Burger Shack Story #9 (Next to Last)

[This is the next-to-last of my ten-story cycle. To read any of the previous eight you may have missed, look under "Pages" in the right-hand column for "Burger Shack Story Cycle."]

For the Sake of the Children©

My wife is a person with so much love in her that it just spills out on whoever’s around, whether she knows ‘em or not. You ask me to describe her, and that’s the most important thing you got to know. Another thing. When she makes up her mind, you don’t want to get in her way. You won’t stop her, and you’ll only give yourself grief.

Me, I have a hard time making decisions. Seems as soon as I think my mind is made up, some little gnat of a doubt starts buzzing around my head, and I have to look at the whole situation all over again. Maybe Cheryl, my wife, does that, too, in the privacy of her own mind, but you’d never know it to look at her, and I’ve been watchin’ her, close, for near thirty years.  From what I see, she takes stock, sorts things, makes her move, and never looks back. She’s always satisfied, too, with how she acted, however things turn out. Don’t you think that shows strength of character? I’ve never heard her say she wished she hadn’t done something. It’s only other people getting in the way that sometimes skews events in the wrong direction, despite her best plans, but as long as no one else interferes or messes up she’s never disappointed.

Trouble is, interference can come from anywhere, including from the Lord Himself, who from what my wife says does not always see the little telling details of human lives on earth and so occasionally muddles up what should be clear and straightforward. I don’t think she got that idea in church, but once she realized it was true she never doubted it for a minute. That’s my wife.

Take when we met. I knew right off that Cheryl was determined to be married by June to come, and I saw no reason to put up a fight. Hell, she was a prize! --I mean, heck, not hell. You know what I mean. I don’t tell stories as good as Cheryl, but since you asked I’m trying. We met in September, senior year of high school, and she was a new girl that year, too, but she announced our engagement to our families in Thanksgiving, and all between then and June she was so busy planning the wedding it’s a wonder she graduated from high school, but she did that, too, because Cheryl’s got the energy of five normal women, for sure, and always did. She planned the whole shebang! All her mother had to do was follow orders while her daddy wrote the checks. I kept up with school and worked a part-time job and managed to arrange to go full-time after our honeymoon, and that was about all I had to do myself. Cheryl planned everything else and told me what I had to do— how many groomsmen I needed (four), who they should be, where to rent the tuxedos, how much to hand the minister after the ceremony, what to pack for our honeymoon, and about anything else you could think of. It’s a good thing women take care of that kind of thing. Some brides’ mothers do it, but Cheryl’s never could have done the job that she did herself. She thought of everything.

             

Here’s an example. It could’ve been a very embarrassing circumstance. Cheryl’s maid of honor, a good friend at the time, a girl named Cindy, well, it turned out she was pregnant, and if Cheryl hadn’t found out and made a substitution there would have been an unmarried witness up there at the altar, showing six months, at least. “And that would’ve reflected on me,” Cheryl told me as she explained the change. The look on her face told me she’d been shocked but was satisfied she’d taken care of the business. Us? Oh, she and I fooled around a little before our wedding, but Cheryl always drew the line where it needed to be drawn. I would’ve slipped over if she hadn’t been firm in her mind.

I guess you’d have to say we’ve had a traditional marriage. Isn’t that what it’s called nowadays, with so many different kinds being had? I went out and made the money, and my wife stayed home and took care of the house and kids. She found the right friends for us and the kids, bought all our clothes, shopped and cooked and cleaned and planned our summer vacations and let me know when things needed fixing or to be replaced or bought new, like when it was time to get a new furnace and put in central air conditioning. I always said, she made all the little decisions and left the big ones to me, like who I should vote for for president of the United States! Things went pretty smooth for us for years.

Then Jenny, our oldest, she got to be a bit of a problem. The way I see it, she was too much like her mother in some ways and too different in others. That is, she wanted to do everything her way, but her way was not her mother’s, and that caused friction.

“It’s just her age,” I told Cheryl when Jenny got her ears pierced, without permission, at the age of twelve. Lots of girls Jenny’s age at her school had pierced ears, and I tried to get Cheryl soothed down, for Jenny’s sake, but what happened in other people’s families had nothing to do with her own, as far as Cheryl was concerned. She’d have been even madder if she’d known the whole story, that Jenny had come to me to ask for permission! That was Jenny, smarter than a squirrel! She knew her mother would say no but hoped she could get around her Pops, twining little strands of hair around my ear through her fingers and giving that impish grin of hers.

“You know you need to ask your mama,” I told her, wishing I could give her everything she wanted.

“Daddy, you’re the man of the house! You can say yes!”

She was long-legged as a spring colt, our oldest child, growing up. I couldn’t look at her without smiling, but I knew my place, too. “I can’t make decisions about girls, sweetie. That’s your mama’s business. You go ask her.”

Jenny pouted and flounced and fired one last shot from the door on her way out. “What is your business, anyway? What do you ever make decisions about in this family?”

