Lenahan, Gordon,Wisc., used a marker to write “liar” in large letters on his ten-year-old son’s forehead, “I lied to friends and teacher” on his chest, and “I tell stories” on his back. Then he took his shirtless son to P&R Pub in Hawthorne and made him talk to customers and display the writings.
Now my pop mutters, “They promised a sunny day and look-it what we got!”
He uses the Polish word for snow, śnieg. Four or five inches of it cover the birdbath.
“Maybe this’ll be my last Halloween to go trick or treating,” I say. “And who’s going to give out candy on a stormy night like this?”
“I geev candy,” Mrs. Pilsudski says.
“Boy’s too old for trick or treating,” my pop says. “What’re you, nineteen?”
“Fourteen. Tad’s nineteen,” I say referring to my cousin. Home from Vietnam, he is named after Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish patriot who helped General Washington win the Revolution.
“Ah, go upstairs,” says Pa. “Read your scrapbook. Play with your winter weed collection. Look at the weather. No, lemme tell you a thing or two.You know what’s falling outside?”
“What?” I ask as I leave the kitchen.
“Shit from the sky.”
“Sheet from sky,” Mrs. Pilsudski says in her broken English.
“That’s northern Wisconsin for you,” Pa says. “Worst climate in the world is in ‘Siberior,’” a word he’s made up combining “Superior” and “Siberia.”
In the living room, I watch Ma and Mrs. Pilsudski, who whispers, “Sheet from sky,” over and over as she stares out at the weather. Ma says we must be patient with Mrs. Pilsudski when she forgets and leaves open the bathroom door at our house, but I saw what she was doing once and it was awful. She wore heavy black shoes, thick, skin-colored stockings, and a shapeless house-dress with yellow cornstalks on it, a style of dress a lot of Old Country women around here wear. Girdle about her knees, the heavyset Mrs. Pilsudski, who cuts the calluses off of people’s feet for a living, hovered over our toilet. Through the open door, I spotted her busying herself, and I cannot say more on the subject. Tonight with Mrs. Pilsudski worrying about getting home, she will wet our couch for sure, and, once she leaves, Ma will dab the cushion and say, “Be patient with her.Yes, she leaves open the bathroom door and pees a little on our couch, but she’s old and can’t help it.”
“I’m going upstairs,” I say.
“You should give us all a break,” says Ma. “Go study your wildflowers.”
With the Lake Superior wind blowing hard outside, I sort through dried weeds, tape them to cardboard squares, write beneath each its name—“Wild Rye,” “Caraway,” “Tansy.” The weed-cards are fun. They pass the time for me like clipping newspaper items does. A brittle weed I collected once and mounted on cardboard, “Fireweed,” also has a news clipping beside it that kind of matches it.
(From page 10, Scrapbook):
HOT UNDER THE COLLAR
Mourners smelled smoke at a funeral. When a mortician investigated, he found a fire inside a coffin. Investigators said embalming fluid leaking from the body of 42-year-old John “Jack” Peters may have caused a chemical reaction, touching off the fire.
Another clipping reminding me of no one or nothing—and certainly of no weed—begins, “Ashland, Wisc. woman charged with adultery” (page 11, Scrapbook). It tells that “enforcement of an adultery law attracted worldwide attention and is raising questions about the old statute’s constitutionality.”Then you read how over-the-road truck driver B. M. Bertilson asked the district attorney to prosecute his wife “under the law that hadn’t been used in Wisconsin in the 20th century.” Mr. Bertilson said his wife, Lotty, admitted breaking the law while he was on the road far from Ashland. What weed or plant could complement this story—Pokeweed? Bouncing Bet? Aaron’s Rod?
Another weed mounted on cardboard, Heal All, matches a news clipping that recalls Cousin Thaddeus. Page 13, Scrapbook, talks about a man dressed in robes and pulling a heavy wooden cross down the highway outside town. “SECOND COMING COULD BE IN NORTHLAND,” reads the headline.
The article said a man yelled, “Praise the Lord,” when a cop, who goes to our church, offered him assistance. Then, when the officer told him it was a highway hazard pulling this cross down the road, the newspaper article said the man offered “passive resistance,” so Lieutenant Gunski arrested him and the cross. On the way to town, Lieutenant Gunski stored the cross in the East End gas station, back with the motor oils, then put the man in jail until his mother sent money to pay the fine. I made up a headline for this one: “CASE OF ARRESTED CROSS.” But you don’t read the real surprise until the end. When the man with the “dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail” got out of jail and claimed his property,
he placed the huge cross over his shoulder and trudged off. Only he’d rigged it so the walking was easier than it was on Jesus’ long haul up Calvary. “He had a neat wheel on the back of it. Still, if you’re dragging that sucker down the highway, it’s got to be heavy,” said the gas station owner, George Polkoski.
When snow is piled against the bedroom window and the cedar tree is bent far over from wet snow, more news comes, a banging on the front door—Souls of the Faithful Departed walking in the storm. Soon, cold air shoots upstairs.
“Hey, look-it this!” I hear Pa say.
He likes Thaddeus, who’s just arrived but then suddenly disappears. Thaddeus is one of many servicemen, especially marines, to come from East End.
“Close the door you were breaking down out there a second ago,” says Ma. “You are sure in a hurry to get inside, Tad.”
As I head to the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, I watch Pani Pilsudski pulling an afghan over her shoulders. “Hey, where’d Tad go? He vanish from sight and become a dead soul?”
“I just told him to shut the porch door, that’s all,” Mother says.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Tad says. “You’re darn right I wanted in. The thing I don’t like about the dark is it’s always dark. Geez, I took quite a fall outside.”
Though Thaddeus is too young to drink, people buy him beer and wine. He’s been on a rumba.A red-and-white wool tassel cap warms his ears. Over his haunted eyes rest blue, square-shaped sunglasses like the Byrds wear. He has on a knee-length, forest-green uniform overcoat with the red cloth patches on the sleeves showing he’s a marine lance corporal. Snow sticks to one elbow and to the side of the coat. He’s fallen down and looks crazy.
“I’m out of uniform.You’re not suppose’ to wear sunglasses. It ain’t military,” he says. “What stinks in here? You let one, Mrs. Pilsudski?”
“Me, I stink,” says Pa. “It’s the odorant so you know what a real gas leak smells like in your home appliances.”
“We know what you smell like. Say,” Tad asks, “what kind of kid collects weeds for a hobby? And newspaper clippings? This ain’t normal.” He waits a minute. “No, I don’t think it is normal,” he says,
