Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm (3 page)

“No, honey, of course it doesn’t mean that,” I say. “Everything is still exactly the same, it’s just that your Dad won’t be living here anymore.”

I really believe that. I really believe that a family of five can subtract one of its members and then, after the briefest of pauses—say,
for a bonfire and a few beers, or a long weekend enjoying the marital harmony of their grandparents—just continue on down their familiar path at home, the four of them skipping through the woods of their lives together, unscathed.

And I’m positive that this will be our fate, as long as I can figure out the financial part of divorce.

In anticipation of filing, I’ve stashed cash in a friend’s safe-deposit box. This is the take from my occasional writing and editing assignments, tips from a part-time waitressing job that just ended, and the prize money I won last month in the Michigan Women’s 8-Ball Tournament. Once the divorce papers are filed, it will be illegal not to reveal the existence of this money to Mr. Wonderful, so I might as well use it all up now. And as soon as the boys are off doing their back-home boy things, I return to the bill file.

I thought I was being so clever by putting money aside like this, but it’s pretty clear that no one is going to mistake me for a criminal mastermind. Because after I pay the bills for July and part of August, a total of $122 remains. Financial genius I am not.

But I write the checks, stamp and seal the envelopes, drive to the post office, and drop the stack into the big blue mailbox. The garden is mostly planted, there is food in the refrigerator, gas in the car, a good supply of hay and grain in the barn, plenty of dog food too, so I think the four of us, plus the two horses and the two dogs, can live on what’s left over for three weeks if we’re careful.

That should be plenty of time to figure something out.

This assumes that nothing breaks and needs repair, nothing wears out and needs replacement, no one gets sick or hurt, and nothing unforeseen happens.

Back at my desk, the bill folder is satisfyingly empty. The boys and I will do this by ourselves. We will live off the farm, I will find
more work, and they will grow up happy. Despite confronting our dire economics, I actually feel pretty good. Knowing how bad things are is better than not knowing, I suppose, even when that reality turns out to be a little worse than you’d imagined.

Together, we’ll plant the last root crops of the season tomorrow, in the morning light of the waning moon when the soil is damp and the air is still cool. Then I’ll take the three of them to the Cherry Festival, just like I promised. Just like always.

And that is my goal. To have their childhoods continue as normal. To give them everything by myself that they would have received if their father and I had stayed married. That “everything” is going to mean keeping our farm, and it’s going to mean observing family traditions like the Cherry Festival, and it’s going to mean holding tight to everything in between, too.

Whatever that “in between” turns out to be.

By eleven the next morning the boys have finished in the garden and I’ve mucked out the horse stalls, scattered fresh straw, filled the water tank, and checked the pasture fence. After lunch, I cut the schedule of the day’s festival activities out of the newspaper and circle the ones that sound fun. To me.

These include a tour of the demonstration orchard via horse-pulled wagon, then a walk through a cherry-processing plant. Live cherry pie judging, then the marching band competition. Maybe I’ll even splurge on the pancake breakfast. I show my newspaper circles to the boys.

Their initial reaction is silence, then universal protest.

“Aww, Mom!”

Translation: marching band music is lame, cherry processing
is boring, and cherry glop on pancakes is sickening, Mom, just totally sickening. Why do I try to get them to eat it every year?

“
We
want to pick what we do this year,” Owen, a.k.a. Official Spokesteen, says. “Not you.”

When I ask what it is that they
do
want to do, the earth shifts on its axis and now there’s actually universal agreement: bumper cars, corn dogs, elephant ears, the Zipper, and cotton candy.

Northern Michigan, and specifically the Traverse City area, where we live, is the largest producer of tart cherries in the country. Maybe even in the world. And so to me, the Cherry Festival is an annual celebration of local agriculture. An opportunity to talk to farmers, see their orchards in operation, try innovative cherry-infused food, and learn more about our area’s proud farming history. I have always just assumed that this was true for my sons as well.

Some time in the past year, and completely unbeknownst to me, a seismic shift has occurred. This jolt has caused my sons to rotate their allegiance from me and from appreciating local agriculture, to worshipping deep-fried dough and greasy carnival rides.