It was a mean thing to say, but I didn’t hold it against her because she was upset. I never dreamed she would go ahead without permission. That’s what she did, though, and that my wife hit the ceiling and ordered the earrings removed and finally pulled them out herself. She loved Jenny too much, you see, to let her take a first step down the road of disobedience, a road that could only end up at a very bad place. Poor Jenny! What’s for your own good can sometimes hurt pretty bad. She was hurt and angry, and my heart ached for her, but what could I do?

“Weren’t you a little hard on her?” I asked Cheryl that night. As usual, I had a hard time seeing Jenny as 100% wrong and Cheryl as 100% right. Not that it was my business to tell Cheryl how to raise our daughter and not that she wanted my opinion, either, but I couldn’t help turning the whole thing over and over in my head and seeing it from different angles.

“Absolutely not! Don’t you think I know girls? First it’s pierced ears, then it’s a tattoo, and pretty soon she’s staying out all night and dropping out of school to have a baby!” She chuckled ruefully. “A little late for you to take over my job, isn’t it?”

She had a point there, my wife. I had to trust that she knew what she was doing. God knows she loved our kids like a mama lion loves her cubs!

Well, that was a long time ago. And now we’re a long way from home, but it’s all connected. Say, look at her there, my wife, talking to that girl at the counter. She doesn’t look forty-six years old, does she? More like thirty-six, I’d say. Doesn’t she have just the greatest smile? And her laugh. You’re sure to hear it in a minute if you wait and listen. It’s no little halfway, can’t-decide laugh! When she laughs, she means it!

You know, it’s a little confusing sometimes living on the road. This place, for instance. Rocket’s Burger Shack. We had one back home, not far from our house. Looked just like this one. That kind of thing can be confusing. Then there’s sleeping in the motor home. Some mornings I wake up and kind of panic a little, wondering why the alarm hasn’t gone off and thinking I’m late for work, and I open my eyes and don’t know right away where I am. Then the pieces come back together, and I remember that the kids are grown up and gone and I’m retired and it’s just Cheryl and me, on the road. When I look at her, everything seems all right again. Even if she’s still sleeping, I can look at her and know she’s in charge and that everything will work out.

I know a lot of retired couples in motor homes just wander about willy-nilly all over the continent, but that’s not us. And we’re not working down a checklist of national parks, either. No, my wife’s had a different plan all along. She just didn’t tell it all to me when we set out. She lets me know it piece by piece, instead, stage by stage. Yes, every morning I get what I call my “marching orders.” That’s one of our little jokes.

At first I had no idea whatsoever what any of this travel was about, but now I’m pretty sure it has to do with Jenny. Well, you see, we know where the others are--Eric overseas is a career Marine, and Monica, his baby sister, lives in Hawaii. She works in a big hotel there. Here are their pictures, see? Aren’t they beautiful human beings? And they’re doing well in the world. Cheryl did a great job, didn’t she? It’s just that, well, they’re so far off we don’t get together the way we’d all like. Plus, neither of these two is married, so, no grandkids there.

Well, I’d have to back up a ways to tell you, but I see Cheryl is deep in talk over there at the counter. That’s the way she is, you know. If she was shipwrecked on a deserted island, she’d make people appear and she’d be friends with them in ten minutes’ time! It’s all that love in her, overflowing into the world.

Okay, well, back to the ear-piercing then. It must have been hard for Jenny to go to school the next day without the earrings, just little, bloody, torn holes in her ears. Girls that age, my wife says, can be terribly cruel to one another, so she probably got made fun of, but we really don’t know. All we know is, after that was like a downhill slide. And it was exactly the way my wife had said it would be, which proves that she was right all along, don’t you think? Jenny got her first tattoo when she was only fourteen! We didn’t even know about it for months, not until bathing suit season, and by then had two more! She stopped doing homework completely. Then, age sixteen she sneaked out of the house—her mother’d grounded her for bad grades--and went “joy-riding” with friends in a “borrowed” car. Across the state line! It was two days later we got the call and drove over to the police station, and she was in a cell, like a criminal. The worst part was, she didn’t even seem upset. She acted like she didn’t care what had happened or what might happen next. I really couldn’t understand it, and I still don’t. It was like our child had disappeared and a stranger had taken her place, someone we couldn’t reach at all.

That incident, as wel called it, got arranged—Cheryl made the arrangements, of course—and Jenny didn’t have to go to a juvenile home. “This time!” the judge said sternly. Jenny didn’t even get charged along with the others for stealing the car. Instead she was treated as a kidnapping victim. “Naturally,” Cheryl explained. “She didn’t drive herself across the state line, did she?”

My wife hoped two nights in jail would’ve taught Jenny a lesson. She had Jenny’s bedroom door and window locked from the outside. But it turned out it was too late. Jenny was already pregnant two months before the joy-riding. When we found that out, we weren’t surprised when she got out of her room somehow and disappeared again. I even thought her brother might have helped her escape, though I didn’t mention that to Cheryl, of course.

Cheryl was a rock. “No, we’re not going to the police. She’ll come running back when she needs us,” my wife said. ‘We have two other children to raise.”

