Rascal

Perhaps a psychologist might say that I had substituted pets for a family. I had a human family, of course—interesting, well-educated, and affectionate. But Mother was dead, my father often away on business trips, my brother Herschel fighting in France, and my sisters Theo and Jessica now living their adult lives.

It made me sad that I could not have known Kumlien, and walked the woods with him, learning every bird and flower and insect. I had been born too late, it seemed, even to hear a whippoorwill.

At the age of twelve he had fallen slightly in love with a pretty Indian girl, so light-skinned and delicate of feature that my father was sure she was more than half French. The Indians had moved on, like the waterfowl they hunted, and with them went the girl, whom he never saw again.

I always enjoyed these farm excursions, particularly the opportunity to watch colts and calves high-tailing through the pastures. The young of almost every species, it seemed, were glad to be alive, Rascal included.

We walked on in silence approaching the forty acres of virgin forest which Kumlien had protected from the ax. It is gone now, but it was there when I was a boy, a sanctuary and a memorial, haunted by the spirit of the gentle Swede who played his flute for the whippoorwills.

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.

Somewhere it must all be recorded, as insects are captured in amber—that day on the river: transcribed in Brule water, written on the autumn air, safe at least in my memory.

I looked up at my father hoping he would say something adequate, but he didn’t. So I tried to be gracious.

“And then you could put it all down,” Aunt Lillie said, “the way it is now . . . case weather, the fog, the lantern light . . . and the voices of the men—hear them—coming in for breakfast. You could keep it just like this forever.”