the roof to Lyle for years, in

a roundabout sort of way. You can't stand and flat tell a

man his house is falling apart. Carl says, "You know, if

you'd like me to, I could climb up on your roof and check

some of those shingles, they look like they might be

loosebut Lyle is leery of accepting help lest the person

helping him think the reason he needs help is that he's

stupid.

Lyle thought he better climb up and have a look. He doesn't

have a long enough ladder, and he didn't want to borrow

Carl's and involve Carl, so Lyle thought he'd go

to the attic and look at it from underneath. He, looked for

his flashlight. He had an idea he'd left it in the comer of

the basement when he looked at the water pump. It was dark

in there, so he couldn't see if the flashlight was there or

not, and he didn't want to go in there, because he could

hear water running and the pump is electrical. So he went

to put in a fuse so the light would work and he could look

for the flashlight. He found a couple dozen old fuses on

the fusebox, waiting to be healed, and none worked, so he

unscrewed one from another socket and put it in and there

was screeching and screaming behind him. He turned and saw

a skillsaw making sparks on the concrete floor coming

straight for him, and he grabbed for the fuse and touched

something that made his whole body feel for one moment like

a piece of history, pulled his hand back, and the saw came

to the end of its cord and yanked it and stopped. It was

all quiet except for the water-pump moanthe same sound he'd

gone to check on when he left the flashlight back in there.

But now it was louder. And it smelled of something burning.

Five disasters in five minutes, including attempts on his

life, by a shingle and a skillsaw, and all on a summer

afternoon. Now comes fall, and after that life' starts to

get serious. He went to start the lawnmower again and had

an idea: why not dig up this sod and put it on the roof?

He'd seen that in the National Geographic, from Iceland or

somewhere, some cold country. If the roof could grow moss,

why not grass? People would laugh at him, but then they

laugh at him now-so what's the difference? The difference

is that, in a couple years, they'd see what a brilliant

idea it is.

He would have to give this some careful thought.

He couldn't think while mowing, so he sat down to think in

his lawn chair, and soon he was dreaming: something about

green grass but not on a roof

One man who's noticed Lyle's roof is Clarence Bunsen, who

takes long early-morning walks for his heart. At 6:00 A.M

in the early light, this little town is so shining and

perfect, so fresh, so still, if you took eleventh-grade

English from Miss Heinemann you would think of Wordsworth:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Clarence walks up Taft Street to -where it becomes the road

to the dump, and on mornings when he feels worse he walks

farther.

This summer Bunsen Motors isn'tt taking in enough money to

keep four people on the payroll: Clarence and Clint Bunsen,

and Stanley and Earl, plus Marlys Diener doing part-time

bookkeeping. They're not selling the Fords they used to.

People are driving forty and fifty miles to buy a car at a

big dealer, they don't have the loyalty to the home town

that they used to have, and they're not even ashamed to

display the foreign dealer's nameplate on the trunk: there

it is, big as sin, Ogilvie Toyota, Saint Cloud. Who is

Ogilvie? Does he go to the Lutheran church? Does he go to

any church? They don't know him. For all they know, he

could be in Las. Vegas, running around with showgirls and

eating spoonfuls of cocaine; meanwhile, Clarence, their

neighbor and friend, who if they were suddenly in deep

water he'd be there to help, is in some fairly deep water

of his own. He's got to borrow seven thousand dollars to

get through

September. Wednesday he saw parked in front of the

Chatterbox a brand-new red Ford Bronco 2 that Harold

Diener, husband of Marlys, had bought in Minneapolis.

Clarence was sick. It broke his heart.- But he tried not to

show it. He admired the car. "That's nice, Harold," he

said. "That's real good. Four-wheel drive. They'll be handy

when winter comes. You sure know your cars, Harold. I

oughta hire you as a salesman."

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a

starry night Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

You five in a small town, you learn about people. You learn

that certain people, if they say they'll be there to teach

school on Tuesday, they'll be there, and some people

won't, and if you call them up Tuesday evening, they'll

say, "Oh, you meant, this Tuesday." It's always the same

ones who are prompt and faithful and dependable, and if

they're ten minutes late you should call the police, and

always the same others who say,- "Are you sure today is

Tuesday? But yesterday was- Oh yeah, it was Monday,

wasn't it?, Well ... do you still need me)"

School started on Tuesday and suddenly it became awful

quiet. All the air went out of the tire, the kids

disappeared with their goofy ideas and dumb jokes and there

was nothing left downtown but business, and not much of

that. There was hardly a car on Main Street, you would've

had to wait around to get in a traffic accident. At

Krebsbach Chev, Florian was in a dark mood. Clarence came

up and

poured himself a cup of coffee, and Florian got ready to

say, "Whatcha put cream in coffee for? Ruins it. I thought

only women did, that." But Clarence took his black, leaned

against the parts counter, and said, "Jeez, what a week.

Only Tuesday and it feels like Friday. I'll bet I don't

sell one car."

That afternoon, at a quarter of four, Florian stepped out

of the Chatterbox Cafe and turned to his left to go up to

the garage. As he turned, he heard wheels behind him. He

looked back and there was the Best boy coming on fast on

his ten-speed. Florian ducked to his left, the Best boy

went to his right, and they crashed. Florian fell over and

the boy landed a little ways away. Florian sat up, making

sure he was not killed, and asked, "Are you all right?"

The boy waited for Florian to yell at him and,. when

Florian didn't, went home to be yelled at by his folks for

riding on the sidewalk and knocking down an old man, but

they didn't either, and at school on Wednesday he was still

waiting to be yelled at. He thought that perhaps Florian

would be the speaker at assembly and talk about bike

safety. fie was sure Florian would write a letter to the

editor-"I was walking along the sidewalk one day last week

when one of our grade-school boys attempted to kill me.

Isn't it time we stop coddling these vicious children and

start putting some of them behind bars as an example to the

others?"

The reason he didn't get yelled at is, ever since Florian

forgot Myrtle at the truckstop on their way to the Cities,

he's expected something to happen to him, and being knocked

down by a bike was much easier than other things he

imagined.

It's a primitive sense of justice: you do bad, and your

Creator smacks you one-but there it is. One day you're

daydreaming at the wheel, you smash into someone's rear

end. She gets out of her car, looks at the busted

taillight, and smiles. She's relieved; she says, "Well, it

could've been

a lot worse." You've just run into a guilty person. She did

something in the past twenty-four hours that made her

think the universe would land on her with both feet. She'd

be covered with boils, wrapped in burlap, sitting in the

ashes, flies on her, and lightning coming closer and

closer, but all it is is a taillight. Not bad. She smiles

and drives away. Now you start to feel guilty. Days later,

the Best boy is still hearing footsteps, waiting. for the

big hand to. grab him and spin him around and the voice to

say, "Why

you-"

Sometimes it's hard to get into trouble in this little

town. There was an old guy years ago got so depressed he

decided to kill himself, and he got a flask of whiskey and,

went down to the lake to throw himself in and drown. But he

couldn't cut a hole in the ice. It had been a cold winter.

He had some whiskey and he banged on the ice with his ax

but couldn't cut a hole. He had more whiskey, and then he

opened up a hole big enough to stick his hand in, and he

drank the rest of the whiskey and took off all his clothes

except his boots. He hiked off naked into the dim winter

night and felt sleepy and then heard voices-women, he

thought-and was scared he'd be seen and ran back and got

his clothes on. He went home, slept, and woke up with a

hangover worse than death, and was resurrected from the

hangover and decided to live. That's a true story ,from

long ago. I believe it's true, except about the -boots, but

he died in 1978, so it's too late to check.

,It rained more this week, a heavy rain that fell straight

down, and eventually Lyle found his flashlight and looked

up-in the attic under the roof, which has been leaking for

a long time into the plastic buckets in his daughters'

bedroom, and he was astounded how awful it looked. Not

just wet but slimy, slippery, like a place where mutant

creatures come from, shiny green things with empty eyes

reaching out for us. For two years Carl has told him he

ought to fix his roof, which made Lyle furious but it also

made Lyle nervous because Carl knows about these things.

Lyle teaches science at the high school; he knows about the

stratosphere, the ecosphere, the atmosphere, genetics, the

cosmos, but not about roofs.

He climbed down from the attic, and he went downstairs to

the furnace room and poured himself a stiff drink. No ice

cubes or soda down there, just the bottle in the workbench.

He wondered what to do. He didn't want to ask Carl for

help, he was tired of him helping, of coming home from

school and finding his brother-in-law had got his sink

apart-Lyle's sink. He had another drink. Poor kids, living

in a house that might fall down on their heads because

their dad doesn't know what to do.

He felt like going to bed but he went up to the bedroom and

called someone. He took the phone to the end of the cord,

took it into the closet, sat down on a pile of shoes, and

tried to disguise his voice to make it sound sober.

"Father? Is this Father Conway? This is Lyle. You don't

know me but I live up here in Lake Wobegon, and I hate to

bother you with something like this but I can't talk to my

priest about it, it's something I've been embarrassed about

for a long timeYes? Well, I appreciate your saying that. I

do. I'll try. It's just hard to find the words to say what

I've been going through over this, but, anyway, it's about

my roof.

"No, I said 'roof.', It's my roof. The roof on my house."

There's a story about Lyle's house, as there is about

most houses in town. That's why old people walk so slow,

because they're remembering all the stories. I'm not that

old but I know a lot because I used to hang out with old

people back when there used to be real old people. Now

everyone is sort of my age or younger, and most people

don't know much more than I do. It's disappointing 'to

become a leading authority in the field when you still have

so much you want to learn. But I do know that Lyle's

house was built in 1889 by a carpenter- named Swanson

who started a milling business to make door and window

frames.

He was tall and sported a fine black mustache and had three

daughters who worshipped the ground he walked on, and after

he died, they lived in the house, adoring his memory. When

they got old, about thirty years ago, they couldn't bear

the thought of anybody else ever living in their father's

fine house. An ordinary two-story wood frame house to

everyone else, but to them it was their father's realm, the

embodiment of his life and wisdom and goodness, and they

wrote in their will that, after the last of them deceased,

the house would be torn down.

Then they died: one, two, three, close together. Each death

seemed to drain the life from the survivors, and the family

collapsed, and a few weeks later, the heir to their

estate, a nephew, the son of their ne'er-do-well brother,

young Victor rode into town, his long black hair combed

high on his head, and a lawyer at his side, to claim what

was rightfully his. The entire town came to despise both

of them within twenty-four hours. The town couldn't decide

which-one they despised more. People had never agreed on

anything so unanimously and heartily -as that young Victor

was despicable, heartless, and deserved to be cheated, and

they set out to deprive him of that house.

The sisters' will provided that, if the house wasn't torn

down within sixty days, then he wouldn't inherit the rest

of the estate, about forty thousand dollars in cash in the

First Ingqvist State -Bank. The town didn't want to see the

house torn down. It was a nice house, and. if Victor didn't

tear it down, the forty thousand dollars went to the

library. Victor said it was his house and he started to rip

the roof off. The town council made him stop while they

studied the matter, looking through the municipal

ordinances hoping that their forefathers in their wisdom

might have passed something usable that they could hammer

him with, and found an odd little law, passed, in 1889,

that

said that the demolition of a building must be completed

within fourteen days. Victor had torn some roof off about

five days before, and it was a week until the next council

meeting. That left two days to tear it down in, and one of

those days was a Sunday,, so all he- had was one day.

He did his best. He arrived early and his lawyer with him,

with crowbars and big hammers, but his grandfather had

built the house better than. he knew, and by noon Victor

could see he wasn't going to make it. He'd made a lot of

dents in it, busted windows, beat the dust out of it, pried

off some boards, but he wasn't going to be able to level it

by nightfall, and so he would lose forty thousand dollars.

He started to yell and run around like a madman, which

meant he got even less done. His lawyer saw that he

wouldn't get paid and turned quiet and gloomy, and Victor

went to pieces. He yelled out the window: "I'll give you

two thousand dollars to help me. tear my house down!"

A little gang of men stood out in the dusty street. They

seemed interested, so he made another offer: "I'll give you

three -thousand dollars to help me tear my house down."

"Would that be per man or for the whole bunch of us?"

"Three thousand dollars apiece."

"Could we see some of that first?"

So the sun went down and he left town and the bank sold the

house to Lyle: a good house, well built, but one that had

sustained some violence, so he has problems with his

plumbing, his wiring, his drainage, his roof, that other

people might not have. And he has a problem with three

ghosts who don't feel good about him being there.

He talked to Father Conway for about an hour-about roofs

but also about football and about fall and what a fine

season it is. Lyle went off to work the next day to talk

about the quiet but passionate life of amoeba, but at noon

Mr. Halvorson asked if he could give up his lunch period

and take Miss Peterson's speech class-she had had lunch and

went home sick-and Lyle said, Sure.

He walked into the speech room and smelled intense fear.

Twenty people seventeen years old sat in three rows, facing

a low platform. Fifty-five minutes in the class period,

each student to speak impromptu for three minutes about

himself or herself, so there'd be no more than eighteen

speeches, so two would escape till the next day, and of the

-twenty, about sixteen were hoping to be one of the two.

An impromptu speech about yourself . . . "Well, what is-

there to say?" one boy said. "I don't know. I was born and

I have a family, of course, and I'm in school and-I don't

know, what am I supposed to talk about?"

"Just tell us about yourself," Lyle said from the back.

"But there isn't anything important to tell."

"Let us decide that. just talk about whatever comes to

mind."

"What if nothing comes to mind?"

There were terrible silences when a speaker froze in

midsentence and the audience looked down out of decency,

studied their fingernails, while the poor person took a

deep trembling breath. Lyle sat in back, and a few feet

away, his daughter Mary. He began to feel ill himself.

Finally it was her turn and she stood up, her face red, and

he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Ah,

youth.

"I was born in 1969," she said, "in Minneapolis. We were

there visiting some relatives, I guess. I don't knowI

wasn't there, of course." Laughter. Silence. Lyle

remembered that weekend when she was born, and tears came

to his eyes.

"My first memory is of a day when we had a blanket on the

grass and my mother and dad and I were sitting on it-I

don't know where this was, but the sun was shining and dogs

were barking far away, and I had this

feeling-and I guess I've always felt this-that my family

was very close to me, always near, even when they were

gone, so I've never really been that afraid. Not even now."

In his head, Lyle heard a voice, and it said, "Lyle, now

have your roof fixed. Keep your house in order."

The bell rang. The two who didn't give speeches let out

their breaths and relaxed, not knowing that one dung worse

than giving a speech is thinking about giving a speech.

Lyle went to the office and called Carl. "Carl?" he said.

"Uh, I was wondering if you had any time free tonight to

come over and have a look upstairs-I've decided I really

ought to go ahead on that roof project and not pursue some

of these, other options I was considering, so I think we

ought to get it down before it snows."

PONTOON BOAT

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It's been hot and dry, and everyone was extremely touchy,

so when you walked in the Chatterbox for lunch and sat

at the counter and got your cup of coffee and looked at

the menu and finally ordered what you have every day

anyway, a bowl of chili and a grilled cheese, and turned

to Ed on your left and were set to say something, you

hesitated. Even to say, "Boy, she's a hot one," might start

something. So you make it a question and ask, "Say, I

wonder how hot she's supposed to get today anyway?" And he

says, "How the hell should I know; What? You think I sit

listening to the damn radio all morning;"

That's how hot it was. So hot you didn't dare ask, and

no rain, but muggy so the dust sticks to your face. It

doesn't seem fair for the Midwest, the nation's icebox, to

be the nation's oven too. It's like living in the Arctic

but

spending your summers at Death Valley. Even at the Side

track Tap, where men sit in air-cooled comfort in dim light

and medicate themselves against anger and bitterness, they

were touchy too.

It's so good to step out of a hot dirty day into a cool

tavern and hold a bottle of Wendy's but two or three Wendys

later, it's so awful to go back out. After an hour in the

dark, the sunlight hits you like a two-by-four, and the

beer in your head heats up, the yeast grows, the brain

rises. When a man on a hot day who's enjoyed an hour of

fellowship gets up to leave, he knows he has dug a hole for

himself.

The portly gent in the cool dark behind the bar, Wally,

recently bought a boat, a twenty-six-foot pontoon boat with

a green-striped canopy, a thirty-six-horsepower out-it

board, four lawn chairs, and a barbecue grill, which

arrived Sunday by flatbed truck and was put in the water

off Art's fishing dock. It was christened the Agnes D.

after his mother. He and Evelyn took a maiden voyage in the

twilight. It was cool out there under the canopy, with a

nice breeze off the lake. Wally stood at the tiny wheel

amidships, wearing a white skipper cap. His ship was, only

a piece of plywood, twenty-six by twelve, on two steel

pontoons, but to him, standing, steering it, it was

majestic. He. wanted to hang lights on it from bow to stem,

on port (left), and starboard (right) sides. He gunned it.

"Not so fast," Evelyn said, "you don't hive to drive the

boat so fast.

"My love," he said, "you do not drive a boat. You drive a

car. You sail a boat. And. when you sail a boat, you need

to find out what she's got under the hood." She'd never

heard him talk like that.

He didn't talk like that in the Sidetrack-he didn't want

anyone to think he was showing off-so when guys asked what

was this they heard about him buying a boat, Wally frowned,

he shook his head, he said, "Yeah, I don't know. I got a

deal on it from a guy I know, but I tell you, it's a

headache. Insurance and the upkeep and worrying about the

thing-did you know that if some fellows stole my boat to

commit crimes with, if they got hurt I could be

liable? It's true! But you and the wife oughta come out

with us some evening. Wouldn't that be something? We

could grill up some steaks, have a beer. . . ."

He invited about a hundred couples aboard the Agnes D. in

three days. An occupational hazard of being a tavern owner

is that you have an awful lot of extremely close friends,

men who've become very intimate and told you 'confidential

things they wouldn't even tell their close friends, so that

makes you their closest friend, although you barely know

their name.

When he invited Mayor Clint Bunsen to come for a cruise,

Clint said, "You know what you ought to do? There's a bunch

of Lutheran ministers coming through on a tour Friday, we

oughta give them a boat ride so they get a nice look at

town."

How and why twenty-four Lutheran ministers were touring

rural Minnesota is a long digression that I'd rather skip,

dear reader. People are so skeptical, they force a

storyteller to spend too much time on the details and not

enough on the moral, so I'll just say that the five-day

tour, "Meeting the Pastoral Needs of Rural America," was

organized by an old seminary pal of Pastor Ingqvist's, the

Reverend J. Peter Larson, who called him in April and said,

"You know what our problem is, we're so doggone theological

we can't see past the principles to the people,

and the people are hurting, so I'm organizing a tour of a

hundred ministers to go and look at rural problems and I

want to visit Lake Wobegon in mid-July."

Fine, said David Ingqvist, who forgot about it until, last

Sunday, his wife, Judy, said, "What's this on the calendar

for Friday? 'Tour/Larson/here'?"

"Oh that," he said. "Well," he said, "I was meaning to

discuss that with you," he said. "It's some Lutheran

ministers. coming through town and I thought we could have

them over for a picnic supper in the backyard."

"How many?" she said.

"I don't know exactly, but certainly no more than a

hundred."

"Well, I think your best bet would be wieners. You

probably. just want to boil them. Maybe you could get

someone to make you some potato salad."

Rural problems was what Pete wanted to see, but you can't

take a crowd of ministers around to someone's house and

point to him and say, "There's one. He's in trouble. I

don't give him long. No sir. He's headed down the chute."

Clint Bunsen thought it was strange. If a minister visits,

you hide your problems, and shine up your children and put

them through their paces. And you talk about other people's

problems; But he agreed to talk to them about municipal

affairs, and then he got the brilliant idea- of the boat

trip. When they arrived, tired and hot and dusty at five

o'clock on Thursday, that was the plan: boat trip, speech

on board and roasted wienies, and fellowship at the

Ingqvists' (four gallons of wine, $4.39 apiece).

They got off the bus and Clint thought: Ministers. Men in

their forties mostly, -a little thick around the middle,

thin on top, puffy hair around the ears, some fish

medallions, turtleneck pullovers, earth tones, Hush

Puppies; but more than dress, what set them apart was the

ministerial eagerness, more eye contact than you were

really looking for, a longer handshake, and a little more

affirmation than you needed. "Good to see you, glad you

could be here, nice of you to come, we're very honored,"

they said to him, although they were guests and he was the

host.

"Down this way! Let's go! Down to the lake!" Pastor

Ingqvist wore yellow Bermuda shorts and sunglasses. "It's

been an incredible trip," Pete said. "Really amazing." They

strolled down from Bunsen Motors, down the alley behind

Ralph's, and along the path between Mrs. Mueller's yard

and Elmer and Myrtle's. Myrtle's cat lay in a limb of an

apple tree, its long gray tail hung down and twitched at

the tip. Mrs. Mueller's cat sat in the shade of an old

green lawn chair, its gaze set on the birdbath,. "I tell

you," Pete said, "I really feel we've gotten an affirmation

of Midwestern small-town values as something that's

tremendously viable in people's lives. But there's a

dichotomy between the values and the politics that is

really critical at this point. It's a -fascinating

subject."

Wally had gone all out. The Agnes D. was hung with two

strings of Christmas lights, the kind that twinkle on and

off. He had laid in five cases of pop, a keg of beer,

and enough hamburger patties to feed the freshman class.

The twenty-four men trooped up the plank and on deck, and

she sank lower and lower in the water. Clint was the last

aboard. He thought, "I'm not sure about this." But how do

you tell some. ministers to get off? The Church

invites us all, the concept of "That's enough for now isn't

part of Lutheran teaching, so Clint stepped lightly aboard,

trying not to put all his weight on it, and felt water

slosh in his shoe.

The boat was riding low, no doubt about it. Wally

thought, "I'm not sure about this," but he didn't want to

sound worried like an amateur. A true sailor would be

hearty. He yelled, "Cast off the bow.line!," and Pastor

Ingqvist leaned over to cast off, and the Agnes D. tilted

to starboard. Wally gunned the engine, she righted herself,

and off they went, at about four mph, with little waves

lapping at the sides, so low in the water that to people on

shore it looked like a miracle.

One problem with twenty-four men on a twenty-six-foot boat

is that in the Midwest we need to stand about twenty-eight

inches or more from each other, otherwise we get headaches.

With the steering post, lawn chairs, motor, canopy, pop

cases, barbecue grill, and card table, there wasn't room.

Men herded forward and to the sides; there was clearing-of

throats and "Excuse me"s as twenty

four men edged away from each other and into each other,

and that was before the coals got hot.

Wally poured half a can of lighter fluid on them and lit

them just before departure. As the heat rose, ministers

standing near the grill edged away toward the bow. There

were too many Lutherans squeezed into too small a space,

and the barbecue shooting up sparks and men ducking and

edging-Wally thought, "If we'd just get up more speed IT

bet that bow would come up a little."

Pete was saying to Pastor Ingqvist, "Dave, I don't have the

answers, but I think that all of us will come out of this

with a feeling of unity of concern," but David was feeling

his own concern: they were sinking and he didn't know how

to mention it in a way that wouldn't seem negative. Wally

at the wheel, calling, "Steady as she goes!," and twenty-

four nervous ministers in earth tones and suede shoes

edging, shifting, herding, trying to be good listeners and

share concerns as the fire got hotter and hotter, driving

them toward the bow, which was sinking, but all of them

trying to keep a good positive attitude, and then Dave

said, "Somebody put out the fire! We're sinking!"

Five men took their beer cups, and leaned over to dip up

water and the Agnes D. tipped. The left front pontoon went

under and the Agnes D. stopped dead in the water and turned

to port. They had reached the edge of the laws 'of physics?

They lurched to the starboard side and both pontoons went

under and there-in full view of town the boat pitched

forward and dumped some ballast: eight Lutheran ministers

in full informal garb took their step for total immersion.

As the boat sank, they slipped over the edge to give their

lives for Christ, but in only five feet of water. It's been

a hot dry summer.

Eight went over, and then the Agnes D. came up again, a

little, and the survivors grabbed to hold on, but then the

grill tipped over and they turned to see hundreds of

burning coals sliding down the deck toward them-the Book of

Revelation come to life!-and they plunged overboard like a

load of hay bales. The Agnes D's bow rose, and Wally turned

to Clint hanging on to the canopy and said,

"I think I got her under control now."

The ministers stood perfectly still in the water and didn't

say much at all. Five feet of water, and some of them not

six feet tall, so their faces were upraised to the bright

blue sky. They didn't dare walk for fear of dropoffs, their

clothes were too heavy to swim in, and they couldn't call

for help

because their voices were too deep and mellow. So they

stood, faces upturned, in prayerful apprehension.

Twentyfour ministers standing up to their smiles in water,

chins up, trying to understand this experience and its

deeper

meaning.

I Clines little nephew Brian waded out to them. "It's not

deep this way," he said. He stood about fifteen feet away,

a little boy up to his waist. They followed him out single

file, twenty-four dripping clergy, their clothes hanging

heavy as millstones, but still looking interested,

concerned, eager to get on to the next item on the agenda.

It was, fellowship at Paster Ingqvist's home, but he was

still aboard the Agnes D. with Wally and Clint, so they sat

down in a circle under the trees to await further

directions.

STATE FAIR

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon

and it's a great pleasure to be here at the Minnesota State

Fair. I've come every year since I was five, and that's

more than twenty years. Every August my mother said, "Well,

I don't know if I care to go to the Fair this year or not."

Nobody had so much as mentioned the Fair, we were too busy

canning vegetables and perishing of the heat and the steam

from the pressure cooker-a burning hot day and us stripping

skins off tomatoes, slaving to put up a hundred or so

quarts of a vegetable we were rapidly losing our appetite

for. She said, "There's too much work to do and we can't

afford it, it's too crowded, and anyway it's the same as

last year. I don't see how we can do it. I'm sorry."

It was her way of lending drama to the trip. So we'd come

to the Fair, the roar of engines and the smell of grease,

and Mother marched around the Home Activities building

looking at competitive cakes and jams. One year we shook

hands with Senator Ed Thye, and another time we won a roll

of linoleum by guessing the number of agates in a toilet

bowl. One year we wandered into the Education building and

saw a demonstration of television, an interesting

invention: people stood in a crowd and looked at a picture

of themselves on a screen. When they moved the picture

moved-interesting. Hard to see why you'd want one if you

had a mirror, but it was entertaining for a few minutes.

I came with Mother and Dad, and because we were Christians

we gave a wide berth to the Midway, where

ladies danced and did other things at the Persian Palms and

Harlem Revue tent shows. We avoided sin, but it was

exciting for me to be so close to it and see flashing pink

lights and hear barkers say, in a voice like a talking

dog's, "See Miss Roxanne just inside the gate, just beyond

that tent flap, she's waiting in there for you, she wants

to show you a good time," and I tried to see beyond the

flap, not wanting Miss Roxanne to be disappointed by my

lack of interest in her. It was exciting to hear bands

playing slow raunchy dance tunes and to walk past the freak

show with the two-headed boy, where the gypsy ticket-seller

looked at me with a haughty look that said, I know things

you'll never know, what I've seen you'd never understand.