I couldn’t help remembering Cindy, the rejected bridesmaid, and wondering if my wife thought Jenny’s pregnancy would reflect badly on our family, but I think she just knew there was no holding Jenny at home any more, however much love was poured on her, and I’m sure my wife had a lot of private sorrow she never expressed. She’s not one for regrets, but she always loved her kids.

So we went on like nothing had happened. We went on with the two we had left, Eric and Monica, until they made their way out into the world, and then my wife was home alone. She didn’t much care for that, so she figured out how I could take early retirement with partial disability, and here we are. “No point staying home to rattle around in an empty house,” she says. Once I asked her what the point is rattling around in a motor home, here today, gone tomorrow, but she only smiled and said, “You’ll see.” It’s been a while, but I figure I’ll see pretty soon.

Yep, pretty soon, I think, because we’ve been here a few days and even had breakfast at this same Burger Shack three days in a row, which is not how the trip was going up to now. Seems to me my wife is watching school buses, too. She won’t say, but that’s how it seems to me. One time she said she guessed that Jenny must be “no kind of mother at all, living in a trailer and covered with tattoos.” She said, “Those kids deserve a real family life, if not with a mother, with loving grandparents,” but then she clammed up and wouldn’t say another word, wouldn’t answer a single question. That’s when I figured she must have in mind finding Jenny and her kids, since those are the only grandkids we have, though we’ve never set eyes on them. Now I figure the reason we’re here must that Jenny’s somewhere close by.

That make sense to you? It would if you knew my wife and how much love she has to give. I think she just can’t stand not being able to give her love to those little kids, her own flesh and blood.

Here’s another clue, a big one. The other day she forgot to lock one of the little cupboards in the motor home, one she says is none of my business, and I got a peek inside while she was in the grocery store. Kids’ clothes, that’s what’s in there. Brand-new kids’ clothes, size 6 boy and size 8 girl. I don’t know how she would even know Jenny has a boy and girl, let alone how big they are, but my wife has a way of finding out things. You see how she talks to people. She talks to everyone, everywhere we go. It’s part of her friendliness, her loving nature, but she finds out things, too. A person has to know things to make decisions and plans, right?

Next? I have no idea! When there’s something I need to know, my wife will tell me. She’s the captain!

Most men wouldn’t care to have their wife in charge, but I don’t mind. She’s smart, and she’s got a good heart. Besides, she’s a take-charge kind of person. And whatever she does is for the best of all concerned. That’s what really counts. It might not look like it at the time, especially to anyone who gets in the way, but Cheryl figures out what’s best for everyone and goes ahead to make it happen. 

Leelanau Farming, July 2012: Green, Green Fields

Wild and Domesticated, Side by Side

One of my bookstore customers from the Lansing area told me that crops downstate are fried brown by the long drought. We haven’t had enough rain Up North, either, but my far-from-expert eye tells me we’re not in totally dire straights. There won’t be as much hay as usual this year, but hayfields are green, and this alfalfa (below) looks decent, doesn't it?

Field corn is tall and green, and stalks have ears. It is good-looking corn! 

Small grain crops and their straw are already being harvested in some parts of the township.

Stone fruit crops (cherries, peaches, apricots, plums) were hard hit in spring by too much heat too soon, followed by damaging snow and freezing temperatures, but at least some of the apple varieties are bearing fruit, and this week’s Leelanau Enterprise gave us all a reality check, in the form of news items from the past. Ten years ago the county cherry crop was disastrously bad, and it wasn’t all that good 115 years ago, either. 

July 25, 2002: ...John Henry Schlueter has 100 acres of tarts and another 10 acres of sweets, but is not harvesting either this year. ... "This year I'd be lucky to get enough for three cherry pies," he said.
July 22, 1897: "While in Northport supervisor Garthe informed us that the fruit crop around there would be a small one this season."

But farming, like art, like poetry, like bookselling, like any true vocation, is in the blood. Orchards and farmers aren’t going to disappear, and 2013 will be another year.

Behind orchard and woods, a sailboat cruises the Manitou Passage

I finally got outside again to sit quietly, too.

Far From New York, I Lead a Literary Life

Petunias at Bella Fortuna

Although my news from Northport this week is literary, I’m going to give a lot of it in pictures. You can follow the links for more words.

Poet Teresa Scollon

Teresa Scollon was at the Leelanau Township Library on Tuesday evening, where the audience happily succumbed to tears in response to her quiet reading of very powerful poetry. She read from her book of poems, To Embroider the Ground with Prayer, talked about her writing process, answered questions, and wound up by sharing with us a new poem. Teresa and I will be connecting again, as I am determined to get her back to Northport this fall for a visit to Dog Ears Books, so that people who missed her at the library will have another chance. She is, as some of my literary friends say, “the real deal.”

Dorene, Trudy, Linda, Pamela, Marilyn 

Dorene O’Brien, fiction writer from Detroit, is the real deal, too, and her annual visit to Northport is the occasion for a group of us to get together for lunch and writing talk. This year we convened at Bella Fortuna, the new Tuscan restaurant in Lake Leelanau. O’Brien is the author of Voices of the Lost and Found (a short story collection available at Dog Ears Books) and many other stories, one of which you can read online here. I highly recommend the tiramisu.

