Rascal Read online

  Thurman and Jenkins didn’t stay for the refreshments. But the rest of us enjoyed the cool drink, Rascal taking his from a saucer.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Dabbett said to me as she was leaving. “Rascal didn’t know he was doing wrong.”

  After the neighbors were gone I said bitterly to my father, “You can put criminals in jail. But you can’t put my good little raccoon in jail. How would you like to be led around on a leash?”

  “Now, Sterling,” my father said soothingly, “it’s better than having Rascal shot or trapped.”

  “Well, all right. But I think Rascal and I will run away and live in a cabin in the woods somewhere.”

  “In the woods?”

  “As far from people as we can get—way up in the north woods on the shore of Lake Superior, maybe.”

  My father pondered this for a moment and then said, “How would you like to take a two-week trip, all the way to Superior? Bring Rascal along of course!”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “Of course I mean it. You can ask the Conway boys to feed Wowser and take care of your war garden.”

  I snatched Rascal from the rug and started dancing crazily, which didn’t disturb my raccoon. He was always ready for a romp. We had been given a reprieve—a wonderful two-week reprieve.

  “When can we start, Daddy?”

  “Why, tomorrow I suppose,” my father said. “I’ll just put a sign on the office door.”

  There were no superhighways in those days to streak impersonally toward some distant goal, scoring the countryside with ribbons of unfeeling concrete. In fact there was scant paving of any kind, only friendly little roads that wandered everywhere, muddy in wet weather, dusty in dry, but clinging to ancient game and Indian trails, skirting orchards where one might reach out to pluck an early apple, winding through the valleys of streams and rivers, coming so close to flower gardens and pastures of clover that one could smell all the good country smells, from new-mown hay to ripening corn.

  We started early the next morning, my father, Rascal, and I in our usual places on the front seat. Turning northward toward Fort Atkinson, we passed our old farm and the Kumlien place as we ascended the Rock River valley. Finding the sources of streams was a passion with me. I had followed Saunder’s Creek all the way to its first spring nearly ten miles north of Brailsford Junction, and I had always wanted to follow the Rock River to its source. So we went by way of the Horicon marshes, as romantic to me as Sidney Lanier’s Marshes of Glynn.

  At some point in this neighborhood we crossed the divide between waters pouring down the Rock River to the Mississippi and waters pouring into Lake Winnebago and the Fox River to Lake Michigan, and thus down the Lakes to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. When we saw the first creek running northeastward I felt like the early French explorers of this region.

  We skirted Lake Winnebago for many miles, from Fond du Lac to Neenah and Menasha where Winnebago empties into the Fox, there to cascade in several major rapids on its winding journey to Green Bay.

  We were making excellent time, considering the bumpy roads and two blowouts, which in those days one took with serenity, struggling with tire irons, inner tubes likely to be pinched, and hand pumps to inflate the tires.

  We had packed some of my casual sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, fresh peaches, and a dozen doughnuts. There was no reason to bring any special food for Rascal. He ate almost anything, just as though he were a person—which he definitely believed he was. We bought a tin pail of fresh, cold milk at a farmhouse and feasted beside a bridge over a rushing stream. When Rascal had eaten, he curled up on the cushion of the big back seat—a coil of shining fur against the maroon leather. And there he slept happily all the afternoon.

  It is even more exciting to move from one arboreal region into another than to move from watershed to watershed. This second “divide” we were crossing was from the deciduous trees of southern Wisconsin—the elms, maples, oaks, and hickories—into the evergreen region of pines, spruce, hemlock, and cedars.

  Now the farm odors and fragrances blended into the great perfume of the north woods: the sharp spicy aroma of the firs, and the fine hot scent of the pine needles lying four inches thick to blanket the forest floor.

  We began to see the first granite and basalt rock formations of the oldest geologic period of the world, the Canadian Shield which carries in its treasure house some of the richest ores on the continent—iron, copper, silver, and many other minerals.

