Oskaloosa Moon

Oskaloosa Moon

Gary Sutton

Copyright 2011 by Gary Sutton

Smashwords Edition

"Oskaloosa Moon" is fiction. Any resemblance to real people or incidents that may have actually occurred is coincidental, and the dog ate my homework.

— Gary Sutton

ISBN 978-0-9759625-3-4

Oskaloosa Moon is trademarked. Foreign rights are pending. Nancy Sutton took the cover photo. Gary Sutton designed the covers and converted her photo to art with Adobe PhotoShop.

We called them temporary classrooms, yet they survived my three decades at Iowa State.

Asbestos siding, gray as our winter sky, supported one smallish window for each room. These opened with creaking reluctance. Blackboards covered the inner walls.

Gaggles of wide-eyed freshmen stumbled through the door every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, selected folding chairs and began scribbling equations in their notebooks. Pieces of chalk rattled in my coat pocket while I paced among them to make points and ask questions.

I struggled to inspire those blossoming minds and it worked often enough. But one lad who wandered into my room, escaping the farm’s monotony, showed more humanity than any college could ever hope to teach.

He kept a journal, which seems quaint on today’s campuses with blogs, iPods, Facebook and texting. But that is today and this was then and little of his life could be called normal anyway.

He moved on. I retired. In time he rewrote this journal as a memoir, giving me permission to edit while he remains anonymous. You shall soon know why.

The boy’s writing hardly required editing. There were three punctuation errors in total and one of those could be debated. He did not misspell a single word, which reminds us of how things once were. I did, however, combine his pages into chapters. I also added the short quotes to their beginnings. That is a flourish which he might question.

This story, his story, honors those villagers who watch over the misbegotten.

-Joshua Green, Professor Emeritus Iowa State University October, 2010

Chapter One

"We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

-Johnathan Swift

Mom and Dad couldn’t marry.

He was an Irish sharecropper and nothing’s wrong with that. But Catholic? Now there’s a whole different matter.

Dad worked four miles east of Oskaloosa on the Rasmussens’ 160 acres, and they let him settle near the creek, so the guy didn’t live half-bad. And he was no dummy. Every spring he’d hitch up his trailer, haul it onto higher ground and stay put until that water got over its notion to flood.

So Dad pretty much had it made.

Except there was no getting around one thing. Kneeling for the Pope and eating fish every Friday and splashing holy water around didn’t sit right with true followers of Jesus.

This ruined a Sunday supper with Grandpa and Grandma. Mom and I perched at their knotty pine table, our backs straighter than cornstalks, while gusts rattled the dead leaves outside. Things didn’t feel so snug indoors either. Grandpa stood for attention, him being near to six feet, and he started right in again.

You know them Catholics pray to statues, he said, bristling against his starchy white shirt and hooking both thumbs under those church-going suspenders.

Grandma turned and nodded at us from the cook stove. Mom glared into her plate, twisting a napkin.

And it makes good sense, Grandpa said, turning toward me, that they call their priests fathers. His fingers gripped both suspenders until every knuckle flashed white.

Cuz most of ‘em are.

Mom slid her chair back. I didn’t dare look, cough or twitch.

Grandma clattered down bowls of chicken, green beans and spuds onto doilies. Her glasses fogged when she lifted the lids.

Mom rose up. Nobody spoke. Mom’s lips tightened. She flung the balled-up napkin across their kitchen. The rest of us stared into our laps. We heard Mom stomp off.

Whiffs of chicken sizzling in cornmeal, pepper and bacon grease drifted across the table. Grandma shuffled the pieces, mumbling something about our lovely weather, hunched over and mashed the spuds, her thistles of white hair wobbling with each thrust. She wiped a palm on her apron and scurried back to the kitchen.

Chow down, Grandpa said, like nothing had happened. That chicken probably smelled powerful good but I can’t remember. My hunger had left when Mom huffed out.

Them spuds ain’t Catholic, Grandpa went on, so they won’t stay hot for eternity.

Oh, they’ll keep overnight, Grandma replied, so hushed you could barely hear, the iceman delivered a fresh block yesterday.

He scowled at Grandma. She turned back to face her stove.

Chapter Two

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

- Robert Frost

I got the whole picture bit by bit. If I pretended to be asleep they’d yammer at each other and by fourth grade I pretty much knew.