Don't skip dessert! 

Lynne Rae Perkins

Finally, Lynne Rae Perkins, Newbery winner for her YA novel Criss Cross, trekked up to Northport from Suttons Bay with posters for the new children’s book she illustrated, Seed by Seed, a children's story of Johnny Appleseed written by Esme Raji Codell of Chicago. We will launch the book at Dog Ears on August 21. That’s a Tuesday evening, and the event is scheduled for 7-9 p.m., so mark your calendar now. And while you’ve got the calendar out, be sure to make a note about Bonnie Jo Campbell’s reading at Dog Ears, too, on Sunday, August 19, 1-3 p.m.

Poster in bookstore window

Finally, did you read Doctor Dolittle books as a child? I certainly did, and one character in particular made my single head spin.

 “Excuse me, surely you are related to the Deer Family, are you not?”  

“Yes,” said the pushmi-pullyu—“to the Abyssinian Gazelles and the Asiatic Chamois—on my mother’s side. My father’s great-grandfather was the last of the Unicorns.”  

-      Hugh Lofting, The Story of Doctor Dolittle    

Here is my own neighborhood pushmi-pullyu. Do you see it? Do you believe it?

Which way is it facing?

Village and Township Life and Future

Morning at Peterson Park

The only constant is change. Our village lost a very special person this week with the death of Reverend Marshall Collins. Another long-time Northporter and regular customer of Dog Ears Books, Catherine Caraher, also passed away. Dr. Caraher taught history at the University of Detroit, but I knew her more as an avid reader and devoted dog-lover. One friend commented mournfully, “This is the trouble with living in a small town!” Really? 


In a large city, would we only rub elbows with other anonymous inhabitants and not be affected by their troubles and deaths? Wouldn’t the circle of acquaintance be about the same? There would be more people one did not know, but not everyone would be a stranger, surely. I remember when my father began to complain of the number of funerals he had to attend, and my mother, taking a brighter look, told him that was because they had lived there so long. They had moved from South Dakota to a county seat in northern Illinois in 1951, so of course in 50 years time they had made many friends. What she left out was that they and their friends had all aged 50 years in that same time period! Well, this happens anywhere, town or country, city or village, but I’ll admit that my friend in her sadness had a valid point to make: losing someone in a small village is a proportionately greater loss, due to the size of the population. And wherever you live, no one is a replacement for anyone else, but life goes on, so to whom will the torches pass?

Ashes to ashes: new ash tree sprouts in old tree's place

Village of Northport (incorporated), village of Omena (unincorporated), Township of Leelanau. Northport has come a lot way up from the Slough of Despond it was in six years ago. New energy is palpable and manifest all over town—new businesses (many made possible by new sewer system), improvements to buildings, new marina facilities, hiking trails, flowers, etc. Where do we want to go from here? What are the community’s priorities?

Looking for excitement? Make it happen!

To those who look at the postcard and poster for a Community Engagement Workshop and say, “Been there, done that,” I want to urge second thoughts. Yes, we had a series of meetings in 2007. Since then, a lot has been accomplished in Northport, Omena, and Leelanau Township. The question is, where do we want to go from here? You would not go into business with a plan carved on stone and never revisit the plan. You would not get married and set up a budget and never look at it again to see where changes in family life indicated new priorities. Yes, we’ve been through something like this before, but it’s time to do it again. It could even be fun! Come find out on Wednesday evening—7:30, small gym up at school. Bring your ideas and prepare to roll up your sleeves.

And before tomorrow night is tonight, with poet Teresa Scollin at the Leelanau Township Library in Northport. Don't miss this event, either. 

Volunteers created and maintain the gorgeous library garden

Burger Shack Story #8

Where Home Is©

Joe was okay for a long time. Then he was pretty good for a while. After that he didn’t know. And then--.

“You are Americano,” his parents always told him. “Born here. You belong.” They were saying that they didn’t belong the way he did, although they were the ones, he always thought when they said this, who had made him American by coming here.

The years the family moved from place to place were okay for José Felipe, the first-born. He was young and knew no other life, and he was always with his parents, even if they were all sleeping in their old Chevy, caught between asparagus and cherries. Later on, as summer merged into fall, the older children had to be in school for most of the day, and in asparagus season, early spring, the parents sometimes had to pick in a cold rain, bent over even on sunny days, even when wagons were brought in and the workers no longer had to walk the rows, so in asparagus season the whole family was very tired and often cranky by the end of the day, but still they were together and happy about that.

Then there were cherries. Compared to asparagus, cherries were a vacation. Joe’s parents worked cherry harvest for the same family year after year, along with other long-time friends. The kids were out of school, their housing was simple but clean, with several cabins that formed a kind of temporary village for the group of them, and at the end of the day everyone, all ages, piled into an old school bus the orchard family kept around the place, all the migrant families heading down a sandy, tree-lined two-track to the lake. They had a picnic supper on the beach, with little children running in and out of the water, squealing and laughing, and fathers squatting at the water line, smoking cigarettes and holding toddlers by the hand while mothers made fresh tortillas over fires of driftwood. No one was ever too tired for an evening on the beach. They stayed until the stars came out and sleepy children had to be carried back to the bus.

