Chapter Sixteen
They had stopped off in “The Cities”, as they commonly referred to Minneapolis/St. Paul, to unload most of Etta’s belongings in her dad’s garage, stopped long enough to call him at her grandmother’s to let him know when they’d be leaving for Iowa. Peggy drove the rest of the way to Iowa, along the rolling hills of Minnesota with small towns and the occasional lake. As the land flattened, the scenery became less dense, with little else but farm fields surrounding them: the barbed wire fencing along the road, with fencerows of chokecherry, elderberry and the occasional dogwood or cottonwood tree bordering large vast expanses of newly planted fields, corn and soybeans. As they went further south, the plantings had grown higher as they’d obviously been planted earlier.
They pulled into her grandmother’s drive about an hour after stopping for a burger. They found her dad sitting in the living room surrounded by a delivery of medical equipment in her grandmother’s dining room: a hospital bed, rolling table, a walker and other miscellaneous necessary gear all sitting in disarray.
“Hey dad,” Etta said, as she came and gave him a side hug as he sat on the edge of the still naked hospital bed. “When did all this come?”
“Just an hour ago. I called a place in Mason to bring it. They just showed up. Now what do I do?” The helpless look on his face was all that was needed.
“Well, we’ll have to get this all set up. When does she come home?”
“Tomorrow. Oh God. Maybe this was more than I could chew, huh?”
“We’ll get it straightened out, dad. Don’t worry. Peggy, can you get us some help to lift stuff in the morning? Maybe some strong arms to lift grandma into the house until we can get a ramp or something? You know a lot of people down here.”
“Sure. Let me go see my aunt and uncle to get it setup. I’ll have a couple of my cousins show up tomorrow. Jesse will help me out. I’m sure he probably has a ramp at the farm we can fashion into something that will work temporarily. And we can move the hutch out of here so this will be a nice room for Gen to recuperate until she can climb stairs again. I think I’ll stay over at my uncle’s tonight and be back in the morning, okay? I’ll call you so you know when Jesse will be here.”
“I love you, Peggy. Thank you so much.” She pulled Peggy into a heartfelt bear hug where she lingered. She whispered in her ear, “I never would’ve made it here without you.”
“We’ve got each other. I’ll see you both tomorrow, okay?”
“Bye.” Peggy walked out the kitchen door and across the block to her uncle’s home to make arrangements and see her father’s family. Etta looked at her dad, who looked tired and weary. “How are you doing, dad? You look beat.”
“I’m okay. Better with you here now. I won’t have to worry about you so much in Beaumont. I’m glad you girls made it here safe and sound.” Etta came over to sit with him and lean her head against his shoulder He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “She’s a real peach of a friend to you, isn’t she?”
“She is. She’s the very best, dad. She made the trip tolerable.”
“Are you okay? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“I will be. I’m going to be kind of testy for a while because --- well, I’m going to miss Tom and the girls terribly. But I know that with time it’ll sting a little bit less and less. Right now it’s an open wound, dad.”
“I know it is. We’ll figure it out, honey. One day at a time.”
“That’s right. And tonight yet we can’t just rest, can we? As tired as I am, we have too much to do before grandma can come home and stay in this room.” She walked over to the large hutch that held a couple of the pretty dishes her grandmother displayed throughout her childhood. “Oh, goody. More packing. Just what I wanted to do. I seem to have found my calling in life. Why don’t you go down to the liquor store and get us some really strong boxes for these dishes? I can get started on emptying the roll top desk until you get back. We’ll empty these out and have Jesse and Peggy’s cousins find other rooms for these big pieces of furniture.”
Her father came over and kissed her forehead. “You’re a dynamo, my dear girl. I don’t know where you get your energy. I’ll be back after a bit. See if you can’t find some sheets in the upstairs closet for this bed, too, while I’m gone.” He went out the back door, got in his car and drove off toward downtown.
Etta went downstairs, found some empty cardboard boxes and starting piling things from her grandmother’s desk in the boxes. Finally she had some alone time. When she got to the lower compartment of the desk that had a keyhole, she was glad to find that it opened. Inside was a family Bible and one very large leather-bound book with a leather strap wound around it. Curiosity now had the best of her. What kind of a book would grandma keep with the Bible in such an important spot? She unwound the leather and opened the cording to find several volumes of hand-written notes in a diary format, written in a very neat singular hand in chronological order backwards. The top book was from 1928, going all the way back to 1916. These had to be her great-grandmother’s diaries.