  My father knew enough geology and minerology to show me where the salts of copper had stained a cliff blue with azurite and green with malachite. These colors blended with assurance into the moss and lichen on the rocks, adding their tints to those of sky and water.

  I felt a twinge of conscience to be so carried away with this new and different beauty of northern Wisconsin. It was as though I were being unfaithful to southern Wisconsin and to my own lake—Koshkonong.

  In those days there were no motels, and few other places to sleep along the highway, unless in a tent or under the open sky. I wanted to be a voyageur on this excursion, sleeping without cover. My father was willing to gamble against rain, being as little concerned as I.

  We stopped on a point which extended into a small clear lake, unpacked such duffel as we needed, and arranged our camp. Safely out on an extremity of bare granite, its crystals possibly two billion years old, we built a modest fire to cook our evening meal.

  I went to the bottom of the cliff, with rod and reel, to cast a wet fly toward an inviting expanse of ivory-white water lilies. On my fifth cast an eager black bass—two and one-half pounds perhaps—seized the lure and tangled himself in the lilies. I brought him out at last, eyes lustrous, scales shining.

  Cleaned, filleted, and fried golden brown, he made an appetizing fish course for three hungry campers there among the pines.

  We had no tent—only navy hammocks. Still trusting this bright, clear August weather, fringed everywhere with goldenrod and asters, we consigned ourselves to the canopy of the sky.

  That first night we tied one end of each hammock to spruce trees, the other to the rear bumper of the Oldsmobile. We had our easily imaginable difficulties climbing aboard these tipsy platforms of canvas while also pulling the blankets around us.

  My father said he would show me how it was done. Firmly grasping the dowel pin which spread the upper end of the canvas, he eased himself onto his treacherous bed. But before he could cover himself with a blanket the hammock flipped upside down. He landed unhurt but exasperated on the thick padding of spruce and pine needles.

  I laughed until I was breathless, and Rascal hurried over to see why my father was lying on the ground muttering to himself.

  “I’ll bet it’s easy,” I said confidently. I made a running dive, lit squarely in the hammock, held it for a minute, and then did a somersault.

  Now my father was laughing as hard as I was, and Rascal was scampering around as though he understood the joke. Just then, at the most appropriate moment, something else began to laugh—maniacal, spine-chilling laughter from far across the lake.

  “Holy Moses, what’s that?”

  “That’s a loon,” my father said, “and he’s laughing at us—he thinks we’re crazy trying to sleep in navy ham-mocks.”

  I was suddenly completely happy, in love with the loony world and with my father and Rascal. I didn’t care where I slept, or how many times I tipped out of my hammock.

  The new moon came up—a sliver of silver through the pointed firs on the far edge of the lake. And the fragrance of balsam and pine swept over the darkening point.

  We learned at last how to sleep in a hammock and still cover ourselves with our blankets. Soon we dropped into blissful slumber with Rascal beside me. Little screech owls sang our lullaby, and at the base of the cliff there was a gentle swish-swish of small waves—the most soothing sound in the world.

  It was shortly after midnight that the brakes began to slip. The first warning came when we bumped th
e ground gently in our collapsing hammocks. The car was backing slowly toward us. My father, thinking fast, threw a stone under a rear wheel. Rascal awoke more swiftly than I did and went prowling around the car as though he thought we were being attacked.

  My father and I were so sleepy that we merely removed the more obvious sticks and stones, rearranged the pine needles under our hammocks, and went back to sleep again. That was the way we would fix our beds from this night on—flat on the ground, the only way you can possibly sleep in a hammock.

  After a few growls and whimpers and trills, Rascal came back to crawl in with me under my warm blankets.

  The cool night went on without us, oblivious of this small intrusion of humanity. And the gentle serenade continued—a night heron’s distant croak, the footfall of a fox, fish splashing in the pale moonlight. The sidereal universe went wheeling around us, pivoted on the North Star—which, as a very small child, I thought was named for us when Mother first had shown me the Great Dipper and the star toward which it points.