I loved the Fair, the good and the bad. It was good to get

out of our quiet town into a loud place with bad food and

stink, music and sex blaring-listen-it's gorgeous. Dad gave

me three dollars and I walked around not spending it, just

gaping at the sights. Once I saw a sad midget stand and,

smoke a cigarette, holding his dog's leash, a big dog. Once

I saw a man necking with a fat lady behind the Tilt-A-

Whirl. He was running the ride. People were get

ting tossed around like eggs in. a blender, and he was

putting

his hands up her shirt. Once I saw the newspaper

columnist Olson Younger sitting in a booth under the sign

MEET OLSON YOUNGER He was puffier than his picture in

the paper and more dejected. He sat drinking. coffee after

coffee and scrawling his autograph on free paper visors. He

led a fairy-tale life in his column, meeting stars of stage

and screen, eating meals with them, and even dancing once

with Rita Hayworth, and he shared these wonderful mo

ments with us through "The Olson Younger Column."

The bad part was that I had to wear fundamentalist clothes

to the Fair, white rayon shirt, black pants, black shoes,

narrow tie, because we had to sing in the evening at the

Harbor Light gospel tent near the Midway gate. We sang

"Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and

for me," and fifty feet away a man said, "Yes, she is ab

solutely naked as the day she was born, and she's inside,

twenty-five cents, two bits, the fourth part of a dollar."

I

held the hymnbook high so nobody would see me. I wanted

to be cool and wear a T-shirt. In the pioneer days before

polyester, a rayon shirt was like wearing waxed paper.

When the service was over, we got one ride on the ferris

wheel, rising up over the bright lights into the dark night

toward the stars, and falling back into our real lives. On

.the long ride home I slept, and when I woke up I was in a

classroom that smelled of floor wax; Mrs. Mortenson was

asking me to explain the Smoot-Hawley Act.

In 1955 my uncle Earl saw an ad for the $2,000 Minnesota

State Fair Cake Baking Sweepstakes, sponsored by Peter Pan

Flour, and he entered my aunt Myrna. He didn't mention this

to her because he didn't want to upset her. She was a

nervous person, easily startled by a sudden hello, and he

was right, she made the greatest chocolate angelfood cake

on the face of the earth. (To call it devil's food would

give Satan encouragement so we didn't.) She also kept the

cleanest kitchen in the Christian world., I liked to walk

in, say hello, and when she recovered, she sat me down and

fed me chocolate angel-food cake. As I ate it, she hovered,

overhead and apologized for it.

"Oh," she sighed. "I don't know. I ought to throw this out

for the dog. It's not very good. I don't know where my mind

was-I lost track of how many eggs I put in, and I was all

out of the kind of brown sugar. I always use." I looked up

at her in a trance, confused by the pure transcendent

beauty of it, and she cut me a second, larger piece. "My

mother was the one who could make a chocolate cake," she

said, and then she allowed herself one taste of cake. And

frowned. "It's gummy," she said. "It's like Pudding.

"No," I said. "It's the best chocolate cake I ever tasted."

"Oh," she said, "your mother makes cake just as good as

that. "

Once my mother heard that and, smiled at me, hopefully, but

all my life I've tried to tell the truth, and I replied

honestly, "Sometimes she does, but not often."

Aunt Myrna was one of the few truly slender women in town.

She set an impossible standard for the others. "She's

small-boned," they said, but the truth is that she was so

critical of her cooking, which was head and shoulders above

everyone else's, that food didn't satisfy her. She was

supernatural that way, like an angel. Angels who visit

earth don't feed on com dogs and pizza. Heavenly creatures

have low metabolism, a little bite of something perfect is

more than enough. Like her cake. An angel visiting

Minnesota to do research on sweet corn could go for a week

on one thin sliver of Aunt Myrna's chocolate cake.

When, in early August, Uncle Earl got an invitation from

the Peter Pan Flour people, none of us was surprised she

was chosen, she was so good. She was mad at him when he

broke the news; she said, "I can't bake in front of a

hundred people. Stand up and make a cake and have them

stare at me like I was some kind of carnival freak. I won't

do it."

He considered that for a minute. "I was thinking of it," he

said, "as an opportunity to witness for the Lord. If you

win the bake-off, I'm certain that you get to make a

speech. You could give that Scripture recipe, 'Take four

cups of I Corinthians 13 and three cups of Ephiesians 4:32,

four quarts of Hebrews 11: 1. . . . ' "

"I don't know if I would be up to it. . . .",

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth

.me. Phillipians 4:13. "

She practiced for two weeks and baked about forty cakes,

most of them barely edible. She was experimenting with

strange ingredients, like maple syrup and peanut butter,

marshmallows, cherry bits. "You can't just stand up in

front of a- crowd and bake an ordinary chocolate cake," she

said, but we convinced her that hers was good enough. She

baked two of them that Friday, both champs. On the big

Saturday she packed her ingredients, cake pans, mixer, and

utensils in a cardboard box and covered it with a cloth,

and they drove to the Cities, stopping on account of car

trouble in Anoka -and transferring from the Dodge to the

bust The bake-off was -at three o'clock.

They arrived at two-thirty. She had assumed the bakeoff was

in the Home Activities building and then she discovered it

was here at the grandstand. Peter Pan Flour had gone all

out. The bake-off was part of. the afternoon grandstand

program, which also included high-wire acts, a big band

playing Glenn Miller tunes, and Siberian tigers jumping

through hoops of fire. She and twelve other women would

stand on stage and bake cakes, and while the cakes were in

the oven, Joey Chitwood's Thrill Show would perform

daredevil stunts on the dirt track, and Olson Younger the

newspaper columnist would, judge the contest and award the

prize. We helped Aunt Myrna to the stage. She was weak and

moist. "Good luck," we said.

I stand here and look 'up at the grandstand and can see how

nervous she must've been. I remember sitting up there in

the forty-ninth row, under the pavilion, looking down at my

tiny aunt in the green dress to the left of the saxophones

while Joey Chitwood's Thrill Show drivers did flips and

rolls, roaring around in white Fords. She stood

at a long table whipping mix in a silver bowl, my aunt

Myrna making a cake. She was mine, my relative, and I was

so proud.

And then the cakes came out of the oven., The State Fair

orchestra put down their newspapers and picked up. their

horns and played something from opera, and the radio-

announcer emcee said that now the moment had come, and

Olson Younger pranced around. He wore a green suit and

orange tie and he waved to us with both hands. It was his

moment of glory, and he sashayed from one entrant to the

next, kissing her, rolling his eyes, and tasting her cake.

When he tasted Myrna's cake, she shrank back from his

embrace. She said a few words to him and I knew she was

saying, "I don't know. I just can't seem to make em as rich

as I used to-this isn't very good at all. It's gummy." It

was the greatest chocolate cake in the world but he

believed her. So she came in tenth.

A woman in white pedal pushers won because, Younger said,

her cake was richer and moister. He had a hard time getting

the words out. You could see the grease stains, from her

cake, beads of grease glittered in the sun. Uncle Earl

said, "That's not cake, that's pudding he gave a prize to.

This is a pudding contest he's running. He wouldn't know

chocolate cake if it came up. and ate him." And he was

right. When Younger waltzed over to give Aunt Myrna her

prize, a bowl, you could see he didn't know which way was

north. It wasn't fair. She was the best. We waited for her

in front of the grandstand. We both felt bad.

But when we saw her coming, she was all smiles. She hugged

us both. She hardly seemed like herself. She threw her head

back' and said, "Oh, I'm glad it's over. But it was -fun. I

was so scared. And then I just forgot to be."

"But it wasn't fair," I said. She said, "Oh, he was drunk.

It was all whiskey cake to him. But it doesn't matter. It

was so much fun." I never saw her so lighthearted and

girlish.

That night an old man came forward at the Harbor Light

gospel meeting. He was confused and may have been looking

for the way out, but we latched onto him and prayed for

him. When he left, he seemed relieved. He was our first

convert-and we were thrilled. A soul hanging in the

balance, there in our tent. Heaven and hell his choice, and

he chose heaven, with our help, and then Dad lent him

busfare.

That night, I said to my mother, "This is the last time

wear a rayon shirt, I hate them." She said, "All right,

that's fine." I said, "You're not mad?" She said, "No, I

thought you liked them, that's all."

I went up in the ferris wheel for a last ride before being

thrown into seventh grade. It went up into the stars and

fell back to earth and rose again, and I had a magnificent

vision, or think I did, though it's hard to remember if it

was that year with the chocolate cake or the next one with

the pigs getting loose. The ferris wheel is the same year

after year. It's like all one ride to me: we go up and I

think of people I knew who are dead and I smell fall in the

air, manure, corn dogs, and we drop down into blazing light

and blaring music. Every summer I'm a little bigger, but

riding the ferris wheel, I feel the same as ever, I feel

eternal. The combination of cotton candy, com dogs, diesel

smoke, and sawdust, in a hot dark summer night, it never

changes, not an inch. The wheel carries us up high, high,

high, and stops, and we sit swaying, creaking, in the dark,

on the verge of death. You can see death from here. The

wind blows from the northwest, from the farm school in

Saint Anthony Park, a chilly wind with traces of pigs and

sheep in it. This is my vision: little kids holding on to

their daddy's hand, and he is me. He looks down on them

with love and buys them another corn dog. They are worried

they will lose him, they hang on to his leg with one hand,

eat with the other. This vision is unbearably wonderful.

Then the wheel brings me down to the ground. We get off and

other people get on. Thank you, dear God, for this good

life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

DAVID AND AGNES,

A ROMANCE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Cool weather and, down at the football field, twenty boys

are working out under the cool eye of Coach Magendanz.

After fifteen laps and three rounds of pushups, it doesn't

feel so cool, and they lie on their backs, imagining it's a

beach, and a woman says, "Did you really play football?"

and you say, "Oh, yeah. Sure." Coach says, "You,wanna

sleep, go home." She says, "Honey, who is that big ugly

loud man?" Coach says, "All right, up, ten laps, come on,

'ladies!" And you jump up; the woman is gone, so is the

beach blanket and the frozen Daiquiris. It's just hot sun

and a cinder track and a big man yelling at you.

Cool nights, getting down around fifty, and it has all the

farmers murmuring over their coffee cups at the Chatterbox.

Farmers are worriers, and even though it's been the best

year anyone can remember-record crops of oats and wheat,

rain has been perfect, a half-inch a weekstill, Rollie

says, "I don't know, she's been so cool at night now. It

makes you wonder if maybe it isn't going to be an early

frost this year. It sure isn't doing the soybeans any good.

Sure, the oats and wheat were real good, but the price went

down, you know. And we could use a little more rain, to

fill out the ears of corn. " Things are real good but they

could be better, because, you know, you never know. Right?

'Ja, that's right, I know what you're talking about."

That's what they were talking about, but other people were

talking about an item that appeared in the HeraldStar on

Thursday. It read: "THANK YOU. I would like to thank my

family and friends for their prayers, visits, flowers,

gifts, food, when I was recovering in the hospital. I will

never forget THANK and generosity. Mange takk.' Florence

Tollefson"

Virginia Ingqvist read it and called up Arlene Bunsen. "Has

Florence been in the hospital recently?" Arlene didn't

think so. Neither did Irene when Arlene called her, or

Marlys Diener or Marilyn Tollerud. Virginia called her

nephew Pastor Ingqvist. He ought to know, and he said he

didn't think so either, but then, Val Tollefson has been

upset with him, so maybe if Florence went to the hospital,

Val got another minister for her, who wouldn't sneak in

liberal doctrine at bedside when she was too weak to

resist. Virginia called Arlene back. She felt terrible to

dunk maybe Florence had been in the hospital and nobody

knew and she had felt so abandoned she put the ad in the

paper to shame them. Arlene said, "I don't think Florence

would do that." But it did seem to both of them that, about

a month ago, they hadn't seen her for a while. Florence is

so quiet, though, it. was hard to know. Virginia ran into

her Friday at Ralph's Grocery and said, "Florence, I've

been thinking about you. How are you feeling these days?"

It seemed like an odd question to Florence, one that a

number of people had asked her since Thursday. She looked

down in the freezer chest among the hams and wondered if

something was the matter with her. Did she look that bad?

She's a little heavier, but then she always gets a little

heavier during the summer, months, especially if she's put

on some weight over the winter.

It was Arlene who finally came right out and asked.

Florence said, gosh, no, she wasn't in the hospital. If she

had been, she'd have made sure people knew about it. It's

the Christian way: if you need help, you tell people, so

they won't feel bad for not giving it. That thank-you item

was ten years old, from Florence's old appendectomy. Harold

Starr put it in the paper because it was on his desk. He's

got stacks of stuff on his desk, some of it going back to

childhood, and once in a while you open the paper and a

piece of old news JUMPS out at you: here's the honor roll

from high school a quarter-century ago and I'm still not on

it, years later, and no smarter. And here's an obituary:

your poor old grandma has died, again; once should've

satisfied her,. but no, she wanted to reperish.

So Florence was fine. Arlene still wondered: wasn't she

gone for a few days about the middle of July, she and Val?

Seems like we didn't see them-well, I suppose they were

around somewhere.

In fact, Val and Florence had planned to go to Mount

Canaan, Washington, in June, to pick up a trunk of books

and papers and things that had belonged to Val's father,

David Tollefson, who died list April. Val had not attended

the funeral. He hadn't told anyone that his father died.

Most people thought his dad died long ago. Val meant to go

west in June, thinking there might be some important

Tollefson family history in the trunk, and then he got cold

feet and told them to ship the trunk to Minnesota. It

arrived around the middle of July. That was when Florence

and Val disappeared foe a few days. They were in the house

reading his dad's papers.

Val's parents were David and Mary Tollefson, married in

1927, and Valdemar was the oldest boy, born in 1928. His

father was a carpenter, and in 1946, when Val was eighteen,

his father went to work on a house down the road from them

that belonged to the Hedders. David added on a bedroom and

a living room with a stone fireplace. It took him two

months, even with Mr. Hedder's help, and about Labor Day,

when he finished the job, he came by the Hedders' house

late one night in his Ford coupe and picked up Mrs. Hedder

and they went off together and never came back.

They left seven children behind, two of hers and five of

his, and drove west, all night, and were married the next

morning in South Dakota, which made them guilty of bigamy,

but, perhaps they thought adultery was worse. They

continued west and wound up in Mount Canaan, and he got

work there as a carpenter, and ten years later

he tried to get back in touch with his family in Lake

Wobegon.

Nobody in town had so,much as mentioned his name for ten

years. The space he occupied was a blank. He was a popular

man; men thought he was a real good worker, women thought

he was polite and handsome, and children loved him, even

little kids who didn't know him-they'd ran right up and he

scooped them in-but when he left five children and a wife

in the middle of the night, there was no doubt which side

Lake Wobegon was on, and he was put out of mind and his

name disappeared. Ella Anderson was his younger sister. He

wrote to her and she wrote back. One Sunday, Ella, talking

to Mary after church, mentioned that David was well, and

Mary shot her a look of pure bitterness and walked away and

wouldn't speak to her again for more than a year.

Val was eighteen and he never forgot. Nobody's father ever

left, not in that town; a father was as permanent as the

color of your eyes. Val took everything his father had ever

given him, every gift, books, bicycle, even a new deer

rifle, and he threw them away. He took the rifle down to

the lake and swung it around by the barrel, and it flew

out over the water, and he heard the splash and crumpled to

the ground and lay there and cried.

The trunk that came in July was the first thing of his

father's he had seen in forty years. He hauled it down to

the basement and it sat by the fruit jars for a week before

he opened it. When he looked through the first layer' - Val

realized that of course there wouldn't be any Tollefson fam

ily history in it-his father had taken none with him.

David's history in the family stopped when he turned the

key in that Ford coupe. There were old brown Sunday

school magazines on top, books on Scripture, hymnals, a

certificate thanking David for years of faithful service to

the Zion Lutheran Church of Mount Canaan, and a Bible.

In the front of the Bible was his father's name and the

name of his second wife, the former Mrs. Hedder. Val

had never known the name of the woman his dad ran off

with. Her name was Agnes.

Agnes. Val sat down on the trunk, feeling a little weak to

have her name after all these years. Agnes. It felt

unfaithful to his mother to know that name. He was

surprised ,how curious he was to know who that woman was.

He knew the story about his dad working on the house. He

imagined them glancing at each other as the walls started

to go up. Perhaps she helped him. His dad hammering,

planing, sawing lumber-fresh lumber smells-and her coming

out to ask how everything was going. Perhaps she made him a

good lunch every day and they talked, and what did they

talk about? What sort of man would do this: as you work on

a man's house and build him a new bedroom, to be planning

to run away with his wife?

In an old Folger's coffee can, Val found letters, dozens of

them, addressed: "Dear Mrs. Hedder," then "Dear Agnes,"'and

some "My darling Agnes," all written in pencil, in a -

handwriting he recognized right away, even forty years

later. Val thought, "I don't want to read these," but he

did. The letters had been folded into small squares. Maybe

he had hidden them for her to find.

"Dear Agnes," he read, "Something has taken hold of my

heart, a wonderful feeling, and I cannot turn away from it

or I would die inside and be no use to anyone. This feeling

leads me to you, my dear lady, and though. I know that what

you say is wise and true, still. I know what is in my heart

and I want you to come away with me."

Val cringed. Always the story had been that the Hedder

woman lured his father away. But it wasn't true.

He spent hours that day and the next in the basement, by

the washtubs, sorting through the layers, laying stuff out

on the long table where Florence sorts clothes. It was

frightening, like opening a grave sealed shut for years. He

reached in and,picked up a maple box he knew his father had

made, plain wood but so well fitted, and inside, in twelve

compartments, were twelve fishing lures his father had

tied, more beautiful than jewelry. Pictures of his father

and the woman ... Agnes. Val couldnt look at them more than

two seconds, they were so ordinary, like any other married

couple standing by a car, sitting on steps. And a poem

David had written her-his father had never written him a

poem, but here was a poem. Val read it and felt weak. He

had to go sit upstair's and turn on the radio. It was like

a cave-in down deep in the earth under your house, an event

so far in the past he never thought about it, now moving,

and his own life shifted and sagged, and he felt afraid.

He went for a walk, and Florence descended the stairs and

looked over the mess. It was clear that when David

Tollefson arrived in Mount Canaan, Washington,' with Agnes

in 1946, he got down to business and set about to become a

good citizen, and clearly the people in Mount Canaan

thought he was and they loved and admired him

and said so. But what Florence looked at over and over were

the love letters. She held them in her hand-written in

pencil on cheap tablet, faded in places to where you

couldn't read them:

"My darling Agnes," she read, "This is harder than anything

I ever did, but I know it is for our happiness and that is

worth more to me than their opinion. When I am with you, I,

feel quick and happy, and when you aren't near it is sad

and empty, I walk out of the house and up the road so I can

say your name out loud."

And she found the poem.

A love so true sings out to me I know that if I turned away

I'd hear the song until my dying day, Hear the words-forget

the melody. It's a song you sang while you were working,

dear, Patching shirts, and I was outdoors Bracing the

kitchen wall with two-by-fours And heard the song and

stopped, it was so dear. It said 'we should open our hearts

and be free. Love has power over doubt and fear. I put down

the hammer, leaving the wall to be Built by someone else,

and so-here I am waiting for you, knowing I belong To one

who knows it too, the old sweet song.

Val came back and they sat to gather on the basement

steps. He said, "I decided to bum it. Everything. I've

'looked at it, that's all that matters. Nobody else has to

see

it.,'

"Well, if that's what you've decided. It's yours."

"That's what I want to do. He had his life and I don't need

to judge him, God will judge him, but I don't need to keep

his memory alive either. When he left here, he gave up his

right to that sort of thing."

"You're going to burn the poem too? It was a nice poem."

"Everything."

"All right," she said, and she helped him load it all back

into the trunk and carry it up to the car. They drove up to

the dump, to the back corner behind the birch trees. He

tipped the trunk over and put a match to the pile and it

went up like straw. Everything was gone in a minute. Except

the trunk-he saved that. And the lures-he could

use those. The rest he burned. Except for the poemFlorence

had snuck that out and put it in her purse. She couldn't

see destroying it "A love so true sings out to me"-seemed

to tremble when she looked at it. She felt better knowing

Val had saved something too, though she knew he'd be

furious if he saw the poem in her purse, and that made her

feel guilty. All these years she's had so. few secrets, and

no guilty ones. It made her think maybe this was the

beginning of the end of her marriage too. It was

like a precious stone you find alongside the road; it's

somebody else's, you can't keep it for yourself. So she

took it in to Viola at the historical society the next

morning. "Viola," she said, "here's a poem somebody around

here wrote; it looks old, but it's nobody I know, but maybe

it's worth saving." Viola put it in an envelope and wrote

"Poem, Unknown" in black marker. Later she took it down the

basement. Back in the corner, behind a commode, under boxes

of license plates and trophies and high-school yearbooks,

was an oak file cabinet (itself historic, thought to be the

first file cabinet in L.W.), a cabinet now full of letters,

in English and German and Norwegian, about weather and

crops and worries about money -and children, everyday

business, and she stuck it in. The poem he wrote with a

trembling heart lies between the pages of an old account

book of the Co-op Elevator Association, from 1902, showing

that the oat and wheat crops were good that year also,

thanks to good rainfall, but that, of course, they could

have used a little more.

THE KILLER

It has been a quiet week, in Lake Wobegon.

It was cloudy and rainy and pretty chilly, and in a town

that's plain to begin with, when it gets wet and cold you

lose most of the charm you didn't have in the first place.

Some storytellers would take one look at a little town on a

cold wet fall day and tell you about a family on a vacation

trip through the Midwest who wonder why this town seems so

deserted and get out of their car and there- on Maple

Street, coming at them with a pitchfork, is a gigantic man

with no eyes and chunks of his face failing off and big

clods of -brown dirt stuck to his bib overalls, but I am a

storyteller who, for better or worse, is bound by facts, so

I simply observe that nobody was out walking because it was

raining, a steady discouraging rain. But there were strange

cars driving through.

A culvert had washed out and the roadbed collapsed on

Highway 9, just south of the Pet the Tame Deer Park, and

the twelve-mile detour led straight past the Co-op grain

elevator through town. There was heavy traffic, and

Skoglund's. Five & Dime held a Detour Sale, 10 percent. off

on all items, and Clifford at the Mercantile put out a

sign, "Fall Eyewear-Slashed in Half- Big Savings"but nobody

stopped. Ten percent is nothing nowadays. And when you put

the word ','Eye" close to the words "Slashed in Half,"

people don't slow down and look for a parking spot, not in

a cold wet little town; they think of the guy with the

pitchfork. (Did that sign say "Big Savings" or "Big

Savage"?)

For one morning and two long afternoons, Clarence stood in

the Bunsen Motors showroom watching the traffic cruise by,

imagining a car might stop and a guy get out and say, "I'm

looking for a 1986 Pinto, two-door, straightstick, no

factory air, kind -of a dark puke color-like this one right

here!" But the cars streamed past, faces peering out the

windows, and you could see what they were saying:

"Where is this?"

"How should I know) You still want to stop for coffee?"

"Not here. What is this anyway? I'm sure glad I don't live

here. I don't know how people could stay in a place

like this. What a dump. How far to Minneapolis?"

"How should I know?"

Coming home from a meeting in Albany, Mayor Clint Bunsen

noticed that the "Welcome to Lake Wobegon, Gateway to

Central Minnesota" sign had fallen down sideways, and he

sent Bud out to fix it, but when Bud unbolted the one

surviving bolt, the sign fell down and broke into three

pieces, which Bud hauled back and piled behind the fire

barn. He said, "You could nail em back together, I suppose,

but I donno. . . . " His voice trailed off into a sniff

that said, What's the point of it? Our town is not shown on

maps, so why not be anonymous too? Nobody thinks that we

exist anyway. (We've never seen proof of their existence,

or much need for it either. But what the hell.)

So the detour passed without benefit and then the trees

started to turn color, especially some maples who got

overexcited and went bright' yellow. It seemed early for

fall, considering all the work we have to do before winter.

We're not ready for it. Mr. Berge said to Wally in the

Sidetrack, "Shees, it's bin cool out, don't you think. I

thought dey said it was supposta warm up a little, fer

crine out loud." Wally said, "It's almost October, Berge.

It's going to be getting a lot cooler from here on out

right through the end of the year and into next. It's not

going to warm up any time soon."

It's easy for Wally to be a realist. He spends his days in

the Sidetrack like a bear in a cave-a cave with green and

orange and blue neon beer signs and a bevy of older bears

leaning against the bar and belching beer breath. Wally

stands in the dark, listening to the bears grumbling and

mumbling, and he doesn't know much about how the lovely

world outside can raise our hopes. How Tuesday morning,

when the sun briefly shone, could excite a person, and how,

walking along Elm Street on a morning simultaneously damp

and cool and bright and, smelling of smoke and sunshine, a

person could feel that this was permanent-that God in His

grace had removed our town beyond the force of time, beyond

change, and placed it on a hill by a blue lake on an

eternal perfect day in midSeptember where those whom we

love will always be as they are now. And then Tuesday

afternoon it was dim and rainy and cold. We felt a cold

chill. We wondered if there is a God or is the universe

only one seed in one apple on a tree in another world where

a million years of ours is only one of their moments and,

what we imagine as our civilization is only a tiny charge

of static electricity and the great truth that our science

is slowly grasping is the fact that the apple in which we

are part of one seed is falling has been falling for a

million years and in one onemillionth of a second it will

hit hard frozen ground in that other world and split open

and lie on the ground and a bear will come along and gobble

it up, everything, the Judeo-Christian heritage, science,

democracy, the Renaissance, art, music, sex, sweet corn-all

will disappear into I the black hole of a bear-that was how

Wednesday felt.

A big mood swing, from belief in eternal happiness with a

loving God to atheistic nihilism and despair in twentyfour

hours in a town of less than one thousand population. Fall

is a powerful season.

In fall when I was young, I thought, This year I will do

better in physics. Study hard, listen, take good notes, and

when he calls on me, I'll give the answer in a loud clear

voice, and not just a good answer but a brilliant one,

possibly an answer that illuminates some dark comer of

physics. I'll be not only a good student, I'll be a genius.

"SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD RURAL MINNESOTA BOY POSES NEW

THEOREM OF LIGHT THAT PROVES DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION

BY FAITH-GRACE OF GOD EXPRESSED AS MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY

BY BOY FORMERLY CONSIDERED SLOW LEARNER."

Then October came and I didn't understand anything. I was

scared that he'd call on me and fear made the air around me

hot and dry, creating teacher suction, and he drew close to

me and said, "Go up and see what you can do," so I stood at

the blackboard, looked at the problem, and thought, "God,

take this chalk and write the answer. Or make the

blackboard fall off and kill me. Please," I wrote a few

faint numbers and the smart kids laughed. He said, from the

back of the room: "We talked about this last week, Mr.

Keillor! I assumed you were paying attention! Your eyes

were open, as I recall! Your head was up off the desk!"

