The Marsh King's Daughter(53)
To my left, the land is so barren, the trees to my right look lush by comparison. There’s nothing uglier than a forest that’s been clear-cut. Acre after acre of scattered brush piles, deep skidder ruts, and stumps. Tourists imagine the U.P. is all beautiful and pristine wilderness, but what they don’t know is that often just a few hundred feet from the main highways, great swaths of forest have been reduced to pulp.
The entire state used to be covered with magnificent stands of red and white pine until the late 1800s, when lumber barons claimed the climax forests as their own and rafted the logs down Lake Michigan to build Chicago. The trees the loggers cut today are all second-growth: birch, aspen, oak, jack pine. Once these are gone, the soil is so abused that nothing grows but moss and blueberries.
When my father and I cut firewood, we cut only the biggest trees, and then only what we needed. This actually helped the forest, because it gave the smaller trees room to grow. “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will the white man realize he cannot eat money” was one of my father’s favorite sayings. “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children” was another. I used to think he made them up himself. Now I know they’re famous Native American proverbs. Regardless, Native Americans understood the concept of sustainable forestry long before there was a word for it.
I keep running. There’s no way to know for sure if taking the longer but potentially faster route will allow me to get out in front of my father. I do know it’s going to be close. Running isn’t as easy as I’d hoped. The logging road is a road in name only: rough, uneven, and canted so steeply in places that it feels like I’m running on the side of a cliff. Deep sand, rocks and tree roots sticking out, potholes as big as duck ponds. My breathing is ragged and my lungs burn. My hair and jacket are drenched from the rain and my boots and pant legs are soaked to the knees from splashing through puddles. The rifle slung over my shoulder bruises my back with every step. My calf muscles scream at me to stop. I desperately need to catch my breath, to rest, to pee. The only thing keeping me going is knowing what will happen to Stephen if I don’t.
Which is when, off to my right, a dog barks. A sharp, distinctive yelp that any Plott hound owner would recognize instantly. I bend over with my hands on my knees until my breathing slows. I grin.
20
THE CABIN
The Viking’s wife looked at the wild, badly disposed girl with great sorrow; and when night came on, and her daughter’s beautiful form and disposition were changed, the Viking’s wife spoke in eloquent words to Helga of the sorrow and deep grief that was in her heart. The ugly frog, in its monstrous shape, stood before her, and raised its brown mournful eyes to her face, listening to her words, and seeming to understand them with the intelligence of a human being.
“A bitter time will come for thee,” said the Viking’s wife; “and it will be terrible for me too. It had been better for thee if thou hadst been left on the high-road, with the cold night wind to lull thee to sleep.” And the Viking’s wife shed bitter tears, and went away in anger and sorrow.
— HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN,
The Marsh King’s Daughter
The days and nights I spent in the well taught me three things: My father didn’t love me. My father would do whatever he wanted with no regard for my safety or feelings. My mother was not as indifferent toward me as I thought. For me, these were big ideas. Big enough that each required a great deal of careful thought. After three days, Cousteau and Calypso and I were still trying to sort it all out.
Meanwhile, I learned that the good thing about almost dying from hypothermia, which is what the Geographic article about the failed 1912 Scott expedition to the South Pole called it, was this: as long as you didn’t lose any fingers or toes to frostbite, as soon as you warmed up again you were fine. The warming-up part wasn’t fun—far more painful than smashing your thumb with a hammer or the kickback from a rifle or getting a large tattoo—and I sincerely hoped I would never have to go through anything like that again. On the other hand, I now knew that I was a lot tougher than I thought I was, which had to count for something.
I didn’t know if my father pulled me out of the well because he knew I had reached the limit of what I could endure or if he wanted to kill me and he got the timing wrong. This was what Cousteau and Calypso said. They might have been right.
All I knew was that from the moment I opened my eyes, everyone was angry. Cousteau and Calypso were angry with my father for what he did to me. My mother was angry with him for the same reason. She was also angry with me for making my father so angry that he wanted to kill me. My father was angry with me for refusing to shoot the wolf, and he was angry with my mother for helping me after he pulled me out of the well. I didn’t remember my mother crawling under the covers to warm me, but there was a fresh bruise on her face that proved she did. And around and around it went. There was so much anger filling the cabin, it felt like there was no air left to breathe. My father stayed in the marsh by himself most of the time, and that helped. I had no idea if he was still trying to shoot our spring deer or if he was hunting the wolf. I didn’t very much care. All I knew was that every evening he came back angrier than when he’d left. He said just looking at my mother and me made him sick, and this was why he stayed away. I didn’t tell him that Cousteau and Calypso felt the same way about him.