Chapter 10

Jess put away his gun and the guys at the fire kept talking but G2 kept moving further and further away until he was up next to the tracks on the trestle. He piled some leaves around him and huddled in his blanket. First train that comes, he thought. It was past the middle of the night when hell broke loose. Most of the action was on the other side of the tracks and trestle from where G2 huddled. There was no place further for him to go. He didn’t like to walk across trestle bridges—especially at night. If a train came there was no place to get to safety. G2 knew stories of people who’d been caught unawares and were killed by an oncoming locomotive. Most of them were amateurs or drunk, but G2 was careful around bridges like that. They were dangerous. It’s not that G2 never took risks. He’d once jumped from an overpass onto a passing train below him. He would probably have rolled off the top and been killed if one foot hadn’t broken through the top of the cattle car he landed on and held him there. It happened that the car was full, so if he’d fallen all the way through he’d just as likely have been trampled to death. G2 pried the splintered wood away from his leg and crawled along the top of the cars until he found an open grain car. He sat in the grain and picked splinters out of his leg for the next twenty miles. But G2 remembered an absolute positive feeling that he would be safe if he jumped that train. He hadn’t even considered what would happen if he fell off or fell through. He just acted. It was what he was supposed to do. And it was probably the right thing to do since he was being chased by a group of punks who had been going around town beating up homeless men. They didn’t seem to need a reason, and as long as they weren’t bothering regular people, the police seemed to be slow to act. G2 certainly wasn’t going to wait to see if the cops would protect him.

G2 didn’t feel safe when the police arrived under the trestle that night, either. There were dogs and lots of lights. Orders were shouted over a bullhorn down below as the police swept the area with powerful flashlights. G2 could hear Jess’s voice booming out, “Hell no, we won’t go!” Things were going to get ugly. G2 looked down the track to see redemption coming. The light of a slow-moving freight was coming around the curve to face the trestle. He crouched next to the track, ready to make his jump for the first available car. Then there was a gun shot from below and G2 felt panic take hold of him. The train was nearly there, but as G2 looked down the slope toward the water, he saw a figure come out from under the bridge, momentarily in the light, then in shadow again. There was a return volley of gunfire, then silence. Against the reflected light on the water below, G2 could see Jess moving up the slope. It was a steep ascent, G2 knew from having climbed it earlier in the night. Jess slipped and went down just as three police officers came out from under the bridge and began scanning the slope above them. With Jess down, G2 was the only thing visible above the police and as the light picked him out in the darkness, G2 leaped for the train. He felt the searing pain in his left leg and then heard the retort of the rifle below him. He hung onto the ladder as the train carried him out over the water on the trestle. The beam was swinging to pick him out again when Jess stood and started firing at the lights below him. There was an answering volley from below and this time G2 saw Jess pitch forward and down the slope toward the police officers. G2 dragged himself into the back well of a jimmie hopper car, but the lights did not return to scan the freight. They were focused on two bodies that lay at the bottom of the slope. It appeared that Jess would never get that brain transplant.

G2 examined his wound the best he could in the darkness of the freight as it picked up speed. He wondered if there were still county hospitals where they took people to die when no friends showed up to claim them. But in spite of the pain and through the tears that ran down G2’s cheeks, he knew he wasn’t going to go to any hospital. The bullet entered the back outside of his left thigh and exited the back inside of his thigh. It looked like he’d had a spike driven through his leg, but it hadn’t hit the bone. G2 opened his wine bottle and poured the last few drops into each of the wounds. He wept more—whether from the pain of the alcohol touching the fresh wound or from the loss of his last precious drops of wine, he was unsure. He pitched the bottle off the train and huddled in the corner of the well shuddering and crying. The salty tears ran through his beard and into his mouth. G2 slept with the taste of salt water on his lips.

