Arms Wide Open Read online

  Like actors in the musical Hair, when Stacy and I stride into the teach-in, friends immediately surround us. “Hey, how you doing?” “We miss you, man.” “What’s been happening?”

  The university auditorium is almost full and I hear a young woman in the audience ask her companion, “Who’s that?”

  “Stacy and Patsy,” the bearded man whispers. “Local war resisters, legendary hippies.”

  Stacy, wearing jeans and the green tweed sweater I knit him, precedes me to the folding table where the other panelists sit. I follow, tall, confident hippie chick in a long skirt, with her towheaded kid on her back, scanning the packed hall for Johan. I know he’s still in Duluth, because Courtney told me he lives with a new girlfriend. I can’t find Patrick or Jenny, either; or the Benders and their three kids, the other residents of Chester Creek House. Only Jim is accounted for, leaning against the back wall near the double doors in his patched bell-bottoms and faded denim work shirt. I tilt my chin hello. Aaron said he’d be late.

  As the room quiets, Stacy stands and gazes across the waiting faces. Nearly every seat is filled, with college students, activists, and a few professors. A pregnant blond, her long straight hair pulled back with a silver clip, excuses herself, trying to squeeze along the row to an empty place. It’s my friend Jody Innis. I smile and wave with my fingers.

  Stacy waits and then begins as if we’re gathered in someone’s living room. “Not since the Civil War has this country been so affected by a military conflict. Every American family is impacted by the war in Southeast Asia. We’ve lost husbands . . . sons . . . daughters . . . nephews . . . and friends. Who here knows someone who’s died in Vietnam?” Hands go up all over the auditorium. “Over forty thousand Americans have been killed already, and many who’ve returned suffer physical and emotional scars. Nearly two million Vietnamese are dead or maimed, destroyed by this war that Nixon promised to end.”

  When Mica begins to fuss, I throw a knit shawl over him, pull up my turtleneck, and put him to my breast. He nestles against me and I rub his fine white hair. Stacy addresses the crowd with quiet moral authority, sure of himself and his cause of peace.

  The audience is mesmerized. This man has his flaws. He’s stubborn. He procrastinates. He has difficulty compromising and is slightly dyslexic, but he speaks eloquently.

  When it’s my turn, Stacy takes Mica on his shoulders and strolls to the back of the room to stand with Jim. I tell the audience how the images on TV tore me from my conventional middle-class life. Vietnamese monks burning themselves to death to protest the war. Asian mothers in shock, wandering through the rubble of their homes carrying the lifeless bodies of their babies . . . I speak from the heart.

  From the eyes of the blond with the silver Navaho hair-clip, I know that at least one person understands.

  Intruders

  “Stacy!” I point down at the deep boot tracks in the new snow, not unusual for November in the North Country. We’re on our way back to the homestead after our stay in Duluth, trekking first across Jacobsen’s white field and then through the forest toward the cabin. Dust devils of powder whirl up in our path.

  My companion relishes the subarctic seasons. He thrives on hardship, pointing out the white sculptured drifts, the low purple clouds, and a red-tailed hawk in an oak tree, while I complain silently. It’s too cold. I’m too tired. I want to go back to the warmth of Chester Creek House. “Stacy!” I hiss again. “Look. Tracks.”

  My lover bends low, inspecting the human imprint, touching the icy outline with one finger. “They’re fresh and lead toward the cabin. By the look of the treads, two men.” We stand for a moment listening . . . then with urgency, plow forward, race to the small clearing on the Lester, another quarter mile away.

  At the edge of the open space where our log house sits, Stacy halts, puts down the baby carrier, and silently hands Mica over to me. He creeps forward. I hold my breath.

  “What the fuck!”

  “Stacy?” I flounder up the slope to see my lover positioned on our porch, his stance wide, glaring at the door where the window is shattered. Cautiously we step in and look around, but there are no rocks on the inside, no log or projectile laying there, just a half-inch of snow covering the floor in a wide arc. I picture the intruders using the butt of a gun to smash in the glass. So far from the road, in this clearing in the woods, we thought we’d be safe.