Debate on this activity begins, and their primary points are these: they’re not babies, they’re not farmers, and I’m mental if I think I can force them back into the former or turn them into the latter.

Which makes me wonder. After feeding them organic vegetables and teaching them how to grow them; after demonstrating how to stake pole beans and plant tomato seedlings sideways to get a good root system going; after reading them classic literature in the evenings and playing board games with them on rainy days instead of letting them watch TV, are they just turning out like any old boys, raised any old way, by any old mom?

“I’ve got to tell you boys, I’m a little disappointed,” I lecture
from the front seat as we drive into town. “Where’s your interest in your native region? Where’s your support of Michigan’s agriculture?”

Because it’s just after the Fourth of July, I’ve put on a CD of patriotic marching band music and turned up the volume. I hope this little speech will be stirring. That hope, and my sound track, are in vain.

“We don’t want to be all historic and stuff, Mom,” the Spokesteen says. “We’re kids. Duh.”

“Yeah, duh!” his brothers add.

I’m the one who made a silent promise to keep our lives going as normal. If this is the new normal, then so be it, and I offer a compromise. I’ll take them to the carnival and give them each ten dollars for rides and snacks. When that is spent, we’ll all go on a wagon ride together through the demonstration orchard. They’ll listen politely to the farmer’s talk during the tour and will each remember one important fact about cherry growing in northern Michigan. Then, they’ll share that fact with the rest of us on our drive home. An educational discussion will naturally ensue.

“C’mon, Mom!” says Owen.

“Final offer. Take it or leave it.”

They take it.

We arrive at the carnival, and a sign on the ticket booth reveals a lucky break. Today is Kids’ Day: twenty tickets for ten dollars. The rides require three or four tickets each, so if the boys spend all their money on tickets and none on corn dogs they will have enough for five or six rides.

“Tell you what,” I say, handing them each a ten-dollar bill. “You guys buy your tickets out of this, and I’ll get you a snack later at the farmers’ market.”

They agree, and after barely an hour, Owen and Will are out of tickets but Luke still has all of his. He’s figured out that he isn’t going to be able to go on all the rides, and he can’t decide which ones he wants to go on the most, so he hasn’t gone on any—not one.

“Honey, you have to choose now,” I tell him. “Your brothers are all out of tickets.”

“Can we just walk around and look one more time?” he asks.

We walk past the Ferris wheel and the haunted pirate ship, past the potato-sack slide, the Zipper and the Twister, and then Luke leads us over to the games. He eyes an old woman smoking a cigarette and holding a BB gun, standing expressionless underneath a rack of stuffed snakes, looking like some kind of Annie Oakley of the undead.

“Five tickets, cowboy,” she says in a monotone. “Five tickets and win this here snake for your girl.”

Can she not see that Luke is only twelve years old? A slight and young twelve years old? But he hands over five of his tickets. And she tacks up a piece of white paper with a red star printed in the middle to the back of her booth, loads a plastic rifle with BBs, and passes it to him.

“Shoot out all the red,” she explains. “That’s how ya win.”

Luke takes aim just like I’ve seen him do at home with his bow and arrows and his own BB gun and starts shooting. This cheap rifle is locked on automatic, though, and shoots like a toy AK-47, wasting a lot of the BBs as soon as he pulls the trigger.

Ah
, I think.
So that’s the trick
.

This is exactly why I didn’t want to come here. And I’m just about to intercede, to tell the old woman that this is a rip-off and
my son wants his tickets back, when I change my mind. The past couple of days have reminded me that life is full of rip-offs. Luke might as well learn that now as later.

“Better luck next time, cowboy,” she says, reaching for the gun.

Before I can stop him, Luke tears off five more tickets, holds them out to her, and jams the remainder into his back pocket. She snatches them from his hand with surprising speed.

“Okay,” she drones. “We got a shooter here. Shooter.” A few people drift over. She tacks up another paper target with another red star.

And then I watch my middle son spread his slim legs apart a little, steadying himself, and take a few deep breaths. He exhales, holds the rifle up to his cheek, and stands there for what seems like a really long time. Someone in the crowd coughs and the old woman rolls her eyes and sighs.