One fall years ago, I was elected president of Young

People's Bible Study, which in the Sanctified Brethren

there are only five young people total, including Mel, who

is thirty-four, but it's an honor and I promised myself

that this year I will organize our Bible study as never

before and prepare the lesson outline early and meditate

prayerfully on it, and then one Saturday night I got a

last-minute date with this girl, and so it wasn't until

Sunday morning I examined Paul's first epistle to Timothy

and had to meditate, fast, and when Mel stood up to pray to

open Bible study, I thought, "Go long, Mel," and looked

down at Paul's exhortation to Tim to avoid false teaching

and was thinking how I could develop this thought in such a

way as to take up twenty minutes ("Let's start by defining

our terms. What do we mean by 'teaching'? by 'false'? What

exactly is an 'epistle'?") when suddenly Mel was praying a

strange prayer-"And now, Lord, it's on my heart this

morning to pray for, uh, one in our midst who has, uh,

taken up with impure companions and, uh, neglected Thy

precious truths for the pursuit of, uh, pleasures of the

flesh Lord, we would ask . . ." In a group of five people,

it didn't take much imagination to know who he meant; it

wasn't himself, and Larry and Joyce were married, so that

left me and my cousin Roy, and Roy didn't have a driver's

license. My face burned. Here I was about to lead Bible

study and Mel was cutting me down in prayer. Maybe I had

pursued pleasures of the flesh, but I had failed, and

didn't that count for anything? We had sat in the car up at

the gravel pit drinking Cokes with vodka poured in them,

and I had contemplated two or three times the buttons on

her, lovely blouse, and then she said, in a strange choked

voice, "Oh no, oh no," and grabbed for the door and the

handle came off, and I said, "What's wrong, Ann?" and she

said, "Oh no," and turned toward me,. It was her turning

toward me that, one moment later, ruined the evening and my

tan corduroy jacket, and nowhere I was being prayed for as

a backslider and what did I have to show for it? "Lord,

touch his heart . give, him strength to witness for You."

It was October 1977 when my classmate Mamie Montaine (nie

Barb Diener) returned to Lake Wobegon, the first one in

town history to become a movie star, In her honor, they

combined Homecoming and Halloween to make one big

celebration, with an afternoon parade and school kids in

costumes, and the band stood and played "Anchors Aweigh"

under a "Welcome Home, Mamie! (Barb)" banner as she swept

past the crowd in a black dress and red shoes. "Oh hi," she

said, "nice to see you again! How are you)"-not calling

people by their names and looking them straight in the

forehead ... but it was nice. And at the Bijou, Bernie had

fixed the magic lantern that made clouds move across the

ceiling and put new bulbs in the stars, more than two

hundred. Her movie, The Hand Under the Bed, was shown there

to a full house.

Barb Diener had left town for good in 1968 after coming and

going for a few years, trying one thing and another. She

headed for California and landed in Sonoma and joined a

commune that made belts out of feathers and changed her

name to Starflower Moonbright and hooked up with a young

man named World Anderson. They went to Los Angeles to see

the son of a famous singing star, who had promised a

recording contract for World's songs, which were mostly

humming-he called them Breathing Songs, they were thirty or

forty minutes long, and he could, perform more of them in

an evening than most audiences would choose if it were left

up to them. She left World to go with a theater troupe

called "U," six actors who didn't so much put on plays as

stand in front of the audience and confront them with their

hypocrisies, and then she got into a jeans ad, and she

became Mamie Montaine, and one night in 1974 her, family

saw her in a TV commercial for Papa's Popcorn, though you

had to watch close to see hershe was a kernel and she

popped pretty fast.

She wasn't exactly the star of The Hand Under the Bed

either. She played the clerk at the lonely motel, who, when

the couple arrived on the dark and stormy night and said,

"Please. We saw the No Vacancy sign, but wouldn't you have

something-we'll take anything," Mamie said, "Well, gee,

there's cabin eight, but we haven't used that-not for

thirteen years since the night-bey, isn't this the

anniversary of that night when-" and they said, "Well take

it!" That was Barb's one and only scene. Bernie ran the

film back a couple times and people clapped and Barb stood

up and made a speech about the movie business and how what

looked simple on the screen was actually terribly

complicated and how absolutely nice the director Phil

Fontinella was, and he was going to use her in his next

picture, a bigger part, and then she said she had to leave-

Thanks so much, goodbye, you're beautiful-and we all stood

up and clapped. And then we weren't sure what to do.

The show was over, really, with Barb gone, but there Was an

hour left of the movie with the couple And their four

children and cabin 8, so Bernie started it up and we

watched for a while. People died right and left, hacked to

death by something lurking just off camera, it was hard to

keep track of. The clouds were lovely, though, and the

little stars twinkling in the ceiling, just like when I

snuck down there with girls and sat in the dark with their

moist hand in mine.

Later in the movie you finally see the killer, a guy in bib

overalls, pitchfork, empty eyes, face falling off in big

chunks, but of course with Barb gone it wasn't that good,

so most of the audience left early, except for some young

people in the back, who were too scared to move and who

were trying to be a comfort to each other.

ELOISE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was, warm and bright and the trees were in full color'

magnificent, explosive, like permanent fireworks-reds and

yellows, oranges, some so brilliant that Crayola never put

them in crayons for fear the children would color outside

the lines. Maple trees the color of illicit romance,

blazing red sumac and oaks and aspen, such color that you

weren't sure you were in this world but perhaps had stepped

through a seam in the tapestry and walked into a magical

wood. But the only trail through there is a cowpath, so you

have to watch where you step.

Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach went driving Tuesday to look

at the beautiful trees, which neither of them enjoys, but

they go because they've done it for years. Myrtle gets

carsick more easily now since she bumped her head on the

cupboard. The bright colors only made her dizziness more

vivid. Florian was grumpy because he hates to see the

odometer roll on his '66-Chev (like new, only forty-seven

thousand miles on her). Low mileage is a form of youth to

Florian, it means plenty of mileage to come. He drove

slowly toward Millet and back and Myrtle hung on to the

strap. She said, of the fall colors, "Well, if this don't

prove to them there's an Almighty, I don't know what in

hell will." They drove 6.2 miles at twenty-five mph and

returned to home base, where he wiped the engine clean with

a rag soaked in gasoline. The smell of gas makes Florian

perk -up.

The leaves reached their peak about Thursday and then, in

late afternoon, seemed to dim. Friday morning we woke up

and could see that we had passed our apex and were heading

for the nadir.

It was still warm, though so when Ranger Steve came to the

third grade -with a boxful of snakes, they were pretty

lively. Snakes are our friends, not slimy, not evil, but

really very beautiful and nothing to be afraid of, he said.

"I'm sure Mrs. Hughes isn't afraid of snakes-look," he

said, and draped a black one on her shoulder as her body

shrank and then stiffened. "See? Snakes aren't slimy at

all. Actually their skin is rather dry-right, Mrs. Hughes?

This is called a bridle snake; it bites, but only if you

bother it."

Ranger Steve smiled. "It's all right, there's nothing to

worry about," he said to Mrs. Hughes, whose eyes were shut,

and took the snake in his big manly hand, and set it on his

broad shoulder. Instantly the harmless reptile dove into

the V of his collar and disappeared. Ranger Steve said, "Oh

God," and grabbed at it. He was wearing a green jump suit,

with no belt for a roadblock, and he turned his back to the

children and bent over and tried to grab the bridle snake

in the jump suit. It was warm under there and the snake was

excited, and the children heard a cry, and Steve staggered

and the snake came out his left pants leg. They all helped

catch it. Steve talked more about snakes but his smile had

slipped to the side and gone out of focus. The passage of

the bridle snake through the jump suit had worn him out,

the exertion of being cool and hysterical at the same time.

Afterward, some of the boys did an imitation of Ranger

Steve with the snake in his pants-, and Mrs. Hughes said,

"I don't consider that one bit funny," even though it was

hilarious.

That's what wears out a grown-up person: the

contradictions.

After school, a girl from the third grade jumped on her old

blue coaster bike and tore off toward the woods to find

snakes and put them on her brothers. Then, coasting down

Branch Street, she saw her little brother standing looking

at their dog Fatso lying by the tree, covering him up with

leaves. She swerved and headed straight for the innocent

little child and yelled, "I can't stop! No brakes! I can't

stop," but he stood there like a stone so she stopped. She

said, "You coulda been killed. Why'ntcha move? That was a

close call, y'know." Fatso stood up and tottered around

back of the tree but the little boy was too scared to move.

"You're dumb, you know that? You're as dumb as a dog."

Fatso blinked. The little boy's eyes filled with tears to

hear his sweet sister talk to him like that, two pools of

paleblue tears in his blue eyes, and then he made a

decision that certainly changed his life: he took one step

toward her with his left foot and with his right he kicked

the big jerk in her ankle as hard as he could. He held back

nothing. A swift hard kick.

More happened then: she chased him, caught him, threw him

down, pounded him. But it wasn't important. He had done

something. (The wrong thing-it's wrong to kick your sister-

but sometimes the wrong thing is exactly the right thing to

do.) His mother ran out and hauled her off him. "What is

going on out here?"

"He kicked me-here," said Amy, and to show how much it

hurt, her big brown eyes filled up with tears.

"What did you do to him?"

"Nothing. I was riding my bike."

"Paul! How could you do a thing like that?"

He looked up at his mother. He wasn't sure.

"Just for that, you come inside."

That was fine with him. He preferred inside.

These are Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach's grandchildren and

their daughter Eloise, who lives around the corner from

Carl. She's got three kids, these two plus a tall lonesome

boy named Charlie, one in a long tradition of tall skinny

lonesome boys who grew up there. Eloise's name is Best. She

married Chuck Best out of high school, a handsome friendly

boy, and three years ago he decided he'd been married long

enough to her. He came home to pack his bags.

Eloise cried and then, when he went to the garage for his

golf clubs, she locked him out of the house without so much

as a warm jacket. She told him she was going to give all

his clothes to the church clothing drive. When he asked for

his car keys she laughed at him through the letter slot.

"You want to start over, then start over," she said. "Don't

be such a drip. This isn't a halfway house, mister, this is

my home. You want to go away, go ahead, but don't ask me to

give you a ride-"

This took place on Greener Avenue South in Minneapolis one

bright summer day in 198 3. The neighbors were out working

on their yards, and when they noticed the Bests'

conversation-the shouts from the slot, the man in the blue

blazer and tan slacks saying, "Please. Ellie. Try to

control yourself "-the neighbors shut off their mowers and

got busy doing quiet things. They studied trees for signs

of drought, snipped at a hedge with silent little snips,

quietly pulled crabgrass.

"Ellie, please. Let's discuss this. Let me in and let's

talk.

"I am talking!" she said and called him a bunch of words

that moms don't use. "All right, " he said. "That's it.

That's all I'm going to take from you." And he walked

gravely and respectably down the walk. He stood at the end

of his walk, glancing left and right, then turned left as

she opened the door and yelled, "You      are a       lousy

lover!" Her voice echoed off the frame and brick

houses"lousylousylousylousyloverlousyloverloverlover"-far

up the pleasant street where they'd had a sweet comfortable

ten years, and he heard the lawn sprinklers whisper, "It's

true, it's true, it's true, it's true."

More happened then. He came after her with excellent legal

talent and pounded her pretty hard in court, and she wound

up in a two-bedroom tumble-down stucco house in Lake

Wobegon, where, well-to be a single woman with three

children, you might as well paint the house, chartreuse and

convert to Islam and make it complete.

Her mother, Myrtle, says, "Eloise, you're the first one in

this family ever to collect a welfare check, it's a

disgrace. People talk about us. Do you know that? They

never useta, and now you can hear em all over town."

She said, "Mother, don't get too ashamed now, because I've

got a long way to go."

"I don't see why you can't get yourself a job."

I'm trying."

"Try harder."

So last Thursday her little ad appeared in the HeraldStar.

Harold himself called her Sunday and asked, "Is this

legit?" So there it was: "Dancing Taught in My Home or

Yours. Individual lessons. Polka, Waltz, Foxtrot, or Lindy.

Eloise Krebsbach Best."

Ella Anderson called her Thursday night. "Ellie," she said,

"I didn't know you could dance."

"Well, Ella, you never asked me."

"I wonder if this wouldn't help my bad hip."

Ella is old and has a hard life taking care of herself and

Henry. People don't visit them, because they're embarrassed

to see him, a man once important in our town, now old and

sleepy. Suddenly he'll sit up and talk about your horse and

somebody named David and where did the girls go) The girls

went away and became middle-aged a long time ago. Ella is

lonely. Her daughter Charlotte called one night and

suddenly said, -Well? Mother? Do you want to or not?" And

Ella couldn't remember the question. Charlotte said, 'Just

say yes or no," and Ella said, "Yes." And now she wonders

what she said yes to.

"What's it like to be old?" Ellie asked her.

"Old age is like birds in the winter. It's hard to keep

going. But you still have your good days, and one good day

makes you want to keep on. I used to get so upset if any

little thing went wrong. Now everything goes wrong and it

doesn't bother me, and some little thing is so wonerful -if

my son writes me a letter, that's wonderful. And if he

puts- in a picture of my grandchildren, -then that's just

about everything."

Ellie rolled up the old rag rug and pushed back the coffee

table and chairs. "What'll it be, a waltz?" she said. A

waltz it was, the "Blue Skirt Waltz," and if you walked by

on Thursday night and saw in the window two women dancing,

one with white hair and the other with red, smiling,

turning, would you have thought it was strange? Would you

have stopped? Or would you have walked on, taking the

sweetness of it to heart on a fall night turning cold, the

bright colors, magnificence and glory all around us

everywhere in the air.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

Grace Tollefson graduated from Lake Wobegon High School in

1938, a thespian and debater and member of the Order of the

Shining Star, a quiet and sensible girl who surprised

everyone and ran, off with a man by the name of Alex

Campbell. He was a handsome green-eyed fellow, the driver

of a 1936 Singer coupe, who performed magic tricks with

quarters and napkins, told jokes and tossed kids in the

air, and seemed to have no prospect in this world. He kept

a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of his car and he laughed

too loud. The Tollefsons were united in opposition to him

but Grace married him and moved to Saint Paul. Years went

along, and people heard bits of news that she wasn't

entirely happy with him. A child came along, and another.

And a third. He left her in 1948. As some people told it,

he came home drunk and she locked him out, but it didn't

matter. There was nothing for her to do but get a ride back

home and live off the charity of her family and the

Lutheran church.

Her younger brother Lawrence bought her an old green mobile

home and moved it into the yard behind his house, next to

the garden. Lutheran ladies came and cleaned it up and

donated old fumiture, a three-legged table, a very nice

green sofa with large holes chewed out of it, some rickety

chairs, a reproduction of Larsson's "The Last Supper."

People were nice to them, as you'd be nice to any

body who was very peculiar. Divorce in that town was as odd

as a purebred dog. Grace could see what people thought as

she walked down the street: We were right, we told you, now

look at you.

The oldest boy was Earl, her daughter was Marlys, and -the

little boy was Walter, who was only three and couldn't

remember his father. When he asked his mother, she only

said that Alex was a handsome man descended from Scottish

nobility, that he had a weakness but it wasn't anybody's

fault. When he asked his grandma Tollefson, she said, "Huh!

Those Campbells were all alike. There wasn't one of them

worth mentioning. But it's not your fault, Walter. You

didn't ask to be born into this world, now did you?" He

didn't ask again.

It was hard living in a mobile home, living off

contributions. At night, when the four of them cleared the

supper table and did dishes, when she was feeling

especially sad, Grace said, "Well, what are we going to do

when our ship comes in?" That was the cue to quit feeling

sorry and to talk about what they'd do when they got rich.

They'd have a big white brick mansion in Saint Paul with a

stone wall around it, a crystal chandelier in the dining

room, fireplaces in the bedrooms. Oriental rugs. A swimming

pool. They'd have six servants, six ladies from the

Lutheran church, to fix their meals and clean up. Earl had

simple tastes and wanted a pony to ride bareback around the

streets of Saint Paul and a .22 rifle. Marlys wanted a

large dollhouse for her dolls, Mr' and Mrs. Parker

Whitehurst and. their children, Jacqueline, Lorraine, and

Kathy.

Walter went along with what they wanted, but one thing he

didn't say was that he 'hoped when the ship came in

his father would be standing in the bow in a white uniform

and a blue cap with gold braid.

One day they got a letter from a man in Philadelphia doing

research on Scottish nobility, who asked who their

ancestors were so he could look it up. He needed the

information for a book he was writing, He enclosed a check

for $15. So Grace wrote down what she knew about Alex's

ancestors and sent it off and didn't think more of it until

another letter arrived from Philadelphia five days later.

She opened the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Grace

Campbell, but the letter was addressed "Your Royal

Highness. " He wrote: "Today is the happiest day of my life

as I greet my one true Sovereign Queen." And went on to say

that their branch of the Campbell family was first in the

line of succession of the House of Stewart, the Royal

Family of Scotland. She passed it to the children and they

each read it carefully, as if it were spun gold and if they

dropped it, it would shatter into little pieces. She was

quiet a long time. Then she said, "It can't be true but

we'll find out. Meanwhile, you're not to tell a soul. You

don't tell anybody.' They promised.

A few days later, the Philadelphia man, whose name was D.

R. Mackay, sent them a chart that unfolded bigger than

their kitchen table. In the upper-left-hand corner were

King James the Seventh, King James the Old Pretender,

Prince Charles. There were several lines of counts and

marquises, and in the lower-right-hand comer, skirting the

clans of Keith and Ferguson, the lines led right straight

to them: Earl, Marlys, and Walter. The Royal Family of

Scotland living in Lake Wobegon in a green mobile home,

furniture donated by the Lutheran church.

They were astounded beyond words. Disbelieving at first,

afraid to put their weight on something so beautiful,

afraid it was too good to be true, and then it took hold

this was grace, pure grace that God offered them. Not their

will but His. Grace. Here they were in their same

dismal place but everything had changed. They were

different people. Their surroundings were the same, but

they were different-and there were times in the months that

followed when Walter wished he could tell somebody that he

was a prince of Scotland, particularly his cousin Donna who

lived in the house the Campbells lived behind and who made

complex rules about who could play in her yard and for how

long and what they had to do for her, as if she was

royalty. Walter longed to tell her. One day D. R. Mackay

wrote to Walter, "Your Royal Highness: Discovering you and

your family has been the happiest accomplishment of my

life. And if God in His infinite wisdom should deny me the

opportunity to meet you face to face on this Earth, I

should still count myself the luckiest of men for this

chance to play a part, however small, in restoring Scotland

to her former greatness. Please know that you are in my

thoughts and prayers every day. And that I will work with

every ounce of my being to restore you from your sad exile

to the land, the goods, and the reverence to which you, by

the grace of God, are entitled. "

A boy doesn't get a letter like that very often. He kept it

under his mattress, he knew it by heart. He lay in bed and

thought, over and over, "the land, the goods, and the

reverence to which you are entitled."

The Tollefsons and other people in town, of course, had

gotten wind of those letters from Philadelphia and were

curious; they tried to pry the secret out of the children,

but they wouldn't tell, and then some. people began to

resent them for keeping a secret. Lawrence said to Grace,

"You know, Grace, sometimes you act like you think you're

too good to walk on the same ground with us." She told him

that she figured -she was at, least as good as anyone else.

He said that if she was, maybe she'd like to try supporting

herself. "Gladly," she replied.

They packed up to move back to Saint Paul. Lawrence packed

their old donated furniture in a trailer but at the last

minute Grace said, "Take it off. I don't want to take that

with me. That's not mine. That belongs to the church."

"You might need it. Don't be so Proud," he said. She looked

at him. She said, "Lawrence, what I need in this life is

understanding and love. And I need style. And I won't be

carrying it with me from Lake Wobegon. I'm going to have to

find it where I'm going." The children sat in the back seat

and looked at the neighbors who'd come to look at them as

they left. Marlys held the Whitehursts on her lap.

"Someday, when we're the Royal Family, they'll have a

parade here in our honor. And I'm not going to come," she

announced.

Life in Saint Paul has not been easy for them. Earl moved

away a few years ago, he was tired of the whole business.

He went to school to study bookkeeping and got a job in a

salvage yard, as a bookkeeper. Grace had him sign a paper

relinquishing all rights to succession. Marlys is twenty-

four and still lives with her mother in their apartment

near the State Fair grounds and so does Walter, a student,

at Hamline University. Over the years they've read all the

histories of Scotland, learned its geography, and studied

over and over the sad story of the House of Stewart, from

which they're descended. That the English in 1688 overthrew

their true and rightful king, James the Seventh, and

brought in the Dutchman William of Orange, and when William

and Mary bred no successor, the Stewarts were waiting in

the wings, glad to forgive the English and come and be King

and Queen again. But no, England sent to Germany for a

motley bunch of princes from the. House of Hanover. Brought

them in and made them royalty. In 1746, Bonnie Prince

Charlie came over from France and rallied his brave

Highlanders and marched South into England and won battles

against the English, then, for some reason, turned around

and went back. And in April, at the Battle of Culloden, his

army and his hopes were torn to shreds, and the Stewarts

went over the hill into history.

Whenever Grace saw an article about Queen Elizabeth in the

paper, she bit, her lip and shook her head. Usurpers was

what they were all of them. Germans, sitting on the Royal

Throne of Scotland. It wasn't right. It wasn't even decent.

Year after year, month after month, letters arrived from D.

R. Mackay: he was forming a committee for the restoration

of the House of Stewart to the throne, he was enlisting the

help of other governments-secret meetings had been held and

overtures made and some very encouraging signals had been

received, extremely encouraging-he didn't want the Family

to be troubled with details but he had been encouraged by

the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and even the

Americans had indicated an interest-so it could happen any

time, they should prepare themselves. Whenever their faith

was low, Grace read the letters out loud and she turned to

Walter and said, "Walter, tell us what it'll be like when

we get the call."

He said: "It'll come at eight-thirty in the evening on a

summer day. August. We'll have eaten sweet corn and

tomatoes and hot dogs for supper, and the phone rings and

they tell us to be on a plane the next morning. We'll be

too excited to sleep. We'll go to the airport, exhausted,

and get on the plane. Mother is wearing her good navyblue

dress, Marlys her silk bridesmaid dress from Nancy's

wedding, I have my dark wool suit on. We land in Glasgow.

There are huge crowds of people. Six men in blue pinstripe

suits get on the plane, they're from Scotland Yard, they

escort us to a helicopter. We fly to Holyrood Castle on

High Street in Edinburgh. We're taken in to freshen up and

have a light lunch and we can hear a low roar outside, and

after a while we'll go up to the balconythere is the

balustrade, with thirteen microphones. And down there are a

hundred thousand Scots. And we walk forward and speak."

"You do it, Walter. I'm too nervous," said Grace.

He often thought what he would say. Perhaps something

humorous like "How much is all this costing?" Or "Nice to

see ya." But he'd aim for something royal and dignified. It

was wonderful to imagine being restored and going to

Scotland and being the Royal Family, though more modest

than the Germans down in Buckingham Palace-they wouldn't

need a private yacht or jet planes or new dresses to go off

to fancy balls in-the Scottish Family didn't need all that.

They'd be a good royal family, thrifty and sensible and

plain. Having known poverty, they would eschew excess;

whatever was satisfactory would be good enough.

Two weeks ago they received a telegram from their father,

saying, "Wire money. Five hundred dollars. Need

desperately. Signed, Alex." Grace didn't know what to do.

Alex! What if he-Walter said, "Don't do anything. If he can

wire us, he can call us." Three days later he called.

Walter had never heard his father's voice. It said, Walter!

This is wonderful. So good to talk to you. I think about

you every day. How old are you?"

"Twenty-four, Dad."

"My God. It doesn't seem that long ago."

"Well, I get a year older every year., just like everybody

else."

"Walter," he said, "I need money. I don't need five hundred

dollars. I need more like five thousand. I've been indicted

for mail fraud. I didn't do anything wrong. Nothing to hurt

people. But they want to put me away for ten, fifteen

years, and Walter, I'm too old to go to prison. I gotta

leave the country."

"What is it you did?"

His father said, "I was in the genealogy business. I made

up family trees for people. But I can explain-let me tell

you, son-" Walter's face went flat and numb. He said, "You

didn't! God. You did this to us. Why did you do this?"

"I meant to tell you before this. I really meant to tell

you. It was meant as a gift, I wanted you to be proud. I

knew how those Tollefsons would pity you-I wanted you to be

so proud of the Campbell family that I wouldn't have to

come crawling back. I hoped you would come and find me."

Walter said he'd send him as much money as he could, and

put down the phone. Grace said, "You didn't tell him then

about our secret." Walter said, no, there'd be time to tell

him later.

She said, "Oh, Walter, what would I do without you? You're

so strong, You're so good to me. You're a prince, YOU know.

They can put a crown on a dog and call it a prince, but you

are a prince through and through. They may not know it now,

but they'll know it soon. Next year we'll be in Edinburgh

with the bands playing and the flags flying and the crowds

cheering."

HOMECOMING

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It was Homecoming on Friday, the Leonards vs. Bowlus Friday

night at Bowlus-an away game, on account of Leonard Field

has developed a sinkhole about ten feet in diameter that

suddenly sank two feet between the ten- and twenty-yard

lines, not that the team used that part of the field very

often. Coach Magendanz and Mr. Halvorson decided to fill it

with clay, and found that filling it made, it sink deeper,

and removing the fill made it deeper yet. So they are

keeping the hole under observation and Homecoming had to be

moved to another location.

The parade was in town, though, and the Homecoming dance

last night, reigned over by Queen Carla and King Jim,

royalty elected by the senior class under the supervision

of Mrs. Hoffarth, who eliminates inappropriate candidates,

The drawback of secret ballots is the tendency on the part

of a few to vote for the wrong person when nobody is

looking, and once a girl other than the Queen got more

votes for Queen, but those were not informed votes. The

voters didn't know what Mrs. Hoffarth knew, or else they

didn't have the best interests of Lake Wobegon High School

at heart. The girl in question had been to the gravel pit,

parked in a car with a boy and drinking beer, and Mrs.

Hoffarth maintains that when you've been to the gravel pit,

you shouldn't expect to wear a tiara and ride a convertible

down Main Street. A Queen should be above gravel-pit

business. "If you climb down off the pedestal, don't expect

to climb back up," she says. "A pedestal is not an

elevator."

For years, ever since I was in school, because Mrs.

Hoffarth's brother Gerald is a colonel of the National

Guard, the Homecoming Queen has ridden on a Sherman tank

borrowed from the Fighting 308th armory in Freeport. She

rides in the forward hatch, below the cannon, and a squad

of Guardsmen march in front of her. It made a deep

impression on me to see a beautiful classmate in a pink

gown smiling and waving from a tank and may have warped my

feelings about women, particularly beautiful ones. I talk

to them and hear bolts slam in the carbines and combat

boots scrape on, the pavement. Fear of death isn't the best

basis for a friendship. It's an okay basis, but not the

best. But that is personal stuff I never told anyone, so

keep it under your hat-I don't want to be asked about it by

every amateur psychiatrist in town. It's a little odd thing

in my makeup that comes from coming where I'm from, no

stranger than thinking about death every time you put on

clean underwear, one of those quirks a person can live

with.

What's hard to live with is not the trash floating in your

head but the ordinary facts of life: mortality, knowing

that you'11 die, and frailty, knowing that when we've got,

it figured out we don't, and indignity, knowing that if we

manage to put up a good front we still have the backstage

view. I suppose that's why I don't go home for Home-'

coming., They know stories about me that I can't explain

away and call me by a nickname that I left home in order to

lose. Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me now. But I'll

tell you: it was Foxfart.