  While Stacy builds a fire, I inspect everything; our books, our cooking utensils, our food, our clothing, our tools, our Autoharp and guitar, even Mica’s toy box. Nothing seems missing, but I can smell the coarse strangers in our home, tobacco and something else . . . a heavy aftershave. We must have just missed them.

  Stacy pounds a square of cardboard over the busted window. Neither of us speaks. The broken window is a warning. A reminder that someone in Lakewood Township doesn’t like us; doesn’t want us here.

  At bedtime, an animal howls far away. “Hear that?” I ask, pulling the thick quilt up to my chin.

  “It’s just dogs.” Stacy blows out the lantern.

  “But what’s making them bark? Something’s out there in the dark.” I snuggle up to him.

  “Just a skunk or a porcupine.” In less than two minutes, Stacy’s breath deepens. I roll on my back, eyes wide, staring into the shadows as the distant yapping continues. I remember the night the attackers came to the Committee for Non-Violent Action farm, drunken men, in pickups, with guns. That time, too, the dogs barked. Then bullets shattered the window glass.

  Here in the woods, we’re as vulnerable as isolated settlers squatting on Indian land. If someone were to creep through the woods with intentions to hurt us, there’s no way to call for help. We could be dead for two weeks before anyone knew.

  Winter

  CHAPTER 4

  Blizzard

  Winter has settled around us for sure. No more bare ground, and little by little the white builds up until we have to use snowshoes.

  Last night I woke to the impact of what felt like a bull moose smashing the side of the house, a blast so hard it shook the windows.

  “What is it?” I ask Stacy, sitting up in bed.

  “Just the wind.”

  All night it howls. In the morning eight inches of new snow loads the balsam grove, and while Stacy is out cutting firewood, four more inches fall. I look out the window, angry at the weather. We’d planned to go into town for my childbirth class at the library, but there’s no way with this storm and this grieves me.

  Up until now there have been no natural-childbirth classes north of the Twin Cities. No hospital where a woman can have natural childbirth with the father present, until we convinced Dr. Leppink, in Two Harbors, to let us give it a try.

  Stacy and I took the four-hour Greyhound bus trip eight times in eight weeks to go to Lamaze classes in Minneapolis. It was a big sacrifice, but both of us were working then, so we had the bread.

  That’s why I’ve tried to start the childbirth class at the library; so expectant parents wouldn’t have to go so far. I have no more qualifications than having taken the course myself, read several books, and, of course, given birth; how can I gain credibility if I don’t show up? I know of at least four couples that were planning to come. There probably were more. Hopefully someone will realize why I’m not there.

  The wind rages all day, battering the cabin, hard gusts against the house, with flakes so thick you can’t see the maple tree where the red squirrel lives. Snow like a white curtain drops over our world. I take notice of our diminishing provisions. Already the jars of pinto beans, cornmeal, and oats are near empty. If the snow gets too deep, how long can we last? My stomach feels hollow when I remember how cut off we are.

  Life, I suppose, goes on as usual in Duluth. Leila and Courtney are baking bread at Chester Creek House while the Bender kids chase each other around the dining table. Aaron
and Jim are attending the War Resisters meeting in a crowded classroom at the university. Afterward they’ll join Johan to prepare the next issue of our alternative newspaper, The Wild Currents, while Stacy and I are trapped in the middle of a snow globe.

  The blizzard lasts for three days. We read. We play with Mica in the dim kerosene lamplight. We make love while the baby naps. We go to bed early to conserve fuel. There’s nothing to do but hibernate like bears, keep warm, and wait. Leaving the cabin is too dangerous. A body could get lost in the blanket of white, get confused and wander off through the forest.

  On the third day, just before dawn, the howling stops. I wake, startled by silence, scoot to the window at the end of the bed, and scrape off the frost. At the top of the curved cedar that hangs over the Lester, I see stars when the clouds part. “It’s over,” I whisper to Stacy. “It’s over.”

  Morning. Sunny and blue. I stand Mica up on the window seat and let him peek out while I pull on his blue nylon snowsuit. In the clearing, Stacy and I throw our arms wide, demonstrate how to make snow angels, and laugh when we fall back, the white stuff so fluffy and deep it covers us. We’re playing like kids when we hear a crack in the underbrush and go on alert. I hold our little boy protectively.

