On These Winds

Nobody believes me when I tell about the time I flew on my snow shovel. Well, my cousin Bobby does. Sort of. He says it was more of a levitation than flying. I guess he’s right. Standing out there leaning against the shovel, I felt my legs lift right up from the ground. I held the wooden handle tight with the shovel stuck in the snow. I looked back over my shoulder and, sure enough, my legs were floating like flags blowing in the wind. Then I ran into the house to tell Mom, “I flew on my snow shovel!” She was busy making a racket in the kitchen. She stopped for a minute and said “Oh you did!” in that tone grown-ups use when kids try to tell them something that seems too silly. She went back to mixing cookies, mumbling oven directions under her breath.

People don’t get it. Levitating on a shovel can change a girl. But I learned my lesson when I tried to write about it in Mr. Schwanabeck’s class. The assignment was to compose our favorite winter memory. He called Mom in because he was concerned about my “perception of reality.” So I keep it to myself. Bobby believes everything anyways.

Oh yeah, Uncle Swen believes me, too. He’s the smartest man I know. Says chewing tobacco preserves the teeth. He’s also the most famous lawyer in Cottonwood. He had to go away to Minneapolis for years learning laws about how to marry people and stuff. Afterwards he came back here and set up his office across the street from the tractor store. Bobby told me that once Swen went to court wearing a snowmobile suit. Judge Kermit said he could take it off, but big fat Uncle Swen wasn’t wearing any clothes under it. I laugh when thinking of him standing up there in his red snowsuit, trying to keep serious.

Being pretty bright, Uncle Swen knows how to treat a girl telling the truth about levitation. It’s a special understanding between us. Like when he found me throwing rotten eggs against the back of Grandma Berny’s barn. I thought he might shout at me—those eggs smelled awful bad. Instead he stood there, watched, and walked away. How did he know I wasn’t throwing eggs for any reason? Still, he’ll take me along in his big Lincoln and we’ll go driving around the lake. I don’t talk during these trips. I listen. And think. Sometimes he yells out the car window, “Oh God, why have you cast me out on these winds?” He’s right, though. The winds here will burn your face if you’re not careful. Not much to break the horizon, except the grain elevators and the church.

I’ve noticed the naughty words coming out of his mouth multiply whenever a lady’s around. Mom says I’m supposed to close my ears when he says the F word, but I know that ears don’t have doors.

Uncle Swen’s favorite book is Moby Dick. He used to read me parts of it. After defending Luella Nelson for burning down her boyfriend’s barn, he told me “Ishmael escaped the whale because he renounced vengeance.”

I’m not sure what that means yet.

—lisa forrest