Apples in the fall weren’t as joyous as summer cherries—again, the kids had to be in school except for weekends--but the work was still better than picking field crops. Apple weather might be cold, sometimes whole days of drizzling rain, but you were standing, either reaching up from the ground or out from a ladder. No bending or stooping. You wore the bag slung in front of you, filled it, emptied it into a tall wooden box. Pickers often sang as they worked, music carrying them like a boat through the cold, crisp mornings, their hands in constant motion, double- and triple-timing the beat. From high on the ladder, you could look way down the rows and see other pickers on other ladders and, between the trees, rows of apple boxes, four feet high, wooden sides dark from years of exposure to the weather. When all the boxes in a row were full, the crew moved to the next row. Later another crew, not as fast or skilled, maybe young Anglos who had dropped out of school or slightly older ones who didn’t have regular jobs, for whatever reason, and were doing this to make a few weeks’ pay, might pass through the trees to pick the remaining good fruit, and after that some of the growers allowed gleaners to come in (others didn’t), but Joe’s family and their friends had nothing to do with the apples after the first picking. They were the pros.

Those years growing up hadn’t always been easy, but they had been okay, especially the Michigan summers. The family shared good memories from that time.

Afterward, too, when his parents settled down in one place with steady work, life was pretty good for several years. Home was only a rented trailer in a dilapidated older trailer park, but they had an address and could get mail from their relatives in Mexico without waiting for it to catch up with them on the road. They had a shade tree on one side of the trailer and sun for growing his parents’ vegetables and flowers on the other side. All the kids, in school now from September to June without a change of residence, started getting better grades.

“But if anything happen to us,” his mother still said at least once a week, fixing her gaze on Joe as if to imprint her instructions directly on his brain, “any time, you go to Tia Melita. You go right to her—nowhere else! Entiendes?”

His aunt and uncle ran a Mexican restaurant in the two front rooms (with seasonal seating on the porch) of a one-story building that had originally been a bungalow before the street went commercial. They owned the building and lived in the back and were a first-generation American success story, naturalized citizens with their own business. Joe’s grandmother from Mexico lived with them, so Tía
 Melita’s husband, though not a blood relative, held the position of unofficial patriarch, and Joe’s mother was so grateful to her brother-in-law for bringing the old lady across the border that she believed he and his wife, her beloved sister, could solve any problem.

“Ma, I know. You been telling me that my whole life.”

“I don’t want you forget.” She stroked his cheek lightly with her fingertips, where signs of incipient beard brought tears to her eyes. His eyes were liquid brown, his hair curly, springing blue-black. So handsome! He was so beautiful she could not stop being afraid for him, her perfect first-born.

“You listen to your mother,” his father added, coming through the screen door, hearing the familiar exchange and adding his own regular emphasis. He was bringing in tomatoes and peppers from his garden so Joe’s mother could make fresh salsa. Joe rolled his eyes and shook his head, smiling at the same time. They had always presented a united front, his parents. He felt close to them, tied tight, and safe in their presence, yet the increasing protectiveness he also felt for them was becoming its own kind of distance. As he grew older and taller, they seemed to diminish in size.

He was in high school now and caught an old yellow bus out by the highway. On his first morning at the bus stop three other Mexican boys appeared from farther up the road, walking with a rolling gait as if moving to music. One of them, walking slightly ahead of the other two, was tall and handsome, despite an ugly scar along his jawbone. He stopped in front of Joe, looked him up and down and asked cryptically, “You wid us?” Joe read the unspoken rest of the question as, or against us, and jerked his chin upward, affirmatively. When the bus came, they all got on together. He told himself they weren’t a gang. Not having to get on the bus alone, being able to walk into a big, new, strange high school with friends, amigos, instead of by himself—for that Joe was grateful, and if Anglo kids drew back when they passed by, if teachers cast hard, suspicious looks in their direction, that was not a high price to pay for friends.

His days fell into a new routine, starting with his friends at the bus stop. At the end of the ride, he was part of their scene in front of the school doors, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as they did, the others joking and laughing and punching each other in the arms while he remained the quiet one. Miguel, the boy with the scar, didn’t push him to talk after Joe answered a few questions that first day—where he lived, where the family came from, where his parents worked. Maybe Miguel needed a quiet one in the group to set off his own leadership. During the day Joe was on his own in classes—English, social studies, environmental studies, algebra and physical education. He kept a low profile and got by. 

After school and the bus ride back to the trailer park, where he parted from his friends, he took care of his brothers and sisters. He went to meet them in front of their grade school and shepherded them home for after-school snacks and homework. Evenings the whole family was together, as they had always been. Saturdays Joe worked with his father on a landscaping crew, and on Sunday the family went to mass and to Tia Melita’s afterward, the restaurant, closed to the public on Sundays, their family gathering place.