Gerald loved salt water taffy. There was something special about the sweet saltiness of the sticky candy, especially if you got it at the county fair. It was even more exciting at this year’s fair because he had a championship photography exhibit. All Gerald’s friends were in 4-H, so it seemed natural for him to be in 4-H as well. Of course, he couldn’t enter any of the animal husbandry categories. His family didn’t live on a farm. They lived in the suburbs. They didn’t even let him keep rabbits like Brian did that year. But for some reason, his mother thought he needed something to keep him busy this summer, so she entered him in three different projects in the 4-H Club. Head, heart, hands, and health, his mother said. It was a mantra that Gerald memorized since they repeated it at every 4-H meeting. The meetings were held at the local junior high school and it was fun. Gerald especially liked Woodcraft I. Each boy was given a piece of maple and a picture of a pig. Mr. Graves showed the boys how to use the flat of a pencil to cover the back of the picture with graphite. The boys taped the picture to the maple with the graphite down and carefully drew over the pig outline. When they untaped the pattern and lifted it from the wood, the drawing had been transferred to the maple. Each boy was given a coping saw, and over the next three club meetings, they cut the pig shape out of the wood. Then they were given sandpaper. “A cutting board,” Mr. Graves told the boys, “needs to be smooth as glass so your mother doesn’t get a splinter when she uses it.” After they had smoothed the board, they oiled it with tung oil. That “raised the grain” and they had to use fine steel wool to smooth it back down to its glassy finish. Finally, the boys had to mark the spot for the center of the half-inch hole that would be drilled in the pig’s tail so it could be hung on a peg. Each boy took his pig to Mr. Graves and positioned it on the drill press. Mr. Graves would pull the handle down so the point of the drill was just above the spot marked and ask if that was the right spot. The boy could adjust the pig until it was perfect and then Mr. Graves turned on the drill and bored a hole through the pig. Gerald’s hole was off-center. In fact, it was so far off-center that there was scarcely any wood between the hole and the edge of the wood. Nonetheless, Gerald finished the project, sanded it, and entered it in the competition. He received a white participation ribbon for his efforts. His mother, who loved her new cutting board, often pointed out that some of the projects weren’t identifiable as pigs at all and she didn’t have a peg to hang hers from anyway, so the off-center hole didn’t make a bit of difference. She loved it. She was still using it that last time Gerald had visited her.

But Gerald’s presence at the Brown County Fair was not for his woodworking project, nor for the carefully collected and pressed leaves glued to a piece of poster board for his Forestry I project. Gerald was at the fair because of his photography project. Gerald’s camera was not the greatest. He had a Kodak Instamatic 104 with a flash cube. Photography I was a competition for black and white photos. Gerald shot three 12-exposure cartridges of photos over the course of the summer. None of the shots were great. They were all in focus, though, and Gerald had chosen good subjects and composition. When they got the film and negatives back from Walgreen’s Gerald had a hard time choosing which of the shots he should exhibit, so he took them to Indian Guides and showed everyone his photography. Something about the picture of two horses with their heads over the fence got Mr. Buckley to thinking. He spoke to Gerald’s dad and the next day Gerald and his father took Gerald’s negatives to Mr. Buckley. They talked about the project and about the rules for the entries. Then Mr. Buckley and Gerald’s dad went to the dark room while Gerald and Dennis went out to play. Mr. Buckley had a good eye for composition and saw right away that Gerald had good subject matter that was hampered by the quality of the camera and the processing of the prints. He chose twelve photos for Gerald to exhibit and made new prints, improving contrast and using paper that would yield more solid blacks. When he saw the results, Gerald was very proud of his accomplishments. He carefully mounted the photos on his poster board, labeled them, and submitted his entry. Gerald’s photo exhibit was the county champion Photography I exhibit.

And that was why Gerald was dropped off at the fairgrounds by his father on the way to work that Monday morning. The 4-H champions were photographed and interviewed for the local newspaper. Tuesday morning a two-page spread ran in the paper about the county fair and the exhibits that people would see when they went out to the DePere Fairgrounds that week. The problem was that the interviews and photos were done at 10:00 in the morning and nothing else at the fair really opened until afternoon. Gerald wandered through the horse barns, the cattle barns, and the sheep barns. He looked at the commercial exhibits, but they were all draped with sheets until the exhibitors and shillers could get there. He wandered the midway, but there was nothing open. No rides would run until 3:00 in the afternoon. That was when Gerald saw the big taffy pulling machine at work. The front of the Salt Water Taffy stand still had the shade pulled down, but when Gerald walked through behind the trailers, he saw that the door of the taffy wagon was open. He stood there rapt as the arms of the machine went around in opposite directions pulling the taffy first one way and then another. Two old people with white hair tended the machine and kneaded and rolled the taffy on the big stone slab then cut it into rounds. Gerald couldn’t believe how fast their hands went as they wrapped candy and tossed the wrapped treasures into bins by flavor. As the man was taking a batch of candy off the puller, he caught sight of Gerald watching through the open door.

“Martha, we’ve got a spectator,” he said. The woman turned from her work without slowing down as she wrapped and twisted the ends of the papers on the candy.

“Do you think it’s an elf?” she asked. The man bent over to look at Gerald, then turned and flipped the mass of candy onto the kneading board.

“No, I don’t think so. His ears aren’t pointy.”

“Now George, you know that the Northern elves have round ears.” Then Martha paused and looked into Gerald’s shining eyes. “But you are right. The pupils are round. Elves have vertical pupils, like a cat. What do you suppose it could be?”

“You don’t suppose it’s a child, do you?” George asked as he poured a ladle of fruit over the candy on the table and began to roll it up.

“A child?” Martha asked. “Whatever would a child be doing here? Why I haven’t seen a child in twenty years.” Martha stooped again, looking at Gerald and then asked, “Are you a child?”

“I’m a boy,” Gerald said, almost laughing out loud.

