That, at least, held a lot of truth, because with Wisconsin behind me I belatedly was ready to heed Gram—although not nearly in the manner she had so strenuously advised back there in the cookhouse—and step out in the world eager for new scenes and experiences, while Herman was as complete a sightseer as a one-eyed person can be. “Donny, look!” he’d point out any stretch of land open enough to hold a horse or cow. Even across cactusless Minnesota, he declared the countryside the perfect setting for a Karl May shoot-’em-up.
Then about the time I’d had all of those exclamations I could stomach, I would glance over and he’d be snoring away—literally in the blink of an eye he could sleep like a soldier, anytime and anywhere—restoring himself for the next stint of gabbing and gawking. But no sooner would I be taking the quiet opportunity to snack on a Mounds bar or pull out the autograph album to coax an inscription from some promising passenger than I’d hear from beside me, “You got work done, Donny?”
The yawning question as he came awake would be my signal to sigh and get back at what needed to be done, thanks to his big eye-dea on our ride out of Manitowoc. That is, corresponding with Gram from well into the future. I will say, when Herman put his mind to something like that, he did it all-out. In the shop at the Milwaukee terminal that sold everything from toothpaste to shoelaces, he had bought me a tablet with stiff backing, envelopes, and stamps, everything needed “for you to write like a good boy.” Then, of course, it was up to me, the storier that I hoped Gram would be more glad of this time than others. As towns and their convenience stops came and went—Fond du Lac, Eau Claire, Menomonee, the Twin Cities, where I made damn sure we caught the next bus in plenty of time—I composed letter upon letter describing how my summer in the company of Aunt Kitty and Uncle Dutch was supposedly going. Creating my ghost self, I suppose it could be said, existing with the Manitowocers roaming around in the afterlife.
If my imagination and I were any example, there may be something to the notion that life on the road lends itself to rambling on the page. Putting the Kwik-Klik into action, I would begin with some variation of Dear Gram—I am fine, I hope you are better. The weather here in Wisconsin is hot. I am having a good time. Then I’d bring my foe into the picture, week by week disguised as the swellest great-aunt ever. For the Fourth of July we went to the park where they played music like “God Bless America” and shot off fireworks and everything. . . . Today Aunt Kitty took me to the circus. Those acrobats are really something. . . . Guess what, Aunt Kitty bought a collie dog named Laddie to keep me company. She is always doing things like that. . . .
I scarcely mentioned Herman, not wanting to get into his change from Dutch and the glass eye he could play a tune on and all that, and he seemed not to mind being left out. He read each of my compositions with his finger, very much as Gram would do when it arrived to her, occasionally questioning a word—“Looks funny, trapeze is spelled with z?”—before sealing it up and putting it in precise order in the packet to go to Ernie, the Schooner bartender, for mailing onward to the Columbus Hospital pavilion in Great Falls once a week. And I would go on to make up the next feature of my pretended summer on the Lake Michigan shore where Manitou held sway. Aunt Kitty and I went to the Manitou Days celebration. It is a big deal here, with a parade like at a Montana rodeo and everything, because back in Indian times he was their Great Spirit, sort of like God to them, maybe. You know how the Blackfeet go on vision quests, up to Chief Mountain or someplace wild like that, to see if they can get visited by a spirit of some kind. That’s like a dream when they are not sure they are asleep, if I savvy it right. I know it sounds spooky, but Aunt Kate said if we can’t believe in that, we can at least believe in Indians. . . .
Old Hippo Butt would have been surprised all the way to her back teeth at the number of kindly endeavors my imagination provided her.
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