It was on a Monday that this simple world flew unexpectedly out of its familiar orbit. The morning, the bus, school—all were as usual—but then at the elementary school, when a river of little kids streamed out at the end of the day, his brothers and sisters did not appear. Not one of them. His impulse was to go inside to search their classrooms, but something held him back. Instead he waited where he always waited for them, on the other side of the street, far enough away from the crossing guard that he didn’t have to speak to her. This time she kept glancing at him, anyway, and her glances increased his anxiety. He edged farther down the sidewalk. When he saw two men in suits come out the door behind the last of the children, he turned and ran.

Tia Melita’s was bright and busy. He could see that even from a distance, but creeping closer to peer into the windows he saw no sign of his brothers and sisters, neither in the public rooms in front nor through the gauzy window curtains in his aunt and uncle’s living room in back, a room crowded with chairs but empty and quiet during their working day. But those men—they would come here, too, Joe felt sure, just as they would go to the trailer park, if they hadn’t already.

Heart pounding as he turned away, this time Joe forced his feet not to run. Outside the tabaquería on the corner, he saw Miguel and the others. Miguel tossed his head up and back in a cool, wordless greeting. Joe acknowledged but signaled that he had to keep moving. The three boys turned away, ostentatiously granting him, for now, the privacy of his decision.

Without a plan but pulled toward home, he forged a quiet, cautious, meandering but steady trail through a series of streets and diverse neighborhoods, making his way back to the highway, to the vicinity of the trailer park. For the moment, certain that his parents had been taken away, being near the place they had lived together for so long felt like the closest he could get to them. But no closer. American-born though he was, he knew better than that. If his parents had been taken away, the little children would have been taken somewhere else, and Joe, not yet eighteen, would be taken somewhere against his will as well if he didn’t disappear into the cracks for a few months.

He remembered that behind Rocket’s Burger Shack there was a tall board fence, and behind that was a quarter-mile strip of scraggly woods, and he made for the fence. Like the wall of a house, it blocked the wind, and he could lean against it. He could hear cars and voices from Rocket’s parking lot, but he was safely hidden. Two nights he stayed there. The first night, after Rocket’s closed and the manager finally locked up and drove away, leaving the place in darkness, Joe loosened a board in the fence and made his way to the dumpster. Sure enough, plenty of take-out bags held unfinished sandwiches and errant French fries. He tried not to think of the unknown hands and mouths that had touched the food and tried not to think of the food itself as garbage. There was a stray dog crouched underneath the dumpster, and Joe, still without a plan, coaxed the dog back through the fence with him for warmth and company.

The third night he could wait no longer. Ordering the little dog to stay, he made his way by stealth to the family trailer, letting himself in with his key. He found his father’s flashlight on the floor behind the sofa, where it was always kept, and by its light saw that a box of papers and documents had been dumped upside-down on the carpet. Moving warily through the rooms, keeping the narrow beam away from windows, he was not surprised to find other evidence that his family was gone: coats and toothbrushes missing; his sisters’ dolls not on their beds; a smell of strangers in the small, close rooms. Joe held his own wrist to his nose and smelled stale grease. Even his own body no longer smelled familiar to him. Though not surprised, he felt cold and faintly nauseated by the odor. Hurrying to the bathroom, he stripped off the shirt he had worn for three days, rinsed his mouth with water and then Listerine, scrubbed underneath his arms, and finally grabbed one of his father’s shirts from a doorknob. He thrust his arms through the sleeves and buttoned the shirt as fast as his fingers could move, inhaling deeply.

Back in the kitchen he stood still, waiting to know what to do next, and a picture came unbidden into his head. The image was of a small, palm-sized, folded manila envelope tucked inside the sugar canister. In that envelope his mother kept her key to the largest of the houses she cleaned, one she would not have cleaned on the day she disappeared because it was her Tuesday-Friday job. The house was in a spacious neighborhood behind a wall, guarded by a gate, but Joe had worked in the neighborhood on Saturdays with the landscaping crew and knew another way in, through the vacant woods and over the back wall. He had even been inside once when his mother was at work. On the heels of the picture of the key envelope in his mind came a different picture: beautiful, open rooms with cream-colored walls and brown leather chairs, piles of books waiting patiently on tables, and enormous tropical plants, not a single one of which would have fit into his family’s little trailer. Without thinking the word, ‘sanctuary’ was the feeling he craved as he slid the key into the back pocket of his jeans. It would be dawn soon.

He eased out the door of the trailer into the dark, but before he could take another step, wary for a reason he could not immediately identify, his arm was twisted behind his back and a hand clapped over his mouth, and he recognized the voice even though it was held down to a sharp, hissing whisper. “What’s up, my brother?” Miguel asked, turning him loose.

The other two boys, Diego and Eduardo, stepped forward from behind the trunk of the big shade tree Joe’s brothers and sisters loved to play beneath in all seasons of the year.

“You can’t stay here,” Miguel said flatly. “So what is your plan, my brother?”