It turns out Mom had been a country schoolteacher until I came along. She hid the pregnancy by wearing a girdle a couple sizes too small. That concealed her sin until the students left for planting, summer fencing and weeding. Then Grandpa packed up Mom’s stuff and sent her off to the Nazarene Home for Wayward Girls, where she wasn’t allowed to bleach her hair anymore or even be seen in public. Mom hid there until I popped out.

Meanwhile, Grandpa and Grandma skedaddled. They snuck out of Grundy Center and headed south for Oskaloosa, escaping the shame of my bastardly arrival.

This fresh start turned out lucky. In just a few weeks Grandpa found work delivering milk with a horse who remembered the route.

That’s right smart for a horse, Grandma said.

You’re a blessing, boy. She did, Grandma said that one afternoon, while she and I put up tomaters for the winter. I was hard-pressed to concentrate on our Mason jars, scalding water and lid seals after such a grand compliment.

Grandma herself taught school, smack-dab in the city of Oskaloosa itself, not out somewhere in the sticks.

Grandma had talked Grandpa into letting Mom move back in. He even granted permission to bring me along. They didn’t make Mom turn me over to the orphanage. It was hardly discussed, Grandma said, and I believe that until this day.

But just to be sure, one morning I got brave enough to ask.

Orphanage? Grandma replied. No, no, no my special boy, how could we?

But Grandma, I heard…

Oh, lad, if you imagined anything, forget about it, because here you are.

And well, there I was.

Mom gave piano lessons on an upright we rented for five dollars a month. She didn’t put on recitals, or anything showy, so Oskaloosa wouldn’t get upset by us outsiders.

Our only other music cost was a piano tuner from Des Moines. That ran ten bucks each time. Paid in advance. He was blinder than a dead bat and if you did-n’t like his fee, tough, he wouldn’t be back until next year. Talk about your monopoly, he could squeeze. Just because you’re blind or deaf and dumb or a cripple doesn’t mean you can’t be a shyster, the way some regular people are. We always watched our backsides when trading with those Des Moines folks.

Them city folk’re slicker than peeled tomatoes, Grandpa liked to say.

A college-educated lady controlled the Oskaloosa piano lesson business and captured most of the hard-coal brats. She charged those rich kids twice what Mom dared ask, put on recitals and let them borrow sheet music. But Mom invented a practice song. She wrote it all by herself.

Oskaloosa. . . finest town. . . in the state.

And the notes went ABC, CBA, BAC. Kids could play that after their first lesson and their mothers beamed and most would then pay without Jewing down the price.

That college lady, she never wrote no song. She owned one of those silly, flattened-out pianos that take up half a room. Why would anyone with more than a pea-brain waste space like that?

* * *

Speaking of space, after his stroke we laid Grandpa out on a bed in the hall, away from the windows so he wouldn’t chill. He hollered sometimes and went funny in the head. Most nights he’d ask me to rub his feet and legs. I would and Grandma kept a quart of Rexall Isopropyl Denatured Alcohol nearby. That liquid felt good to his skin and covered the stink.

One evening I rubbed Grandpa’s left calf and knee, stringy and cold they were, and studied his eyes so I might tell when he nodded off. I dimmed the lamp to get him woozy. Those alcohol vapors made me light-headed too.

Suddenly Grandpa’s head jerked up.

We raised you like one’ve our own, he said.

I reckon you did, Grandpa.

He plopped back onto the pillow.

And you wasn’t even legitimate, he said.

I kept quiet. His eyelids flickered and shut.

When Grandpa got sickly we lost his milk route money, so Mom snagged a few more kids for piano lessons. Grandma grabbed some weekend work at the Pentecostal Redemption in Jesus Second Nazarene Church, known as Pentecostal Redemption Nazarene for short.

PRN is the best church in town, I said in the basement one evening. The Women of the Lord’s Auxiliary dished up angel-food cake, potato salad and deviled eggs, but you didn’t dare call them deviled inside the church, plus cherry Kool-Aid. They all sort of froze, the rest of the crowd too, when Reverend Dawson sprang from his chair and headed straight for me.

Pentecostal Redemption in Jesus Second Nazarene Church to you, Moon, he said, and not so quietly.

Don’t ever ignore the name of our blessed savior. Driplets of sweat flew while he shook a finger over me. Grandma had always said that horses sweat, men perspire and women glow, but our Most Reverend Christian Dawson II seemed to do all three at once.

