Spoonwood (9 page)

Over time my personality becomes integrated with my philosophy. In our woods I am cheerful and optimistic; in town I am guarded and sullen.

Part of my plan for Birch's education is to create an intellectual, moral, and emotional framework to give him the tools so that he can make himself intimate with this land that his mother and grandfather Salmon were so wrought up in. If I cannot introduce him to society at large, I must make do with the natural world, for a person must have a context to fit himself into or, conversely, to escape from. If he leaves the land, denies it, hates it even, he must know it to begin with so that he can place himself outside it. Without context he will drift on an endless sea. Through books and observation I will teach myself all I can, and I will pass on that knowledge to Birch. I am already well-equipped to teach him the practical arts of survival—sheltering, cooking, heating.

However, I lack in any but rudimental medical training. I cannot perform an appendectomy. I have no license to prescribe drugs. What will I do if Birch or myself sicken? Working in the woods is dangerous. I could gouge myself with the chain saw. A tree could fall on us. Medical care and the expense it entails is so overwhelming to me that I cannot face up to the problems. I simply refuse to think about them.

I am one who cannot exist in the material world without succumbing to drink and rage and confusion. However, as my father pointed out, eventually I must earn a living in that same world—but how? At the moment I do not have an answer. The best I can do is to refine my way of life here and now. The larger questions will have to wait for another day.

I've cut enough standing deadwood for the stove to get us through the winter. Once the snows fly my pickup will be stuck at Forgot Farm until spring, so I'm careful to stock up on bulk items such as paper diapers. Not that Birch and I will be marooned. It's only a couple miles into town on a hiking trail. The leaves have started to turn color, and I've decided to walk in with Birch and enjoy the views.

On the way I spot a figure in the woods off the trail—Katharine Ramchand. She's holding a rock in her hands, studying it intently. I stop and watch her. I'm waiting for her to notice me. I want to startle her. I want the Darby elite to know that Frederick Elman walks in their midst. I want them to fear me. I want to hurt them. I want to . . . I'm suddenly aware of my thoughts—how injurious they are. My chest tightens and my breath comes quicker. Birch in the baby carrier stirs from the euphoria of motion. He must sense the disturbance in me.

I want to apologize to Katharine Ramchand, to tell her that I do not mean to spy on her. “But that would be a lie.” Old Crow's voice is barely a whisper. Katharine doesn't notice us, because she is so intent on the rock. What could be so interesting about it? I want to ask her, but I just don't have amenities in me. I decide to wait until she notices me and see what develops.

She replaces the rock in its niche in the wall and starts down the path. I could follow her, but I don't want to give in to the vague desire to stalk her. I'll let some time pass before I return to the trail. I walk over to the rock wall and inspect the rock she'd been holding. It looks like any other, pitted grey with flecks of mica schist and a streak of green (perhaps) fluorite. Suddenly, I'm grateful to Katharine Ramchand, for the rock is beautiful. I hold it above my head so I can see it with the fall leaves in the background. The rock deserves the attention she paid it. Katharine Ramchand did not toss the rock aside. She placed it in the exact location she'd found it, so I do the same. I decide to follow the wall into town instead of the path. It's maybe an extra half-mile of walking.

We're almost at the field where the wall breaks out of the woods. Not a farmer's field (mowed for good reason) but a
homeowner's field (mowed for no good reason). Birch has fallen asleep, which he frequently does when the rhythm of my walking becomes steady. A movement in the woods catches my eye. I go over to investigate. Lying on her side is a sow bear in plain view, two cubs nursing on her. Unlike Katharine Ramchand she notices us, but she does not move. She just keeps her eyes on us. She's depending upon me to show good judgment. I back slowly away, impressed. A woman, a rock, a bear and her babies, fall leaves: entertainment in the woods. I feel blessed, lucky to be out today. Such are my simple pleasures. I want to express my thankfulness, so I wake Birch and tell him the whole story as we skirt the field and head into town.

Later that day back at Forgot Farm I'm still thinking about the bear, the look in her eye—wary, guarded, but without fear. The entire scene was odd. Odd that I should come upon it. Odd that a mother bear would nurse in plain sight. I don't doubt what I saw. I doubt its meaning. It's as if the bear mother was sent to me for some purpose. What could it be?