Miguel had never before called Joe “my brother” or come to his home, and the hairs on the back of Joe’s neck prickled, and sharp perspiration started up in his armpits, though he could not have said why. It was too dark to see faces clearly, but Joe felt Ed and Diego grinning.

“He got a plan,” Miguel whispered confidently, and the others echoed “Yeah” in their own whispers, and Miguel gave the order, “Les’ move out now where we can talk,” and the four of them slid down the dark, narrow street, Joe with his heart in his mouth, two keys in the pocket of his jeans, and no semblance in his mind of any kind of plan at all. 

Cook Gone, Fish Coming

That’s the headline that popped into my head this morning, although it makes little sense. Well, it makes a very little sense, for what I was thinking was that the appearance of Mario Batali yesterday evening at the library was over, with the Fishtown book author coming up at the bookstore this afternoon.

Mario was splendid! He and Bob Sloan, another cookbook author, entertained and enlightened the audience with food advice and opinions and humor. Audience for the 7:30 event was already assembling well before 7 o’clock, and more and more chairs kept coming out of the township hall to accommodate those who had not gotten the message to bring lawn chairs, and the grey clouds overhead raised some minor anxiety—but not, it seemed, with the FOL folks, whose remarks ranged from a confident “It won’t rain” to a philosophical “If this is what it takes to bring rain, great!” A few drops fell, and a handful of people put up umbrellas, but no one had to scurry for shelter. I sold books afterward, which Mario graciously signed with a big orange pen, and that’s when I noticed he was not wearing his signature orange Crocs. What I’d realized much earlier, to my great chagrin, was that I had forgotten my camera! Many other people did have cameras, and many fans had their pictures taken with Mario, and the entire event was well documented for Northport history—just not for this blog, and I can only apologize and hope there will be another chance in the future. Meanwhile, introduce yourself to Mario here.

But now it’s another new day, and besides my 8:30 a.m. meeting (ah, yes, I knew there was a reason I was up at 6 o’clock!), this afternoon will bring Laurie Kay Sommers to Dog Ears Books with Fishtown, Leland. That’s a book whose time had come, and I’m pleased to introduce its author to Northport. With design by Dan Stewart, concept from Amanda Holmes, and photographs and documentation from many, Fishtown, Leland is a real keepsake, for natives, newcomers, and visitors. One of my customers has already reserved multiple copies, and I’m sure others will follow. It’s that kind of book.

Will the days ahead be quieter? Somehow I doubt it. It is, after all, "high season" Up North. 

Authors, Books, Birds, Bookmarks, Dogs and the NORTHPORT DOG PARADE!

Author and book-loving fan

Thursday was great fun with the Chickadee Man! Bill Smith, author of Chickadees at Night (northern Michigan’s current best-selling hardcover book, the paperback bestsellers being “shades” of some dull color...), did a recitation of his “fun” verse about chickadees (defending "funner" as "more fun than 'more fun'") and also gave his audience an insider view on how an illustrated book comes together, crediting his illustrator, Charles R. Murphy, and graphic book designer, Jenifer Thomas, for their contributions. There’s no doubt about the quality of the collaboration--the book speaks for itself—but the magic that happens between author and audience adds a dimension all its own, which is what bookstore events are all about, so here’s a little more of the flavor of Dog Ears Books on Thursday, for those who couldn’t be with us:

Imitating chickadee doing WHAT?

Explaining how the book illustrations evolved

Bill left behind a copy of his petition to make the chickadee Michigan’s new state bird, replacing the robin. Signatures welcome! Thanks to him, I have realized that the bird I heard on my first day sitting still in the woods in January was undoubtedly a chickadee, so of course I signed the petition. How about you?

Birds! On the back roads and close to home, one of my new bird friends this year is the Eastern kingbird, Tyrannus tyrannus. (Isn’t that a name? Wow!) All the guidebooks say the kingbird is “common and conspicuous.” Well, what can I say, as one who only learned to see it this year? All previous summers I was looking for a much smaller bird, and so I missed it altogether. Now I spot a kingbird and greet it as a friend and neighbor.

Kingbird, my new friend

We are also honored to have bluebirds nesting in a dead popple, close enough to our outdoor dining table that we can watch the parents feed their young while we ourselves are feeding. Saturday evening I could see (but was not quick enough to photograph) two gaping baby beaks at the nest hole entrance when the father bird returned with a grasshopper almost as big as his own head. One baby got that giant insect, and the other had to wait for their mother to arrive with a smaller tasty treat.

Papa at nest tree

Still on the subject of natural species, but switching from fauna to flora, I was intrigued to run across a couple stands of fireweed in northern Leelanau Township recently, up on the way to Christmas Cove. To me, fireweed is a U.P. wildflower, past blossoming by the time I get to Lake Superior for a visit in September, but here it was, close to home, and somehow that pleased me greatly.

Fireweed here in Leelanau Township

Cookbooks!