Ordained members may call it Pentecostal Redemption Nazarene, he went on, but only members, Moon, and you are nothing more than a guest.

But Reverend Dawson, I asked, then why is it that everybody calls the youth club PRN?

Oh boy, that did it. His cheeks puffed and that vein on his temple pulsed as if wanting to burst. Everybody hushed and looked in all directions but ours.

Blemished kids, of all people, should not blaspheme our Lord’s House, he said.

I scooted out of there and everybody felt better, including me.

I helped out by delivering the Des Moines Register before sunrise.

Every night I’d set my alarm for 5:05 am. But every morning, somehow, I’d wake up at exactly 5:04 am, shut off the alarm so nobody got disturbed and just over one hundred papers hit porches and doorsteps before 6:30.

Besides my paper route, I’d shovel sidewalks in the winter and mow lawns each summer. Some customers gave me piles of loot at Christmas. Mr. Grifhorst, the druggist, normally handed me a silver dollar. Mrs. Hank the Tank Schmidt, our mayor’s wife, always foisted a fruitcake on us and Grandma would donate it to the church. Mr. Nordstrud, who ran our Coast-to-Coast Hardware store, handed me a set of fishhooks one holiday, a length of chain another season and 500 BBs once. That Christmas paper grew so fat my shoulder nearly wrenched off, so I deserved something.

With time, I figured out how to catch those few customers who wouldn’t answer their door on collection days. And I learned to give the Roosevelt dimes in change for Democrats but never irritated the Republicans with his image.

When North Korea invaded South Korea, which are countries in the Orient, the paper fattened up to forty-eight pages. This made it impossible to ride my bike around the route, even after the snow melted. I didn’t get any extra tips, but that didn’t matter, since several more citizens subscribed to that thicker paper, containing all the battle reports.

Oskaloosa took good care of me.

Each August, during Korn Kastle Days, most farmers came to town so I’d order twenty extra papers. When I strolled through the VFW in the middle of the afternoon, some of the customers would give me a dime for a copy, even one or two pretenders who couldn’t read. Since they got soused I would drift back through, about two hours later, pick up their copies, refold them and sell each one again, unless they had slopped beer over it. During one Korn Kastle Day I cleared ten bucks. Ten George Washingtons. In one day.

A few farmers whooped it up at Korn Kastle Days if the corn and beans were healthy. When crops withered that same handful of farmers got lubricated to forget. That struck me as contrary, since prices went up if the weather hurt the yields, but they were lucky to get fifty cents a bushel when there was a bumper crop. It seemed not to matter near as much as they carried on. Maybe it was pride. They loved to brag on their yields, stretching the numbers sometimes to drive a neighbor nuts.

The carnies trucked into town for Korn Kastle Days and set up a Ferris wheel, a Tilt-a-Whirl and booths where citizens might win kewpie dolls and plaster figurines.

Carnies didn’t mind my affliction. They had plenty of their own.

So I’d work a booth, after delivering the papers, usually the one where folks paid twenty-five cents for trying to set a Coke bottle upright. Sometimes I ran the guess your age and weight scales, but usually I was the star of that Coca-Cola bottle booth.

Test your luck, I’d holler. Just one thin quarter, the fourth part of a dollar to win a kewpie doll or sculptured piggy bank, all original works of art.

As soon as one customer would stop, several others gathered. I’d step outside the booth, reach back in with a bamboo pole, loop the rope tied to its end around the neck of one of the Coke bottles, laying flat, and set it upright.

Hey, how easy was that? I’d ask.

Some guy would shrug and flip me a quarter. I’d drop it into that short apron with pockets that all us booth carnies got to wear.

Here you go and good luck. I’d hand the pole to the customer. Either the Ferris wheel or Tilt-a-Whirl would whisk past; flashing lights and full of shrieks. This didn’t help the customer concentrate. The customer would lift the bottle about an inch, maybe two, before it rolled out of the loop and clinked down into the gravel.

Oh, too bad, great try. Most customers would shake their heads while the watchers chuckled. Maybe about then a diesel generator would start chugging to power another ride or the barker from the freak show might shout over the loudspeakers.

See the amazing spider woman...right here, the astounding two-headed calf...you won’t believe it when plastic man ties himself in a square knot...inside this tent in two quick minutes, ladeees and gentlemen, only one hundred and twenty short seconds to go.