The Queen of Homecoming, Carla Krebsbach, has no odd

nicknames to escape-, no humiliating secrets, and she made

a terrific Queen. She looked like a million dollars,

wearing a white spangled dress you could get married in if

you wanted, but with a dress like that, why get married and

ruin your good looks) The soft contacts made her eyes

glisten. She. had her hair cut so her posture is improved.

When Mrs. Hoffarth walked slowly across the stage holding

up the tiara and the other four girls in line squeezed

their eyes shut, Carla looked straight ahead, as if she

knew for a fact whose head was going to be crowned. Hers.

When it was, she didn't cry or hop up and down, she looked

as if she was ready. The tiara dropped on her and it fit

like Cinderella's glass slipper. She blinked and smiled a

smile you could feel in the back row of the auditorium.

Unfortunately, her dad, Carl, couldn't be there to see it.

He was at his folks' house, Myrtle and Florian's, south of

town, looking into the matter of their septic tank, which

had reached an emergency status the night before. Florian

noticed a problem last week when he raised the extension

ladder and climbed up to install storm windows. He climbed

up seven rungs and was only two feet off the ground. The

lawn was soft as a trampoline, and the ladder sank down

into it. "Well, it'll freeze soon, and then I can get

around to,it" he thought, but it didn't freeze soon enough.

Thursday morning the ground around the ladder had sunk

three feet. "Well," he thought, "these things happen." He

could put in roses there. A sunken garden. Be quite

attractive. Friday morning the toilet overflowed, an event

that he dared not overlook. So he called Carl.

People often call Carl in this sort of situation. It's what

comes from being handy. Sometimes he envies the

incompetent. He inspected the sinkhole, went back to town

and borrowed the backhoe from Bud, and came back and

started digging.

Even he was surprised by what he found. It appeared at

first to be-and as he went deeper it actually turned out to

be-a 1937 Chevy coupe that someone had buried there to use

as a septic tank. Whether they couldn't afford a concrete

one or just had a low opinion of that car, there it was in

its subterranean glory, the roof caved in, the passenger

compartment pretty well loaded to capacity.

You'll notice how gracefully I tell this story, slipping

elegantly around the unnecessary or too-vivid  details,

touching only the high points, but I must tell you that

Carl moved the backhoe around upwind and went at it from

there. It had to come out-that was the only spot for a new

tank unless he wanted to cut down two oak trees or put a,

new tank uphill of the house, which isn't the textbook way-

so he hauled out this monstrosity, getting more and more

curious to know who had put it there. Florian has owned the

place since Carl's grandpa died. Florian had gone to town

with Myrtle to watch Homecoming. Carl loaded the Chevy onto

a hay wagon and didn't bother to tie it down: if it fell

off, it fell off. He hitched up to the tractor and started

his lonely drive to the dump, on the. other side of town.

By then he was not in a good humor. "Honor thy father and

thy mother," yes, but did it include this? Hauling away

thirty years of family history.) The Chevy septic tank had

lost most of its load but with the wind at his back it was

suffocating.

That may have been why he didn't ask himself why so many

cars were parked along McKinley Street. He didn't see a

soul around and figured -the coast was clear-he wasn't

getting much oxygen to his brain, only the fumes of his

heritage. He chugged past the high school and the Lutheran

church and had to make a right turn to get the wind off his

back, because now his eyes were full of tears. He hung an

emergency right onto Main Street, and suddenly he was a

feature attraction.

The entire population was lined up three deep on either

side of Main between McKinley and Taft, and straight ahead

and coming his way was the marching band and the tank

behind it. The other tank.

He imagined he could make it to Taft and turn left and

avoid the parade, but the old Farm, all didn't have much

acceleration with that load of Chev, and he and the

National Guard put on the brakes and met nose to rise

directly in front of the Chatterbox Cafe. The band had

melted away to, the side. About half the crowd began to

move off toward a more distant vantage point, and the other

half followed them. A strong aroma of Chev got in the

ventilator of the Cafe, and the patrons silently put down

their forks and emerged from the rear. Queen Carla sat on

the front of the tank, her eyes almost level with her

father's

where he sat, in front of the old family heirloom. "How

could you do this to me?" Her lips formed the words.

She was a Queen. When Queen Victoria once noticed pieces of

toilet paper floating in the Thames and asked what they

were, one of her counselors, the privy counselor perhaps,

said, "Madam' those are printed notices saying that

swimming is forbidden." Rank has its privileges, and one of

them is ignorance.

The tank couldn't turn around there, the sergeant told

Carl, so he had to turn the tractor and wagon. Backward and

forward, backward and forward, back and up and back, and

now people were cheering and clapping. First gear, reverse,

first, reverse, first, reverse. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. "If

this falls off," he thought, "I'm going to leave it and

leave town." The band began to play again, "Anchors

Aweigh." When the Farmall got turned around, the band fell

in behind it and the three units paraded north to the

statue of the Unknown Norwegian, where the second and third

units turned left. The Unknown watched the Krebsbach float

chug off to the dump.

In a way, it was the most memorable Homecoming ever.

Graduates who heard about it later wished they had been

there, because of course it won't be repeated. It was a one

time event. Which was how Carl looked at it hours later,

when he'd taken a bath and was sitting in the Sidetrack

enjoying a cold Wendy's. He said, "Well, if it had to

happen, I'm glad it happened where everyone could see it.

That's how I feel. Who needs dignity when you can be in

show business?

BRETHREN

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Halloween was last night. Children went out trick-or-

treating, dressed as hobos or rich glamorous people, and

some kids went as grownups: wore dark dowdy clothes, walked

stiff, talked funny, and got sore at everybody. The candy

they received, and sweet rolls and apples and quarters,

they richly deserved. It was the end of October, when the

long dark places between houses seem to reach out for you,

poor innocent child, and draw you toward the shadows.

Those are places in the dark where the children live who

lie in the cemetery, and where Mr. Geske lives, who always

loved children and who used to visit the cemetery every day

after his beloved mother died. He lived with her for forty-

two years. After her death, he went up the hill and tended

the flowers on her grave. A prim little man, chubby, who

walked like a pigeon. He spent time up there and people

didn't think much of it until one day the grave looked

different. "I planted a bed of petunias," he said, "that

was Mother's favorite." Bud said, "It looks like you dug

kinda deep to put in petunias." Mr. Geske looked down at

his shoes like he couldn't remember that. He looked away up

the hill. He said, "I had to clean out the weeds and the

roots went so deep, you know. They go right down there-all

the way to where she is, I didn't want the roots to go in

where she is."

They found her body on a chair in the kitchen. He had set a

cup of coffee in front of her and a piece of lemon meringue

pie. There was meringue on her lips. He had turned on the

radio to her favorite station. There was more that Gary and

Leroy wouldn't talk about. Mr. Geske was shipped to the

loony bin, where he hung himself with a bedsheet two years

later, that nice middle-aged man who used to help out at

Boy Scouts. The hobos and the rich glamorous people thought

of him standing in the dark. Standing and holding his

shovel and clearing his throat the way he used to do. "Hi,

kids. How are you doing tonight?" he says.

Most of the trees have lost their leaves, except one old

maple across from Clint and Irene Bunsen's, which was slow

to turn color, a luminous phosphorescent yellow, at night,

with the streetlamp behind it. It was so bright you could

read by it. Most other trees were bare, so sound travels

farther, and last night, in the middle of supper, you could

hear a door slam half a block away and hear seven fast

sharp footsteps, X X X X X X X. The door whanged when it

hit the frame and bounced back open, and there were seven

slow footsteps going back to shut it. Thunk. Everyone

around the -supper table stopped chewing. A man's voice:

"Get in here! It serves you right!" And a boy: "I can't

talk to you, you're crazy!" Forks hovered and everyone

around the table held their breath, waiting for the

gunshot. The door was opened and closed, and there were

muffled angry voices. My mother sighed. "I always dread the

week before an election," she said.

She is one of the peacemakers, like so many women, though

she could get awfully angry-in fact, she hit me with a

broom once. I was about fourteen, and though she hit me

with the bristles and not the stick, it shocked me so much

I forgot what had happened prior, whether I might possibly

have said something that upset her. But she was a

peacemaker at heart and her anger was brief. Once she

yanked me by the wrist, yanked me almost off my feet, and

hissed at me. She said, "You little b-.", She made a clear

b sound. I had never heard her use the word she almost

used, and it shocked me. I don't recall what led up to it.

Women in our family, as mad as they got, they always made

up right away. There was shouting and banging back and

forth, then weeping and gnashing of teeth,, then a little

silence, and finally a little talk and more, tears, and

then you had your arms around each other and peace was

made. Men were different. No noise, no shouting, only a

quiet bitter voice saying, "I'm not angry. What do you

mean, 'angry'? I'm not one bit angry. I'm hurt, yes, but

that's all right, I'll get over it. " A soft violent voice.

"I can't believe you would say that to me. No-don't

apologize., You don't need to apologize. You said what you

meant, and I'll just remember it." And you knew that he

'would. It would be weeks before he'd get over it.

My mother is a peacemaker, though peace and quiet makes her

nervous. In disaster she is calm and resolute. A child

climbing a tree gives her the jitters, but when our

neighbor put his hand into a, circular saw and staggered

out of the garage one summer day holding something that

dripped bright red, she didn't blanch. My own blood drained

from my head and I turned and sat on the ground, but she

went straight to him! She took off her apron and tied it

around his arm, and called to his wife, "Millie, come out

here right away."

In the Sanctified Brethren church, a tiny fundamentalist

bunch who we were in, there was a spirit of self-righteous

pissery and B.S.-fication among certain elders that defied

peacemaking. They were given to disputing small points of

doctrine that to them seemed the very fulcrum of the faith.

We were cursed with a surplus of scholars and a deficit of

peacemakers, and so we tended to be divisive and split into

factions. One dispute when I was a boy had to do with the

question of hospitality toward those in error, whether

kindness shown to one who holds false doctrine implicates

you in his wrongdoing.

Uncle Al had family and friends on both sides of the so-

called Cup of Cold Water debate, and it broke his heart.

The dispute was really between two men, Brother Win. Miller

and Brother Jas. Johnson, who had dragged others into it,

and so, one fine August day, Uncle A] tried to make peace

between those two marbleheads and prevent a great deal of

unhappiness for the rest of us. He arranged for them to

meet at his and Aunt Flo's one Sunday, a few Millerites and

a few Johnsonians, not to discuss the hospitality-to-error

doctrine but simply to enjoy a dinner of Aunt Flo's famous

fried chicken.

It took weeks to arrange. Uncle Al worked through an

intermediary, Brother Fields, who had never shown

hospitality to anyone, whether in error or not, and who

therefore was neutral on the question. Finally, one Sunday,

they arrived, in two cars, both Fords, the Brethren being

united on the General Motors question. Out climbed, slowly,

some gaunt flinty-eyed thin-lipped men in dark floppy suits

and their plump obedient wives, and they came in the house

and sat in awesome silence in the living room until the

call to dinner' and they trooped in around the long dining-

room table, extended with two leaves so they wouldn't have

to sit close, and the Millerites and John-. sonians bowed

their heads in prayer.

Prayer was a delicate matter. Brethren were known to use

even prayer before a meal as a platform, and so Al the

peacemaker, concerned lest one brother take prayer and beat

the others over the head with it, said, "Let us bow our

heads in silent prayer, giving thanks for the meal," and

they bowed their heads and closed their eyes and-a long

time passed, the old clock ticked on the bureau; a cat

walked in and meowed and left; a child snickered and was

stifled; cars went by; there were dry sniffs and

throatclearings; and soon it was clear that neither side

wanted to stop before the other: they were seeing who could

pray the longest.

Brother Miller peeked through his fingers at Brother

Johnson, who was earnestly engaged in silent communion with

the Lord, who agreed with him on so many things. His

forehead almost touched the plate. So Brother Miller dove

back into prayer and the other Brethren stayed under too,

sneaking glances around the table to see if anyone else

noticed how long it was. Minutes drifted by. Heads stayed

bowed, nobody would come up. To stop praying might imply a

weakness of faith.

Al said "Amen," to offer them a way out of the deadlock,

and said it again: "Amen." Brother Miller looked up and saw

Johnson still bowed, so he went back down just as Johnson

put his periscope up and saw Brother Miller submerged, so

down be went. It was becoming the longest table grace in

history, it ground on and on and on, and then Aunt Flo slid

her chair back, rose, went to the kitchen, and brought out

the -food that they were competing to see who could be more

thankful for. She set the hay down where the goats could

get it. Tears ran down Brother Johnson's face., His eyes

were clamped shut, and tears streamed down, and so was

Brother Miller weeping.

It's true what they say, that smell is the key that unlocks

our deepest memories, and with their eyes closed, the smell

of fried chicken and gravy made those men into boys again.

It was years ago, they were fighting, and a mother's voice

from on high said, "You two stop it and get in here and

have your dinners. Now. I mean it." The blessed cornmeal

crust and rapturous gravy brought the memory to mind, and

the stony hearts of the two giants melted- they raised

their heads and filled their plates and slowly peace was

made over that glorious chicken.

THANKSGIVING

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Thanksgiving was Thursday, a cold, gray, windy day, and the

Thanksgiving service at the Lutheran church was packed, to

Pastor Ingqvist's great surprise. He expected a small

turnout, like last year's, and hadn't prepared a complete

sermon, only a couple index cards, one with a text from the

Psalms and the other only said "Conclusion." He sat

thinking hard through the opening hymns. Halfway into the

reading from Ecclesiastes, the fire siren went off two

blocks away, and everyone who had left a turkey in the oven

sat up straight in their pews and had a vision of flames

engulfing their home and the roof collapsing in a shower of

sparks. All the firefighters jumped up and left, and came

back a minute later: it was nothing. Bud had accidentally

jostled the siren switch while reaching back into the

joists for something. Time for the sermon. It was a nervous

and turbulent sermon, he felt, with a bumpy landing due to

the loss of one engine, but afterward people shook his hand

and said it was one of the finest they ever heard.

Beautiful. Do you have a transcript of that? some people

asked.

He thought, You got to be kidding, but the Lutherans of

Lake Wobegon don't use much irony, like they don't use much

curry powder: some, not a lot. There stood the tall, slope-

shouldered pastor in humiliation for a Performance that one

person after another -said was wonderful, even Val

Tollefson. "Well, I wish I'd Prepared more, and tried to

develop it a little better, " he said, blushing, and

thought, Thank you, Lord, very much. Tusind takk, Lord.

Clarence Bunsen wasn't in church. Arlene went, but the

mister stayed home, because he wasn't very thankful.

He got up that morning and stepped on a screw and tried to

levitate off it and strained his back- His back didn't go

out but it felt weak. 'He didn't want to slip in the

bathtub, so he took a bath instead of a shower, and felt

like an old vet at the Vets' Hospital, and climbing out, he

slipped and strained his back again, another part. While he

was combing his hair, a clump came out, from the bunch that

he's been combing across the top in hopes it would take

hold. He came down to the kitchen feeling that life had,

turned against him.

Arlene said, "Have a cup of coffee, that'll perk you up,"

and usually that's all a Norwegian needs. Norwegians have

often been revived by this method, including some whose EKG

showed a flat line-a sip of coffee on their lips and the

pen jumped. Clarence felt like coffee wouldn't make much

difference.

He didn't tell Arlene that he'd talked to daughter Barbara

Ann on the phone Wednesday, night. She was going on and on

about this, that, and the other thing, and suddenly he had

a premonition that the real reason she was coming home for

Thanksgiving was to make an important announcement, of her

divorce. She and Bill, married for ten years, the poor

thing. He could understand, he always knew that Bill wasn't

good for her, he didn't have Barbara Ann's undying

enthusiasm, he was too serious, worked too hard, and earned

far too much money. Clarence could understand her

unhappiness-not that she said anything, she didn't, it was

what she didn't say. He wanted to stay home from church and

be alone.

One other thing: one day in October, Arlene had said, "How

about we go to Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and stay at the

Curtis -and have the buffet in the Cardinal Room? I hear

it's fabulous."' And Clarence said, "Naw, let's stay home.

If you're tired of making dinner, I'll do it." He heard

himself say these words and heard her say, "Fine. Good.

We'll stay home, and you make the dinner." One more reason

he didn't go to church. Another was his fireplace, recently

repaired by a, man from Us Angeles named Curtis Olson.

Byron recommended him as a man who knew about fireplaces

and chimneys, but when Olson left, Byron said, "No, I was

only repeating what others had said. I forget who they

were, but they said he was pretty good." Clarence didn't

want, to see Byron for a

while, and Byron would be at church.

Olson came with full-color brochures about fireplace

inserts and how for a low sum you could have a liner put in

the chimney, guarding against chimney fire and improving

the efficiency of fireplace and furnace by SO to 70

percent. He installed a unit at Clarence's and suddenly a

fireplace that had worked pretty well started to go to

hell. Smoke poured out into the living room and the heat

went up the chimney. Olson looked anguished. He paced up

and down, wringing his hands, and said, "This is terrible;

I didn't know your house had a problem with convex airflow.

You have an inverse ratio: weren't you aware of it? I don't

live here, it isn't my house, you couldn't expect me to

know about your convexity problem. Now look, I've gone and

made a mistake, walked into a minefield, and what am I

going to do about it? I feel miserable. I came in here

feeling good about myself and in two days you've managed to

completely destroy my confidence. "

Clarence said, "I'm sorry you feel so bad. Why don't I have

Carl come and look at it?" "Well, all right," said Olson,

"but I still feel like you don't have respect for me."

"No," said Clarence, "no, not at all."

Carl came and looked down the chimney. He said, "Whoever

was here knocked some bricks loose and he had to pound

harder to get the liner in, so now you're got a wad of

sheet metal stuck in there, tight; I don't know if it's

going to come out or not."

Olson called from Minneapolis. "I'm too upset to work'

right now,"-he said. "I feel threatened and embarrassed. I

need some time alone." And there was seven hundred dollars

gone, click.

Thanksgiving morning, Clarence built a small fire in the

fireplace with an electric fan on the hearth to push the

smoke up the chimney. He heard the door open and a familiar

voice said, "Hi, Daddy," and there she was: tall, lovely.

He put his arms around her and had to go to the kitchen.

Norwegian men cry privately and dab cold coffee on their

eyes to get the redness out. Poor child. Thirty-four, about

to be alone in the world.

"Can I help, Dad?" said Bill, roaming into the kitchen.

"No, of course not. Fix yourself a drink.'

"What do you have?"

"I don't know. It's in the basement."

"Care for something yourself?"

"No, -I can't drink while I'm cooking."

He cooked. Basted the turkey, boiled yams, peeled potatoes,

checked the pumpkin pie in the oven-thirty minutes, forty,

forty-five, an hour, still it wasn't done. Then the crust

caught on fire. He chipped off that part. The house smelled

of smoke but he was doing pretty well. That's what Arlene

said too as she cruised through from time to time: "You're

doing awfully well, dear. I'm proud of you. Are you boiling

these potatoes here? Then you probably want to put some

water in the pot-ah, the turkey smells good. Mmmmmmmm. Want

me to put some aluminum over it? It's up to you, but in a

four-hundred-degree oven it might scorch after a while."

It was hard but far from impossible, and it felt good to

cook and be in charge and not sit, as he had for years, in

the living room with a silent son-in-law, saying, "Well,

Bill, how's the real-estate business?" "Oh, not bad." Well,

that took care of fifteen seconds, a couple hours more and

we can wrap it up. He cooked and cooked, waiting for the

news to drop, rehearsing his calm reaction. ("Well, kids,

that's your decision. I can't say that I approve but I

certainly can sympathize. Arlene and I have been together

for forty years but there have been times . . .") Then she

told him. She said, "We have an announcement. We're going

to have a baby. In April."

He almost said, "Well, kids, that's your decision. I

certainly can sympathize. Arlene and I have been together

for forty years but there have been times . . ." and then

the happy news dawned on him and tears came to his eyes and

he had to blow his nose.

The happy news lit up the afternoon. An unseen child, in

the house with them, a child sleeping inside his daughter.

It was a quiet happy dinner, and a quiet afternoon washing

dishes. Arlene took a nap, Clarence washed, Barbara Ann

dried.

"I remember when I knew that your mother was expecting you.

It was right around the beginning of July. A hot beautiful

day. I felt so good I walked downtown in my undershirt and

bought a panatela cigar and smoked it standing on the

corner by Ralph's, and then I walked up to the Co-op and

bought four rockets and took them down to the swimming

beach and stuck em in the gravel and shot em off, one, two,

three, four, way out over the lake. Gosh, that was a day."

He could almost see those rockets bursting in air. Then

Bill said, "Say, Dad, something's wrong with your

fireplace." Clarence dashed out. Arlene was asleep on the

sofa,and starting to cough. Smoke filled the room. He

opened the window and pitched burning logs out on the grass

and heard a faraway siren, and in less time than it takes

to talk about it, the old red truck came chugging up the

driveway. "Thanks, boys," said Clarence, "no emergency,

everything's under control."

They backed out and Bill decided he'd like to go for a long

walk. Arlene went back to sleep. Clarence and Barbara Ann

were in the kitchen when she felt the pain.

"Mmhhhh, " she said.

"What?"

"Nothing, a pain in my side. Mmmhhhh."

"Let's go," he said. "I'll get your coat."

"No, it's not that. It'll go away."

"Let's go. Now. I'll get the car out of the garage."

"Daddy, believe me. It's not that."

"Honey, there's no sense in taking a chance. Let's go." And

they went, but backing out of the driveway, he heard, the

foolishness of those words: no sense in taking a chance.

What else is having babies about if not taking a chance.)

They headed for the Saint Cloud Hospital, but she felt

better and the sun was setting, the pain was gone, so

instead they drove to Saint John's and back. What a' fine

chance to take. A lot of cars headed south from town,

foreign cars going back to a life in the city that he did

not understand: silent fathers, exhausted mothers, children

sitting happily and politely with little headphones on

their heads. We took a chance when we produced these people

and it looks as if we'll have to wait a little longer to

see how it comes out.

CHRISTMAS DINNER

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Christmas. The exiles, were home. It was pretty quiet,

though you could hear the gritting of teeth, and there was

a moment of poisoned silence at the Clarence Bunsen home

that rang like a fire bell. Before the blessing, as they

sat around the table and admired the work in front of them,

a still-life Christmas Dinner by Arlene, before they ate

the art, their daughter, Donna, in town from San Diego,

said, "What a wonderful Christmas!" and her husband, Rick,

said, "Well, if Democrats had their way, itd be the last

one." Silence.

Arlene said that if Rick had his way, the turkeys would be

having us. Clarence bowed his head. "Dear Lord, the giver

of all good things, we thank Thee." He prayed a long

prayer, I as a cease-fire. Arlene smiled at Rick: "Have

some mashed potatoes "Thank you, Mom." She winced He is her

son-in-law and she doesn't know why. He is not raising her

grandchildren right, he comes to Minnesota and talks too

much about the advantages of southern California, he wears

silly clothes, he makes fun of Norwegians, he makes fun of

women including his own wife,

and he says "agenda" in place of 'plan" or "idea" "Did you

have a different agenda?" he says. "Let's get our agenda

straight." "I sense a hidden agenda here."

He piled his plate with Christmas agenda and chomped a big

bite of it. He said, "Mom, this is the best dinner I ever

ate. I really mean that." She smiled her brightest smile,

the smile she has used all her life on people she'd like to

slap silly. She'd like to give him a piece of her mind, but

she can't, because he has hostages, her grandchildren. So

she kills him with kindness. She stuffs him like a turkey.

Fresh caramel rolls for breakfast, a pound of bacon and

smoked sausage and, scrambled eggs, and two hours later pot

roast for lunch and big slabs of banana cream pie. He has

gained four pounds since Tuesday. Her goal is twelve. All

day he sits dazed by food. "Fudge bars, Rick? I made them

just for you. Here, I'll put the plate right beside you,

where you can reach them." "Oh Mom . . ." She's found the

crack in his armor, and it's his mouth. His Achilles mouth.

Her agenda is stuffing him so he becomes weak and pliable

and goes into a calorie coma, and she takes the little boy

and the girl for walks and tells them about our great

presidents, our great Democratic presidents. And did you

know they were all Norwegian? Yes, they were, a little bit,

on their mother's side, and that little bit was enough to

make them great.

At the Tolleruds', Daryl and Marilyn and their six kids

went up the hill to the folks' house. His brothers, Gunnar

and Fred, and their families were home for Christmas, and

Daryl's family barely has room for themselves around their

little table.

When Daryl went into farming in partnership with his dad in

1968, he was under the impression that someday soon he and

Marilyn would move into the big house and' the folks would

take the little one, the one that Grandpa Tollerud built

when he came from Norway. But nothing has been said about

this for a long time. The little house would be fine for an

older couple, who tend to sit quietly and not tear around

chasing each other. But the old folks sit quietly in the

big house, with four empty bedrooms upstairs. "We really

need a larger house," Daryl says. "Well," his dad says.

"Soon as we get the pig barn built, we'll see about adding

on to it."

Up at the folks' house, Christmas is the exact same as it's

been forever. You close your eyes and it could be any time.

You might open them and you'd be six years old, not forty-

two. The dialogue is the same. His mother complains about

leaving the turkey in the oven too long and it being too

dry, and every year it is perfect. The men sit in the

living room, gently clearing their throats, 'and when it's

time, his dad stands up and says, "Well, I'm going to go

see to the horse."

They haven't kept a horse for years. "You boys going to

come help me see to the horse?" he says, and they troop out

to the barn and he reaches down behind a horse collar and

pulls out the bottle of Jim Beam. They pass it around and

have a pull, and stand and say some things, and pass it -

around again, and the old man takes a nail and marks the

new level and puts it back, and they troop indoors. Daryl

wishes they could just have a drink in the living room, but

to his old man there's a difference. He is not the sort of

man who keeps booze in his house. The barn doesn't count.

Gunnar was on the wagon again, the third or fourth time. He

is the oldest boy and the smartest, he should've gone on

and become somebody but drink has cursed him since he wag

young. He'd go in the Sidetrack and have a bump with his

buddies but then he got belligerent and tried to pick

fights, which nobody wanted because he was so strong and

quick, so they took care of him by giving him more to

drink. He'd say, "I'm not going to take that from you. You

son of a bitch, you sat down in my chair."

They'd say, "Gunnar, I bet you can't drink a whole glass of

whiskey. Two dollars says you can't."

"Put it down where I can see it,"' said Gunnar, and Wally

filled up the glass. A beer glass. And Gunnar drank it, and

as he drank he forgot about the chair, the two dollars,

where he was or why or who. He finished the glass, and they

carried him out the back so he could be .sick there, and

they scraped him up and drove him home. This happened over

and over. Then Gunnar skipped the part in the middle, the

argument and the challenge, and went straight from the

first drink to the last on his own steam.

Gunnar drives a semi and when he's drinking he takes a

bottle in the cab to help keep him awake. He quit drinking

this time after his last crash, driving a tank truck that

jackknifed in broad daylight in the middle of Kansas and

overturned in the ditch. The tank had a hole knocked in it

and when Gunnar climbed out of the cab he was up to his

hips in scrambled-egg mix, a thick yellowish froth. He

slipped and went under and thought he was going to drown in

egg but struggled to shore and hasn't had a drink for three

months.