Usually, Birch's demands are easy to satisfy. He's hungry or he has a wet diaper. But there are times when he cries out of some need that I do not understand. During these moments I become nervous and upset. I attempt to feed him, and he knocks the bottle away; I rock him, I talk to him, and still he cries. On this day, I bring him to my bed, lie down, and put him on my chest. He somehow finds my nipple underneath my t-shirt. He sucks on the fabric until I can feel his wet mouth on my skin. His effort calms him down. Soon he falls asleep.

The following day: same situation. This time I remove my t-shirt and let him suckle on my nipple. The feeling gives me the creeps, but I persist. He wants this, not a bottle. I will give him this. After four days something strange and magical happens. Nursing changes me from the inside out. I begin to respond. The feeling is sensual, but not specifically sexual. I'm enjoying the kind of physical intimacy I could not have conceived of only a few weeks ago. I will not want to give it up. On day eight I produce a small amount of milk.

7

VISIONS IN FIRE

I
n October I build a shaving horse, which is a vise to hold wood for whittling, and at a flea market I buy a draw knife. It has a blade about a foot long with a handle at each end, so you can whittle with two hands. You put the stick in the vise and pull the shavings off. Making shavings satisfies my whittling urge, and the shavings do not go to waste. I use them for starting fires and to provide light. Open the stove door, throw in some shavings, and you are treated to a quick burst of light from the flames.

A few inches of snow fall on election day in November, but it soon melts. It doesn't count as the first snow. Never mind what the calendar says, in New Hampshire the first day of winter begins with the first major snowstorm. On an Indian summer day, I read the town bulletin board and learn that Garvin Prell has been elected county prosecutor. Envy and resentment ruin two hours of my life, but only two. I resolve never again to read the bulletin board. News is a form of unnecessary conversation.

One night I hear high-flying honkers, and I take Birch outside into the clearing so I can show him the “V's” of the geese silhouetted against the moonglow. The “V-birds” are flying south
and making an awful racket. One feels privileged to witness such an event.

Late in the month a couple of deer hunters in blaze orange vests wander by while I'm stacking firewood. I recognize them as Chester Rayno, the poacher, and his son, Junior, who's about twelve; they're hunting legally right now since it's deer season. They look at me with amusement. The old rage, the old hatred of humanity comes roaring back. I try to ignore them by not looking at them, but they come over anyway.

“You're Freddie Elman, right?”

I answer with a bare nod.

“Seen any tracks hereabouts?” says Chester.

“I saw a blaze orange buck yesterday, but somebody shot him dead,” I say.

“It's inadvisable to speak down to an armed man,” Chester says.

I pick up my chain saw, start it, walk casually toward the men.

“I could shoot him down,” the boy says.

I rev the saw.

The boy's debating whether to flick the safety off, when Chester grabs his gun. “Take it easy, Junior,” Chester says.

They back away, while I continue to rev the chain saw.

By the end of the month the ground lies bare and brown, the ferns and grasses fallen, matted over with autumn leaves. Birch and I have settled into a routine that suits us both.

I sit up in my couch/bed and look outside at the trees, still and solemn under starlight and moonglow. I can't say exactly when I start my day, because I refuse to wear a watch or own a clock. Nor do I keep a calendar. My aim is to live in the present moment. Not easy with a brain that roams through time. I can say that our day starts hours before the dawn.

I light a candle, come over to Birch, and stick a finger in his diaper. It's a little moist. I'll wait until he wakes before I change it.

I open the door to the Franklin stove and throw some wood shavings in to give more light to the room. Watching dancing shadows in firelight entertains me the way a movie used to. A
heightened awareness and appreciation of light is one of the unexpected pleasures of life without electricity. I add fat wood on the shavings to crank up the heat. Later, I'll put on some logs and close the fireplace door. The stove will run for hours without a reload.

I make my bed, sweep around the hearth, toss the dirt into the fire. The broom and carpet-sweeper are in use off and on all day. I keep our yard-sale imitation Persian rugs from collecting dirt. I'm discovering that, unlike Howard, I like everything to be just so. I pee in an extra-large empty Hellman's Real Mayonnaise jar. I screw the cover back on and place the jar behind the curtain, where the potty resides.

I pull the shaving horse close to the fire. I will move the horse back and forth throughout the day in relation to the fireplace to catch the right amount of light and heat. Against the wall is a pile of sticks. I place a stick on the shaving horse, push with my foot, and the “dumb head” comes down on the stick and holds it fast. I work with great concentration, pulling wood off with the draw knife, shavings flying. My goal is to make the stick smooth and shapely.