  We awoke at dawn, wonderfully refreshed by a night in the pine-scented air. My father said he felt a little stiff. But I challenged him to join us for a swim in the icy lake. We dipped, toweled dry, and raced up the path to the cliff, panting and laughing, with Rascal dripping gaily along behind. For breakfast we had bacon sandwiches and the remaining peaches, with black coffee from a graniteware pot.

  As we sat munching our sandwiches, utterly contented, a very large bird came soaring over the lake. I spotted him first.

  “Look, a bald eagle!”

  My father watched the bird for several moments before he said, “No, son, but you were close. It’s an osprey.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “An eagle soars on straight pinions. The osprey has a slight bend in the wings. Our bird is only crested with white. The mature bald eagle has a head which is entirely white.”

  Obviously there was much I still could learn from my father, who explained complicated matters so simply.

  Rascal was begging for the last of my sandwich, standing on his capable hind legs, patting my cheek and reaching for the food. So I lay on the ground at his level and we looked each other squarely in the eye as we nibbled at either end of the bacon sandwich, growling softly, just for the joy of pretending we were fighting a little over the food we were sharing.

  Soon we were packed, and off into the morning through pine shadows and patches of sunlight which dappled a winding road through the forest.

  One of the several poems which I knew by heart at this age was Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”:

  Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken;

  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  My sister Jessica, the poet of our family, had told me that it was probably Balboa, and certainly not Cortez, who had caught this particular glimpse of the Pacific. Her criticism did not lessen my admiration for the sonnet, however. I was still in that uncritical stage which allows for the enjoyment of poetry.

  We came upon Lake Superior with similar astonishment and wild surmise—an entire ocean stretching far beyond the horizon, as though a sapphire half as big as the visible sky had been set among granite cliffs and northern pines.

  This “sea of sweet water,” as Radisson had called it when he had visited these shores in the autumn of 1659, is the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes. No cleaner, colder, or more crystal water will be found upon our continent. It is rightly named Superior, having no equal in the world.

  From our eminence above Chequamegon Bay we could see several of the Apostle Islands blending into the far distance. As we hurried toward the lake I found myself reluctantly admitting that this tremendous bowl of blue water was indeed more beautiful than my Koshkonong.

  On a shore of sparkling sand and clean-washed gravel, with the gulls crying overhead, my father and Rascal and I walked the beach, like beachcombers in a dream. This might have been Crusoe’s island, we were so alone with sea and sky.

  In a little pool made by an entering rivulet, my raccoon caught a gleaming minnow which proved to be a trout—dappled with color. Rascal next explored the whitened stumps washed up by the waves. Through these labyrinths he felt his way, curious but cautious, apparently expecting to meet the rightful owner at any moment.

  The beaches of Lake Superior are strewn with agates. These ancient jewels are the result of age-long water seepage into small cavities in the rock. The water carries silica in solution, stained by various minerals. The result is often a gem which in cross section shows rings within rings of crocus yellow through all the shades of brown to deep, rich red. On the outside, agates are often pitted and with no visible evidence of their interior beauty—which rivals the most subtle stained glass. If by accident broken open, however, they shine, wet and radiant upon the beach. During that morning we found more than twenty stones worthy of cutting and polishing.

  Rascal knew nothing about agates, picking up and dropping almost any bright stone that took his eye. But he did find one of the broken agates; and I kept it for him to add to his pennies and his arrowhead. In time he grew impatient with this beach which seemed to have no crayfish, and went to sleep in the hollow of an old stump until we also tired of the agate hunt.

  We ate at a small restaurant in Ashland, then followed the road westward which brought us into the valley of the Brule River, the finest trout stream in Wisconsin.

