My Blog

Part 1 of 8

Lola and Charlene

The cannon was on a limestone bluff that surveyed the moonlit river. Her daddy had told her it would be fired occasionally to scare the Indians, but she could not imagine why, thinking of the shy family, the Sunfish, who had their tar-papered cabin in the depths of the Stevich woods and who silently fished the banks of the Little Cedar for a significant portion of their food. The cold black Civil War relic hadn't been fired in her memory, but her father had made his recollections clear to her, as if she had lived a separate life in a segment of time she could not define but for its elusiveness at the edge of her own memory. Her father had been dead six years.

Where are you Charlene? Time to get walking on the river road, river road, river road. Lola Hessen was 16 and was waiting, impatiently, on this cold November evening, 1941, for her friend. Good Lord, Charlene, this world begins in daylight and as you walk west the limestone ledges climb and they tumble in the melt and chunks litter the road like scattered stone books. And then someone cleans the road and piles the stone books to the side (or takes them to build a house) and then in spring the honeysuckle and Dutchman's britches flower and the wild lilac and rose. You walk west in summer and the sun flames the river red and the color takes your right hand and you stroll with it as the library of limestone reads you its purple and you always have some place to go. The mourning dove coos her heavy sighs and the sound is like your mother's arms as if you have stopped struggling after pain and you are soothed into her, yes, bodily, animal, blind little kitten. And then the cool days come like now and the leaves begin to speak with their dry voices, and they say to you that they are dying and then they fall and the wind in the bare trees is the largest voice, you can't lose it. And at night, how its voice seeks you, seeks you, seeks you.

The cold was not yet penetrating, yet she had prepared herself for the evening=s five mile hike from Ottie, Iowa (the minuscule town where she lived) to St. Albans, Iowa, near the Minnesota border. She wore a long brown wool coat, a hand-me-down from her mother. She wrapped the white wool scarf neatly around her head like a kerchief. On inner pockets in her coat were two freshly baked potatoes wrapped in tin foil. They radiated a steady yet diminishing warmth.

It was said that two young Indian lovers had leapt to their deaths from this very overlook (there are always such stories). And yet Lola could imagine their glittering eyes levitating above the river. She closed her eyes. She could hear their disembodied voices in the wind, and she could feel their spirits wrapping coldly around her. Suddenly, someone touched her elbow.

"Jesus, Charlene! You just about made me shit my undies!"

"Lord forgive me!" Charlene made the sign of the cross and then cupped her hand over her mouth. "Are you ready for our walk?"

"Sure, you idiot. Here." Lola mittened over a hot potato to Charlene. "You can eat that at the movies."

"I'm going to eat this before we get to the movies, Lola. Did ya put butter in it?"

"Butter?!"

"O.K., no butter."

"I'd let it cool off at bit too."

"No problem. Five miles through the icy darkness. Thank you ma'am; you are wealth and generosity personified."

Lola cracked half of a smile and looped her arm through Charlene's.

"To Oz?"

"To Oz!"

And they broke into that skipping-walk-dance they had perfected over two years. We're off to see the wizard. They kept it up for about a hundred yards down Lookout Hill and then struck their normal strides. They would make the 7:30 show of "That Hamilton Woman" at the St. Albans. That neighboring small town had an equally small imagination naming their businesses: St. Albans theatre, St. Albans bank, St. Albans café and restaurant, St. Albans seed and feed, St. Albans grocery. However, that town winked like a cluster of inviting stars when compared to Ottie.

The stars shone well and on nights like these Lola thought heaven was that much closer and those who loved you well from above could see you with clear eyes and wish you well and send their blessings unhindered by cloud cover. They crossed the bridge, and as they crossed it they could hear and see the falls gushing over the hydroelectric dam.

The dam house had started out in the 1850's as a grist mill. The mill stone itself rested as a doorstep to the door that now was locked to the mysterious generator. The water rushed over the dam and the turbines spun and a dim yellow light got lit above the door. Wires connected to Ottie, and other dim yellow lights burnt above the chopping of onions and the frying of beef and pork liver and kidney and potatoes. The water gushing over the dam curled and looked glassy at the top, and then it fell and crashed to spray and foam.

The Red Ball was the highway they walked and it wound closely by the river for a while and then took a northwest diagonal to St. Albans. It cut through the thick hardwood trees that banked the Cedar and it reminded Lola of the Haunted Forest. The stars shone brightly through the leafless canopy above and she whispered her father's name in the back of her mind.

"What are you thinking about, Lola?"

"Lenny. He has been in St. Albans all day with the car and we have to walk."

"Well, what else are brothers for?"

Lola made her mouth a thin line.

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