Daryl has had some close calls himself the past couple of

months. He doesn't drink except in his dad's barn, seeing

to the horse, but several times he's been in his old Ford

about to pull onto a highway and looked left and turned

right and suddenly, HoNK, a car swerves and jams on its

brakes. Or he looks in the side mirror, turns into the left

lane' HoNK, a car right there! Once he ran a red light.

What's the matter with him? Is he losing his peripheral

vision? Monday he was out teaching Eric to drive ,and he

heard brakes screech, he'd gone through a stop sign.

Tuesday he went to ask Dr. DeHaven about it, who talked

about changes in the brain that come with aging, a loss of

reflex, a diminution of one's faculties. "This is  normal,"

he said. "Ordinarily we don't see it so much in a person of

forty-two, but it isn't anything to worry about. just relax

and slow down and take things at your own speed.

Daryl was depressed for two days. Tuesday night he

left a door. open in the pig barn, and twelve got out.

Recess

for pigs. It took him and Eric two hours to get them back

in class, but Daryl felt fast on his feet and felt the

reflexes

working, bang, bang, bang. Wednesday afternoon, not

thinking, he walked in the kitchen and opened the fridge

and got out a bowl that was full of glop and dumped it in

the garbage, and just as the force of gravity was pulling

it

down he thought, "That's mincemeat pie filling."

How could he do such a dumb thing? Just wasn't thinking.

Marilyn was gone to the farm wives' luncheon. It was two

o'clock. He had never made mincemeat filling before, but

how hard could it be to follow a recipe?, Fairly hard, he

discovered. Mincing the meat. Beef and venison. Mincing the

apples. And then the recipe called for brandy. No brandy

anywhere that he could. find-where did she keep the stuff?

Did she have a secret stash in the laundry room? Finally he

took an empty mustard jar in his pocket and snuck up the

hill to the barn. He crawled around back through the corn,

dashed for the door, got the bottle, filled the jar, made a

careful mark with the nail. Heard a door slam. Tore out

back. Crawled through the corn to the end of the field,

stood up, walked down to the house, whistling. Into the

kitchen. Tossed in the whiskey. Mixed it, cooked it up,

popped it in the fridge as the car rolled up the driveway.

Thursday, as they came to dessert, Daryl's heart was

pounding. He chose pumpkin. Everyone else chose mincemeat,

except Gunnar, who chose pumpkin too. The pie was sliced

and served and the first forkfuls of mincemeat came to.

their mouths. "Mmmmmmmm," said his mother. "Oh Marilyn."

His dad said, "Oh my, now that's mincemeat." "It sure is"

said Fred. "How do you make it, Marilyn?" "Oh, it's just

from a recipe," she said. "Do you use brandy in it?" "Oh

no," she said. "You don't really need brandy. I just leave

the brandy out." "Well, it's the best I ever ate," said

Fred's wife. "You ought to have some of this, Daryl." "No,"

Daryl said. "I got my pumpkin here. I don't care for

mincemeat. Keeps me awake at night. I can't take so much

rich food anymore. I'm getting old, I guess.

EXILES

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

Warm and foggy on Tuesday, and late in the day, as the

temperature fell, fog froze on the trees and made white

bare trees in which the fog appeared ghostly beautiful, as

if you could walk into these trees and receive immortal

powers of a sort we all want at Christmas: the power to

gather our friends and loved ones close around us and

prevent suffering and evil and death from touching them.

When I was little, I worried about a group of men I called

the Murderers, who had killed before and would kill again

because killing meant nothing to them, they had nothing to

lose, it was the electric chair for them either way. They

were now driving in a stolen black sedan toward a Y in the.

road where two roads diverged, and if they chose one they'd

come to our house and kill us, and if they didn't they

wouldn't. I could keep my family safe by prayer. At night I

crawled into bed between cold sheets like sheets of ice and

prayed for God to keep the Murderers away from us, and as

an extra precaution, in addition to prayer, I always got

into bed from the left side. I lay on my right side. I

prayed the exact same prayer. And although

I knew I shouldn't, in the dark I made the sign of the

cross, on the odd chance that God was not Protestant. I

pulled the blankets up and lay warming my little hollow,

listening to the house creak, smelling the Vicks my mother

put on me as a precaution, and felt I had kept the

Murderers from our door. Then, one night, I got into bed

from the wrong side, "posing my family to evil because I

was in a hurry, so I got out and got back in on the correct

side. But was still afraid. So I took my radio into bed

with me. It was the size of a breadbox. I pulled the covers

over my head and tuned in Bob Franklin, host of "Music by

Moonlite"-the "Old Smoothie," he was called, because he

made you feel like you and him were close ("Hello, friends,

Bob Franklin here-say, I believe that I know you well

enough to say that you're discriminating when it comes to

the finer things and particular about the details being

just right, just the way you want them, and that's why I

know that Jirasek's Dry Cleaning in Albany is just the

place for you...")

It thrilled me as a boy to hear a man take me into his

confidence that way, but instead of old Bob playing Glenn

Miller, there was a preacher on the air who wasn't friendly

at all and didn't think I was discriminating and didn't

think dry cleaning would do me much good one way or the

other. He seemed to -suggest that the Murderers were

standing over my bed about to stab me with an ice pick and

that it was exactly what I deserved. What was "Brother Carl

and His Wall of Hope Revival Show" doing in place of old

Bob and "Music by Moonlite"? Then I checked my clock: it

was five-thirty in the morning. We were safe for another

day.

Corinne Ingqvist came home for Christmas on Sunday. She

came barreling north in her red VW from Minneapolis,

arguing with a preacher on the radio, telling him his

theology was repressive, when she noticed she was going

seventy-five mph. She cruised through the lights of town

and turned down the long-familiar driveway to their house

by the lake. In the backseat were two tins of tea for gifts

and 132 - critical essays by her seventeen-year-old

students on Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" ("Two

roads diverged in a yellow wood, . . . and I-I took the one

less traveled by, And that has made all the difference")

that she was planning to grade on Monday. Her parents'

house seemed like a quiet retreat with only her and Hjalmar

and Virginia for Christmas.

She pulled up the driveway and parked by the old limestone

wall. She got out the shopping bag of presents and essays

and walked up three steps to the back door and put her bare

hand on the cold brass knob and a sudden cold thought came

to mind: This soon shall pass. And it won't be too long.

She swayed slightly and then went in. "Hello," said

Hjalmar, and kissed her. "Hello, dear, you look so

wonderful," said Virginia. The tree in the same place,

beside the old piano, in front of the bright fish tank.

Orange and silver guppies seemed 'to swim among the

ornaments, drifting to and fro, like orange and silver

snowflakes that never reach the ground, fish in the

branches among the lights.

Dozens of exiles returned for Christmas. At Our Lady of

Perpetual Responsibility, Father Emil roused himself from

bed, where he's been down with cancer since Columbus Day,

and said Christmas Eve Mass. He was inspired by the sight

of all the lapsed Catholics parading into church with their

unbaptized children, and he gave them a hard homily,

strolling right down into the congregation. "Shame. Shame

on us for leaving what we were given that was true and

good," he said. "To receive a great treasure in our younger

days and to abandon it so that we can lie down in the mud

with swine." He stood, one hand on the back of a pew, and

everyone in that pew-children of this church who grew up

and moved away and did well. and now tell humorous stories

at parties about Father Emil and what it was like to grow

up Catholic-all of them shuddered a little, afraid he might

grab them by their Harris-tweed collars and stand them up

and ask them questions. "What a shame. What a shame. " They

came for Christmas, to hear music and see the candles and

smell incense and feel hopeful, and here was their old

priest with hair in his ears whacking them around-was it a

brain cancer he had? Shame', shame on us. He looked around

at all the little children he'd given first communion. to,

now grown heavy and prosperous and sad and indolent, but

clever enough to explain their indolence and sadness as a

rebellion against orthodoxy, a protest, adventurous,

intellectual, which really was only dullness of spirit. He

stopped. It was so quiet you could hear them not breathing.

Then he said that this was why Our Lord had come, to rescue

us from dullness of spirit, and so the shepherds had found

and so shall we, and then it was Christmas again.

Dozens of exiles were back, including some whom their

families weren't expecting because they'd said they weren't

coming, couldn't come, were sorry but it -was just out of

the question. But Christmas exerts powerful forces. We turn

a comer in a wretched shopping mall and some few bars of a

tune turn a switch in our heads and, gates open and tons of

water thunder through Hoover Dam, the big turbines spin,

electricity flows, and we get in our car and go back, like

salmon.

Larry the Sad Boy was there, who was saved twelve times, in

the Lutheran church, an all-time record. Between 1953 and

1961, he threw himself weeping and contrite on God's throne

of grace on twelve separate occasions -and this in a

Lutheran church that wasn't evangelical, had no altar call,

no organist playing "Just As I Am Without One Plea'? while

a choir hummed and a guy with shiny hair took hold of your

heartstrings and played you like a cheap guitar-this is the

Lutheran church, not a bunch of hilbillies-these are

Scandinavians, and they repent in the same way that they

sin: discreetly, tastefully, at the proper time, and bring

a Jell-O salad for afterward. Larry Sorenson came forward

weeping buckets and crumpled up at the communion rail, to

the amazement of the minister, who had delivered a dry

sermon about stewardship, and who now had to put his arm

around this limp soggy individual and pray with him and see

if he had a ride home. Twelve times. Even we

fundamentalists got tired of him. Granted, we're born in

original sin and are worthless and vile, but twelve

conversions is too many. God didn't mean us to feel guilt

all our lives. There comes a point when you should dry your

tears and join the building committee and start grappling

with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof

and make church coffee and be of use, but Larry kept on

repenting and repenting. He came up for Christmas and got

drunk and knocked over the Christmas tree. That was before

2:00 P.m. He spent the next eight hours apologizing for it,

and the penance was worse than the crime.

Eddie the jealous Boy came home. He told his parents that

he wasn't going to come, but they didn't protest enough,

and he felt unwanted and so he came up with his lovely

wife, Eunice. She is the most beautiful woman, ever to

leave Lake Wobegon, having been elected Tri-County Queen in

1960, Miss Sixth Congressional District the same year,

first runner-up in the 1962 Miss Midwest contest, and then

Miss Upper Mississippi Basin by the U.S. Corps of

Engineers,, and having won them all, she retired from

royalty because it made Eddie crazy to see other men look

at her and like her. If she so much as touched a man on the

arm in a friendly, way, it meant she'd later spend hours

listening to Eddie's hot dry angry voice and endure days of

his silence, and so this funny and lovely woman has tried

to please him and make herself quiet and dull and

unattractive, but he's more jealous than ever. On Christmas

afternoon,- when he looked up from a robot he was

assembling and noticed that Eunice and her brother-in-law

Fred were nowhere to be seen, he tore around in a frenzy,

ran outdoors, got in the car (there is no motel in town),

and headed for the skating rink. The warming house was

open. Maybe they were kissing in there. Maybe they were

skating together. Maybe they were off in the woods, naked

in the snow. He saw her alone, walking. He jumped out, ran

up, and said, "Where is he? Where's Fred?" She stared back

at him with a dull look in her eyes. "Fred didn't come for

Christmas this year," she said. "Don't you remember? He and

Marcie went to Des Moines."

Corinne put off grading those papers until Monday and got

busy baking cookies and some little currant buns from an

old Norwegian recipe. She hadn't had them since she was

little, and now she was baking them herself. Amazinga

delicious smell from childhood that brings back every sweet

old aunt and grandma as if they're there beside you, and

you do it with just a little saffron. Monday night she made

herself start those papers, and then carolers came, and it

wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that she really faced up to

it, 132 essays of five hundred words each, about seventy

thousand words about-the poem "Two roads diverged in a

yellow wood, ... -and I-I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference." And of those words

at least ten thousand were 1, me, or mineThis poem makes me

think, of what happened to me when I was ten and my parents

said to me ... For them, all roads converged into the first

person singular. It was hard reading, very hard, and their

teacher finally chose the road that led away from the stack

of essays toward the Christmas tree and the fish tank. A

lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like

a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together, it's not

individual, it's sociable.

Foxy the Proud Boy came home, but now he is Richard to

everyone, except among his close pals in the grainfutures

business in Minneapolis, where he is Pinky. He drove up in

a pink 1987 Ferlinghetti, a car so fabulous that when he

sits in it, even en route to his origins in a little house

painted lavatory green, he feels attractive and special. He

forgets his dull seedy relatives, who come out and look at

his fantastic car, its red leather seats, the incredible

instrument panel that shows you the tides, the movements of

planets and galaxies. They peer in the tinted windows and

say, "Cheess, there's no room in there, Richard-two seats-

what are you thinking of-whaddaya do when you got things to

haul?" They don't see that Richard is traveling light, he's

secure in himself, and with Vanessa sitting next to him,

that's a total reality and his life is complete, and yet-

Why does he turn pale when he leads this fabulous woman in

a silver-lame' shirt into the -dim little house? Why does

he tremble? Is it the pictures on the walls: the praying

hands, the Threshers by Millet, a Winslow Homer ship,

needlepoint, "Ve Get Too Soon Oldt and Too Late Schmardt"?

Is it his family, who never learned the art of making

conversation because they only talk to people they know? A

slow and terrible death, asphyxiation in your own past. All

afternoon he's dying to get back in the Ferlinghetti, and

go home. At the first decent opportunity, he begins the

long ritual goodbye: Well, I 'guess it's, time we ... No,

really, Ma. Vanessa has to (lie lie lie). Well, okay, just

one, but then we got to (lie). No, I'd like to but we

promised these friends we'd (lie lie). Finally, with a wave

and a roar, they pull away and she turns to Richard the

Proud and says, "They were nice. I liked them." But his

eyes are full of tears, from exhaustion and relief and

guilt and from pride-he really does love this car, it gives

him so much pleasure.

Corinne didn't see Richard, Larry, or Eddie. She stayed

home. On Christmas Eve, she and Hjalmar and Virginia sat

and talked and listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,

both sides, A and B, and their old scratchy record of

Lionel Barrymore in A Christmas Carol. They watched

Midnight Mass from Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New

York and ate the saffron buns. In the morning, Hjalmar

took their dog, Puddles, for a walk. A mile away, the old

dog was exhausted. Hjalmar had to pick him up and carry

him home. Hjalmar was too tired to drive into Saint Cloud

to the Powers Hotel for the elegant Christmas buffet, and

so, because there were only three of them, Corinne said,

"Let's not fuss, let's make a little turkey dinner with the

microwave Daddy got you for Christmas last year." "Fine,"

Virginia said, "it's under the bed in the guest room, in

The box." They both studied the operating manual. In its at

tempt to describe the incredible flexibility of the micro

wave, its various functions and options and alternatives,

the infinite variety and joy of the thing, it bewildered

them.

The control panel had buttons numbered from 0 to 9 and

other buttons that said: Over, Stop, Clear, From, Time,

Recall, Auto, Memory. Which brought back the memory

of how lovely it was to put water in a pot, boil it, and

drop stuff in- "No!" Corinne cried. "We can't let elec

tronics defeat us!" They put the frozen turkey-dinner'

pouches in the microwave, pushed a combination of but

tons that made the light go on and the fan whirr, and left

the kitchen and went and conversed until the bell rang,

but something was wrong: the peas were a bluish, green,

the pouch of turkey had flecks of silvery ash in it. They

had each had two glasses of sherry and were in a philo

sophical mood. Corinne looked at her mother, her mother

looked at Corinne. "Well," said Corinne, "I'll never have

babies." "So," said Virginia, "I'll never be a grandma."

"That's life," they said, "let's go to David and Judy's

and see what Christian charity really is worth nowadays.

They invited us, didn't they-? It was a month ago and we

said no, but we didn't know then what we know now, so let's

go."

The Reverend David Ingqvist and wife, Judith, were in the

midst of an argument when they heard the knock on the door.

They were arguing whether she is always wrong or not: she

was saying that, yes, she can never do anything right, and

never pleases him, and he was saying that, no, she was

wrong now but she is usually right and, no, she often

pleases him and, yes, he does tell her-when he opened the

door, expecting to find someone with a gift in hand, and

saw his aunt and uncle and cousin. "Hello," said Hjalmar.

"We thought we'd come down." "How are you?", said Virginia.

"Merry Christmas." "What're you having for dinner?" asked

Corinne. "Aren't you going to invite us in?"

NEW YEAR'S

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

A warm dry winter, with no snow for a month, just brown grass

and some dead snow, and the Lake Wobegon Weather Bureau,

which meets at the Sidetrack Tap, has never seen one like it.

They're getting fed up with it. They are storytellers, and it's

tiresome to have a phenomenon so unusual it doesn't remind

you of one that was similar but more so. A blizzard would make

you think of some good blizzards of the past, and you could

improve on them, but this January drought is only a novelty. It

defeats memory. It brings conversation to an end. We wish it

would snow.

The ice fishermen wish it were colder, but they put

their fish houses out on the lake anyway, they couldn't

wait any longer. Mr. Berge asked Elmer, "You think the

ice is thick enough?" Elmer said, "Mr. Berge, ice doesn't

freeze from the top, it freezes from the bottom, so the

temperature of the air doesn't have much bearing on it.

Look, Swanny's got his out, and his weighs more'n yours

and mine both." Swanny has the first two-room fish house

on the lake, twenty feet long, a mansion. He hauled his.

out on Tuesday, and Wednesday night there were forty

houses out there, a little city of men who know that this is the

alternative to divorce.

In the dead of winter, a home gets smaller and smaller and a

man's natural tendencies become more pronounced. Some

days she looks at you and wonders if it was worth fifteen

dollars for the license. One day she finds you surrounded by

newspaper and empty beer bottles and some dirty plates and

bits of spillage and she shrieks in horroryou look down and see

your pants are gone, you're dressed in a bearskin skirt, holding

a hunk of wood, and dangling from your mouth is the tail of the

wounded rodent you're eating for dinner. The lovely woman

shrinks away in disgust,, and you open your mouth and growl.

At this point in the marriage, discussion is no good; you need a

place to hunker, and that's your fish house, a little plywood

room with a stove, a sleeping bench, table and chairs, and a

floor with two holes in it to fish through the ice.

The Boosters Club motto for 1987 is "Onward Ever Higher

Our Community Inspire," but so far this year doesn't look

any. different from last, except that Darlene is gone from

the Chatterbox -  She hung up her white waitress dress and

gave the counter one last swipe with a wet rag and drove

to a new fife in Minneapolis. Her mother said, "You couldn't

spend New Year's Eve with your own family? Honey,

after all we've, done for you? We were counting on it.

Couldn't you just come and be with us for an hour? Is

that too much to ask? One hour? A half-hour?" But Dar-

lene said, "Mother, you always said that a girl has to learn

how-to say no. I'm trying to learn. No."

Senator K. Thorvaldson sat and drank eight cups of coffee

Wednesday afternoon, flirted with Darlene, and made

remarks about maybe going to Minneapolis with her. He is

reading a boxful of novels by Ramona Jean Jensen, a writer of

whose oeuvre you might remark, "I wouldn't read that trash- if

I was on a desert island with it," and

then you pluck from the paperback rack in Ralph's a thick

novel with a picture of a bosomy Viking temptress in a

diaphanous gown struggling with a heavyweight wrapped in

animal skins, and you read a few paragraphs and suddenly

your legs are stiff, you're on page 43, your frozen steaks are

thawing and your ice cream is melting; but you sit down on the

ledge inside Ralph's big front window to learn how Ingrid will

ever escape from Stefan and read a passage about her milky

white -, her young and tender her small, pert -, her -. Good

Lord, you had no idea people sold this in a grocery store. Then

a shadow falls on the page and you look up and there's Ralph.

"Want me to put your meat back in the cooler?" he says.

I Senator K. looked at his old waitress and thought how much

he'd miss her. Her skin was milky white . . . her hands as she

stuffed napkins in the holder ... the special way she filled his

coffee cup ...

"How about that woman in Maine-aren't you still writing to

her?" Darlene said. '.'Oh well, yes, but she can't leave her son,

he's sick, some kind of sleeping sickness. And she's been

seeing another man. He's younger, seventy-one. That's fine. I

don't want to get in her way if she cares for someone else. I

don't "want to make a fool of myself. It's up to her. Maybe

she's too polite to tell me. So I'll just have to -remove myself

from consideration." He'll leave soon for his little condo in

Florida. "Maybe you'd like to go to Florida," he said to Darlene.

"It's-pretty down there. A lot of old people, but we wouldn't

need to bother with them."

The Ingqvists bought their tickets to Florida two months ago,

Pastor Dave and Judy; at least that's what she said. They've

missed the Annual Ministers' Retreat three years in a row

because the civilian leadership at church cant see why their

minister and his wife should cavort in the tropics in January.

She can see about three reasons, but she can't tell the Board

because it's more than they want to know

about a minister: it's hard work to stand tip and say what

people don't really believe but want to think they do; and

it's tough when a man of faith suffers from depression in

a town where nice people are expected to be upbeat. For

a few days on Captiva Island, at the Chateau Suzanne,

around the blue kidney-bean-shaped pool, cool aquama-

rine in a forest of deep green and fabulous birds of brilliant

plumage, some pale plump Lutherans will sit in the sun

like lumps of bread dough and say forbidden things. Oh,

the luxury of truth when you come from a town of story-

tellers!, The luxury of sitting in sunlight, clasping a gin-

and-tonic, wearing two articles of clothing that allow the

world to reasonably assume you are a woman, lighting up

one of your ten annual cigarettes, and saying openly to

other ministers' wives, "It has been hard this year."

"I moved up to the third pew, left side. His idea. I was sitting

about in the tenth row, and he said it looked to people like

indifference on my -part. So there I am in the store window

with an admiring look on my face, and he looks up from the

sermon and says, 'My wife said a wonderful thing to 'me the

other day,' and I just blanch. It's always. some dumb thing-all

of us have that ability in a pinch to utter something pretentious

and moralistic and false-but he- quotes this with a big cheesy

smile, and I have to smile, up at him in a modest girlish way,

when inside I'm thinking, 'You bastard, you didn't even quote

me correctly. I didn't say, "The acorn doesn't fall far from the

tree," what I said was "I'd know a Tollefson even if the lights

were off."

Judy misses her friend Katy, who moved to town with her

husband Merle, six years ago, both of them schoolteachers,

both funny and, bright. But it was Merle who got a job at the

school, and Katy didn't. Katy stayed home, raised their kids,

was active in things, and found out that Lake Wobegon didn't

like her to be too active. She was ... too critical. Too sarcastic.

At the band-and-choir concert, Katy said., "God, it's awful, isn't it?

You can tell where all the accidentals are because everyone misses them.

It's like they never saw the music before." It was the truth: the

band played rotten, and it was funny to hear someone ,say so,

but Judy was glad she hadn't said it herself. The women who

sat with them froze in shock. Katy got cut out. Nobody went to

visit her. So she decided to show them-she opened a one-hour

photo developing business in her basement. She'd show them

and be successful despite what they thought of her. But they

didn't send film to her. You don't send film to someone who

you think is making fun of you. You don't want her looking at

photos of you and your husband, fat and sleepy and grinning

like idiots. She sat smelling chemicals for four months, and got

mad at people. Finally she got a job as a schoolbus driver. She

had her 13. A. in English and was angry to be earning four

dollars an hour, and one winter day her bus ,skidded into the

ditch. No one was hurt badly, but by then she and Merle were

having troubles, she was in debt from the photo business, and

one night she left, town without telling anyone. The thing was:

she didn't take their new Ford Sonata, she took the old Hornet

that was on its last legs.

Their escape to Captiva Island was all set. The tickets

arrived. Dave's substitute would be Reverend Bob Olson,

a friend, not one of those. flashy subs who have one sermon

they've performed a hundred times so they talk like it was

from the heart like TV ministers and have special drops

to put in their eyes to make them - gleam-one of those

subs, and you return from vacation and feel the disap-

pointment. Reverend Bob is a plodder.

"Do you honestly think we'll go?" she asked him one 90

night over dishes.

"Of course," he said. "Don't even think about not going. Of

course we're going. You have to believe in it. All right? What

makes you think we're not going to go?"

Advent exhausted them-so much joy and great tidings

proclaimed while inside they felt crummy-and before the

candlelight service they stood in the vestibule, he in his

vestments and she at the head of the children's choir, and they

got in a fight and hissed at each other. "How could you say that

to me?" she said.

"I never said any such thing."

"You certainly did."

"Oh shut up."

In. this little town, as winter descends, we depend on marriage

to get us. through, because we can't be attractive' every day on

a regular basis, we need loyalty, money in the bank, and if it's

the Church that stands behind marriage, then the Ingqvists'

marriage is crucial to everyone. So then they tried hard to be

nice to each other, and that was almost worse. To treat your

true love like they are a customer. "Good morning, how are

you? What can I do for you today?" They needed to sit in the

sun and hear birds cry, paradise birds, non-Lutheran birds, with

their sharp cries. Lutheran-birds wear brown wool plumage

and murmur, "No thanks, none for me, I'm fine, you go ahead,"

but these paradise birds in their brilliant orange-and-green silks

are all screaming, "MORE MORE mom! I want MORE

MORE MORE!"

Sunday night she looked at the calendar. "Seven days

to go. Can we make it?" The Scripture verse for Sunday

was: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea,

we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our

harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For ... how

shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" What did

this mean in regard to Florida?

Val Tollefson came Monday afternoon, with his old dog, Rick.

"David isn't here," she told him. "That's all right," Val said, "I

came to put a new circuit box on your furnace. " He and Rick

went down the basement like it was their house. Val has never

liked them, and it took her years to find out why. Val owns the

entire series of Joy-and-John books, all sixteen. The inspirational

adventures of Joy and John Kendall, Lutheran minister in the town of

Littleton, books like

Rejoicing in Him and Blessed Quietness, in which Joy and

John meet the challenge of each new day with quiet simple

dedication. "No wonder Val doesn't like us," she thought, "we

smell, we chew our food-the Kendalls are perfect, they cast no

shadow." Val knelt by the furnace. "I don't know," he said.

"Seems like we're spending money left and right. 'Stead of

going to Florida one week to get warm, seems like it'd make

more sense to fix this furnace. "

On Monday all of them had fleas. The kids couldn't go .to

school. She drove to Ralph's and bought groceries and stole

two bars of Lysine soap because she was afraid some one'd

notice the wrapper said FOR CONTROL OF HEAD LICE AND FLEAS.

She slipped them into her purse. An exterminator

recommended over the phone that they go to a motel for a

week. She started cleaning the house with Lysine. Tuesday the

furnace went on the fritz. They didn't dare call Val. The

furnace. went on if you jiggled the thermostat and dialed the

combination fifty-five, ninety, seventy degrees; it went on and

got the house up to sixtytwo. On Wednesday the flu struck and

their two littlest children woke up with hot dry eyeballs and the

taste of Au in their mouths. They lay in misery, weeping. The

house was cold. "We're a decent home," she thought, "we have

a piano, encyclopedias. Now fleas."

She didn't know they had mice too. Rick, who'd brought the

fleas, had driven off their old cat, Sam. David discovered the

mice after she found the fleas, and he decided not to tell her.

He set a corn trap under the basement stairs and disposed of

the mice every morning. The corn trap is a bucket with corn

soaked in syrup in the bottom; the mouse Jumps in and eats and

can't get out, and you carry it outside and spin the bucket to

confuse the mouse and let it go.