  Needing supplies, we stopped at an old, unpainted crossroads store. There was everything imaginable for sale in that store: snowshoes, shotguns and deer rifles, and even a yoke for oxen. You could buy groceries as well as brightly colored yard goods, snow packs, and bear traps. There was also merchandise more fascinating to me, such as excellent split-bamboo fly rods and hand-tied trout flies which I viewed with longing.

  While my father bought bread, bacon, and other necessities, Rascal and I browsed. I had been taught never to touch things when I shopped, but Rascal had no such scruples. He delicately fingered everything shiny at his level—never cutting himself or tipping over the object. His little hands examined gleaming axes, peavey hooks, and entrancing fly reels. On and on went his happy investigation of log chains, garden tools, and other hardware. Only when he climbed on a counter and started touching the kerosene lamps did I stop him for fear he might send one crashing to the floor.

  “Real smart ’coon you got there,” the storekeeper said. “Make a good coonskin cap some day.”

  “He’ll never be a coonskin cap,” I said fiercely, and surprised at the anger in my voice. “Nobody will ever skin Rascal.”

  We came at last to what was to be our permanent camp in the north woods. It was on a promontory some twenty feet above one of the deepest and most beautiful trout pools I have ever seen, carved from the rock at a curve in the Brule. The grove shading the little hill was the only piece of virgin timber we found in all that north country. If the trees had been white pine they would have been cut forty years previously. But they were yellow pine—just as proud in the forest, but almost useless to the carpenter, who calls this intractable wood “Devil pine” because it cracks and splinters in every direction and refuses to take a nail without a tantrum.

  The nearest branches were at least thirty-five feet above us, and the forest floor beneath had no vegetation, only a thick carpet of pine needles. The breeze was always gently stirring in this high-canopied room, and again we had a projecting rock above the river for safe campfires. When the sun sank slowly westward through our pine-roofed mansion, we ate, and prepared our beds upon the ground. I had almost decided that I would live here forever, thus avoiding permanently the nightmare of caging my pet raccoon.

  It was characteristic of my parent that he had not told me the real reason for this trip. He had been asked to tes
tify as an expert witness in a case being tried before a judge in Superior, Wisconsin.

  Our camp on the Brule was some twenty miles from the courtroom; so each day the court was in session, my father would leave shortly after breakfast, taking his packet of notes and documents, and would return during the afternoon.

  I had no interest in legal affairs, and my father was tranquil concerning my safety. He knew that I could scarcely get lost if I stayed on the river or one of its branches, and that Rascal and I could swim if we fell into one of the deeper pools. Several recent showers lessened the danger of forest fires, and we had seen no sign of bears—neither footprints along the stream nor trees scratched or rubbed at bear’s length above the ground.

  Despite the war in Europe, the world as a whole seemed safe in those days. We had left our house unlocked in Brailsford Junction. We seldom took the key from the car. We trusted our fellow human beings, and particularly the creatures of the woods.

  Two weeks of absolute freedom! Each hour was savored. The very first day Rascal and I found an opening in the forest where a sunny hillside was festooned with blueberries nearly as large and dark as grapes, their leaves lacquered deep red. We hurried back to camp for a bucket, and returned to pick three or four quarts of such delicious fruit that I ate a third as many as I put in the pail. Rascal had an even better record. He ate every blueberry he picked.

  That afternoon we were too busy exploring to find time to fish. Wearing only my swimming trunks, I padded over pine needles, as alluring to my bare feet as to Rascal’s. We crossed small tributaries to the Brule, or waded up their winding shallows hoping to find the hidden springs from which they emerged. We walked the length of mossy logs, crossed and recrossed the Brule in its foaming riffles—ice cold and amber clear. Once I slipped on a submerged boulder and went laughing down into the pool below, with Rascal plunging in dutifully to follow me in my fun. Little red pine squirrels scolded us as though we had interrupted a service in a cathedral. Striped chipmunks came darting out, whistling and chirping, frantic with curiosity and eager to see the show.