“Come
on
, Luke,” Owen whispers from behind him, irritated. “I mean,
jeeze
.”

Luke takes another breath, exhales again, stands as still as if he were frozen to the spot even in this July heat, and pulls the trigger. A thin circular line quickly appears around the outside of the red star. Seconds later, the star drops out of the target like a dead duck, flutters, and lands on the ground. All that remains tacked to the back of the booth is a white rectangle with a jagged hole in the center. Not one speck of red.

Luke figured out the trick all on his own and beat it. You don’t start inside the star and try to remove it piece by piece, because there will never be enough ammo for that, no matter how good of a shot you are. No, you conserve your ammunition and make every shot count.

The old woman rips the target down, takes a drag on her cigarette, and looks at the paper herself this time instead of showing it to Luke.

“Winner,” she says, exhaling. Then she yells “WINNER!” at the people passing by. The small crowd that has gathered claps politely, and a big man in a trucker hat steps up to the booth, holding out his own strip of tickets.

The old woman climbs up on a step stool and pulls down a bright-green stuffed snake with white triangle teeth and hands it to Luke. Up close, it’s pretty big. He doesn’t say anything at all, just grins.

“Cool!” Owen says, grabbing the animal’s fuzzy head and looking it in the eye.

“Wow, Luke! Wow, Luke!” Will cheers, bouncing around his brother in a circle. “Can I hold it? Huh? I want to hold it!”

“Nope,” Luke answers, wrapping the snake around the back of his neck and over his shoulders like a yoke.

I put my arm around his waist and pull him to me while we walk away from the booth, pressing my cheek to the top of his blond head. Luke is a boy filled more with action than talk. He is my introspective son, an old-fashioned boy of aiming and exploring and building campfires and carving wood with tools, in a new-fashioned world.

I have bonds with his brothers too, but this is the one I have with him. Acceptance of our outmoded life skills—moon gazing, gardening, shooting—is something Luke and I have in common. Together, I believe, we could’ve survived the wagon trip north, the American frontier,
even the Dust Bowl.

“That. Was amazing,” I tell him.

He looks up at me and grins his happy boy grin.

“I can’t wait to tell Dad,” he says.

I feel my chest tighten. I bought him his BB gun and his bow and arrows. I showed him how to shoot them, just like my dad showed my brother and me in our backyard when I was about Luke’s age. I tore apart a cardboard box, painted a target on it for him, and tacked it up on a couple of hay bales. All me.

“Why don’t you call him and tell him about it when we get home?” I force myself to say.

I am the one divorcing their father, they’re not. This seems like an easy concept to grasp until it is you that has to do the grasping.

The last of Luke’s tickets are sticking out of his back pocket. He still has ten left. In the excitement of winning, we’ve forgotten all about them.

“What do you want to do with those?” I ask him, pointing.

We are standing in front of the bumper cars. The sound of squeaking rubber and humming electricity and laughter emanates from inside the ride. There is already a line for the next go-round, but it isn’t very long.

“I want to go on these with Owen and Will,” he says.

The bumper-car ride costs three tickets. Paying for his brothers to go on the ride with him will leave him with just one ticket out of his original twenty. You can’t go on anything with one ticket. He already knows this, he says, and doesn’t care. He just wants to crash cars with his brothers.

That is just like him, my kindhearted, fine-boned, middle boy, always thinking of everyone else first. The peacemaker who just happens to have really good aim.

I am oblivious to anything else right now except my happy sons, and how fun this day has turned out to be despite my initial misgivings, and so the next few moments unfold like the clicks of
a View-Master, the tiny square scenes a mystery until they arrive, one after the other, right in front of my eyes.

Just as Luke is climbing the steps toward the bumper cars, a long white arm reaches out from the crowd. The arm snatches the tickets from Luke’s hand, and Luke’s face collapses in confusion. The body to whom the white arm belongs is running. He is running toward me, and then he is almost to me. This is an arm that never sees the sun, never works in a garden. There is an ornate cross tattooed on the arm, and letters—a word?—on the knuckles of the big white hand.