The Big Beaver
by John Underhill
Madeline and I go down the old wood steps dappled by light and shadows of
branches and leaves. She is 7. I am 64. Madeline is the only child at the
family get-together going on at the top of the stairs in the patio, not one
of the guests interested in going down the steps with her. Except her
Grandpa Gary who went with her an hour before, though they didn’t stay long
before returning. Madeline wants a longer adventure, and I do too.
The party has gotten to the stage where most everyone has run out of
things to say and some of them are now twitching and looking around for an
exit while silently composing their departure lines. It is an excellent time
to go to the river. Madeline is from Louisiana and has come to visit the
Toner family in Fridley with her Grandpa. I met her inside the house when
my wife, Marilyn, brought her into the room where I was talking with her son,
Jon Minh. He is a third grade teacher. Madeline is beautiful, she stands
tall, her head held high, eyes steady and direct. This is a girl who is going
to go far in life. We discover in the next few minutes that she is smart,
vital and has a lovely sense of humor. And she knows what she wants, and how to
get it.
Jonnie asks her, You in third grade? She replies
casually that she’s in
second. "You be a third grader in the Fall?" he asks. She says yes. "Do you
know any third grade teachers?" She nods. "You like them?" She nods. "You
have one you especially like? Who’s class you want to be in?" Madeline smiles
big and nods enthusiastically, gives us the teacher’s name and talks about
her for a little while.
I like the way Jonnie talks to her, he doesn’t scale down his regular
tone of voice from talking to an adult to talking to a kid, like a lot of
grownups do, he talks to her as he was telling me he talks to his third
graders, as one person to another. Madeline likes this too and you can see
she trusts and likes him. Jonnie tells her who I am, his West Coast Dad, his
stepfather. He tells her we haven’t seen one another in awhile. Madeline
thinks about this and asks him, "What is awhile?"
Jonnie’s caught by surprise by this question, and the way she says the
word it doesn’t sound like the 'awhile' he used, the way she articulates it
makes it sound like a brand new word. Both Jonnie and I think about how to
answer her. Then he says "It’s...like a while, a period of time". He stops
and thinks how to better answer this. He tells her it is a good question, and
repeats her question: "What is awhile?" And again adds, "That’s a really good
question, Madeline." "What is your favorite subject at school?" he asks.
"Math?" She shakes her head. She has told us already that she likes to read.
He remembers now and says "Reading?" She nods and adds, "Also writing."
Jonnie wants to know what is her favorite thing to do outside of school and she
tells him it is riding horses. Then she just ups and asks him if he will go
down the steps to the river with her now, and he says, Well, maybe later.
Madeline is not the sort of person to be put off so easily to a direct
invitation to do something with her. She tells him determinedly that he will
come with her now. He explains that he and I are talking, and she points out
that she and Jonnie are talking. He tries wiggling out of that by saying he
has to go do something, and then maybe he’ll go with her later. She asks what
he has to go do? And how much later? He gets up muttering something neither
she nor I one can hear and we follow him out like two kids behind the
teacher, Madeline and I. But he dodges around some people coming into the
kitchen and makes a clean escape.
For the next hour out on the patio where the family visits I keep hoping
Jonnie will come out and say "Okay, let’s go," but he doesn’t, he is in
watching the game on TV. Finally, when Madeline has given up hope of ANYone
ever going with her I call to her and say, "Let’s go." Her smile is so big it
dazzles me with its radiance.
The handrail to the steps, which Marilyn’s father, Bob Toner, built
hundreds of years earlier, at least that’s how old they look, the railing
made of iron water pipe coupled every four or five feet with a pipe coupler,
and bracketed to the upright 4 by 4’s that brace the steps. It wobbles as we
go down but the wood seems solid, except where a few steps have broken in the
middle. We step on the sides of them.
The dog Pebbles has come along eager to have us throw sticks into the
water so she can jump in and swim after them. She is an Australian Shepherd
with a bit of Mark Spitz mixed in.
We get down to the last step and there is five feet of grassy slope to
the bank and then a drop of a foot or so of black mud at the river’s edge.
Madeline notices some small fallen birch trees with the teeth marks of beaver
in the wood and points them out to me. We wonder why the beaver didn’t carry
the trees into the river wherever it was probably building its river bank dam.
Pebbles has found a stick she likes and brings it over to us to throw
into the river. We do and this goes on and on. After ten minutes I tire of it
and tell her, "Okay,Madeline, let’s go back." She says, "Not yet," that we
want to stay down here for awhile. I see that look in her eye and know it is
useless to argue. Heck, why not, the party upstairs is not as neat as down
here where it is all overgrown and hidden from view from anyone, on the river
or off. It’s like a good clubhouse, we have a good stick and a willing dog,
so let’s have some fun.