She opened the 1916 diary and started reading from the first page:
“January 28, 1916 – Moved in with Bernard and Anna today. I’m sharing a room with baby Frank, so I write as he’s sleeping. He’s a sweet child. I’m so happy to be with Anna again. Papa is very sick now and they say what he has may be contagious so I cannot stay with Ma and Pa any longer. Doc Fuller says only time will tell if I have what has caused Papa’s illness. Tomorrow I will see Mrs. Schoenfelder to see if she will hire me to cook for her. She wants a German-speaking girl, so I hope she will find my cooking good enuf to work for her. Anna and Bernard can’t afford to keep me for long without pay. Leo Wilson, will give me a ride with his sisters and aunt, Lula, who is the teacher in Keewanee. Anna knows her and has said that she is very sweet and her nephew will give me rides for a time without pay.”
Etta stopped reading after the first dated entry. So that what how her great-grandparents had met. He’d given her a ride to a job. Hmmm … she never knew any of this. She would take this upstairs to the guest room for some nighttime reading. Who knew what she would learn about her family’s past? For right now, she needed to keep packing things up. At least for a while the work her keep her mind off her troubles.
* * *
Etta smoothed down the covers and placed her grandmother’s hands beneath her own. “Are you comfortable now? Can I get you anything else before you take a nap?” The exhausted look on Etta’s face held an unconditional love Gen knew had always been there. She just hated to see the girl so tired and drawn.
“No, I’m fine now. You need a nap as much as I do, I think.”
“You might be right on that one, grandma. I’ll take you up on that for an hour or two. If you’re set, then I’ll go lay down too. I’ll start dinner as soon as we get up, okay? Chicken soup, okay? Just from a can tonight. I’m a little too wiped to cook anything from scratch.”
“That’ll be fine, dear. You shouldn’t worry about anything else. You’ve done so much already.” Peggy’s cousin, Jesse, had really come through. He’d brought three strong guys to move the heavy furniture to better spots in the house and moved all the boxes Etta had packed the night before up to the attic. He’d also brought along a ramp from his farm and, with Peggy’s help, built it into a sort of short-term wheelchair ramp, and all before noon. When she and her dad had brought Gen home from the hospital at two, everything was looking picture perfect in the house and all she had to do was worry about her grandma.
Peggy had stayed a couple of hours to make sure nothing else was needed. “Gen, you’re looking pretty good for a woman who’s had a stroke. I’ll make sure my mom knows you’re okay.”
“Oh, good. I worry so about your mom.”
“You two worry about each other like Etta and I do. I guess we’re just chips off the old block, huh?”
“You sure are. It’s so nice to see that you are, too.”
“Etta, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” Peggy came over and gave Genevieve a peck on the cheek. “I’ll give my mom your best, Gen. Take good care of Etta.”
“I will. We’ll take care of each other,” Gen said, patting the younger girl on the cheek when she bent down to kiss her.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back, grandma.” She gave Gen’s hand a gentle rub on the way towards the kitchen. “What’s up? What’s so mysterious?”
“I’m going to head back to my folks tomorrow. Jesse said he’d give me a ride home. He says it’s time I face the music with my folks and he’s right. I hate to leave you here by yourself, but I think you and your dad will be okay, won’t you?”
“Yes, we’ll be fine. And Jesse is probably right. You’ve got to figure out your life, Peggy. I’m going to have to figure out mine too. As long as you know I’ll always be there for you, the way you’ve been in the past few days.” Unwanted tears were forming in her eyes, with just the thought of how close Peggy had become to her over the past few months.
“I know it. God, I’ll miss you.”
Etta wiped a tear from one eye with the back of one hand. “So many damned goodbyes this week. I don’t know if I can hack it.”
“You’ll be okay. What could go wrong in Beaumont? Nothing ever happens here.” She gave her one last long hug, then walked out the back door, down the back steps and started walking towards her uncle’s house, calling back. “Although, you may die of boredom.”
“Thanks a lot! Careful going home. Call me when you get there.”
“Will do. Bye Etta! See ya around.”
* * *
The muscles in Tom’s forearms burned with the effort of rowing his kayak from Raspberry Island to America Dock on Rock Harbor. It was his third kayak trip that day and it was a bit much, but he needed to know if Izzy had heard from Etta since she’d left. He may be out in the wilderness, but his mind had been on Etta non-stop since she’d left. He needed to know she was safe, that she’d made it to Iowa okay. He didn’t know what he’d need to do to get her back one day, but he wasn’t going to let go so easily, no matter where he was and no matter how much he had to row to find out.