  Gunshots

  Two men on horseback with four big dogs come out of the trees. They work their horses closer. Mica snuggles into my neck. “Doggie!” he laughs. It’s Rob Bailey, our Vietnam vet neighbor, and his brother Ed, dressed like heroes in an old western, their Stetsons pulled low and their wool plaid scarves, like masks, tied over their faces. Since the broken window we’ve been on edge. Stacy knows Rob from the whole-food co-op. He enjoys discussing the war with him, getting a new perspective. Rob hates Nixon, but thinks peaceniks are sissies. Stacy told him about Vietnam Veterans Against the War and little by little he’s coming around.

  Rob looks down from his perch on his mount and clears his throat. “You couldn’t turn us on to a cup of hot coffee, could you?” The men tie their horses to trees and we tromp inside, pull off our icy boots and jackets, and draw up chairs to the cookstove.

  “No coffee,” I tell the men. “Too expensive, but this peppermint tea will warm you up.”

  Ed, a graduate student in biology, leans forward, elbows on his knees. He wears heavy horn-rimmed glasses and, unlike his older veteran brother, who works at the post office, has a full head of yellow hair.

  Rob clears his throat and turns toward Stacy; not wanting to worry the little woman, I think. “Have you folks heard any gunshots lately?”

  Stacy rises and stokes the fire. He steps over Rob’s long legs. “Shots?”

  “A few nights ago. We weren’t sure at first, thought it was maybe backfire from someone’s truck, but it was too regular and too close.” He picks at the hole in the toe of his sock. “This was the night before the blizzard. We brought in the dogs and checked the horses, but the gunshots went on maybe an hour. The night was pitch-black and colder than hell.”

  “We called into the dark, but no one answered,” Ed cuts in. “After a while the shots just stopped and we went back to bed.”

  Stacy changes the subject. “How are the roads into town? Pretty bad?” He’s unwilling to entertain paranoia.

  “Fear of each other just makes things worse,” he later tells me, but I’m still thinking of gunshots.

  Winter Solstice

  “Where shall we have the bonfire?” I ask. It’s December 21, the longest night of the year.

  The blizzard, three weeks ago, brought it home to us. Winter really is here, and we’ve worked hard for days finishing the chinking. The little cabin in the woods is now cozy and warm. We’ve even made Styrofoam plugs that we put in the windows for insulation at night. Laura and Mary in their Little House in the Big Woods never had it so good.

  Exhausted from cutting and stacking wood all morning, Stacy stares out the kitchen window at the azure sky. A flicker with its white tail and red head pecking high in the maple catches my eye. “Look, Mica. A woodpecker.”

  “Let’s build the fire out in the big clearing.” Stacy brushes a few crumbs from his beard. I reach over and pick one off that he’s missed.

  “At the end, by the rutabaga patch?”

  Our first vegetable garden, two summers ago when Mica was only four months old and we lived in a tent, was a poor one. Like yeomen farmers of old, we turned over the sod by hand and dumped in wood ashes, but the soil was still too acid.

  Our second garden, this summer, though not great, was an improvement, and what we lost in an abundant harvest we made up for in style. Our whimsical plot was hand-tilled in the shape of a man with his thumb up, hitchhiking. It was Stacy’s idea. He’s clever like that. You could only appreciate it from an airplane or the top of a pine, but the head was a spiral of thyme, sweet marjoram, and basil. The arm and the thumb were sunflowers.

  My lover inspects the angle of the light through the window. “We better build the fire. It’ll be dark in an hour.”

  “There’s the brush that we cut at the edge of the clearing.” I say this over my shoulder while rinsing my fingers in the washbowl. The sink with no faucets, which we found at the county dump, drains into a slop bucket. Before bed we’ll empty it outside in the balsam grove.

  The three of us bundle up with knit caps, mittens, and scarves over our faces. Mica wears his little blue snowsuit and lined boots, new, from the Goodwill. Out in the clearing, we tramp the snow down for our ceremonial fire and drag a log over to sit on. Though the cold and snow have clamped around us for weeks, today is the first official day of winter.