I've stapled and nailed carpets to the walls and ceiling of the school bus for insulation. I've sewed sticks to the walls for decoration. I try to bring out the beauty of each stick before using it. My goal is to finish the entire inside of the school bus with shaved sticks. I've made a kitchen chair for myself, a crib and high chair for Birch, shelves, and smaller stuff such as a mirror frame and candle holders, all with sticks. My latest project is a playpen for Birch. I expect that he'll be crawling soon. The playpen began with an ash tree I cut down. It's a tree the local Indians used to make snowshoes and dogsleds with, because the wood bends easily, especially when it's heated in a steam box. I rived the bolts with a froe and shaved the pieces into rounds with my draw knife. Presently, the shape of the stick is to my liking, and the sight of it makes me happy. I follow the natural bend of the wood, so no two pieces are the same, and none is exactly straight.

The stick is almost ready, and I can hear excitement in my breath. I sweep up the wood shavings and toss them into the
space between the simmering front and back logs. I kneel on the floor, watch my shadow jig and jitter on the walls. I look around in satisfaction at the silhouettes of my modest homemade furnishings.

I hone my tools, inspect the floor to make sure every speck has been picked up; I move the shaving horse slightly so that its angle to the hearth is pleasing to my eye. Everything has to be neat and clean, as if company were coming. I go through my woodpile, choosing a piece as much by feel as sight. Every piece has to have some figure in it, some twist in the grain, some digression. Sometimes Old Crow speaks to me. “You don't want to do this, Frederick. You're tired, Frederick—tired. If you had a clock it would say 2
AM.
It's dark, it's always dark—why is December so dark?” But my self-doubt is transitory, a function of my loneliness. I am soon back to my shaving horse, throwing ringlets of wood with the draw knife.

Birch wakes cranky and needy. I change his diaper and set the diaper outside by the door on top of the two other used diapers. I bring him to my bed and lay on my side so he can nurse and I can watch the fire. He suckles and I nap, that sweet hour of half-sleep, half-musing before the dawn. For me nursing is calming and meditative. Worries and animosity empty from my mind.

Years later I'll ask Dad was it was like to nurse me. He'll say it was a pleasant sensation that spread out across his body, like being in a hot tub, which won't be all that helpful since neither one of us will have any experience in a hot tub. I love Dad's warmth. It's during these times when we are almost glued together that I think of Dad as you, Mom.

I've listened to the
zz
of Dad's bow saw, the
whoosh-thuck
of his ax, the
sip sip sip
of his knives on the wood; in excursions outside I listen to the talk of birds, the talk of wind, the talk of distant coyotes, the talk of tree toads, the talk of Dad's footfalls. I've tested out all those languages with uncertain results thus far.

At the moment I'm trying to talk fire. It crackles, it sighs, it roars, it hisses, it spits, it squeals, and it farts, all in all quite a
complicated series of syllables and sentences whose meaning eludes me. I practice speaking fire until suddenly I feel hunger, and then I turn to my own, more effective and precise, if limited, language—the
FEED ME!
holler. Dad's milk is soothing, but there isn't all that much of it. It's more an appetizer than a meal.

I cry and Dad ignores me for a minute. He's the most selfish when I wake him up. Finally, he puts me in my stick high chair and sets the stick table with silverware and cloth napkins. He insists that we dine with some decorum. We eat corn flake cereal in milk with fruit, no sugar. The propane refrigerator from the camper is Dad's only modern convenience.

After breakfast Dad puts me in my new playpen. He wipes the bowls and spoons. He shakes the table cloth, folds it, and places it on a shelf. He carefully arranges the chairs behind the table. He sweeps the floor and puts the broom away. He stands back and makes sure everything appears well-ordered.

Birch is in deep thought, or so it seems to me. I wonder if babies really think or whether thought arrives riding shotgun on tactile stimuli. I go outside, where I've set up my kitchen, the center-piece being a stone fireplace hearth with a cooking grill vented by a metal chimney that rises up through a porch roof I built against the school bus. I call it the cook shed. With a roof and open sides I can cook year-round outdoors on wood fires.

I follow our trodden path to the well and pump a bucket of water. This goes on all day. You don't know how much water you use until you have to pump it and lug it by hand. The labor makes one appreciate water in the same way that one appreciates a hill by walking it as opposed to driving it. I dip the pot into the bucket and scoop out some water.