This distracted them further. The carnies called customers marks.

Try your luck again? I asked. Usually the mark would. They’d fail. And I’d show them how, one more time. Some other distraction would take place, maybe an electrical connection on a spotlight arced with a zap sound. There was always a new noise and another flash of light to rattle them.

Care to try a third time? If the mark did, I’d see that they won, unless it was Doctor Throckmorton.

The secret came each year while I dug through the empty Coke cases behind Hardcastle’s Grocery & Notions, looking for bottles that were cast off-center, showing one thin side while the opposite was thick. Those were cash in the bank. When I laid the bottles for myself, I put the thick side down, which was heavier, with the light side on top. Those stood up easy. Then for the marks I put the lighter side down so they could never make that very same bottle stand.

Lee Grifhorst, who ran Grifhorst’s Drug Emporium across the street, sold Coca-Cola from his soda fountain.

This is the true Coke, he said, standing behind the fountain in his white jacket, it’s mixed fresh with the bubbly, right in front of your knowing eyes.

Mr. Hardcastle sold it pre-carbonated in those green bottles with the hourglass shape.

This is the better Coca-Cola, Mr. Hardcastle claimed, because the mix is perfectly done at the factory. I don’t know who got that one right.

Since any bottle was worth a penny, I replaced the Coke bottles I borrowed with Pepsi empties, and nobody ever griped.

Some days I’d make five bucks at the booth and Grandma might let me keep half. I’d bring home a cotton candy for Mom. She’d groan but she’d take it. If Mom was in good spirits, she’d hand me the paper cone at the end so I could lick the sugar beads, but that didn’t happen so often.

One year the carnies brought a spectacular ride to Oskaloosa called the Flying Saucer. It was like a gigantic pie tin with pennants on top. Half the town flocked into and through this thing. It started to whirl. Passengers got pushed back against the side, harder and harder. It tilted up a bit, a few riders screamed, and finally it dropped back down and squeaked to a stop.

Folks marched into that contraption, erect and in a straight line. They rode it and wobbled out hunched over, zigging and zagging in a dozen directions.

I had to try that ride but mud caked my soles and heels, so I scraped most off using the angle iron that supported the entry gate and stepped in. Gloria Throckmorton, the doctor’s daughter, pranced through with a flock of friends, chattering and giggling.

Hi Gloria, I said. They floated past wearing their yellow, red and green Capezio shoes, unspotted, without making any notice of me.

I turned my left side, the good side, toward her.

This is some crazy ride, huh Gloria? I asked.

She looked away.

The carnie buckled us all in. We spun and twirled. The Flying Saucer rotated faster while the pennants above our heads crackled and fluttered, some of the louder customers went quiet and the whole thing started to tilt, thrusting toward the clouds.

Gloria pointed at me.

Moon’s rising, she said.

They laughed. This didn’t upset me at all, but it wasn’t so funny that they’d make The Ed Sullivan Show with that stupid joke.

The ride kept tilting until we swirled at a sharp angle to Main Street. I glanced at Gloria just when she puked. Centrifugal force pulled the vomit back in a lumpy, yellow-brown trail across both her cheeks and into her ears, over that flip hairdo, and through her Korn Kastle Kween Krown.

She didn’t call me Moon again that day. But of course, girls hardly ever talked to me anyway.

In spring, summer and fall, Grandma beat the carpets every Saturday at Pentecostal Redemption Nazarene, as some called the church. She set up folding chairs in the basement for the socials and passed out cardboard fans. Each fan had a color photo of Jesus on one side and Farber & Ottoman’s Funeral Home, Friends When You Need Them Most, printed on the back. Those fans helped, but in July and August the sweat still darkened your collar before the benediction, and unless you had your own seat cushion, your pants stuck to your rear every time you stood. Most farmers didn’t apply enough deodorizer under their arms for church. Grandpa said that’s where the word pew came from.

My family and I are going to ‘Ye Olde Copper Kettle’ for lunch, Grandma said when we left church one Sunday. She waited a bit, while shaking hands with Reverend Dawson, making sure a few other parishioners heard. The most Reverend Dawson nodded and motioned at us to keep moving. We scrambled out. Our bachelor neighbor stayed home with Grandpa, for which I gave him a free paper.