“A boy? George, it says it’s a boy.”

“You don’t say! Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure.” George came to the door. “You say you’re a boy? Do you like salt water taffy?” Gerald didn’t know. He told the man that he didn’t think he’d ever had salt water taffy. “Well, let’s find out,” George said. With that he turned with a rolled piece of candy. “Now you have to take the paper off of this, and then you eat it. Not the paper—what’s inside it. Can you do that?” Gerald nodded his head. He took the piece of candy from the old man, unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth. The first chew almost welded his jaw shut, but the burst of flavors was overwhelming. It was sweet with just a little hint of salt—and peppermint. It was delicious. Gerald loved it. This was the best thing he had ever tasted. “Do you like it?” George asked him.

“Yesh,” Gerald said, his mouth was watering around the candy so much that he couldn’t speak without slurring the word.

“It’s a boy,” George said proudly. “And just in time, too,” he added. “Do you have anywhere you are supposed to be?”

“Not until 1:00,” Gerald said.

“Well we could certainly use your help, since you are a boy and all. It’s slow work, but if you like salt water taffy, you could be our tester this morning.”

“What does your tester do?” Gerald asked excitedly.

“Well, each time a batch of candy comes off the puller and we add flavor to it and start cutting the pieces, the tester has to take the first piece off the roll and chew it up to tell us if the batch is okay. Are you willing to try?”

“Oh yes,” Gerald answered. Over the rest of the morning, Gerald had a piece of salt water taffy about every fifteen minutes as the couple expertly flipped each batch off the puller and put a new one on. The cut fruit, vanilla, cinnamon, wintergreen, jelly candies, and chocolate into the still hot candy as they kneaded it, rolled it, and cut the first piece off the roll to hand to Gerald. He pronounced every batch the best he’d ever tasted. During the course of the morning, they talked about his winning project and George and Martha both promised they would go look at his pictures when the exhibits opened. From that day on, Gerald had a weakness for salt water taffy.

G2 couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a piece of salt water taffy, and that only made the tears run more.

G2 was on the wrong side of the lake. It was the hottest summer he could remember and he had been heading west from New York. He got as far as Detroit and realized he would have to go into Chicago, or try to find a way around the northern end of the lake. G2 would have liked to go around the north, but the rail lines that went up that way had been abandoned long ago, which meant he’d have to hitchhike and take his chances. It was a bad territory to be abandoned in. But if he went south, he would have to go through Chicago and head north, a prospect that he also didn’t relish.

Gerald was thirteen when Brian’s father took the boys to St. Ignace, Michigan. In his own kind way, Howard was trying to step in to fill the void left by the death of Gerald’s dad. On Labor Day weekend that year, they’d gone up to St. Ignace and walked the five miles across the Mackinac Bridge to Mackinaw City. Then they caught a bus back to St. Ignace. Gerald wasn’t sure how to act on the trip. It had always been so natural when the boys went up with Gerald’s dad. Even though Gerald respected Howard and even admired him because he worked in a factory, it seemed different somehow. But Howard was undaunted. He took the boys to the Mystery Spot, and Gerald was impressed that it was even cooler than the one he’d seen in the Ozarks. A ball actually rolled uphill. “Amazing,” Brian said, when they got in the car. “Incredible,” Gerald added. “You won’t believe your eyes!” Howard chimed in. They all laughed and started using the words from the signs for the Mystery Spot for everything that happened. “How was lunch, boys?” Howard would ask. “Amazing!” Gerald said. “Incredible!” Brian added. “Mind-boggling,” Howard said. He took the boys to the ferry terminal in St. Ignace and they boarded the boat to Mackinac Island. The Island was only reachable by ferry and Howard said that when they were offered the option of being included in the early plans for the bridge, the people turned it down emphatically. There were no cars on Mackinac Island and they wanted to keep it that way. They explored the shops and even went on a short horse ride. The horses proved to be so set on getting back to the barn, though, that they ignored the commands of the three novice riders entirely after about half an hour and took the shortest route back to the stable, crashing through underbrush and trying to lose their riders all the way. “Amazing,” Howard said when they dismounted. The boys broke out laughing so hard they couldn’t finish the lines. The trip back across the strait was harrowing, though. The winds had picked up and the passenger ferry was tossed around. Brian and his father stayed below, but Gerald felt compelled to be at the prow of the boat, as far out as passengers were allowed to go. He leaned out into the wind as the boat cut through the choppy waters, splashing a spray over the foredeck with every plunge. Gerald was sure he was going to die when this ferry sank. That was the way it would be. But he would face death proudly, feeling like he was flying over the water. When they made it back to St. Ignace, Gerald was cold and soaked through. His teeth were chattering so hard he could hardly speak. “Are you okay?” Howard asked Gerald as they stepped ashore. “I ... in ... incredible,” Gerald stammered. “Amazing,” Brian said sarcastically.