I put the pot on the grill in the cook shed. I have plenty of firewood but a limited amount of propane, so we rarely use the camper stove, allocating the propane to the fridge. Then I go around to the other side of our home and start another fire in a circle of stones. One of my future projects is building an ice box
for the outdoors, useful during the winter months when we won't get out much to buy fresh food.

Once the water is hot, I bring the pot inside, strip off my clothes, and give myself a sponge bath. After diapering and dressing Birch and putting him in his playpen, I trim my beard and comb my long hair. I have a horror of lapsing into recluse-dishevelment. I want the trees and the rocks and the peeping-tom critters of the forest to note in their gossip that the father and the son in the wilderness are neat, clean, prim. By contrast, when I go to town I mess my hair and beard and wear dirty, wrinkled clothes. My purpose is to make people want to flee at the sight of me. I take a long look at myself in the mirror—hairy, thick all over. I'm proud of the body. It is built for utility rather than show.

I note the vanity in the eyes. But wait—what is this mote floating in inner space? Alarm? No, fear. Why be afraid? And then The Obvious speaks to me. I cannot afford overconfidence; any excess of self-satisfaction could lead to distraction and an accident. No accidents in the woods, please. I remind myself that if I die out here Birch dies too. I put the mirror away.

In well water I'd boiled the day before for drinking, I brush my teeth and clean out my juice bottle.

I clip my fingernails and put on fresh underwear and blue jeans, which I fold along a crease every night so they will appear pressed in the morning. I slip on tan moccasins (my cabin slippers). I pull a clean white t-shirt over my head and put on a blue oxford button-down shirt. Lilith bought a bunch of them for me. I have a row of them on hangers to keep wrinkles to a minimum.

I wash my dirty underwear and socks and hang them in front of the Franklin stove on a twig laundry rack. I dump the pan of dirty water outside the door in a homemade leaching field of small stones. I tuck Birch into my front carrier. He waves his hands and makes those
oo-ah
bird calls babies are famous for. He knows we're getting ready to go into the great big world of the forest, and he is happy and I am happy.

I place my slippers beside my couch/bed, put on my boots, grab the mayo jar of pee, and go out, pausing at the door with
Birch to listen. A pair of birds high in the trees sings to one another. I scan the trees, trying to locate the birds, but they are not to be seen, and I cannot tell from their song what they are. Bird identification is one of my weak areas.

I check my weather center, which I've hung in a hemlock tree because I enjoy hemlocks, their embraceable branches, their reddish bark. The thermometer says eighteen degrees, and the barometer has fallen overnight. The wind is blowing very gently from the west. I've considered a battery-powered radio to get weather forecasts, but in the end I've decided to depend on my gauges, observation, and intuition.

“We're at the tail end of a cold front,” I say. “See the high clouds moving in. Maybe this is the day the first big snow falls. I hope so. Come on, let's do our chores.”

Dad talks to me only about “necessary things,” as he would say—what he is cooking, what he is making on the shaving horse, the practical matters of day-to-day living, various facts—or maybe should I say so-called facts—about the world. He likes to imagine that I, though I have not yet learned to speak, already understand him. Which is true, sort of. I have the score of his musical sounds filed in memory.

With his twenty-one-inch bow saw Dad cuts several lower dead branches off a nearby pine tree and tosses them in the fire pit. He adds some of the smaller branches from a brush pile he'd made from the tops of trees he'd cut down the day before. When the fire is going strong he tosses in the brown paper bags of his waste and my dirty paper diapers.

Dad dumps dribbles of pee from the mayo jar here and there. “It's called marking our territory,” he says.

Dad removes the front pack (with me in it) and hangs it on the low branch of a maple. I look up into the trees at a couple of wise-guy crows. Crows of course imitate or perhaps even speak human languages. At the moment the crows are talking the language they learned from me, my desperate cries for attention or food. They're mocking me, though at the time I think they're admiring me.

“Listen, now, I'm going to teach you,” Dad says, pointing. “That is a white birch, the state tree of New Hampshire. A lot of people think birch and pine and poplar are no good as firewood, but the truth is any wood will give you warmth as long as it's seasoned a year when you burn it. It's best to have lots of different kinds of wood handy, the lighter woods for quick hot fires and the denser woods for longer-lasting fires.