Ye Olde Copper Kettle featured four booths with blue Formica tabletops, a plywood counter stained mahogany and two tables with red and white checkered cloths that nearly matched. The patrons looked startled when we stepped inside so Grandma hustled us to the back booth, near the stove.

We scooched across to the far side of its bench so grease popping from the stovetop couldn’t spatter us. Pieces of chicken or hamburger patties hissed when slapped onto that grill and quickly settled into a deeper shhhh sound, whipping up everybody’s appetites. We had to raise our voices to talk in that corner, but were careful not to say much, so others wouldn’t grumble over us getting uppity and being out of place. There were wieners on the stove too, but they cooked without much noise.

Sip quietly, Grandma whispered.

Mom looked away like she didn’t hear, but she took care to not slurp at the end of her chocolate malt. People might have heard and that could start them grouching about us.

My family’s as good as any in Oskaloosa, Grandma said, but not so loud.

We ain’t a family, Mom replied.

Three generations, by my count, Grandma said, and here we sit, dining in a restaurant.

Grandma ordered a vegetable burger, which they created with a fried patty of ground chuck under two pickles, a tomato slice, lettuce and onion in a bun toasted on the grill.

I ate a hot roast beef sandwich, chewing real slow, and that thing tasted so good I wished it could last forever. It wasn’t really a sandwich, but a slice of white Wonder Bread on the plate, a slab of beef with hardly any gristle and a scoopful of mashed potatoes on top, plus brown gravy ladled across the whole thing. It cost us all of two bits, for crying out loud.

The King of England had nothing over me that day.

Since Grandma did so much for The Most Reverend Dawson, pretty soon the parish agreed to let me attend Sunday school, except I could not take catechism, which I didn’t care about anyway. Are you kidding? Memorize all that? Stand up to recite in front of the whole congregation? No ma’am and no sir. It was just fine that they included me out of that torture.

Folks at church started calling me Moon. But Dad never would. He suffered from a nervous condition and acted jumpy during our secret meetings. Dad and I got together often. He gave me a fishing reel once and a Louisville Slugger baseball bat another time. The bat was an official Duke Snider model, signed.

I got good with the reel.

Mr. Nordstrud saw me practicing my casts with that reel. He took both my daily and Sunday papers. Mr. Nordstrud displayed a used fishing pole in his

front window. He noticed that I always studied it.

Why doesn’t anybody buy that thing, Moon? he asked one day.

It sure is swell, fiberglass and all, I replied.

The next Saturday, after collecting, he said I could hold it. By swinging it

around non-stop, I hid the excitement that made my fingers trembly. "That’s a great whip action Mr. Nordstrud, my rod’s metal, and won’t bend

near half this much."

Could I suggest something? he asked.

Sure thing, Mr. Nordstrud.

You’re pretty good at casting, right Moon?

Yes sir, fair.

His forehead wrinkled. Do you understand, Moon, what a big favor you’d do me by just taking that thing? Wouldn’t it be good advertising? See all that window space it would free up?

My eyes darted across those duck decoys under his glass counter without really seeing them, and the twine balls next to the decoys and the grease guns hanging on the back wall, but they all went fuzzy, kind of like my brain locked up.

Are you kidding, Mr. Nordstrud?

He scratched his head. Maybe he was just joking around. Mr. Nordstrud stepped out from behind his counter.

You understand, Moon, that this wouldn’t exactly be free? He chomped down on his toothpick and squinted at me. He was thinking.

I’m trying to save my paper route money, Mr. Nordstrud, for some future education.

"It’s not a cash expense, Moon, but can you handle a different kind of cost?

You know how happy I would be to get that fishing rod out of my front window? But could you promise me to use it publicly? That’ll take some of your time, won’t it? If people see how well you cast with it, doesn’t that promote my store?"

I sucked air in deep to keep from going faint, but did it through my nose so he wouldn’t get distracted.

Think you could, Moon, promise me to get better with that rod? And show it off regularly?

Mr. Nordstrud stepped away to measure a length of chain for a farmer. I stood there and steadied myself by gripping the counter. They talked on and on for about a century but finally he clipped the chain, the farmer dug into his overalls for a dollar, Mr. Nordstrud made change and strolled back to me.

Oh yes Mr. Nordstrud, I said, surely, and often, and Mr. Nordstrud I can tell anyone who asks about your store and the other stuff you have here that’s so keen, Mr. Nordstrud, and certainly I will and is it really that important to free up your window space?

