Old Home Familiar Pt. II, or Red Iron

A bright afternoon, Broeks, Jeremy and I set to fishing for bluegills at a silky green little pond. The oblong water was circled by a crop of cattails and rushes with grass hills rising radially from its indent. We dangled our feet in it, sitting on the edge of the dock, casting, reeling. Eventually the warmth of summer coaxed us in to taking a dip. Jeremy dashed and flopped off the dock and then tried swimming to the bottom. At the surface with a splash and gasp, “Oh, it gets cold down there! Even just as deep your feet are.” It was a hot day. Broeks sprinted off the edge, long-jumping, and I followed my own casual way. We splashed, dove and jumped again and then trudged up through the slimy weeds on the bank, gathered up the poles and tackles and drove back along dirt roads to the house. It all made me want to get a telescoping rod to pack with me and go riding around the vast northwest wilderness from water to water harvesting my catch and having my hunger satisfied by my labors directly. I was starting to become preoccupied with the thought of riding again, but these days provided a kind of rest it's not so easy to wake from.

The next afternoon Bork, a friend I hadn't seen in two years, knocked on the door and came in trying to gather everyone up for a tubing trip down the Big Sioux. It's a big brown tributary of the greater Missouri and it was, at the time, bulging with the heavy rainfall of a flooded North Dakota. He'd brought a big case of beers in hopes of persuading all to come and float down it in the heat, drinking as another happy summer day slipped serenely by. Everyone's plans conflicted though, so we sat around and drank inside, watching the lazy time go all the same.

Broeks was going to his parents' cabin for the fourth of July. The cabin sat on the brim of Red Iron Lake in the northeast South Dakotan plains, a land carved into hills by the glacial Pleistocene and pockmarked blue with myriad lakes in its gullies. Jeremy and another friend, Jordan, would drive up to meet him to catch fish on the lake, and I decided I'd go along with them. I didn't so much want to repeat my path of two years ago across the state, watching the broad untouched land flow so tantalizingly behind the barbed-wire limits of the interstate.

The morning of departure we made up seventy-two hambuns (a simple sandwich of burger bun, ham, and slice of American cheese) and packed them all into the plastic bun bags. We met with Jordan in front of his house, strapped down all the luggage, rods and my bike onto the boat which he'd hitched to his truck, and then we started our way north with a hurry later in the afternoon than had been intended. The soft orange sun was already setting to the west as the land transitioned out of smooth flowing fields of crops to dapples of water laced with more cattails and rushes, here in the dreamy wilderness where the migrating geese and emerald and sapphire ducks, great pelicans, and wading cranes waft about the pools' wooded islands, trembling leaves; solitary pheasants wander throughout fallow fields, beautiful proud turkeys promenade on plowed amber lands, and timid soundless deer all gather together, in hidden recesses of the tall dry grass, peaceful and curious.

One hundred-fifty miles north we crossed into Sisseton as shuffling silhouettes appeared, bound in the yellow of windows against idle blue evening. We came to a gas station where we bought our week's worth of drinks and then it was only a short distance to the cabin. Off of the highway a dirt drive led through a tunnel of trees coming out along a line of cabins which overlooked the lake's pebbly shore. The fleeing crescent moon fell on the western horizon across the black lake, ripples breaking and bending its thin yellow curl.

We parked and walked down the hill and around the cabin into the backyard, finding everyone sitting in a ring of plastic chairs around a rising, biting fire. All of their faces turned to us, attempting to distinguish who we were in the scattered light, and with realization came smiles and welcoming. I hadn't seen most of these people since years ago. Broeks was across the fire beside his parents' flickering faces, and continuing round the circle there sat the Hubers, a family whose cabin was a little farther down the drive and whose sons had been our schoolmates. Next to them was a family from Minnesota who introduced themselves as friends of the Hubers' and Broekhuis's. This was the meeting place this year for friends on the Fourth.