  The fire is roaring as the sun inches behind the pale poplars, sentries at the edge of the woods. I nurse Mica, an old quilt wrapped around us. Now and then he pulls back from the breast, looks up, and says, “ ’Bye, Sun.’”

  All is perfect and still. No sound. No movement, just the clean white snow and the smell of the evergreens. Spires of gold shoot up from the horizon as the last flash of light from the west dies away. The three of us take off our mittens and solemnly raise our palms to the sun, paying tribute to the giver of life on this shortest day of the year, this longest night.

  “Ohm,” Stacy chants. “Ohm . . .” from deep in his chest. I join him and reach for his work-callused hand. Mica imitates us in his little-boy voice. “Ohm. Ohm.” Peace.

  Now our baby crawls all over me, restless as a spider monkey. The moment has passed . . . We take turns kicking snow over the last of the blaze, more for fun, to see the steam rise, than safety, then tromp back through the woods to the cabin. Inside, I put on a kettle for tea and check the firebox. I’m remembering last solstice at Chester Creek House, how we introduced our candle ceremony to the commune. I miss our friends.

  “What’s that?” Stacy cocks his head. We run to the window. Voices waft through the night. Voices singing. Over the river and through the woods, to the little log cabin we go!

  The door swings open and Aaron bursts through. “Surprise!” He tosses his cowboy hat on the window seat and shrugs off his parka.

  Jim follows, stepping out of his boots. As usual he doesn’t say much, just takes a seat at the table, nods hello, and picks up my guitar.

  Leila rests her walking stick just inside the door and hangs up her long black wool cape. She gives me a one-armed hug, clips back her ebony hair, and starts pulling goodies out of her knapsack. I am so grateful to these comrades for remembering and for tramping all the way through the snowy woods, in the cold and dark, just to join us for solstice.

  “Brrrrrr. Give me warmth. It’s going to be forty below zero tonight,” Aaron says as he drops his cowboy hat over Mica’s face. “How you doin’, partner?”

  Forty below! I observe the stout timber walls and our pile of wood near the stove. A rush of excitement runs through me, as if meeting a cunning opponent. The cold will not get us tonight. Not if I can help
it!

  Stacy encourages everyone to draw up to the table. “Come on. Let’s get started.” He knows I take this ritual as seriously as if it were Mass, Passover, and Communion rolled into one.

  After a moment of silence, we begin to light the assorted candles that I bought at the Salvation Army store. Some are new, some half-gone. “I’ll light the red one for fire,” Stacy says. We think about that for a minute, on this below-zero night.

  “Hot!” Mica announces. Hot was one of his first words. In a cabin with a woodstove and kerosene lamps, we’ve said hot to him so often and with such intensity, he picked it up early.

  “This blue one is for water,” Aaron says, leaning in.

  “This tall gold one is for the earth and all that sustains us,” Leila whispers. She pulls her hair back as she bends over the flames.

  I take my turn. “The white one is for family.” I look at Mica, then at Stacy and around at the larger group. They are my family too. Fleetingly I flash on my mother, sitting home alone, watching TV in the living room of our house in Carson City, and my brother, Darren, so far away I don’t even know where he lives.

  Jim follows, but he takes a long time. “The orange candle is for peace and justice and for those who have died for it . . .” I picture the students at Kent State.

  Mica stands up in his highchair, supported by Stacy. “Hot!” he squeals again. All night the candles will burn in their little tin plates until the sun, giver of life and warmth, returns.

  When we are done, Aaron leans back and pulls his Hohner harmonica out of his shirt pocket. Stacy opens his Autoharp case and Jim picks up the guitar again. ’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free . . . Leila swings me around in an improvised jig. ’Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be . . . If the stout log walls could dance, they’d pick up and join us.

  CHAPTER 5

  Tree Song

  Christmas comes and goes without much celebrating. Stacy considers it overcommercialized capitalist crap, and I sing carols to the trees and the woodland critters down by the river. The days pass with inside work, reading, and playing. The leaden gray sky presses down on us. Tonight while Stacy is out cracking the ice at the spring, I hear him call.