Memory Boy (16 page)

“That's right,” my father said.

“Whereabouts you headed?” the taller one said pleasantly. He smiled as if passing the time of day.

“North,” I said suddenly. “Heading up to Canada.”

My father looked at me suddenly, then regained a poker face.

The two men glanced at the
Ali Princess
, then back at us. “Well, have a nice trip,” they said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

When they had gone, my father said quickly, “Why did you tell them we're heading north?”

“Because they're no fools,” I said.

He looked at me.

When we pedaled—thankfully—away from the campground from hell, we first turned south onto the dusty highway. Our tires left narrow lines in the pale ash. But a hundred yards or so down the road, we pulled the
Ali Princess
off the highway and into the trees. With a pine branch I fluffed away our tracks on the shoulder and in the ditch. Then we hid ourselves out of sight but with a view of the road. My father and I kept our shotguns handy.

Barely ten minutes passed before a group of six men, all on mountain bikes and all carrying guns strapped across their backs, came up the campground driveway.

They paused at the highway and looked down to the dust.

“South,” one of them called. “I told you they'd lie. You can't be that dumb and make it this far.”

“Let's get after them,” another said.

The posse of bikers sped south after our faded, disappearing tracks.

We pedaled into Bemidji at noon, happy to be out of the forest and off lonely Highway 2. In Bemidji we once again crossed the Mississippi River. Its waters slid under a low bridge no wider than a tennis court, then entered the south end of Lake Bemidji. The big lake stretched northward almost out of sight. My map showed the river leaving the far end of the lake.

Across the bridge, at lakeside, was a dusty, silent amusement park complete with big statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Like normal tourists, we pulled in for a look at the statues. There was a tourist information building just beyond, with a sign that read
OPEN
. We went inside.

A young woman at the counter lowered her
Teen
magazine; she looked at us like we were ghosts. Or aliens. Or the first tourists she had seen all summer. She cleared her throat. “May I help you?”

“Got any brochures and local maps?” I said.

“Sure, sure, all kinds of them,” she said, and started to lay some out on the counter.

I looked through them. “Any that show state land?”

“You mean like public land? If you want to hunt or something?”

“Exactly,” I said.

Behind her, from deeper in the office, an older, unsmiling woman appeared.

“You're looking for?” the older woman asked.

“We're not sure. We're on vacation,” my mother said easily. Outside, Emily went
“Baaack!”

“The resorts here are full, sorry,” the older woman said, “and so are all other accommodations.” She didn't look at all sorry.

“Then why are you open for tourists?” Nat asked with her cheerful but steady gaze.

The young woman at the counter looked away with embarrassment; I seized the opportunity to stuff my shirt with maps of all kinds, particularly the one showing public land.

“I'm just following the mayor's orders,” the older woman said, her face flushing. “We're not to encourage people to stay here.”

“Well, congratulations, you've done your job,” Nat said.

I shrugged apologetically at the young woman and then followed my family out the door.

“Now what?” Sarah said. We looked up at giant Paul Bunyan and his towering blue ox. They stared blankly west.

“The maps,” I said dramatically, holding up a whole sheaf.

We sat along the shore. They ate lunch as I pored over the maps. “Did you notice that the Mississippi flows north here?”

“No, I didn't,” Sarah said sarcastically.

“There's a continental divide not far from here,” I observed. “I mean, like, what if the Mississippi didn't turn south but instead kept going north into Canada?”

“Well, we wouldn't have Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,” my mother said, always the literary person.

“There you have it,” I said.

I love those kinds of questions. I especially liked to bring them up in history class. “Like, what if Germany instead of America had developed the first atomic bomb?” “Like, what if Kennedy had not been assassinated?”

Like, what if the Cascade Mountain range had not vaporized itself?…

I glanced at my road-warrior family. Already we were looking shabby and dusty again. It would be nice to find “home” soon. I leaned closer and began to trace the Mississippi River as it flowed through state-forest land.

Downstream from the Iron Bridge. That's all I'll say
.

“There!” I said.

My father leaned in to look.

“There's a triangle of state land cut off from the road,” I said. “That has to be it.”

My father nodded.

“We follow Fifth Street west, then take County Road 11 down to 7,” I said. I liked the lucky numbers. “That will take us mostly along the Mississippi, though we probably won't be able to see it because it's a ways back in the forest.”

My father leaned in to look. “And Kurz's cabin?”

“I remember him mentioning the Iron Bridge west of town, which must be here.” I moved my finger on the map.

“And from there?” my father asked.

“Downstream. That I know for sure.”

“Come on, Memory Boy, you'll have to do better than that,” Sarah said.

“I'll find it. We're not far, just a few miles,” I said. Nothing could bring down my mood; I felt like a real explorer, like Lewis and Clark combined.

“Well, I'm just glad that we aren't heading into the mountains and our name isn't Donner,” Sarah said.

We passed through Bemidji, a nice-enough-looking small town that even had a state university stretched out on the lakeshore. (I could see going to college in a location like that; maybe that's where brown-eyed Dairy Queen girls went to college.) Then we headed west and south on a narrow tar road. No sign of the Mississippi. But I could tell from the curving road that it was not far beyond the trees. We passed a ramshackle place that advertised
RIVER TUBEING
. Not only was their sign misspelled, it was falling down.