So we throw the stick to Pebbles, and this goes on, stick into the
river, dog after it, she swims back to the bank, clambers up, comes and
shakes herself off as soon as she is near enough to soak us. we keep the
stcik in the tide water made my a tree that fell into the river long ago but
that stays rooted to the bank.
After awhile we hear this loud slapping or banging noise, we peer through
the low branches and all the leaves into the river where the sound's coming
from, and in time we see this head, brown, with beady black eyes, then see
the flat tail come out of the Mississippi and slap down hard on the water, a
beaver warning sign to us, I see in hindsight, but that at the time we
believed was done in play and frolic, a friendly howdie to the three of us.
As Pebbles goes in after the stick the beaver gets closer, it’s huge!!
When it dives its whole body shows: a small bear big. But Pebbles thinks it's
just a big stick, being very nearsighted without her glasses, and the
slapping sound she takes to be the thrown stick hitting the water. The brown
of the beaver’s wet fur she is thinking is a bigger stick,alright!, so goes
swimming for it. Then, as the stick moves toward her baring its teeth, a
thing sticks never do, she thinks, Whoops, I think I forgot something
back in California, and begins swimming back to the bank in a fast Australian
crawl. She hauls her body up the steep bank as fast as she can. The beaver
disappears once again. More sticks, then more slaps, the beaver showing up
nearer now so when Madeline this time tosses the stick a little farther out,
beyond the big barkless tree that serves as a pier, and Pebbles goes for
it, she gets into the main current a little too far out there, and the
Mississippi being in moderate flood stage, almost doesn't make it back.
But she does, using a powerful sidestroke she learned from me, clambering
toward the pier tree and tries to haul herself up... but the tree is slick
and she can’t manage it.
Just then Beaver comes around the end of the tree fast with a demonic
light in his beady eyes I don't like, he circles Pebbles, and when he comes
in nose to nose Pebbles nearly faints from fright, I mean this guy has
TEEEETH!!! Not for clamping onto li’l sticks, but for gnawing down huge trees
and smallish dogs. Pebbles’ paws are working so fast now trying to get a
purchase on the half sunken tree that they're a blur. She's trying to
scream for help but all
that's coming out are these tiny squeaks and muffled woofs. We are frightened
for her. I get this fabulous idea; I'll toss one end of the dog
leash to Pebbles while holding onto the other, and being very smart she will
grab it in her teeth and I can then pull her up to safety without committing
myself to getting down there into the mud and maybe toppling into the
Mississippi. I ask Maddy
for the leash, she hands it to me, I lasso one end out to Pebbles, it lands
right next to her but she just looks at it, as if wondering why I would want
to take her for a walk now, and, besides, how do I expect her to put it on
herself since she doesn't have any fingers...and even if she did she is now
using them to try and escape early death by GNAW.
I grab the rowboat/canoe docking rope that’s been tied to a tree on the
river bank since I first started coming here with Marilyn from California
ten years ago, I test it first, it snaps apart and literally turns to dust in
my hands. But I don't fall in, nossir, 'cause I grab a hold of a tiny tree to
anchor me. But no, it's not a tree, it's a...it’s a.... Eeeeeeeeeek!
Poison ivy!!!!! I tell Madeline to give me her hand, a little panicked
you might say since I weigh 220 and she weighs about 40 and knows that to
hold my hand is not only to drown if I slip
but to drown quickly, she's no fool, so she's standing well out of reach.
Instead I prong my fingers straight down deep as I can into the black mud
as a purchase to working my way down closer to the dog and pier tree, the
beaver still swimming around Pebbles figuring what part to gnaw down first,
then I make my heroic leap onto the sunken log hoping my smooth soled sandals
don't slip...do a balancing act, teetering this way, jerking that way before
getting down on my knees to connect the leash snap to Pebbles' collar. I just
can't understand why Pebbles wouldn't grab the leash in her teeth so I could
pull her out without this risking my life. Lassie did stuff like that in the
movies, Rin Tin Tin too. Now I tug her out, the beaver seeing its chance
logging out and then going for Pebbles' tail, snicker snak!!! Misses, Pebbles
clawing her way up the nearly vertical bank now in four wheel drive compound
low, saying OmigodomygodohmygodinohmydoginheavenI'msaaaaved!!!
Now I have to do the same and finally get back to where Madeline is
already getting ready to throw another stick to Pebbles, both of them
apparently having already forgotten what a close call we've had.
So I say to Madeline, "Hey let's go tell all the people at the party
about this adventure," and we do, trudging up the 56 steps to her Grandpa
Gary and the others. He looks her over and says to her, "Where did you get
all that mud on you?", and she turns to me to tell the whole story so Gary
knows Madeline got it in the line of duty, helping me help a poor dog from
becoming an unwilling part of a beaver dam on the Mississippi.
The End |