It wasn't that he couldn't kill a mouse, but in winter, when life

itself seems so precious and precarious, it is easier to spare the

creature. He took away two mice Monday night. Tuesday

morning another mouse sat in the trap, who looked like one

from the night before. David painted its left front ankle blue.

Tuesday night it was in the corn trap again. Despite the triple-

reverse spin he had given it, it had found the way back to their

home. An amazing mouse, so he named it Moses.

Tuesday night he carried Moses up the hill and deep into Egypt,

up to Val Tollefson's backyard. Wednesday morning Moses

was back in. the bucket. That afternoon David carried him

over the -hill and into the Tolleruds' cornfield. The mouse lay

quietly in his mitten, and David thought about killing him.

Maybe a sacrifice would set them free. Kill the mouse and go

back to a toasty-warm house with happy feverless children and

a lovely happy wife, a wonderful Lutheran family with no fleas.

Kill the mouse. He set Moses down in the snow and it ran and

sat and looked at him.

Thursday the mouse came back. David carried him to the lake,

out on the ice, halfway to the fish houses. He said, "Moses, I'm

going to miss you. But how can I until you go away? Now go

in peace." He dropped him, and Moses put his head up and

sniffed and sniffed, and that night he was back at the

parsonage, like there was a star overhead. Thursday night was

prayer meeting but they didn't go: the house was sixty-two

degrees, the kids 103, Judy had been boiling sheets and.

blankets, the kitchen reeked of disinfectant, supper was

cornflakes, in a bowl, and he noticed the big suitcase by the

door. Was it theirs or hers?

After supper he put on his jacket and picked up Moses and

carried him out across the lake toward the fish houses. "This is

our last trip," he said. "If you come back again, I guess we'll -

have to take you in." The moon shone and

smoke curled up from the little shacks. "What if I go through

the ice?" he thought. "Carrying a mouse to freedom, I lose my

life." The thought made him slip, then he caught his balance.

He walked out to Berge's shack. "Here," he said, "you two will

like each other," and set Moses down, and the mouse was

dead. It lay on the ice, a little piece of gray fur. When he

slipped, he must have squeezed his hand and broken its neck.

One slip. Tomorrow the mouse would've' come back and

they'd've kept it there in the land of Canaan. Moses almost

made it.

He ran home and called Judy's mother, Clarice. "Come now, "

he said, "we're going. " How? Judy asked. "Now, " he said.-

Tonight? "If we wait until tomorrow it'll be that much easier to

wait until next year." Clarice came in, took off her coat, and

told them not to worry. They picked up the suitcase and drove

to Minneapolis, slept in a cheap motel on a truck route near the

airport, woke up on a gray day, and at scven-forty-five they sat

in row 24, seats E and F, in a beige tube full of people that

suddenly vibrated and rumbled and tilted up and they rose.

Clouds flew past the window, and then a brilliant blue sky.

Sunday will be Lay Sunday at Lake Wobegon Lutheran

Church, Clarence will be in, the pulpit. The, Ingqvists arc at

Chateau Suzanne, in the sunshine, listening to birds cry: moRE.

But that's all there is.

WHERE DID

IT GO WRONG?

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

The strange weather continues, the warm winter with no

snow, the famous winter of  1987-we'll be talking about this

twenty years from now: "Ja, that winter of 1988, boy that

was an odd one." "Nineteen eighty-seven, Grandpa. We read

about that. Nineteen eighty-seven." "Shuddup. I was there, I

seen it, 1988. No snow, it was warm, and we were 'all sick

from January to March. It almost killed us."

A lot of people have been sick in Lake Wobegon, and it could

be due to the weather. Norway is a seafaring country and if

you have Norwegian blood you're happier and you operate

best when you're cold, wet, and sick to your stomach. Misery

is what keeps a Norwegian going, and in warm sunny weather

such as we've had, they get sick and go to pieces and get a

case of Swedish flu caused by weakness on account of a lack

of suffering. (Swedish flu is like Asian flu but in addition you

feel like it's your fault.)

The Leonards lost three of their starting five to the flu, and

eight of the top ten, all of them sick, which is how they

normally feel right before a game: weak, feverish with

cold chills, nauseous, achy-these boys felt that bad on Sunday,

so on Tuesday, against Freeport, Dutch's starting lineup

included boys who joined the, team expecting they would

never have to play. Tall shy boys who had come to feel

comfortable on the bench, whispering, kidding around, making

fun of the poor saps out on the floor: the team satirists-

Tuesday, there they were, warming up, passing the ball

gingerly around the circle, trying not to drop it, trying to look as

dignified as possible under the circumstances, with Freeport

kids yelling humorous things at them, knowing the game was

not, theirs -to win.

"These are my formative years," thinks a, boy in this situation,

"and tonight will help shape the rest of my life. I'll become a

hopeless derelict to begin with and sell secrets to the Russians

and fire a gun into a crowd and turn to cannibalism. After that,

who knows?"

You start out with thoughts like those in warmup, and game

conditions don't make you feel better. The Leonards got

greased, 63-34; they were baked forty-eight minutes at four

hundred degrees and were had for lunch.

On the long way home, they came down sick with the flu, a

busload of nauseous Leonards and their fainthearted fans on

an overheated bus with bad suspension swaying back and

forth barreling sixty-five mph down that bumpy old tar road

and the railroad tracks up ahead-they knew when they

bounced up something wouldn't come downand just. before

they hit, a satirist yelled, TRAIN COMING!

A wave of cold terror! The brakes screeched, they crashed

forward into the seat ahead, the bus banged over the tracks,

they bounced in the air, and then they rode along quietly for

about twenty seconds, not moving, praying: Lord, please do

not let this happen to me, what is going to happen right now-

this is what comes from having a warm winter.

Harold and Marlys Diener were sick in bed; so was their dog,

but not as sick as them. They lay side by side with

headaches, fever, vomiting, diarrhea: a whole new dimension to

their marriage. Ordinarily one person is sick and the other one

is the kind, sympathetic, helpful, Christian person, but with.

both. of you down in bed, you just lie there and look at each

other with mounting disgust, your true love looking as awful as

you feel, romance receding into the dim corners of memory,

and your stomach sinks. And then it rises.

They, lay in the tangled swamp of flu for a day and a half.

Marlys's mother came and helped, and then she was sick, so

Marlys dragged herself out to make breakfast for the kids and

got them off to school, and then she lost track .of time. She lost

track of school,'of society, and the idea .of parenthood, and

went away into the depths of flu, where a person ceases to be

an American, where you join the ancient tribe of hairy

lowbrowed people who, hunker around a cold fire and chew on

rancid elk and moan to each other in a dry white tongue:

huhnnnn, hwihhhhhhh-qwertyuiop.

She lay in the twisted bedclothes, dozing off, waking up,

sweaty, weak, dreaming short fast horrible dreams about

falling and falling through the air and turning around and

around, jumping out of bed and running to the toilet, back to

bed, sleep, boys jump on you and hit you in the stomach, up out

of bed, run, run....

Later, not sure what time it was, she got up and went to the

kitchen. It was dark outside but this is February in Minnesota:

darkness is normal. She snapped on the kitchen light-and

turned it off. A mess like that, you don't want to see when

you're sick. It looked like the cupboards had blown up. It

looked like the fall of Rome. Then she heard a hissing sound

from the living room, like a gas leak but worse ---

ssssssssssssss---like that scene in It Came Up the River about

mutant eelpout changed by radioactive wastes from the

power plant into immense slithering damp carnivorous

monsters who invade Metroville one Friday night, this was the

sound the eelpout made from their immense wicked

mouths full of lurid bluish radioactive light as they slithered

along. Ssssssssss. The living room was dark except for the

TV. The screen was blank, the sound was turned up high,

ssssssssss, and there on the floor, in a mess of blankets and

empty pop cans and cereal boxes, lay her three kids asleep,

their mouths open, their lips crusted with sugar. A living

nightmare of What Happens When a Family Falls Apart.

She said, "Up! Come on! Everybody tip and brush your teeth

and in your pajamas and into bed!" That one sentence

exhausted her. She staggered away to bed, and awoke again,

and it was light, sun streaming in, and extremely cold. The

front door was open, the living room was a shambles, and. she

heard dogs in the kitchen eating the remains of the sausage

pizza the kids had made for their breakfast. This is the price

we pay for a warm winter.

Father Wilmer -was down with the municipal virus, so Father

Emil, the poor sick old man, did the honors on Ash Wednesday

at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. To observe this holy

day the same week as half the town has the Swedish flu is to

be in a state of redundant contrition, one would think, but

Father Emil got out of bed and did his duty. As the faithful

shuffled up the aisle to the altar, he dipped his thumb in the

bowl of ashes and put the black smudge on their forehead and

said the words God said when He threw our parents out of

paradise, "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return."

Adam and Eve evidently weren't from around here because

the Bible says they went naked and we know that's not right.

But they were from a place that was similar to this, except

warm all the time, like a shopping mall.

They had everything their hearts could desire and all of it

exactly perfect, shining, beautiful, and new, but of course they

didn't realize it at the time because they had nothing to

compare it to. They didn't know what misery

and grief and pain were like, they were a couple of wahoos in

birthday suits, perfectly happy, but they didn't have two minutes

of education- between them. So when God made one rule and

said, "Don't get on that bus," they had no reason to get on it, but

when the bus came, they had no reason to stay.

It was a long. silver bus with a shiny apple on the side that said

Minneapolis, driven by a rather handsome snake, his brown hair

slicked back, wearing a little snake mustache and a brand-new

suit. He glanced at them with a gleam in his eyes and said,

"Minneapolis. Step right up. Bright lights, smart sophisticated

people, artists. You're gonna love it. Yethir, yethir. Board."

They had no reason not, to get on the bus, except that God had

told them not to 90, but what did that mean? Adam and Eve

didn't understand No. Paradise was the land of Yes, there was

no negative around there anywhere.

So Adam looked at Eve with her naturally curly. hair, and she

looked at him in his green feed cap that said "Let there be

light," and he said, "Well, I donno.''

She didn't know either. Serpent said, "Hurry hurry hurry hurry.

Step right up. And -put those adult tickets aside, everybody

comes in on the children's price of admission. Free, folks., it's

absolutely free."

Well, they were children to begin with. She said, "You want, to

eat that apple?"

"Well, not particularly, but I suppose I could. It's up to you."

She said, "Well, if you dont want to, that's all right," and he said,

"I'm not saying I wouldn't, it's not important to me either way,"

and she said, ."Same here. I could go or not, either one is fine,"

and he said, "Well, as -long as you want to go, then I'll come

too, I don't want to spoil your good time, I'd never hear the end

of it," and she said, "Well, it's up to you, but that's fine, I'll go. "

And they

went. And it was a one-way trip. How you gonna get them

back to paradise once they've been to Southdale?

Darlene went to Minneapolis to find her destiny and to find her

husband Arlen so she could divorce him. They were married in

1971 and he left home in 1976 for the Bicentennial, so she had

him for five years and was without him for ten. The decade

seemed better to her, lonesome but cheerful. For a long time,

however, Darlene wondered. All the years she waitressed at

the Chatterbox, sitting drinking coffee and smoking Alpine

cigarettes-for the coupons, 'because the more you smoke you

can get nice things like TV trays or a clock radio and if you got

one already you could give one to your mom. She wondered

where did it go wrong and how was it that she and Arlen lost

the happy feeling they started out their marriage with.

It might've been when she served him the Szechuan chicken.

She'd never made it before, but he was tired of what she'd

been making, so she tried a new recipe and bought some

unknown spices and used more garlic in one day than she'd

used in six years. These two innocent people raised on the

ambrosia of cream-of-mushroom soup and the many hotdishes

derived therefrom such as tuna hotdish, the world's most

comforting food, sat down and ate the Szechuan chicken, all of

it. It tasted bad but they didn't want to admit it and they were

brought up to clean their plates, and afterward they lay down

and moaned. Nothing seemed the same after that.

It might've been when Arlen came in the bathroom (as a joke)

when she was taking a shower, scrubbing, and singing to

herself "How Great Thou Art." She had a feeling that someone

was watching her and she looked up and screamed-it was their

golden retriever, Rex, looking over the curtain bar. Arlen was

holding him up, Rex's big brown eyes full of prurient interest

peering down at her bare

breasts. Afterward they laughed about it, but weeks went by,

and every time Rex looked at her, she still felt ashamed. He

looked at her through half-closed eyes, leering. "I know you,"

he seemed to say. She'd be vacuuming and turn and there he

was, staring at her. Wake up and he was by the bed. Come out

of the bathroom, he waited in the hall: "Hello, baby," he seemed

to say. One night she woke up and the bed was shaking, it was

Rex trying to climb in. 'No," she said, "NO NO NO." She made

Arlen give him away to Arlen's hunting buddy, Jerry, but then,

when she saw Jerry, she noticed a look in his eye, like Rex had

told him. He said, "Hi, Darlene," looking straight through her

blouse. Then one morning she saw it in Arlen's eyes, a strange

look. She thought, "Please don't, honey, please," but you can't

very well tell someone not to look at you that way; they can't

change how they look.

POST OFFICE.

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

The first snow fell Monday and it turned cold. It got so

cold Tuesday and Wednesday, you actually saw boys

wearing scarves outdoors. The cold snap came on fast.

Bud had been meaning to put antifreeze in the pickup-

it was his firm intention, and he even mentioned it to Eloise

one day-and the next morning the truck was frozen up

and Bud was mortified. He couldn't even eat breakfast.

She said, "For heaven's sake,. what's wrong with you?" He

said, "Radiator cracked on the truck, and now I got to

spend a day putting in a new one." He couldn't even admit

the truth to his own wife.

As the municipal maintenance man, Bud has a reputation for

competence and foresight, the man Mayor Clint Bunsen calls

first for any mechanical problem. He wasn't about to take his

frozen truck to Bunsen Motors and become Clint's joke of the

week, so he borrowed Carl Krebsbach's pickup and drove to

Little Falls for a new radiator. But first he had to call Clint and

say he was going. He had to think of an excuse. "I need to go

to Little Falls to . . . " To what? What could he say he was

going to

Little Falls to get so that Clint wouldn't say, "Oh we got that

right here. What size you need?" Had to think of something too

odd for Lake Wobegon to stock but not too odd for Little Falls,

a town of seventy-two hundred. A trailer hitch. Or tin snips. A

piston  for his lawnmower. Or a chamfer bit. He'd heard of

that somewhere; "chamfer bit" sounded good. Like something

you ought to know, so Clint wouldn't say, "What's a chamfer

bit?" He'd say, "Oh. Yes. We used to have those but we don't

anymore." Unless Bud had the name wrong. Maybe it was a

chandler bit. And Clint'd correct him: "You mean a chandler

bit." And every time they consulted him on mechanical -

problems, Clint'd remember and say, "Well, a chamfer bit might

do the trick," and laugh and slap his knee, and everybody would

start chortling and wheezing. Chamfer bit! Bud was nervous,

and when he got Clint on the phone, he said, "I got to go over

to Little Falls to get me some work gloves." "Okay," said Clint,

"see you later." Bud said, "They're not just ordinary gloves.

They're a special kind." "Okay'. Clint said, "that's fine."

"Somebody told me about these," said Bud, "so I thought I'd run

over 'and see if they got them there. Nobody has them here. I

checked. " "All right, then," said Clint, "we'll catch you later."

As Bud was pulling away, Carl came running out and said, "If

you go by an auto-parts store, see if they don't have a radiator

hose, I froze up my car the other night, forgot to put the

antifreeze in." Okay, Bud said, I'll do that.

Carl knows, there's not much privacy in a small town.

You know so much about other people, and you have to

figure they know at least as much about you. What they

surmise about you from what they know is, of course, a

matter of conjecture.

It was cold. Not historic heroic cold, just plain everyday cold,

not even worth complaining about, a fact of life like the flat

terrain, though some people complain about that.

It's flat out there," they say, "darned flat. It's a lot of sky to

have to keep track of."' The furnace broke down at the

Herald-Star, just when Harold's wisdom tooth was on the fritz

and he had it pulled Tuesday. He sprained his ankle at the

dentist's when he hooked his foot around the chair, hanging on

while the tooth came out. He almost pulled his foot off. When

he hobbled to the Chatterbox for a cup of soup, Carl said,

"That tooth had a long root, didn't it?" He heard the same joke

from others. That night the furnace stopped, two water pipes

froze, and the toilet burst, causing a short so the lights wouldn't

go on. Harold's blessings were running in the red. He reached

for the bottle of Old Overcoat whiskey in the desk and the

bottle was empty. Someone had finished it, perhaps himself.

He threw it into the wastebasket, or meant to, but had gotten

turned around in the dark and threw it through the door instead.

Glass shattered on the sidewalk. Water was frozen on the

floor, and he slipped and fell on the glass. Some people thought

he must be drunk but he only wished he was.

It was cold, and at the Lutheran parsonage Judy Ingqvist said

to her husband, Pastor Dave, "This year we've got to try to

make the Annual Ministers' Retreat in Florida this January. We

really need to. Three years in a row now we have cheated

ourselves out of it, and we could use a break."

"It's not in Florida this time," he said, "it's in the British West

Indies, I think. They sent a brochure on it. Let me go find it."

Off he went, and then from the dining room: "Honey, did

somebody fool with this thermostat? It's sixtytwo degrees in

here."

"What's the thermostat set at?" she said.

"Seventy-five.

"Aha!" she said. "Try turning it to fifty-five. Slowly. Then up to

ninety. Then off. Wait fifteen seconds and put it up to seventy.

That worked last year a couple times. "

For months the building committee has discussed the

parsonage furnace, an old coal burner converted to oil that

some think needs replacing and others say has a lot of use left

in it. Finally, on Monday, the committee traipsed through the

kitchen down to the cellar on a fact-finding trip and stood

meditating in front of the ancient blackened hulk in the comer

and its tangle of pipes. "It sure runs quiet," said Elmer. "I don't

think it's on,-" said Clarence. He.glanced at the laundry rack

where the minister's wet shorts hung and his wife's brassieres

and pantyhose.

"It seems to work fine except that it doesn't give heat," David

said. He squeezed past Elmer and stood a few feet from Val, in

front of the laundry rack. "It seems to be discouraged by cold

weather. Any sudden drop of temperature and it feels like the

furnace figures 'What's the use?' It feels doomed to failure. So

it quits."

He stood, hands in his jacket pockets, as the men studied the

prehistoric furnace, and Judy noticed that he was shielding the

laundry rack and her wet underwear-what a lovely modest man-

his hands in his jacket pockets so as to spread. himself wider to

protect her private clothing.

"I don't know," said Val, "my cousin in Canby has one almost

exactly like it, he says it's the best he ever had. I just wonder if

it isn't a problem up here in the hot-air vents.... And he slipped

around back of the laundry rack, peering up into the joists, the

minister keeping an eye on him. "But I suppose we could

replace it if it comes to that. We could take it out of Foreign

Missions-we got nine hundred dollars in the disaster relief fund

that we earmarked for Laotian refugee camps and I'd hate not

to send it to them, with things down there being what they are,

but--I suppose.",

He circled the laundry rack, and Dave turned and tried to slide

the underwear together, and one pale-pink lacy brassiere fell to

the floor. The men all glanced down at it. It was pink because

it'd been washed in a batch of red -things, but Judy didn't

explain that to them. Dave picked

it up and dropped it in the laundry tub, a big pink fish. Tears

came to her eyes: taking money away from refugees to buy a

new furnace and the minister's wife wearing fancy pink

lingerie, they'd never get to go to Florida in January, not now.

In the post office, due to the lack of a fifty-nine-cent part for

the gas jet in the stove, it was too cold to sort mail. Mr. Bauser

dumped the morning sackful on the table and put up a sign, DUE

TO NO HEAT, MAIL IS OUT OF ORDER HELP YOURSELF, and people

wandered in all morning and rummaged around for their own.

"I ordered that part six weeks ago from way over in South

Dakota, they coulda sent it by congressional committee, it

woulda got here by now," Mr. Bauser said, but we didn't mind.

It was interesting looking at the mail. To know that Irene

Bunsen subscribes to Northern Spy magazine with its big

black headlines, FLESH-EATING FLAMINGO

FOUND IN FLORIDA, NEST SURROUNDED BY EMPTY BABY SHOES.

450-LB. WOMAN MARRIES 78-LB. MAN. GRANDPA, 89, TAKES

NITRO PILL AND EXPLODES AT DINING ROOM TABLE AS WHOLE

FAMILY LOOKS ON IN HORROR. Irene has been leading the

discussion of Ephesians in Women's Circle. WISCONSIN MAN

PREGNANT WITH FIRST CHILD. You don't find that in Ephesians,

do you.

Mr. Berge had a big creamy envelope from an attorney firm in

Houston, their name in black raised letters. What could that be?

A legacy from an old rich aunt who died thinking of him as a

sweet boy, that grizzled old souse, and here was a check for

twenty-five thousand dollars? He was in Texas once, wasn't

he, in the Army during the war-didn't he go through basic

training there? You don't suppose he committed a crime?

Maybe he did and was in prison when we thought he was in the

Army, and now time has passed and public outrage has cooled.

He is applying for a pardon from that heinous crime, hiring a

smooth Houston lawyer to expunge the horrible words

from his record. Do you think? Naw. He couldn't afford a

lawyer with stationery like this. Of course, sometimes a court

will appoint you one. What do you suppose he did back then?

1 don't know about this stove," Mr. Bauser said. "Do you

know, I bought this brand-new two years ago from a guy from.

Rapid City; he was driving a late-model van and he had blue

aviator glasses and a sheepskin jacket and cowboy boots, and

he give me a five-year warranty on it, ,parts and labor, and

now when I write him a letter there's no answer; I don't know,

I don't know.... You care -for some coffee?" He reached over

to his electric hot plate and touched the teakettle--"I got hot

water right here"-and ,the rest of us who were looking at Mr.

Berge's envelope glanced at the teakettle. Steam curled up

from its tin spout.

What sort of crime might he have done in Texas? Now a slick

lawyer in a three-piece blue pinstripe suit will get him

pardoned by a rich liberal judge who lives in a mansion and lets

murderers and rapists go free. If Mr. Berge bludgeoned

someone to death on a three-day weekend pass on a Texas

back road in 1942, don't we have a moral obligation to our

community and our children to steam this envelope and find

out? Of course it would be wrong, but if by opening the

envelope we could save a life, then shouldn't we? If we think

something might be wrong, if there's a suspicion and someone

seems to have a tendency?

"I tell you, I start to miss that old woodstove we useta have.

That Was good heat, wood heat-a real warm heat, not drafty

heat." And he pulled up his parka and rummaged in the

postage drawer for instant coffee. We looked at the teakettle

boiling on the hot plate. It seems like it's sat there since I can

remember, but I don't recall Mr. Bauser drinking coffee or tea.

And yet for years and years he's had water boiling on the back

shelf next to where he sorts the mail.

I walked over and helped myself to a clean Styrofoam

cup, put a little Sanka in it, and poured, hot water in. I tried to

catch Mr. Bauser's eye. I wanted to look him in the eye and

silently ask him if he ever read my mail, and by the look in his

eye, as I thought it, I'd know if he's guilty or not, the old -son of

a bitch. I wrote about 187 love letters a year ago, and if I

thought the old snoop had steamed the flaps open, reading my

words to that lovely woman-words I wrote to her, thinking only

of her, fir away, the beautiful her-should I have been thinking

of him, old man with hair in his nose and little red eyes darting

across the page, reading my mind, stealing my life ...

Each person knows how much privacy you need, and you can't

accept less, not even in a small town. If you drop by Bud's

garage and say, "You putting in a new radiator  What's

wrong?" and he says, "A rock came up and knocked a hole in

the bottom," you should accept that. When people watch us too

closely, it turns us into an actor and kills us, because, frankly,

most of us aren't good at acting. I forgave Mr. Berge "for the

murder he committed. Maybe it was someone who read his

mail and he stabbed them with a letter opener.

a goddamn fish. just cause you're underwater doesn't make

you a Baptist.") Long after they disappeared, he still yelled

things their way, which only time can tell if it comes true or

not.

While the motor home was still parked by the Knutes' temple,

consumed by a cloud of exhaust, a shiny old black Cadillac

with a silver-angel hood ornament slid up to the curb in front of

the rectory next door to Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility

school at the end of morning recess, when the herd was just

lining up at the front door before they went up the chute. When

they spotted the car, most of the livestock broke loose and

galloped over to have a look. Sister Arvonne said, "Hey!

Inside!" A tall horse-faced man in a black coat and hat slid out

the back door and stood up. He said, "Good morning, Sister,"

and went straight into the rectory. There was a faint smell of

cologne and his heels clicked on the sidewalk, then he

disappeared. The driver sat in the car with the motor running

for half an hour, halfway through algebra. Kids working

problems at the blackboard stared down at it. "Keep your mind

on your business, "said Sister Arvonne, "and I'll let you know if

anything happens worth looking at. 19

What she knew was that, after forty-four years, Father Emil

had asked to be relieved of his duties at Our Lady, but she

didn't know who the gentleman in black was. Our Lady is a

mission church of the Order of Saint Benedict, founded in 1858

to minister to the Indians and then to the German immigrants

who were following a map drawn by a Father Schlafmeister,

who placed Minnesota several hundred miles farther west than

it actually was. When the settlers arrived, they had the feeling

they, weren't quite there yet, that the mundane fact of longitude

had stopped them short of their dream of Minnesota that it was

out where Montana is, and they lost touch with their home base

in Pennsylvania. Our Lady has always been under

the jurisdiction of the Abbey of Saint Frederic, outside of

Scranton, but when Father Emil submitted his resignation, it

panicked the Abbot, who had been in office for only eleven

years and didn't know he had a mission church loose in

Minnesota, rolling around the deck. Father tended not to ask his

superiors for much guidance and the file on Our Lady was thin.

The Abbot worried that it was one of those crackpot Catholic

Second Coming churches with ammo boxes in the basement

and the Knights of Columbus in masks, so he got on the horn to

Minnesota, to the Bishop of Brainerd, and said, "If you want it,

you can have it." That was the tall man in the black coat,

Bishop Dennis O'Bleness of Brainerd. He sat in Father's parlor

and balanced a cup of Sanka on his knee and listened to Emil's

rocker creak and tried to see the old man's face.

Father likes to put his chair so the morning sun comes over his

shoulder. The sun lit up the Bishop while Father sat there like

the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The younger man tried to

slide his chair southward into the shadows. "Light bother you? I

can pull the shade. just takes a minute, with these knees the

way they are-"

"'No, that's fine. So. You feel you can't continue-"

"Don't feel. Know. I knew I'd know it when the time, came,

and now it's, come."

"How old would you be now?"

"Seventy-two."

"And what sort of timetable are we looking at here?"

"I would like the privilege of celebrating Easter Mass. I would -

like to leave on Monday, March 31. "

"And what are your plans at that point, Father?"

"My plan is that you will -take care of me, for the rest of my

life."

.Well, I would hope that the Abbey, would make some

arrangements for you. . . ."

"Whatever. I'll just pack my bag and sit on it and wait for

somebody to come."