He had started out his day at Siskiwit Lake working with Dr. Raymond Moody, the research scientist in charge of the project he’d been assigned to. In his first two days on Isle Royale, he’d found in Dr. Moody that the man’s name fit him: somewhat grumpy and temperamental. After a while, he was sure, they’d grow accustomed to one another and he’d find a working rhythm with the guy. He’d been assigned Wednesdays and Thursdays as lieu days, so he had two days to himself starting this morning, yet Dr. Moody expected him to drop some paper work for him at Edisen Fishery on his way to Rock Harbor. He’d told him he needed to use a phone and that was the closest place where a satellite phone was available.
Perhaps the upper-body workout of a long paddle would keep his mind from dwelling on the fact that, in essence, he’d lost Etta. She may have seen Owen Randall as an insurmountable obstacle to their life together, but he didn’t. He would have to convince her that he wasn’t anything to them. This three-month waylay in the woods, although it had seemed a great idea at the time, had come at the most inconvenient time possible for his relationship with Etta. It was just something he’d have to deal with. Now, if he could just get rid of this bothersome song running through his mind. It was perhaps the most annoyingly repetition of a sixties blues songs, “Buttercup”, talking forever and monotonously of a girl who clearly didn’t love the guy back.
And he wasn’t some sap who was going to sit by the phone just waiting for her to call. Hell, no. He’d go get her. He’d go to the ends of the earth if he had to, but he’d get her back. He’d hold her in his arms again and feel her luscious body against his. He’d build a life together with her. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he’d known from that first night, that first kiss. Yeah, he’d get enough kisses for a silk scarf and he’d get her forever.
He found the make-shift “phone booth” for the satellite phone behind the main lodge, which was really just an old chair sitting inside an old Army surplus canvas tent, with a pole running up the middle and staked out on all sides. There was hardly room for one person and clearly no room for more. Surprisingly, it was empty and there wasn’t a long line of people waiting to use it. He called the house’s number in Marquette and got Izzy.
“Hello?” Izzy’s tired voice came over, although somewhat filled with static.
“Hey Izz. How are you all doing?”
Tom could hear some fumbling of something in the background and a faint distant voice, maybe just a humming noise. “Oh, hey, Tom! We’re good. How are you? Where are you?”
“In the wilderness. Is everything okay? No problems?”
Izzy let out a big yawn. “No problems. Gabby and Sophie are going to summer school. I’m working at the restaurant full-time. It’s good. We just miss you and Etta.”
“Did she get there okay? Is she all right?” In his weariness, the worry that had been in his mind all day, through the long trip to the phone was coming through his voice.
“She called when they got to Iowa. She’s fine. I’m calling her once a week. Her grandma’s doing okay. Stop worrying, Tom.” There was a sound of a loud slap over the line. “She’ll be fine while you’re up there. Are you having fun?”
“Oh, yeah. Worrying to death about her and you guys. Paddled for about five hours to get to this phone, but yeah, I’m okay.”
“Shit, Tom. You don’t have to do that. We’ll be fine without you for a while. Why don’t you just write her? There must be places where you can drop a letter?”
Tom could swear he heard a male voice over the phone nearby Izzy. “Same place as the phone. Lots of paddling. I’ll have arms like a fiend after this summer. Why do you sound so tired? Is somebody there with you?” “No, it’s just me. I had my little TV on before I laid down to take a nap. The news is on. You just caught me in the middle of a nap is all,” Izzy answered in a nonchalant way.
“Oh, okay. Sorry I woke you.” Tom pulled back the canvas opening and saw there were four people now sitting on the bench near the lodge in line. “Well, I wish I could talk more, but now there’s a line for this thing. Leave a message with the office if there’s a problem, okay? And call her more to let her know I’m asking about her, okay? I can’t let her forget me.”
“Oh, Tom. She’s not going to forget you. Take care of yourself. No falling in or anything, okay?” “Okay. Bye, Izzy. I love you.”
“Love you too. Bye.”
Tom disconnected the phone and left the canvas tent which sufficed as a phone booth in these parts. There were two gals and two younger guys he recognized from the kitchen staff at the lodge waiting to use it on a break from their work. He tipped his cap to them, hitched up his pack on his back and went to find some beer before he setup camp behind the housing unit of his new friend, Josh. It was nice of him to let him use his bathroom when he came into harbor. It helped having friends. Maybe he’d buy him a beer or two tonight too, if for no other reason than to drown his sorrows and maybe get this damned song out of his head.