The third week of July will be busy for me. Mario Batali is the guest author on Tuesday evening, July 17, 7:30 p.m., at the Friends of the Leelanau Township Library’s Suzanne Rose Kraynik summer author series, and I’ll be there with a few of Mario’s cookbooks (four different titles) for those who want to purchase and get his signature and personal inscription after the formal presentation. (FOL president Suzanne Landes asks that everyone coming to the event bring a lawn chair, as the crowd is expected to be large, necessitating an outdoor evening!) Then the very next day, Wednesday, July 18, the author of the new Fishtown, Leland book, Laurie Kay Sommers, will be at Dog Ears Books from 4 to 6 p.m. to sign that exciting regional offering!

Bookmarks are a natural complement to bound books printed on paper, and a new addition to my bookstore inventory is a selection of beautiful, colorful, scenic (and laminated) bookmarks by local photographer Karen Casebeer. Karen urged me to carry “just the ones you like,” but there were none I didn’t like, and so my customers can choose wildlife, scenery, or sailboats on Grand Traverse Bay. There is only one photograph that was not taken here in Leelanau Township, and it will be up to you to determine which one that is, if you want to guess, when you make your choices. And yes, there is a snowy owl....

Last but hardly least important, let’s not forget the Northport Dog Parade. This year the parade will be a week earlier, taking place on Saturday, July 11--which is also the date of the Leelanau Township wine festival here in Northport, but let’s not get sidetracked. Dog Parade, Dog Parade. The theme this year, a nod to the marina improvements, is “Old Un-Salty Dog.” If any of you are going “Huh?” please recall that “salty dogs” are sailors and that Lake Michigan is “unsalted.” Now, start thinking about a costume or a float.

Dog Parade registration forms are available at Dog Ears Books, the Pennington Collection, and the Northport Bay Dog and Cat Company. Registration is $5/dog before August 11 and $10 on parade day. Parade day registration runs from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., with the parade beginning at 1:00 p.m., and JUDGING BEGINS AT THE MILL POND on 3^rd Street at 11:30 a.m., so be there early, in costume!

Guest Blogger: Michigan Novel Takes Flight

A couple of days ago I put on Facebook an idea that had popped into my head: I asked anyone having bought a book in my shop that made a big impression to write and tell me about it. Then, I said, with the customer’s permission, I would put the story on Books in Northport. To my delight, someone took up my “Facebook challenge,” and here is today’s guest blogger, Barbara Stark-Nemon. A retired English teacher and speech/language therapist (speech pathologist), Barbara has finished her first novel and is well into a second—but I’ll let her tell the rest of her story:

I’ve taken up your FB challenge!  Donald Lystra’s  “Season of Water and Ice” came to me from you last winter on one of my solo sojourns to the lake house to write.  Set in Michigan and written by someone who came to novel writing as a second career, this book was immediately of interest to me.  Then I read it, and was treated to its taut, honest narrative voice and the spare simplicity of the 1950s setting with which I further identified.  I loved this book, and a year later it found its way into my own novel…. Here’s the excerpt…  you never know where a book recommendation will lead!

Barbara

Sh’ma Yisroel........   The traditional prayer, watchword of the Jewish faith, floated unbidden into my mind along with gratitude for the opportunity to be pressed into the window seat of a small jet at take-off.  To this very day, taking off in an airplane signaled a momentary suspension between the end of exhausting preparation and extrication from the complexities in my life, and the beginning of the rigors of an adventure that lay ahead.  I had a childhood full of air travel in small single-engine planes, piloted by my parents and a family friend. I’d gained a visceral experience of the mechanical insecurities of aircraft, and the physical alarm systems offered by the human body to remind us that flight is not what we were designed to do.  The prayer always seemed like a perfect acknowledgment of my transitional state on every level.  It was all about oneness, and whatever will be will be.

“How are you liking the Lystra?” The deep voice penetrated the roar of the jet engines and my early attempts at mind-clearing meditation, another favorite airplane trick. I opened my eyes and looked at the man seated two seats over.  He was very good-looking and as relaxed as a tall person can be in the undignified  confines of a coach seat on a small jet. His violet-blue eyes met mine and then glanced at the book in my lap.

“Quite a bit, actually.  Have you read it?”

“I wrote it.  Donald Lystra,” and with that he offered his hand across the seat.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” I felt a whoosh of excitement synchronous with the ascending airplane.  “That’s pretty amazing.” I could tell this man was not yet famous enough to expect to be recognized, and he was as pleased as I at the serendipity. “You first.” I ventured. “Where are you going? Are you giving a book talk?”

“Nope.  I have a reunion.  What about you?”

“I’m going to see apple orchards and hard cideries.  Business trip.” I rushed on. “What I love about this book is the way you portray this adolescent boy in a world of adults that aren’t working in his best interest, but who love him.  It’s so real.”  I didn’t care that I sounded earnest and intense.  It was an airplane after all.  And the novel about a lonely young boy burdened by loyalty to his unhappy parents in their separate lives had touched me.  It was spare and intimate.   The boy was going to make it. The ultimate robustness of children was a theme that comforted me.

Barbara Stark-Nemon blogs as the Northport Muse on North by Northport.