He still hadn't got a good look at Father. First the hallway was

dark and now the sun was in his eyes. He wasn't sure this was

on the up and up. Lake Wobegon: had he ever driven through

here before? It was, on the border between Brainerd Diocese

and Saint Cloud and, frankly, he couldn't recall discussing with

Bishop Reitz whose parish it should be. It was no prize,

obviously. A strange town, one that would take a special sort of

priest, a man who perhaps couldn't fit in at another parish, a

square peg, who would find his voice, his vocation.... Well, he'd

been giving Father Wilfred some careful thought recently. Poor

old Wilfred. Maybe he could find peace in Lake Wobegon.

Maybe the Lord had created this vacancy especially to give

Father Wilfred a place in the world.

A strange town, the Bishop thought. On the sidewalk outside, a

man came up and spoke to him urgently about rider mowers..

The old priest with the light over his shoulder: could he have

been a ghost? And now this old man ahead on the road-a

hitchhiker, but he was standing in the middle of the road,

waving his arms-Brother Curt had to veer to the left, almost off

the road, to avoid him. They sped away and the Bishop looked

back as the man threw something at them, hitting the rear

window. The Bishop ducked. ("Catholics are the worst, the.

bottom of the barrel. A few days ago , . .") The glass didn't

break, the object wasn't hard. In fact, it stuck to the window. A

few miles farther, Curt stopped and scraped it off, but it

wouldn't come off, it spread around.

He thought that Father Wilfred might be just the ticket.

HAWAII

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It got very quiet when all that snow fell and the weather turned

cloudy and cold. A gray sky the color of a tin roof Then, when

they found out I was coming here. to Hawaii, things got even

quieter than that. Bitterness and envy are never nice to see,

especially among Christian people who used to tell me, "Be

content with what you have, dearwe should all feel fortunate to

have food on the table and a roof over our heads," assuming

that someone who tells lies like I do, would never prosper. But

here I am, cruising up and down Prince Kuhio Avenue in a

clean shirt and a pair of shades, at the wheel of an '87 Mirage

with unlimited mileage.

I believe I am the first person from Lake Wobegon to make

the trip here, though Hjalmar and Virginia Ingqvist were going

to come four years ago with their grandson Stanley. I know it

was four years ago, because he was fourteen then and he's

eighteen now. Almost eighteen, anyway. He'll be eighteen in a

month or two.

They picked -him tip in Fergus Falls and drove to Fargo and got

on an Elks charter flight to Hawaii via Los Angeles.

Over South Dakota, Hjalmar had a glass of complimentary pink

champagne and began to hum to, himself. He patted Shirley the

stewardess's hand as she poured him a refill. He carried it with

him, strolling up and down the aisle, saying "Call me Hjalmar,"

gladhanding strangers like he was in public office. Stanley was

deeply embarrassed. He shrank down in his seat. Shirley

offered another glass. Hjalmar said, "Well, you're the doctor."

Arrived in Los Angeles in a mood to entertain, pranced down

the concourse singing, "Honolulu Mama, could she dance, in

her pink pajamas when she took off her- Oahu! Oahu! Oahu!"

Virginia laughed and laughed. Stanley walked twenty

feet behind, as far away as he could get and not be afraid

of losing them completely. The poor child was so dis-

tracted by grief and shame and worry, he didn't - see where

he was going and he tumbled down a flight of stairs, hold-

ing on to his suitcase, and broke his leg. They came home

with nothing to show for it but a souvenir hula doll; you

poke her top, she wiggles her bottom. Hjalmar hasn't

touched pink champagne since.

Daryl and Marilyn Tollerud were thinking about coming to

Hawaii three years ago; their pig operation had done well and

they had money in the bank. But then Daryl thought, "No." He

said, "Rather than going this year"after they'd gotten the

brochures-"what we'll do is invest that money in building up the

herd, get more feeder pigs, and next winter we'll go and take

your parents too." So they did. It was in January, he went out

one morning and twenty-four pigs had died of a virus. They

were lying on their backs in the sun with their little legs stuck

straight up in the air. Next morning there were forty-two more

dead, and about sixty-eight died about two days after that. And

that was their trip to Hawaii.

In February 1957 twelve men from Lake Wobegon Lutheran

were going to come to Honolulu for the National Church

Ushers Convention, including the finals of the

Ushers Team Competition. The guys had raised thousands of

dollars for the trip and had been drilling for two nights a week

for six months, practicing their silent usher signals,

a complicated set of hand and eyebrow signals like this: cupped

hands (it means "need additional hymnal in this pew"), or

crossed arms and kicking motion ("remove this child"), or

fluttering fingers with arms akimbo ("heed a new collection

plate, this one is too full"), a signal seldom

used in church but popular at contests.

Nowadays many ushers use walkie-talkies, especially in big

churches, where they're called Sanctuary Security and can be

heard during the service, lurking behind pillars and back in the

vestibule, beeping each other, talking walkie

talkie talk: "Avenging Angel, this is Deadly Shepherd, we are

proceeding now into recessional sequence, ETA, on the benny

is 1259:30." But back in 1957 they used silent signals

and a team of twelve: a head usher, the front four,, five

linebackers, and two deep safeties. They knew the service

forward and backward, they could run it in their sleep and

often did. That's  when they used their only nonsilent. signal,

when they looked and saw a buddy resting his eyes and listing

to starboard: the sinus toot, braaaghhhh, the

usher's wake-up call.

The local squad that wa's coming to Hawaii in. 1957,

nicknamed the Herdsmen, was headed by Val Tollefson. He

wasn't elected-he just happened to be the one who

made up the lineup every Sunday, so he got to decide between

Cliff Peterson and Cully Kolstad for the twelfth spot on the

traveling squad, a tough call that Val made at Wednesday-night

practice: Cliff got the nod, All the Herdsmen were standing in

the vestibule, buttoning their overcoats and buckling their

overshoes. Clarence said, "What? Why Cliff?" Val put on his

hat, pretending not to hear him. Everyone was a little

embarrassed. "Why did you decide that?"

"It's seniority, Clarence. Cliff's been with us longer."

"No, he hasn't. Cully's been an usher since '46, and Cliff didn't

even move here until after that."

I Val took a long, slow, deep breath to give himself time to think.

Clarence was right. He slowly let his breath out. "It's -not just

seniority, Clarence. Of course it's not. Seniority is just one

thing. It's also dedication and teamwork, how a man gets along

with other people on the team."

"You can't just pick people you like! It's not right!"

Val -put on his gloves. "Well, you know, Clarence, we wouldn't

be arguing about this if you hadn't brought it up in the first

place." He looked around at the other Herdsmen, and they

glanced down at their feet. Val said, "If you want me to step

down as head usher, then just, say so right now and I will."

He let a few seconds pass. "All right, then."

A silent election. Not as good as guys hoisting you on their

shoulders and carrying you around the room, but it meant he

was reelected for another three or six or ten or twenty years,

until whenever somebody dared to stand up to him again. Cliff

got to go on the traveling team instead of Cully, and Cliff got an

official Herdsmen's insignia sewn on his suit jacket-the

shepherd's staff against a field of blue, blue standing for

obedience. As the Lord would have said in the Sermon on the

Mount if He had had time, "Blessed are those who arrive early,

wait to be seated, and sit where they are told." The ushers at

that service would've been called Mounties, and they'd have

passed out bulletins ("Peter and Andrew went fishing last week

and caught so many that their nets almost broke-way to go,

guys!") in addition to loaf and fish distribution.

Cliff got on the team to come to Hawaii for the finals, but

people had bad feelings about Cully's not coming. Several guys

said, "Cully, you take my place, I don't even care about Hawaii,

I dont want to go," but Cully said, "No, I feel that the Lord

made this happen as a way of testing my faith and drawing me

closer to Him." They

voted to take thirteen guys, twelve regulars and an alternate,

but Cully said, no, he felt that his faith had been strengthened

so much in just a few days, and he was learning about how if

you turn the other cheek it actually makes you a stronger

person and the Lord comes in and takes away your bitterness

and replaces it with love. At that point, morale was so low, the

Herdsmen couldn't have organized a two-car parade. They

went to Minneapolis for the semifinals and stumbled around in

Central Lutheran, a big strange sanctuary, and never got

adjusted to tripleaisle formation and scored only 82.12 points.

That was as far as they got. No Hawaii for them.

"Wait a minute," you say. "The Herdsmen were paying their

own way. They could've gone to Hawaii whether they got into

the ushers competition or not, couldn't they?" No, they could

not.

This was Minnesota, they were Lutherans, and you didn't just

fly over to Hawaii for your own pleasure because you wanted

to. It wasn't right. You walk in the Chatterbox and say, "Guess

what? We're going to Hawaii!" and someone'd say, "Oh. Say,

that's great. Sure wish I could afford to go on a trip like that.

That must be nice, being able to take off and go like that." And

guilt begins to fall like a gentle rain of rabbit pellets on your

head. You shouldn't go and you know it. The extravagance of

it. The money you're spending having a good time, while people

you love are home, suffering, needing you. How can you do it,

you selfish pig? You can't.

Only way you can go to Hawaii is if you can say, "Well, it

looks like we're going to go to Hawaii after all. Yeah, I wasn't

going to go, but she's got her heart set on it, soyou know. Yeah,

her sister and brother-in-law-Annette and Warren? Remember

them? The one who had the chemotherapy and lost all his hair.

They're going and they got this package deal on a tour where

they needed another couple to go in on it with them, so-you

know."

You've got to have a good reason to go to Hawaii. "Yeah, well,

we're going to see my aunt on Maui. She's going to be in a

hotel there. She doesn't live on Maui, she lives in Cleveland, but

she's there visiting friends of hers and we figured that, as long

as we're going to Portland for the funeral, we might as well go

over." And as you explain the web of circumstance that forces

you to visit that tropical land of romance and delight, people

nod, they understand: "Yeah, well, that's right. God knows you

don't want to go to paradise, but you got to. There's no way out

of it. It's that kind of a deal."

My people aren't paradise people. We've lived in Minnesota all

our lives and it took a lot out of us. My people aren't sure if

we'll even like paradise: not sure that. perfection is all it's

cracked up to be. My people will arrive in heaven and stand

just inside the gate, shuffling around. "It's a lot bigger than I

thought it was going to be," we'll think. We'll say, "No, thank

you, we can't stay for eternity, we'll just sit and have a few

minutes of bliss with you and then we have to get back."

We were brought up to work hard, not complain, accept that

life is hard-, and make the best of what little we have, so when

we come to the grandeur and grace of an eternal flower garden

ringed by mountains beside the pale-blue. coral sea under the

continuous sun, we naturally say, "Oh no thanks, it's too much,

really, I - don't care for it, just give me some ice, please."

When Lake Wobegon Lutheran women walk into heaven,

they'll think it's church and look for the stairs to go down the

basement, where the kitchen is. When the men arrive' they'll

look at the Father's mansions and talk about siding: aluminum

vs. cedar shakes.

My people aren't paradise people, but when God. loves you,

then everywhere is paradise enough. The honeymooners

walking along Waikiki Beach are in love, and yet they are

uneasy in paradise, not sure their love is good

enough for paradise to last. When Daryl and Marilyn saw their

dead Hawaiian pigs on a cold January morning, it was enough

to break their hearts. If two of you pick up sixty-eight little pig

carcasses by their frozen legs and throw them into the pickup

and haul them to a landfill and bury them, and if you don't get

mad and blame each other, just do the job, and go to bed, your

pigs gone and your shirts lost, and turn toward the middle and

lie in each other's arms, that's true love. Probably it will last

because it has endured so much already.

HANS EL

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

It snowed eight inches on Tuesday and if you'd been there and

come, for a walk with us you'd know why people in my town

love stories so much. There was a fine dim light in the air:. the

town was full of moonlight, the old streetlamps glowed, the

houses were lit, light shone up from the snow, the snow on the

trees-it was so absolutely wonderfully shining beautiful, it made

you feel that anything could happen now, just as I felt when my

uncle Lew sat on' the couch and, cleared his throat and said in

his quavery voice, "Well, I believe this was back in 1906, when

I was in high school.

Anything could happen. George Washington could ride down

this snowy street followed by a thousand ragged troops on their

way to the battle of Trenton. Angels could descend, saying

"Fear not" and scaring the wits out of us. Noah could ride along

on an elephant, leading another elephant, and all the other

animals. strung out behind. Maybe it wasn't a flood God sent,

maybe it was winter and they were snowbound, and it wasn't

an ark, it was a barn. Forty days and forty nights would be a

short winter

but ... In Uncle Lew's story, a house burned down on a cold

winter night and the little children inside ran barefoot into the

snow of 1906 -- some were pitched out the bedroom window

by their father-and all were safe. But although I heard the story

dozens of times, whenever he told it again I was never sure

they'd all get out. And since these children grew up to be my

ancestors, I had an interest in their survival.

just so, walking in the mysterious light of a warm snowy winter

night in Lake Wobegon, it's not quite certain what year this is

but it is certain that in this world that we think we know so well,

and in our life that we're always talking about, there is a great

mystery and powerful music playing that we don't hear and

stories full of magic, so many stories that life isn't long enough

to tell them all. This seems clear from the light in the air on a

winter night. A car goes by so quietly on the snowy street; a

little cloud of snow falls when we brush by a tree; our feet

crunch on the snow. In this big white house are the Kruegers,

in their dark living room, watching television, poor things. They

sit in the bluish light and from their faces it's hard to tell if

they're alive or in a persistent vegetative state-maybe it's time

to pull the plug. The Obsergs' house is dark in front, a light is on

in the kitchen. You can just about make out her plate collection

in the dining room, dozens of plates on display on shelves he

built for her, and such beautiful china and majestic black-walnut

furniture, but the four Obergs always eat in the kitchen. Why

have good things you don't use? The next house is Wally and

Evelyn's, who own the Sidetrack Tap, and next is this little

beaten-up blue house with plastic tacked on the windows.

In the front window, you see Kenny fooling around with his

kids in the living room. The room is all torn up, cushions and

clothes scattered around, one kid bouncing on the sofa, three

kids hanging on to him, and Kenny chasing the littlest boy, who

toddles around the dining

room table, his diaper half coming off. He doesn't see that his

dad has reversed directions.- The little boy walks along

laughing and then-looks up-in shock and delight (there is no

joy like that again in life until you have a baby of your own)-he

trembles and squeals and Kenny picks him up. They dance

around and then Kenny lies down on the floor and they crawl

on him; the boy jumping on the sofa climbs UP on the end table

and the lamp almost falls.

The dining-room table is strewn with dirty plates and the dog

stands, paws on the table, reaching for the meat loaf Joanne's

at choir practice.

Kenny is a chubby guy with a mustache and the start of a bald

spot. You can see he loves them and loves it when they hang

on him, and now, just as they're getting a little too wild and tired

and about to break into tears, he collects them in his arms and

they all lie back in a heap in the messy messy living room, and

he will now tell them a story. The dog is licking the meat loaf,

but they don't see. The kids curl up close to their dad lying on

his back, and before he can start the story, everyone has to get

very quiet. Very very quiet-you see how stories have been

useful to parents over the years: the children get quiet.

It's the story of Hansel and Gretel, the little boy and his sister in

the house in the dark forest; their mother is so sick and she

dies and their father is so sad and after a while he comes home

with a new mother.... That's how the story begins.

Kenny lies there with his kids and tells the story, which is

familiar,. and yet it's not easy to tell about the dad who lets his

wife talk him into leaving the kids in the woods to be eaten by

animals. Kenny sometimes forgets a detail but his kids

remember each one' and if the bread crumbs on the path

sparkle like diamonds in the moonlight in one version of the

story, then the next time you can't say they glisten like pearls,

you've got to tell it the same way. You can't disappoint them

but you also have to surprise them,

so each time he'll toss in something new and crazy-maybe the

gingerbread house will have a garage this time, made of

pepperoni pizzas, and the wicked witch will sit drinking coffee

and watching TV-but Kenny has to be careful: next time he

can't say the pizzas were sausage and onion. Stories are

permanent.

As they lie in a heap, and Hansel and Gretel sit in the clearing

and Gretel says, "Don't cry, Hansel, I'll take care of you," and

the dog's big black snout reaches for the gravy bowl, and

Joanne is putting on her coat in the vestibule of the church

after choir practice, on the, end table where the lamp almost

fell lies a letter in  an envelope addressed to Kenny that tells

him that his dad has died. The letter is from his stepmother,

written in ink now smeared from orange pop; it says, "Just in

case Larry doesn't get hold of you, I know that you will be glad

to hear that Doc finally passed away at Good Shepherd early

this morning, it was very peaceful, he just seemed to let go and

take a breath and let that be the last one. I'm too tired to write

much, but I am grateful for 31 years with him and know, it'll be

lonely without him but that is what comes from loving someone,

You miss them when they're not here, and we accept that

when we love another, that sadness and loneliness will be part

of it. What a lovely man. I will write more tomorrow. Love,

Ora."

Doc was born in Lake Wobegon in 1910. He helped his dad

farm and when they lost the farm in 1927 Doc didn't, know

how to quit.: He couldn't give up his horses, so he' hired out as

a farmhand. He got the nickname Doc because he liked books.

He loved the independence of farming. In pictures of him as a

young man, he looks dignified, tall, shy, poor (you can see that

from the clothes), but look in his eyes, he looks like a young

prince. He worked as a farmhand in North Dakota and led a

pretty wild life. He drank a lot and read a lot, played baseball,

stayed out all night, worked all day, and knew some women

whom he

made a big impression on, either because of baseball or by

quoting to them from books and pretending it was his own ("I

wrote you a poem, LaVerne I don't know if it's good or not.

'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit predicaments'

"), and one winter, back _in Lake Wobegon, he met Dorothy

and fell in love. They courted between Thanksgiving and New

Year's and were married the first of February 1944. She was, a

schoolteacher, so he couldn't pretend he wrote that sonnet for

her. She saw through his bragg ing and wildness that other

women had loved him for, and loved him for something, he.

didn't know was lovable, that he was gentle and good and

when he told the truth he told even better stories. But it wasn't

often enough, and after Kenny was born, the third child, in

1950, she told Doc not to come home anymore. He was forty.

He drank too much and did other things. that weren't good for

him, but mostly he just plain worked too hard. He still hired out

as a farmhand, being a good farmer, but the work was

backbreaking. He hurt, his body was so stiff he could hardly

move. He kept going because it was all he knew how to do.

Then he was too old and sick, at fortytwo. He came to Saint

Paul and hung around downtown, walking the streets. He

looked like an old wino but he was simply worked out. He met

Ora, who was a waitress at an all-night diner, and they married

and he got a job as a caretaker in an apartment building. They

got a. tiny basement apartment, where, in 1969, Kenny, who

was nineteen, came to see his dad for the first time in twelve

years. It was for Thanksgiving.

Ora was very sweet to him. She made him Swiss steak and

french fries and asked him fifty questions about himself, but it

wasn't -any use, it was terrible sleeping on a couch in the

basement in a strange city with a dad you don't know at all.

Kenny, felt seven years old, lost, scared. He couldn't bear to

be around his dad, who had left him. He went for walks around

Saint Paul, and one snowy night

like this he glimpsed the tower of Montgomery Ward's on

University Avenue, a Spanish castle above the used-car lots,

and he imagined that a great man lived there who would come

and rescue him, a sweet, generous, handsome, strong, and wise

man named Montgomery Ward. The next day Kenny ran

away from Doc and Ora's little apartment and went home to

Lake Wobegon for Thanksgiving. He saw them the next

summer, but only for supper, and the next winter Kenny

married Joanne.. He loved her so much and was so afraid he'd

be like Doc, unfaithful, he didn't tell her about Doc or invite

Doc to the wedding, but by then Doc was too sick to come. He

had emphysema and a liver problem. The great lover of 1944

was beginning to die, just as his grandchildren were being born.

And now he is dead, finally. Kenny is lying on the floor, five

kids on top of him. Hansel and Gretel have escaped from the

witch. Gretel didn't push her in the oven but just turned up the

volume on the TV set. She and Hansel tiptoed quietly away.

Their father was overjoyed to see them! They brought home

diamonds and emeralds and pepperoni pizzas. And suddenly

there was a tremendous crash and the dog ran down to the

basement.

The gravy boat is broken. Gravy all over the carpet. The table

not cleared, the kitchen a mess. And the living room-cushions

on the floor, papers, dog hair, clothes, pop spilled. And little

children half asleep, their teeth unbrushed, lying in a heap.

Kenny thinks, "Joanne! She'll be home any minute." And he's

right In fact, here she comes down the street from choir

practice, humming "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's

Blessing." In a moment she'll come in the front door and look

at this scene of incredible chaos, but she would get too angry if

she went in now, so the writer is going to send her around the

block. She thinks, "Gosh what a beautiful evening, I'll walk

around the block," and walks past just as Kenny gets up off the

floor and sees her. Go, Kenny, go. C'mon, kids, wake up,

brush your teeth. Pick up the cushions, papers, scoop up

dirty plates, lay paper over the gravy, zoom zoom zoom.

Minutes later she walks in.. "Honey! What in the world

has been going on in here! I can't believe this mess!" But

if she c an't believe it now, she should've seen it two min-

utes ago. I I

They are in love, though, and later, when the kids are asleep

and they go to bed, she says something to him that she said

fifteen years ago when they first knew each other. She says:

"Kenny, you only think about one thing all the time." And he

says, as he said then: "Yeah, 'well-that's so whenever you

think about it, then you'll know there are two of us. "

And after they make love, they lie in their warm winter bed,

their arms around each other, the room full of mysterious light.

Anything can happen.

DU, DU LIEGST

MIR IM HERZEN

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

We didn't make it to the state basketball tournament or even

get close, but there's no point talking about that. All those

years you watch little guys shooting baskets in the driveway

on cold winter afternoons-little guys wearing gloves with the

fingertips cut off, sliding around on the gravel, making set

shots in the dark-and you think, "Someday these little fellas are

going to put our town on the -map," and then they grow up and

they're not quite good enough. They were good with mittens

on, dribbling on gravel and rocks, but a smooth floor and a

heated gym seem to throw off their game.

It snowed on Wednesday, a heavy wet snow, and -all the men

were out to shovel, a sociable job when the snow is heavy and

you need longer rest periods, especially us older guys who are

heading into heart attack country. You shovel ten feet down

the walk and take off your parka and stand and talk to your

neighbor. "This is the heaviest snow this year," he says, "it

makes you think about getting a snow blower." It would be

ridiculous to die from a heart attack shoveling snow.

Clarence's cousin Dan died on his

front sidewalk. He pitched over from a mild heart attack and

died of a concussion when his head hit the clean concrete-

some snow might have saved his life.

It's a couple weeks until the exiles return for Easter, and a

couple weeks until Father Emil leaves town. After fortysome

years at Our Lady, he is retiring and moving south.

People still can't believe that he really is going to leave

them. Friday night there was a dinner dance for Gene and

Lois Pfleidersheidt's golden wedding anniversary, and there

was Father going from card table to card table in Our

Lady's basement, and people thought, "Two weeks and

he'll be gone. I can't bear it.  It's too sad." Except Father

didn't look sad at all. He had a Wendy and soon he was

showing a Pfleiderscheidt grandchild how to play a polka

on an empty beer bottle, blowing across the top to make

the oom-pa-pas. He looked younger than when he was

young, and some people felt hurt to 'see him look so good.

A man who's leaving, you'd think he'd have  the courtesy

to seem confused and pitiful, at least until he gets out of

town. They thought, "'What's wrong with us, that he's so

happy to be going away?"

He told a joke to Gene that made Gene lose his breath and get

dizzy. They thought, "Well, if that's how he feels, maybe we

don't need to give him a going-away party."

He danced a schottische with Lois and her sister Mrs.

Luger, and they danced so hard they almost fell over.

People thought, "You know, there used to be more dignity

in the. priesthood in the old days."            I

It was a wonderful dinner of roast beef, of course, sliced. thick

and piled on the potatoes and all of it swimming in sweet salty

greasy brown gravy. Everyone came, even people who weren't

hungry and who had a small helping but managed to recover

their appetites and have a second and third. The

Pfleiderscheidts' daughters borrowed half the Catholic card

tables in town for the occasion; when you put four big beef

dinners on a little card table and add

eight big elbows, you have a- potential for drama: Gene and his

brothers, Louie, Bernie, and Whitey, were seated at one of the

head card tables, eating in silence, heads down, and gravy

starting to run over the gunwales, and Lois zoomed over and

said, "Don't lean on it so hard, what's the matter witcha, ya got

brains or not."

Gene looked up at her: "What?"

"Getcher elbows off or you're gonna break that table and

everything'll land in your lap."

He started to say, "You can't . . . " Then he got his elbows off.

And his side of the table rose and Whitey's plate slid almost off

but he caught it with only slight spillage.  And the gravy stain

on his pants matched the old stains, so no harm was done.

Gene and Lois Pfleiderscheidt have complained about each

other to everyone else for forty-nine years, eleven months, and

twenty-nine days of their marriage. When she sits down with

her sister for coffee, she says, I could just wring his neck," and

he walks into the Sidetrack Tap and says, "I have just about

had it with that woman. " Over the years they've got hundreds

of hours of free counseling and sympathy from people who

slowly realized that in some mysterious way Gene and Lois

were happy together and their marriage was staying aloft by a

law of physics nobody could understand, so advice was wasted

on them, and meanwhile some of their counselors' marriages

were becoming shaky. Couples who had seemed like a story

out of Catholic Homes and Gardens suddenly got tight-lipped

and spooky; meanwhile, Gene- and Lois sailed on, complaining

to'. anyone who'd listen that they'd made a big mistake thirty,

thirty-five, forty, and now fifty years ago.

Lois was decked out in a red pant suit with black lace up the

legs, a black wig, and bright-red lipstick. Gene had come in

khaki pants, a green-plaid shirt, a string tie with a silver

clasp, and a green nylon jacket that said "Central Seed Corn' on

the back. She said to her daughter Louise,

"Look at your father, he looks like he was going to the grocery

for a quart of milk, he's trying to get a rise out of me, well, he's

got it." He said to his daughter Frances, "Look at her, have you

ever seen anything like it-is that a Catholic mother? She looks

like you could rent her by the dance."

Father Emil no sooner sat down than Lois grabbed him. She

was steaming. She said, "I can't believe it, I could wring his

damn neck. Bay, am I mad. It just bums my bacon. The girls

give him one little dinky job to do, and what does he do, he

makes a mess of it as usual, like. he's done all his life. Jesus

Mary Joseph---' She snatched her granddaughter going by and

said, "Quit that chewing on your hair, Rosemary-don'tcha know

you get hair in your stomach, it gets all balled up, and it'll kill

you? I mean it. Faber?" He was gone. She grabbed her

daughter Katherine: "How could he do this to me?" she said.

Kathy gave her a weak smile.

Gene was supposed to -hire the band, so he got Whitey's

boy Dennis, a drummer, and his band. They play rock

and roll on Friday and Saturday nights, when- they're called

The Desperradoes and Sunday nights they are The Happy

Hooligans and play old-time, but this was Friday night, and the

accordion player, Chuck Weimer, couldn't come so Denny only

had drums and bass and Randy the organist from The,

Desperadoes, who is nineteen and has hair down to his

shoulders. He was just trying to play some chords around the

beat and not move his head too much, because it hurt a lot.