Luckily I wore black trousers. I was scared that I might wet myself from this excitement, but it wouldn’t show so much with dark pants.

Mr. Nordstrud nodded. He stared at the rod, not blinking.

And I’d mention what a cool selection you’ve got in your store.

He extended his hand.

Well it’s a deal then, okay Moon? I’m only pleased with our agreement if you are, so what do you say?

I told him how happy and delighted I was with this arrangement and how I’d make sure everybody saw me casting with that rod and would get better and better and I jerked his hand up and down until finally Mr. Nordstrud suggested we had shaken long enough to confirm our deal in all 99 counties of Iowa.

Could you free up my window space now, Moon, and get that blanketyblank rod out of here?

I did.

May I say thank you, Moon?

Sure, Mr. Nordstrud, but gee, thank you too and I’ll...

Can you just get that carnsarned thing out of here now, Moon?

I did, without dampening my trousers, but needed to duck into the bandstand bushes right after leaving his store.

Every eyelet on this rod, except one in the middle, was still attached and I even retied that. You could bend this rod double and it would snap back as if nothing happened. I got so I could cast thirty yards and drop the line into a tire behind the gas station every time.

Well, maybe my cast hit center with about half my tries, but that’s pretty good for such a distance.

Okay, I guess it was only once that I hit it five times out of ten, and that was the best I ever scored, but several other times I nailed it three or four times. That’s respectable. Any fisherman would agree. Dad would be impressed.

But shoot, I never did get to try that baseball bat Dad gave me.

Moon has a dangerous lack of depth perception, Doctor Throckmorton lectured to the school PTA. Grandma got to attend, but she said the fluorescents flickered like lightning over Moses, giving her a headache. (Grandma had hung a framed photo of Charlton Heston over the bed, thinking this was a pretty good likeness of Moses.)

But at this PTA meeting, Doctor Throckmorton ran both hands over his mud-colored hair, Grandma noticed, without moving a curl. An overflow crowd of two dozen parents sat in the school lunchroom, dipping ginger snaps in coffee and milk. Doctor Throckmorton added that he thought it would be too risky for me to play baseball. He marched to the room’s center. All heads turned to follow him, Grandma reported.

There is simply no point in disturbing teams from our neighboring towns with Moon’s condition, the good doctor said, turning back toward the door. Everybody twisted in their chairs to watch him, looking biblical in that flickering light.

We want Oskaloosa to become famous for our positive things, not tragedies.

He paused and walked out the door backwards, one hand up, palm facing the crowd, making his usual grand exit.

He was completely wrong about me.

It’s not like I was ever invited to join some carnival side show. My right eye slants a little lower than my left, but not so much. My cheekbone there is pushed in flat but most folks say they don’t even notice. Well, some small kids comment. Every once in a while, not often, toddlers cry the first time they see me. Hitting a baseball could be tough, but thanks to big shot Doctor Throckmorton, I’d never know.

This name thing started in the schoolyard one recess. Willy and I were playing mumbley-peg on that scraggle of grass in center field.

Gloria Throckmorton paraded past us with several pink, white, blue and yellow-bloused girls like geese hunting worms, except with brighter colors. She stopped and pointed at me, shaking with giggles.

What? I asked.

Moon. Jeepers, it’s a moon, she said.

Huh? I asked.

Doesn’t his head look like the crescent moon? she asked. The girls bobbed their heads laughing.

I made the mistake of talking back. Then everybody made a huge deal out of her dumb comment. By the next weekend my name had become Moon all over Oskaloosa.

Chapter Three

"Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?"

-Thomas Wolfe

The worst lie I ever told was when Dad asked about that baseball bat he gave me and I claimed to have hit a home run. Dad and I had snuck out to Osky Marsh for a meeting. The mosquitoes were biting fierce. We swatted them nonstop on our face and arms.

Dad couldn’t suspect that I fibbed because he didn’t dare set foot inside Oskaloosa, being my illegitimate father. I never really figured him out, especially when I lied about that home run. He grinned and whistled through his teeth, hugging himself, and looked away for a minute. When he glanced back his cheeks were wet. Several mosquitoes landed on his face, but for a spell Dad didn’t notice.

Mom always escorted me out to Osky Marsh for those get-togethers. She and I hiked over to this place where duck hunters beached their flat-bottomed boats in the reeds. I’d sit in