Away back to the truck we went and unloaded the things we'd need for the night, and set up our tents in the yard while fighting off mosquitoes. Jeremy fixed a cooler full of condensed orange juice, vodka, and beer all mixed together and we hauled it down and sat at the fire with the everyone else. He scooped me up a plastic cup of it. The smoke of the fire supplied a kind shelter against the bugs. Everyone wanted me to tell what stories I had, and so I started on the drink to loosen my tongue and started rattling off a few. Everyone else was already steeped at least a little in alcohol, so they were a lovely audience giving all the appropriate gasping and interjections. The night quickly descended into a hazy stupor (for me at least) and some of the party eventually faded off to bed indoors. Drunken ramblings between those of us remaining was directed inevitably to a discussion of God, upon which differing assumptions put a schism in the company. The talk disappeared but between me and one other. Black night pulled in cool around us, the waves of heat sighing from the fire against the warmth of my red face compounding my delirium. I didn't want to talk of it anymore. Soon thereafter, everyone conceded that the night was over and Jeremy, Jordan and I stumbled up across the grassy hill to our tents, tired and wondering, and I felt lost.

When the first hint of orange fell on opalescent clouds above Jeremy and Jordan had taken the boat and were on the lake fishing. I slept until I was sweating in my sleeping bag, woke and went down to the end of the dock to read. Eventually Broeks called to me from the top of the stairs and we went into the Hubers dining room where everybody else was for a big cabin-type breakfast with pancakes, fruit, little pancake balls with cream cheese in the middle and eggs. Me and Broeks took his motorboat out to test the cut of the lake afterward. We roared over the water, bouncing heavily against the undulating, crested surface, with wind-in-face and bur-r-ring toward the opposite shore. He pulled the boat around and sped to another edge of the lake. Jordan and Jeremy were there, scooting along guided by trolling motor, both standing erect on the hull of the long sleek boat in sunglasses, with t-shirts under the caps on their heads like a keffiyeh covering their raw, red necks from the sun, lines cast, searching out the illusive fish's haven. They spent every day like this, or else bouncing from lake to lake putting every spot to the test, expanding their location list, what they'd caught there and with what lure, trying every secret and hidden place they could endeavor into.

Broeks and I went with them a few times. I had no license so couldn't fish, but I watched the gurus and learned what I could through my laymen eyes. Sometimes they'd go to the truck bed and trade the rods in for bows with arrows tethered on the fletching side to a reel on the bow. In silent attention they'd carefully step among the reeds by a culvert or through the grassy ridges by aquatic tree roots probing to find where the beastly carp were gathered below water's glare. They whispered to one another, “There's a big one by your feet. You see it?” as the carp slipped against the stream. With a release of the fingers the arrow embarked, and in a fraction of a moment dove discretely with barely a “plunk.” Its point struck the fish's muscly middle and drove in through the tightly knit scales opposite. As it writhed and pumped against the tension, it was pulled up, greeted with cheers and compliments.

After dusk on the Fourth we celebrated with fireworks on a neighbor's dock, joining our stocks to have a big light show and a loud night in honor of independence. A light wind blew in from across the water causing some of the hot sparks to fall on top of us, which burned a few, so everyone pulled the chairs farther away from the dock, and settled back again with beers in hand to watch the banging, sparkling sky from a greater distance.

In the morning, after Broeks' parents had got back from their early walk, they fried us eggs, toasted bread and cut up some moist fruit as well. Jeremy and Jordan arrived at the dock after we'd finished eating and we all embarked onto Red Iron. Meandered along the shore following the lakeside, I sat in one of the chairs reading while they stood casting in the shallows, switching between buzz-baits, spinners, or jigs testing what would work. There hadn't been any catches. The trolling motor pulled us slowly by an old brown house on the shore. In its window a native lady stood, still and watching us, lit by the day against the comparable darkness of the artificial light inside.

The house pulled out of sight behind a grove of trees as we came farther along the shoreline. “What is she doing?” I looked up and saw Broeks' gaze was intent on something behind us. The lady was in the water and swimming at us, her head bobbing over the flurried surface. She kept on, pressing and pushing, dove down beneath and I saw she still wore her jeans and all her clothes. She rose a little closer to our boat and continued pressing her body toward us. Broeks yelled out to her, “Are you okay?” Exasperated she uttered something mysterious and ghostly in her native tongue, her ethereal voice reverberating from the trees and over the clear warmth of the lake. She couldn't maintain the mechanical pace of the boat's engine and eventually stopped her pursuit, floating in the darkness of the water, her hand resting on a log at the foot of the tree grove, glaring after us.

We tried to reason why she had pursued us, but never could understand. I left the next day, meeting Broeks' parents on the highway while they were on their morning bike ride over the near green hills of the northern plains and I went farther west into forlorn lands.


More pictures on Facebook: Albums 1, 2,  3.