Lindberg Fiction
58
When Jerry was a kid he had traversed through these same woods with his brothers and sisters, making peace with it and its animals through general curiosity and coyness. They transposed themselves in its nature, turning themselves into Greek heroes, tribal nomads, indigenous oracles, Roman generals, Nordic pillagers—molding themselves to the season of the woods and whatever story had recently been present in the mind of their sister, Martha. But on days they didn’t, and even on days their feet transitioned them into the woods, they swam. Jerry was the oldest and had two sisters and two brothers. On the warm summer days they would tread down from their father’s house, their feet enthralled by the path that led to the Nemadji River. He and his brothers, having taken off their shirts, and his sisters, already having changed into gym shorts and T-shirts, would wade into the river. Occasionally, their toes would be plucked by suckers that had mistaken them as rocks or dirt, and he’d tell Martha to watch for them when she had a particularly large blister on her toe. It was all right to swim again soon after, because there were no predators in the flowing pond, just mistaken bumps and bruises—the kind they’d get by running through the backyard and stumbling across some knoll of the Earth that had made its way to their feet after its billion-year creation. He and bud stop by the ravine and bud drinks out of it, leaving its tongue hanging in a full pant. Jerry’s right foot and left foot know the trail and the ways it changes from direction to direction, meandering north and south to east and west, until all directions have received their fairness in footsteps. And the deeper they squirm into the woods, the more dense it becomes, and the more the dog’s nose moves side to side in mid-trot, nostrils vibrating like a hummingbird’s wings. It was a hummingbird’s wings that had brought Martha down to the Nemadji that day, a thousand beats per minute, those pulses that moved its seemingly immobile wings. They followed her down the hill as she galloped after it, knowing she could never catch the bird, while understanding if she saw a hummingbird she must follow. The bird flew downstream with the Nemadji and they laughed and played in the grass above the sloping river’s edge. Consequently, the sun began to beat down on them with all the furiousness it could create. The three boys stripped down as the girls decided to wear just what they had on—it