This series is a little bit biographical and a little
bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when
he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into
Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and
fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always
wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG
JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click
OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the
last page.
Startled, the man stumbled
backwards.
The sound of his head hitting
a rock was loud enough to make Tommy Hastings wince and Freddie Merrill squeak
in surprise.
It wasn’t enough to slow them
down. They ran deeper into the woods. Two of the five Finns stopped. From the
back of the pack, the shrill scream of Bonnie – of former Bonnie and Clyde fame
– cried out, “They’re getting away!”
A figure rose up from the
shade under the white pines. Wearing a dark dress and a wide-brimmed hat, a
guitar strapped to her back, the Witch of Anoka shouted, “ON THIS NIGHT OF THE
FULL MOON, I HEX THEE BOYS FROM THIS DAY FORTH, I HEX THEE WITH BROKEN BONES
AND SHATTERED SKULLS! ON THIS NIGHT, ON THIS NEW MOON I INVOKE MY WILL TO BE
DONE, TO ONLY BE UNDONE OF MINE OWN DESIRE AND WILL!”
Tommy ran nearly ran her over
and shouted, “Jesus H. Christ!”
Freddie leaped over her,
knocking her down. The Witch of Anoka screamed and she hit her head against a
rock and stopped moving. He shouted, “I killed her!”
Behind them, Bonnie and Clyde
stopped and helped the other woman sit up.
Tommy shot a look over his
shoulder and shouted, “You didn’t kill her! Run!”
With six down and only two
left behind them, the boys ran faster than ever. Freddie shouted, “We’re losing
them!” They ran until there were no more sounds of pursuit; there were no more
sounds of humanity; then they collapsed on the ground, chests heaving, staring
into the bright afternoon sky.
“We made it,” Tommy gasped.
“They’ll find us,” Freddie
gasped back.
“How they gonna find us?”
“A airplane.”
“You think a bunch of gardeners
and mansion workers know how to find an airplane – let along fly one?”
As he spoke those words, a
low, rumbling drone rattled the needles on the trees and the air around their
heads.
“It’s an airplane!” Freddie shouted, struggling
to his feet. He started to run. Tommy tackled him with a hook of his arm and
Freddie went down with a thud an explosion of air from his lungs.
Tommy shouted, “If you run, whoever’s
flying that thing can see you! We have to get under a tree!” He started crawling
toward the lowest, widest branches he could see. Freddie did move. Tommy
shouted, “Move, you idiot!”
“What if they see me?”
“They’ll see your white T-shirt
if you don’t get under this tree right now!”
Freddie sat up, looked down
at his shirt, then with his rear end in the air, scrambled across the ground
until he huddled next to Tommy.
A moment later, a Canadian
Air Force Hawker Hurricane, marked with the yellow-blue-white-red nested
circles of the CAF, thundered overhead then past them. The sound faded into a
distant drone, then a faint buzz until if you asked them, neither boy would
have been able to tell the airplane from the cicadas shrilling in the trees.
Most likely neither one of
them would have answered because both were sound asleep on the soft floor of
fallen pine needles. Tommy’s belly rose up and down – and Freddie’s head did
the same, comfortably resting on the belly of his best friend.
That would have been how the
Witch of Anoka found them…
Image: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/503293/thumbs/r-DEREK-ALLEN-WWII-FLYING-ACE-large570.jpg
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