A few miles south and west of town, the
Princess
began to roll more freely, then coast without being pedaled; we headed into a long, downhill curve.

“The Iron Bridge,” I called, and pointed. “That has to be it.”

“Aren't all bridges made out of iron?” Sarah said.

We rolled to a stop. The river here was less than a tennis court wide, and its flow lazy and shallow and clear. Underwater grass waved slowly downstream, where the river disappeared into marshland.

“Well, Memory Boy, where do we go from here?” Sarah said.

“Shut up, Goat Girl,” I said as I spread out the maps.

“That's enough,” Mother said. My father leaned in to study the maps. “We're just inside the Mississippi Headwaters State Forest,” he said.

“So?” Sarah said.

I looked up. South and east, beyond the marshland, low hills and forest rose up. “So Mr. Kurz's cabin is just down there,” I said.

“Great,” Sarah said. “So how do we get there?”

I looked down at the water; it was waist deep, clear and steady in its flow.

The river was my road
....

“Easy. We just need a boat,” I said.

AFTER THE
ALI PRINCESS
, THE
Princess River Queen
was my next-most-impressive invention. She had required only four hours to make, half of which was taken up by transporting three large truck-tire inner tubes down the highway to the Iron Bridge. The river-rafting guy (“Tubeing”) was a loser and happy to sell some rubber. He hadn't had a tourist stop for over two years.

“How are we going to keep the
Princess
on the tubes?” my father asked.

We
. I liked it when he said
we
.

“I've been sketching,” I said. “First, let's get her unloaded.”

Sarah helped without being asked. Emily balked at leaving her perch, but soon enough we wheeled the empty
Princess
down to the landing.

I did some more measuring, then went down the shore a ways with a saw. My father helped me cut six small trees—alders, I think; there were hundreds of them along the bank. Each was about wrist thick in diameter, and we cut them eight feet long. After some final measuring, we lashed all six of them to the inner tubes to make a large triangle: the bottom of a raft. Afterward we struggled to lift the empty
Princess
onto the raft frame.

“Sits too high,” I said.

“Yes. It'll be tippy and unstable,” my father agreed. “We have to take off the wheels.”

Sarah groaned as she once again helped us lift the
Princess
back to shore. There I removed the axle nuts and pulled off the wheels. Now we were ready again for final placement. This time the
Princess
fit snugly onto the wooden frame. Using two full rolls of tape and several yards of cord, I made sure she was firmly secured to the raft. As I worked, my father cut two more, longer poles.

“Are you sure about this?” Nat asked as we loaded the
River Queen
. She did not much like sailing, or the water in general.

“The river's only three feet deep here,” I said as my father handed me one of the long poles.

She shrugged and gingerly got on board.

“Now departing, the
Titanic
,” Sarah said. She stayed close to the center of the raft; Emily seemed quite happy at the prospect of being on the move again. Maybe in a previous life she was a hood ornament.
“Baaack!”
she called, and with that we shoved off.

Into complete silence.

After all the splashing and scraping and work at the landing, we were suddenly moving slowly downstream with only the tiniest of rippling sounds. My father gave me a thumbs-up as he worked his pole. We didn't really have to push, but only keep ourselves from getting too near the banks where the river curved.

And curve it did, like a slinky toy. Around each bend, ducks or herons and once an eagle lifted up, startled. What a sight we must have been.

The water depth varied from five or more feet to sometimes only a couple of feet; that worried me a bit. My father tested the depth with his pole. “Quarter twain. Half twain. Mark twain,” he called. “Actually, I forget which is shallower.”

“Did you know that's where Samuel Clemens took his pen name?” my mother said to us.

“Everybody knows that,” Sarah said.

Except me.

Deeper into the marsh, which spread out for blocks on either side, the current slowed. Grasses rose up several feet tall on either side. Their pale tops ruffled lightly in a faint breeze.

“First mate, shall we run up the mainsail?” my father said.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” I replied. Hoisted by rope and ring, the canvas rattled its top above the marsh grass and caught the breath of wind, and we began to move along steadily again.

We slowly passed through the marsh. The tall, silent, grassy walls meant that we couldn't see out, had to trust the current. Ancient dark logs lay half sunken here and there, and carried lines of little turtles down their backs. From a distance the logs looked like alligators. As we drew closer, the turtles
plook-plook
ed into the water and disappeared into the dark, spongy river bottom. With our poles we had to push against the grassy sedge; beneath the raft, there was nothing to push against.
Soft and mucky. Loon shit, I called it
.

We kept moving. We were all silent by the time we rounded a bend and saw the forest again.

“Land ho!” my father called.

“Thank God,” my mother said, smiling.

I agreed. Sturdy banks and trees slowly drew close on either side of the river now. Here the river bottom became lighter, sandier; minnows flashed in the deeper, green pockets, and the sudden shadows of larger fish (bass? northern pike?) arrowed away from the
River Queen
. Tall bushes lined the banks and drooped with clusters of berries still green but turning to pink.

“High-bush cranberries,” I said suddenly.

My family stared. At first they didn't see them.

“There,” I pointed.

As we passed through forest, the river narrowed further. Both my father and I could push off nicely from the firm riverbanks.