5

Ramrod straight, my great-uncle Stan was himself a bog man—the Minnesota variety discovered just north of Red Lake in that wondrous result of paludification. Ramrod Man was grim-faced and stoic in the only photo we had of him standing in front of his cabin with his family. The cabin was blown away in the great brushfire/sandstorm predating the Dust Bowl by several years. The Raging Winds, as they were known. After the Raging Winds, he took the family to Alberta, worked that soil for several years, and then returned alone to Minnesota, where he scouted mindlessly for a bit of land he could afford; he was most certainly suffering from dementia and starvation when he fell in the bog hole. When he was revealed by the blade of the motorized peat-gathering machine (the desire of a man named Al Wildberg to compete with the soft coal industry), he was bisected neatly, head to toe. Wildberg decided it would cut into his gathering schedule too much to call anyone to see yet another bog man. He gave Uncle Stan a firm kick with his boot, watched his arm crumble to dust, kicked him a few more times, and then got into his machine, cranked it up, gave it a bit of choke, and ran over Ramrod Man.

6

I’m unconvincing as a bog man. A small twist in my smile betrays me to Thompson. My body is facing northeast along its vertical axis in order to throw the Ohio State archaeology team a loop if they come, so that they’ll conjure up some sacrificial rite to the spring rain gods. We bog folk often attempt the best we can to make some pretense of history (thus my arm thrown dramatically back and the Hamletesque thoughtfulness of my brow line); my demeanor must be that of the hard-bitten down-on-his-luck soul handpicked for sacrifice. An easy role for me, I admit.

Thompson proceeds to clear my entire ear, around the bottom of my jaw, while twilight smears the western flank of his farm, darkens the thick crowns of his windbreak. He’s talking softly to me, his voice modulating with the breeze. It takes me a second, but then I realize that he’s making a confession, and it’s about Irene in the tobacco shop.

Sure she’s young, sure, a kid, really. But lovely to behold. So lovely. And along with her girl-smells, perfume and the like, she always smells like a fresh pouch of rough cut.

Before that he said: I did, do love Alice. She’s a fine woman and mother to my children—yet there’s something in her, well, I guess a demeanor is the word. We don’t mix. Oil and vinegar. We worked this land side-to-side during the great ‘67 hardships, the Great Wind of ‘88, the Dry Spell of ‘89, the Cricket Plague of ‘90, and all the little plagues in between, but that’s not enough, to have toiled through some rough times is not enough at all. Those irrigation pipes were her idea. I’d have to admit that much.