finally spoke again. “It is time you were exposed to the world.”
Karl’s mind leaped up. Chicago. Grain and livestock pouring in from all over the plains. He could hear the animals’ frightened cries, see throngs of people as numberless as the Bible’s multitudes.
“You will be going to the North Woods to work with your uncle,” his father said.
It was as if Karl had been tackled and brought to earth.
“Why send me so far?” he complained. “What do I need to know of the forest?”
“He is my brother,” his father said.
KARL WENT BY TRAIN, switching lines he forgot how many times, until he found himself in a freezing boxcar with a dozen ruffians who, to his dismay, all got out at the same bleak rail crossing he did. From there they were taken by open oxcart mile upon bumpy mile until they reached a scar in the forest that turned out to be the camp of Schum-peter Logging Co.
“Looking for something?” said the enormous oxcart driver, his words clotted by an accent that was not German but more German than French.
“I’m to meet Mr. John Schumpeter,” Karl said. “I’m to be working for him.”
“Everybody does that,” said the ox man.
“I’m to be his clerk,” Karl said.
“Be you a saw clerk or a wagon clerk?” said the ox man.
“Ledger clerk,” said Karl, who could only guess at the penalty for a smart mouth. “I’m to learn the business from him.”
“You’ll learn a lot more than that here,” said the ox man. Then his thick finger pointed toward the other side of the camp. “A person can usually find Mr. Schumpeter over to that big old pile of logs they call the office. But usually you don’t go there unless he asks you to, and then you’d usually just as rather not. By the way, Mr. Ledger Clerk, be sure to wipe those boots off afore you enter. Mr. Schumpeter lives in that office of his, and he likes to keep it as neat as Astor Street. You know where that is, don’t you?”
“No,” said Karl.
“And you never will neither.”
With that the ox man turned away, and Karl struck out across the muddy yard. The first log structure he reached smelled like a kitchen. He poked his head inside, barely able to make out anything except for the glow of coals in a fireplace under a hanging cauldron straight out of the Brothers Grimm.
“I’m looking for Mr. Schumpeter,” said Karl.
“I look like him to you?”
“I’ve never laid eyes on him,” said Karl.
He put the wind in his face again and slogged toward a cabin that looked a cut or two nicer than the rest. He knocked tentatively on the jamb of the open door.
“Hello?” he said.
From inside came the scrape of a chair, then heavy footsteps on wooden planking. When the figure appeared in the rectangle of light from the doorway, it was . . . his father!
The shock lasted only an instant. Then he noticed the age lines, the rounder jaw.
“I’m Emil’s son,” Karl said.
“I was worried that he had decided not to let you come after all,” said Uncle John, reaching out his hand. “He went this way and that way for months after I suggested it.”
Uncle John wore heavy work clothes. But you could tell he was not a man of common labor. His grip would not have held a bucking horse, perhaps the effect of having so many saw clerks and ox clerks.
Karl’s first lesson in business came the very next day, the basics of double-entry bookkeeping. He was not so sure at first about doing everything twice, but his uncle did not seem to be one to waste motion. For one thing, he did not repeat himself, unlike Karl’s father, who assumed his sons could never harvest anything clean on a single pass.
Soon Karl began to appreciate the ways of the account books. He learned to make the figures tell the future, not like a gypsy lady, but scientifically: Let this number drift upward—by paying the men too generously or buying too many provisions—and that number (net profits) began to drop. Your fortune, or the loss of it, was not in the Tarot cards or crystal ball; it was right there on the ledger paper.
He lived with Uncle John in the back of the main cabin. At night Karl would watch his uncle poring over the dense market tables in the Chicago Tribune, a packet of which was delivered once a week. He did not know what his uncle was looking for, but somebody could have detonated a stick of dynamite outside and Uncle John would not have lost his place.
Meantime, Karl began to admire the men he at first had feared. He came to love the forests and streams in which they worked, learned to find his way by moss and the lay of shadows. He developed a genuine feel for the contours of sand hill and swamp. He soon knew the names of birds and the melodies of their songs. He could track deer and turkey. More than once, during slack times in the office, Uncle John let him go off with scouts to investigate virgin lands they intended to work during the winter.
It was on one of these journeys that he came across the river that drew him for the rest of his days. Ahead of them a big buck turned and stared at them for a moment before cracking off into the deep brush. As they reached the lowlands, their boots began to sink into the wet loam, the suck of their footsteps punctuating the hush of invisible waters and the rustle of the wind.
Suddenly off to Karl’s right something reared up. He turned. It was a bear, and it had a cub.
Karl froze. The others, who had not seen it, continued to move up behind him.
He had never known such an animal. On the farm there were weasels and coyotes, but they wanted to stay away from you. The bear stood its ground.
The cub kept rooting around, curious about everything. At some point it began to edge in Karl’s direction and would not retreat. Karl did not dare move because mama had one clear purpose, and it was as old as life. When her child came closer to Karl and mama showed her fangs, Karl’s foot found a stiff twig and snapped it to back off the cub. We’re in this together, little cub, Karl thought. A tremor went through the mother.
Then from behind him came a shot. The shot was clean. The mama bear’s legs buckled and she fell.
Her cub went to her and began poking her with its snout. The next bullet came so close that Karl could hear it ticking through the branches near his ear. The cub collapsed.
A sharp cry pierced the forest. It did not come from the animal.
The ox man and the Norwegian with the rifle ran to him.
“You hurt?” shouted the ox man, who went by the name of Peter Hoekstra.
“Big one,” said the Norwegian, grinning. He moved up to the carcasses and touched the mama’s nose with his toe to make sure she was gone.
Karl had been around butchering all his life, so he knew what to do. When he finished flaying the beasts for their skins, he waded into the river to consecrate it with the blood from his hands and to cool in