When Lois said, "Excuse me, when are you going to play the

'Blue Skirt Waltz'?" he winced and said, "I don't do requests,

lady. Okay? I'm not into that. I'm a songwriter, you know?"

Dennis hummed the "Blue Skirt Waltz" to him, but Randy

couldn't hear it with his headache so bad-he couldn't even

shake his head. He said very quietly, "I think I need

to be by myself for a little while."            - I

"He's unbelievable. He hires a band that doesn't know the

'Blue Skirt Waltz'! They don't know 'Du, du liegst mir im

herzen.' He might as well have got a phonograph and a couple

of records."

At an anniversary dance, the "Blue Skirt Waltz" is required. It's

a rule, same as if you have coffee, you give people cups.  You

don't serve it in pails or pour it into people's cupped hands but

have actual cups and saucers, spoons, cream, sugar, and some

bars. Or cookies. Or cake. And you slit, and after a while you

say, "Have some more?" and they say, "Oh no I can't, I gotta

run," and you sit and have more. There are rules in Minnesota,

this is a civilization here, we don't just do what we feel like

doingit's not like California, it's a civilized place. You must

dance to the "Blue Skirt Waltz" and sing "Du, du liegst mir im.

herzen" at the Pfleiderscheidts' anniversary dance.

"How can he do this to me?" Lois cried to Father Emil. "I send

him out for bread, he comes back with bricks. How could I

marry someone so damn dumb you'd think he was a Norskie."

She reminds him of Elsie in Maryland, his old pen pal. In .1947,

-Father saw an ad in Collier's for a pen-pal service; he wrote

in and got Elsie's address and wrote to her, seeing if she'd like

to correspond with him. He didn't mention he was a priest,

because. it might inhibit her. Instead he said he had just been

released from Sandstone Prison for burglary. It seemed like a

good act of contrition to be a convicted felon. Elsie wrote back

and said she had discussed it with her husband, Vince, and he

approved, so it was all right. She was interested in hearing

about prison and she was interested in American history and

Wondered if he knew about raising tomatoes. Thus was born

his most wonderful friendship with a woman.

After a few years of letters, Elsie said she and, Vince were

driving to Glacier Park but they wouldn't stop and visit him

because she thought they'd be better pen pals if

they never met. Yes', he wrote, I think you are right. Once he

tested her and said he was thinking about the priesthood as a

possibility, and she said, "Don't do it. I think you were meant to

be a poet, not a priest. You are far too original in your thinking

to ever be part of a system as rigid as the Catholic Church.-'

Father Emil likes Lois. She swears a lot and she's been

smoking too much for far too long, but she does bring drama

wherever she goes. You remember Lois. Father never can

remember her daughters' names. After being Pfleiderscheidts

as girls, they married men named Smith or Gray or White or

Brown, and are pretty and nice, and it's hard to believe they

came from this old lady rollicking around in toreador pants,

smoking Camels, getting angrier and angrier at her fiftieth

anniversary.

Finally a tentative peace is made, thanks to Father Emil, and

Randy is set to play the "Blue Skirt-Waltz," which Denny has

written down the chords to on a paper sack, and everyone is

gathered around for Gene and Lois to dance, but she is still

furious. "I'll never forgive you for this," she says. He is mad

because she's so mad: "Our fiftieth anniversary and what does-

she do? She goes and makes a big stink in front of everybody

and tries to make me look like a goddamn fool!"

"Dance with her. Please, Daddy. Please."

"I ain't going to dance with anyone who's said the things about

me that she has said. I got some pride."

"Mother, please."

"If he thinks I'm gonna apologize to him, he better go get a

chair, because it's going to be a long wait."

"Gene, come on. just dance with her."

"I've put up with this about long enough."

"Lois and Gene, please. As a favor to me. I ask you. Please."

"Well, all right, Father Emil-Jesus Mary Joseph"and they

danced, at arm's length, not looking at each other,

looking for a sympathetic face in the crowd, who would

understand what, he and she had been through and why no*,

at last, they had finally come to the end of their rope.

They stood at the end of a brief waltz and everyone clapped.

Father led them in singing "Du, du liegst mir im herzen." He

made them hold hands. They held but they didn't squeeze.

Lois looked fierce, like she was about to give a speech, and

Gene looked like he might be silent for the next two weeks.

Their daughter Patty-Smith, or Gray-put her arms around them

both and said, one last time, "Please, for our sake."

But this is a play, and they're actors, and they're good at it:

And they do do it for our sake, that's why they do it so loudly,

so we can hear. And now, for our sake, the old man puts his

arms around the old lady and looks in her eyes and announces,

"I love you, Lois," loud, and she rolls her eyes and blushes and

sighs and says, "Well, it's about time."

APRILLE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobeg'm.

Spring has come, grass is green, the trees are leafing out, birds

arriving every day by the busload, and now the Norwegian

bachelor farmers are washing their sheets. In town the

windows are open, so, as you pause in your walk to admire

Mrs. Hoglund's rock garden, you can smell her floor wax and

hear the piano lesson she is giving, the tune that goes "da da Da

da Da da da," and up by school, smell the macaroni cheese

hotdish for lunch and hear from upstairs the voices of Miss

Melrose's class reciting Chaucer.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne

And smale fowles maken melodye

That slepen al the nyght with open ye ...

The words are six hundred years old and describe spring in this

little town quite well; the sweet breath of the wind, the youth of

the sun, the sweet rain, the tendre croppes, the smale fowles

maken melodye: we have them all.

I made a pilgrimage up there last Sunday to visit my family and

my family wasn't there. I walked in, called; there was no

answer.

I drove over to Aunt Flo's to look for them and got caught in-

Sunday-morning rush hour. It was Confirmation Sunday at

Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. Thirteen young people had

their faith confirmed and were admitted to the circle of

believers, thirteen dressed-up boys and girls at the altar rail in

front of a crowd of every available relative. Pastor Ingqvist

asked them all the deepest questions about the faith (questions

that have troubled theologians for years), which these young

people answered readily from memory and then partook of

their first communion. Later they lounged around on the front

steps and asked each other, "Were you scared?" and said-,

"No, I really wasn't, not as much as I thought I'd be," and went

home to eat chuck roast, and some of them' had their first real

cup of coffee. They found it to be a bitter oily drink that makes

you dizzy and sick to your stomach, but they were Lutherans

now and that's what Lutherans drink.

The Tolleruds, for "ample, drank gallons of coffee on Sunday.

Church had been two hours long, the regular service plus

confirmation, and Lutherans don't have the opportunity to stand

up and kneel down and get exercise that you find elsewhere, so

everyone was stiff and dopey, and the Tolleruds, when they sit

around and visit, are all so quiet and agreeable they get drowsy,

so they drink plenty of coffee., Years ago, when Uncle Gunnar

was alive, they didn't need so much. He had wild white hair and

eyebrows the size of mice, he spilled food down himself and

didn't care, he had whiskey on his breath, and if anyone

mentioned the Lutheran church he said, "Haw!"

He was an old bachelor who got rich from founding a chain of

private clubs in the Dakotas and Iowa called the Quality

Prestige Clubs. They were only empty rooms over a drugstore

with some old leather couches and a set of Collier's Eno

yclopedia, and he gave away memberships to men who'd

never been invited to join a club before, tall sad men with thin.

dry hair, of whom there are a lot, and made his money selling

them lots of shirts and ties and cufflinks with the QP insignia.

Uncle Gunnar got rich and sold the, Clubs to an Iowa

meatpacker and went to Australia to get into some line of

work down there he didn't consider worth mentioning, and the

last anyone saw him was in 1962. Presumably he died, unless

perhaps he just got tired of us knowing him.

The Tolleruds gathered for pot roast because Daryl and

Marilyn's daughter Lois was confirmed. She sat at the head of

the table, next to her dad, promoted from the children's table

out in the kitchen. She is a tall lanky girl who has grown four

inches this year, and it has tired her out. She is quieter than she

used to be, a tall shy girl with long brown hair she has learned

to tie in an elegant bun, and creamy skin that she keeps

beautiful by frequent blushing, which is good for the circulation

and makes her lovelier whenever she is admired.

I A boy who has sat silently across from her in geometry

since September has written her a twenty-seven-page letter

in small print telling her how he feels about her (since

September he's looked as if he was just about to talk, and

now it all, comes out at once: he thinks God has written

their names together in the Book of Love). But she wasn't

thinking about him Sunday-she was blushing to see her

Confirmation cake with the Scripture verse inscribed in

blue frosting: "Be not conformed, to this world: but be ye

transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may

prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will

of God." It was a large cake, -and Marilyn used the extra-

fine nozzle on the frosting gun-there it sat, lit with birthday

candles, and Lois didn't know how to tell them that she wasn't

sure that she believed in God. She was pretty sure that she

might've lost her faith.

She thought she might've lost it on Friday night or sometime

Saturday morning, she wasn't sure. She didn't mention it at that

time because she thought she might get it back.

On Friday night, less, than forty-eight hours before

confirmation, she was sitting on the couch watching television

with Dave, the boy who wrote the letter, while her mom and

dad were gone to have supper with her prayer parents. When

you're confirmed, you're assigned prayer parents, a couple

who promise to pray for YOU for three months prior, and Lois's

turned out to be the Val Tollefsons, people she had never liked.

To think that every night over supper Val Tollefson had bowed

his big thick head and said, "And, Lord, we ask Thee to

strengthen Lois in her faith"---the same man who said once,

"You won't amount to a hill of beans, you don't have the sense

that God gave geese. ""She could feel her faith slip a little. She

felt guilty, because Dave wasn't supposed to be there, and she

was supposed to be ironing her confirmation dress, but he had

walked two miles from his house, so what could she do? She

felt sorry for Dave, he always has a bad haircut and a swarm

of pimples on his forehead, but she likes him, he's quiet and

nice. They talked to each other at Luther League get-togethers

about what. it would be like to be someone else, someone

famous, for example, like Willie Nelson-you could use your

fame to do good-and they went for one walk halfway around

the lake, holding hands, and then she got the long letter saying

how much she meant to him, twenty-seven pages, which was

much more than she wanted to mean to him; it scared her.

She didn't know that Dave was a born writer, that

twentyseven pages is nothing to him, he did thirty-one on the

death-of his dog, Buff-she told him it would be better if

they didn't see each other anymore. Friday night he walked

over, full of more to say. She had four little brothers and

a sister to take care of, so he sat on the old red sofa with

a bottle of orange pop and watched as she fed the baby,

and she turned on the TV and lost her faith. Men in khaki

suits were beating people senseless, shooting them with

machine guns, throwing the bodies out of helicopters. Their

reception was so poor, the picture so fuzzy, it was more

like radio, which made the horrors worse, and she thought,

"This could happen here. " It gave her a cold chill to imag-

ine violent strange men busting in, as they had done to

Anne Frank. She held the baby, Karen, imagining all of

them were hiding from Nazis, and heard twigs crunch

outside and knew that this boy could not protect her. She

prayed and heard something like an echo, as if the prayer

was only in her head. The whole world in the control of

dark, powers, working senseless evil on our lives, and prayer

went no place, prayer just went up the chimney like smoke.

When Marilyn cut the confirmation cake and served it with

butter-brickle ice cream, Lois thought, "I should say something."

Like "I don't believe in God, I don't think." Nobody would need

coffee then.

After dinner she put on her jeans and a white jacket and

walked out across the cornfield toward the road and the

ravine to think about her faith on this cloudy day, and,

Walking west over a little rise, she saw, just beyond the

ravine, a white car she'd never seen before, and a strange

man in a trenchcoat standing beside it. She walked toward

him, thinking of the parable of the Good Samaritan, think-

ing, that perhaps God was calling her to go witness to him

and thereby recover her faith. He stood and pitched stones

up over the trees, and as she got closer, he turned and

smiled, put out his hand, and came toward her. She saw her

mistake. Something glittered in his mouth. She stopped. He was

a killer come looking for someone, it didn't matter

to him who it was, anyone who came down the road would do.

He walked toward her; she turned and fell down and said, "Oh

please no, please God no."

I hadn't seen her for five years. I said, "Lois, Lois-it's me." I

helped her up. How are you? It's good to see you again. We

shuffled along the rim of the ravine, looking for the thin path

down, and she told me about her confirmation, which I have an

interest in because I am her godfather. I wasn't invited to

church, I reckon, because fourteen years ago I wasn't anyone's

first choice for godfather. I was nominated by Marilyn because

Daryl suggested his brother Gunnar and she thought that was

ridiculous, and to show Daryl what a poor choice he would be

she suggested me, and Daryl said, "Sure, fine, if that's what you

want," and they were stuck with me.

The baby was named for her mother's Sunday-school teacher,

who was my aunt Lois, my youngest aunt, so young she was

like an older sister. She was single when I was a boy and so

had plenty of time for her favorite nephew. She told me I was.

She said, Don't tell the others but you are the one I love more

than anyone else, or words to that effect. We were riding the

bus to Minneapolis, she and 1, to visit Great-aunt Posie. Lois

seemed young to me because she loved to, pretend. We

imagined the bus was our private bus and we could go

anywhere we wanted. We were somebody.

My favorite game was Strangers, pretending we didn't know

each other. I'd get up and walk to the back of the bus and turn

around and come back to the seat and say, "Do you mind if I sit

here?" And she said, "No, I don't mind," and I'd sit. And she'd

say: "A very pleasant day, isn't it?"

We didn't speak this way in our family, but she and I were

strangers, and so we could talk as we pleased.

"Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?",

,"As a matter of fact, ma'am, I'm going to New York

City. I'm in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came

back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died,

and I'm going back to Broadway now on the evening plane.

Then next week I go to Paris, France, where I currently reside

on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps

you've read about me."

"No, I never heard of you in my life, but I'm very sorry to hear

about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person."

"Oh, she was pretty old., She was all right, I guess."

"Are you very close to your family, then?"

"No, not really. I'm adopted, you see. My real parents were

Broadway actors-they sent me out to the farm thinking Id get

more to eat, but I don't think that people out here understand

people like me."

She looked away from me. She looked out the window a long

time. I'd hurt her feelings. Minutes passed. But I didn't know

her. Then I said, "Talk to me. Please."

She said, "Sir, if you bother me anymore IT have the driver

throw you off this bus."

."Say that you know me. Please."

And when I couldn't bear it one more second, she touched me

and I was myself again.

And the next time we rode the bus, I said, "Let's pretend we

don't know each other."

She said, "No, you get too scared."

"I won't this time." I got up and came back and - said, "It's a

very pleasant day, isn't it? Are you going to Minneapolis?"

Eventually we do. We pretend to be someone else and need

them to say they know us, but one day we become that person

and they simply don't know us. From that there is no bus back

that I know of.

Lois Tollerud asked me, "Why did you stop here?" I told her I

had parked by the ravine, looking for a spot where our Boy

Scout troop used to camp and where Einar Tingvold the

scoutmaster got so mad at us once, he threw' two dozen eggs

one by one into the woods. Each egg made him madder and he

threw it farther. When he ran out of eggs he reached for

something else. It was his binoculars. He didn't want to throw

them away but he was so furious he couldn't stop-he threw the

binoculars and reached for them in the same motion. Heaved

them and tried to grab the strap as it went by. We scouts looked

for it for a whole afternoon, thirty years ago. Whenever I go by

the ravine, I look for a reflection of glass, thinking that, if I

found those binoculars by some wonderful luck and took them

black to him, he might forgive me.

"That's not true, is it?" she said. "No, it's not."

I stopped there because, frankly, I'd had a lot of coffee, but I

couldn't tell her that. We walked for almost a mile along that

ravine, to the lake and back, and then I felt like I'd like to visit

her family after all.

We walked in. I got a fairly warm hello, and was offered

coffee. "In a minute," I said. "Excuse me, I'll be right back." I

had a cup and a slice of cake that said "Con but for," a little

triangle out of her verse.

Be not conformed to, this world. but be ye transformed. Our

lovely world has the power to make us brave. A person wants

to be someone else and gets scared and needs to be known, but

we ride so far on that bus, we become the stranger.

Nevertheless these things stay the same: the sweet breath, the

rain, the tendre croppes, and the smale fowles maken melodye-

God watches each one and knows when it falls, and so much

more does He watch us all.

GOODBYE TO

THE LAKE

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.

We got a good rain on Wednesday, a long soaking rain good for

field and garden and lawn. It was so dry, no rain for a month.

The ballpark grass looked dead last Sunday, the lake level fell

and rocks showed in the river. It began to rain in the night,

Tuesday. People woke up and lay listening to it. It wasn't a

storm, it didn't blow, it was just water falling from heaven,

trickling off the roof. Clarence woke up and thought the phone

was ringing and imagined it was his daughter Barbara Ann

calling to say the baby was born and they named it Clarence.

But it was rain. Ella Anderson woke up because Henry rolled

over. She lay squeezed half under him and said out loud, "La

Crosse." A city on the river, a transfer point for train crews on

the Zephyr, and a name that for some reason makes him roll

back to his side. His rolling interrupted 4 dream of hers in which

a young man approached and touched her cheek and spoke in a

musical voice, "Come, come," and she was about to when

Henry woke her up. She lay and listened to the rain. David and

Judy Ingqvist lay on their sleeping porch, the one and only

luxury in the parsonage, each of

them awake, looking at the roof, the rain rattling down. Each of

them wishing the other were awake but careful not to move,

knowing the other is a light sleeper.

It rained through the morning. Couldn't work in the gardens so

kids lay around on the porch and read books. At ten o'clock in

the morning. Such luxury, only rich people get to do it, rich

people such as you only find in books, but rain gives the poor

children a holiday. People in books never work in gardens. The

Three Musketeers never had to kneel along a row of peas and

weed them. That's why they got in all those swordfights,

resisting the call to weed. Princesses didn't weed peas, one pea

made a princess black and blue even though it was under forty

featherbeds; so weeding peas woulda killed her, poor thing.

Laura Ingalls worked in the garden but always cheerfully and

only for a sentence or two: Laura worked in the garden under

the hot sun. Soon it was time for supper. "Laura!" Ma called

from the little house." You can't call that hard work.

Brian Tollefson lay on his porch reading The Case of the

Deadly Smorgasbord, the latest in the Flambeau Family

mystery series, in which Nobel prize-winning scientist Emile

Flambeau, his wife, Eileen, the star of stage and screen, and

their exceptionally bright and happy teenage son, Tony, leave

their large tastefully cluttered Manhattan apartment and zoom

off to Copenhagen to track down a band of leftwing terrorists

who put mood-altering chemicals in the red herring, but that's

only a story and what Brian loves is how the Flambeaus talk to

each other-they're a family and yet they're also each other's

best friends.

"'Tony,' Eileen said, touching her hand to his cheek, 'what

happened .between you and Rosemary? Aren't you still seeing

each other?' " Brian's mother never touches his cheek except

to see if he has a temperature. But Eileen is Tony's good friend

as well as his mother, and so much more interesting than

Rosemary, a better talker, more un

derstanding, Tony actually prefers his parents to other

teenagers. Brian loathes his parents. They sicken and disgust

him, they are fat and lumpy and dreary and slow and

determined to be dumb. Born to be boring. Emile and Eileen

live in large sunny rooms full of plants and piles of books and

are easygoing and affectionate and talk intelligently about so

many things. "Emile turned and put his arms around his son

and held him closely for a long moment.. 'You're an important

part of my life,' he said softly, 'and you have a right to know

that."' Their lives are not consumed by petty things. The need

to pick.raspberries and freeze them is not part of the

Flambeaus' life on the Upper West Side, nor is gas. mileage or

back problems or aphids or Lutheranism. The Flambeaus are

above that., Probably they are Christian but they don't need to

talk about it so much.

Arlene picked up her sister Irene and they drove up to the

cemetery and sat in the car. June 10 is the anniversary of their

mother's death. Lutherans don't ordinarily observe such days

but the girls do because it would have pleased their mother,

Mrs. Holm, so much. She was impossible to please when she

was alive, but now that she is gone and her spirit recedes into

the shadows, the girls are able to satisfy her with this annual

trek to sit under the tree that shades her-she always burned

easily, Mother did, and always needed shade. The tree's roots

reach down where Mother lies, so in a sense Mother is

shading herself, like a -lady with a parasol. They sat in the car

in the rain for fifteen minutes, thinking their own thoughts, and

Arlene said, "Seventeen years. Do you know that I still

sometimes pick up a phone to call somebody and forget and

dial Mother's old number? A couple named Ferguson has it.

After years of me saying, Oh I'm sorry, I have the wrong

number, we finally introduced ourselves. And do you know,

she sounds a lot like Mother."

The rain patted on the roof and ran down the wind

shield. Irene held a bunch of yellow and blue irises. "Do you

know that I still hear her sometimes--- I'm washing dishes or

ironing, -something simple, and I hear her say, Oh  Irene

you're doing that all wrong, here let me, and my hands

tighten on the dishcloth, I grab the iron. The simplest things.

Putting toast in the toaster. Boiling an egg. Oh Irene, that's

not how to, do that, here I'll show you. I still hear it. Never

when I'm trying to do needlepoint, or make a souffle-always

when I'm pulling a weed, hanging a picture. Oh that's not

straight, Irene, here. What's the matter with you? Oh you

don't put on a pillowcase like that. " She began to sniffle.

"Oh this is so crazy. I don't know why it has to be like this."

She cried and Arlene cried and they held hands, the rain

streaming down the glass. And then Irene bounded out of the

car and ran up on the grass and heaved the bouquet as far as

she could toward their mother's grave. It hit the tree and fell

apart in a shower of wet irises and dropped on the grass.

The noon siren went off and a lot of damp happy people

trooped in to lunch, including Florian Krebsbach and his son

Carl. Cart couldn't work at the Bausers' because of the rain so

he went to his dad's garage, Krebsbach's Chev, and helped out

with the annual parts inventory. His brotherin-law Lyle was

there too. Carl didn't want to work at Bausers' anyway, it was

a bad job, taking off their porch and modernizing the house

with aluminum siding. The porch sags, so Bob wants it out.

Carl ripped out the floor Tuesday, painfully, feeling like a

vandal (when a car drove by, he stopped), leaving the roof for

Wednesday in case Bob got converted overnight. Inventory

was fun. Counting bearings, bushings, grommets and gizmos;

and thingamabobs, calling out the count for Florian to write

down. 121 lugnuts! Three repeaters! A box of shankmapst

Two extensogrips, one kft, one right! One Folger's drip

grind coffee can full of nuts and bolts, some iron, some

brass! Like playing Captain May 1. Lyle, and Ronnie and

Ernie and Carl roamed the store

room, the library of parts, and Dad sat at his old desk, the

pigeonholes stuffed full of slips of paper to remind him of things

he has to do that he has managed to put off until it was no

longer necessary. A trophy shelf of defeated obligations, each

hole stuffed with pigeons that Florian the Great-Postponer has

successfully escaped. The inventory shows, once again that

Krebsbach's is in chaos. "I donno, I can't figure this out,"

Florian says, "this don't make sense. Look at this, boys." And

the boys look: carburetor parts missing, floormats, doorknobs,

wipet blades-all the numbers are there but nothing adds up

against last year's inventory. He says, "I donno. It's too much

for me. Pop always said it was Frank who had the head for

business and Pop was right.", Florian is happy. He rips the

inventory sheet off the pad and carefully folds it down the

middle lengthwise and into thirds, and finds room in the last

pigeonhole to stuff it in. He looks up at them and shakes his

head. "One of these days I am going to come -in on a Saturday

morning and get this desk straightened out. Now let's go have

some dinner."

Rain fell all morning and everyone was in a festive mood, the

Chatterbox was packed for dinner. A bunch of Norwegian

bachelor farmers piled into the back booth and had mushroom

soup and liverwurst sandwiches. "Looks like this may keep up

all day," one said. "Yeah, that's what they're sayin. " If a

drought were to kill off his crops, a bachelor farmer might be

forced to contemplate marriage, the last refuge for men unable

to fend for themselves, just as poor Mr. Hauge did in the

drought of '59. He married a Saint Cloud woman and died six

months later and not from excitement. To them, rain means

that life continues, and they cleared their throats like happy

lions, Braghhhhh.

Mayor Clint Bunsen sat with Rollie and Louise and Marlys

Diener and Mr. Berge and By Tollefson, a tight fit. Clint had

thought he was going to have to order a ban on watering -

lawns, it was so dry and the level in the water

tower was getting low, or so he thought. Its depth gauge broke

back in 1968 when the water level got so low that the float

arm snapped, and now Clint tests the level by getting a strong

boy to throw a baseball way up there and hit it, the tone telling

him how full it is, but this spring he couldn't find a boy with a

good enough arm to reach the tank, so Clint himself had to

climb up the ladder-- Bud gets nosebleeds past twenty feet and

has to come down and stuff cotton in his nose-and he climbed.

high above the roofs and trees and banged on the tank with a

hammer. It rang like a deep bell tolling for the dead, wonnng.

Wonnnnnggg. Now with the rain watering them, the tank is

filling up, and soon it'll sound like wedding bells.

Byron was happy, and like a true Norseman he showed

it by complaining loudly. "No mushrooms in this soup,"

he groaned. "It's getting to be like everything else. You

got decaffeinated coffee, soda pop with no sugar, pretty

soon we'll have chemical sweet corn. Taste fresh year-

round, and it'll be flat, and round like a cracker. No salt,

no sugar, no fat. You wait and see. It's coming. I'm glad

I won't be here to see it but you'll see-I was reading

where by the year 2000 they'll be cultivating without trac-

tors, using low-frequency sound waves, and they'll breed

a dairy cow with no legs, a rectangular body you can stack

a thousand or so in a warehouse the size of the school. It'll

give fifty, 'eighty, a hundred gallons a day on a bushel of

grass clippings and a couple Demerol. This story said that

when agriculture is fully capitalized for peak efficiency,

all of rural Minnesota can be run by three hundred people,

seventy-five to raise the crops and the rest to write the

reports. I believe it. I believe it."           I

Mr. Berge didn't hear him, he was looking at Marlys. He took

a spoonful of corn chowder and fell in love with her, her lovely

bare shoulders and neck, her throat, the lovely spot where the

collarbones Join together, and he took a bite of liverwurst and

tears of love came to his eyes,

a brief powerful romance until it ended. "Yeah," Rollie was

saying, "we put in the last of the sweet corn yesterday. Two

rows. Should take us through the middle of September."

I look at them as I eat my cheese sandwich and don't hear

them anymore, they sit like a picture. Specks of rain on the big

front window, a cool breeze through the screen door, raindrops

in the puddles along the curb, rain out on the lake, which is so

misty you can't see the other shore, it's like an ocean. just as I

imagined when I was little and we floated sticks offshore and

bombed them with rocks. Now Lake Wobegon looks even

more like an ocean, and through that mist I can sail to

anywhere, including where I'm going, Copenhagen.

This is my last view of them for a while. If you see them

before I do, say hello from me and give them my love. For

now I'll remember them as they are this moment, on a

Wednesday in June, sitting with each other and listening to a

summer rain that may yet save the crops. And the river may

rise so that you and I can push our lovely rafts from shore and

be lifted up over the rocks and at last see what is down there

around the big bend where the cottonwood trees on shore 'are

slowly falling, bowing to the river, the drops glistening on the

dark green leaves.