We got to milk the cows and May Amelia can’t get into any more trouble with Pappa or he’ll disown her. We best be going, Uncle Aarno, Wilbert says. Sounds like a job for Wild Cat Clark, Uncle Aarno says. Some mean cougar has been picking off our sheeps and if he keeps it up, we ain’t gonna have any wool socks this winter.
Uncle Aarno nods and says, Eaten By A Cougar. He keeps a list of ways he might die:īored to death by the preacher in church. Uncle Aarno is always talking about How He’s Going To Meet His Maker. I take the letter from him and ask, Thought up any new ways to die lately? Give that to your mother, he says, passing me a letter. He looks just like Pappa, except that he smiles and has laughing eyes and a kind way about him. Uncle Aarno is a gillnetter and he is Pappa’s brother. Uncle Aarno is sailing down the river in his mail boat, the General Custer. It’s spring, and the sky is gray as the slates we use at school. On either side, the mountains rise green and thick.
The Nasel stretches out before us like a winding snake. I learned to navigate when I was only five, although none of the boys let me steer except Wilbert. Out here in Washington there are no roads but we have the Nasel so we take rowboats everywhere. You can’t stay in there forever, Wilbert says. Not a soul knows about it except Wilbert and he is my Best Brother and would never tell anyone, not even the nosy wind. It is a hollowed-out tree that fits a child like me just fine and is my secret spot. You got to stop running away.īut I am content where I am in the old sorcerer tree. I want to say that it is very hard indeed to have sisu when you’re the only girl on the Nasel.Ĭome on out of there, May, Wilbert says. Sisu is a Finn word that means to have guts and courage. Wilbert is always telling me that I need to find my sisu or I will never make Pappa proud of me. We live on the Nasel River in the state of Washington. Wilbert is fourteen, and my Best Brother.
Kaarlo is eighteen and our cousin, although we think of him as a brother. Matti is nineteen and he ran away not that I blame him. I don’t know why he would want any more boys seeing as he already has seven. Pappa says I’m Just Plain Stupid because I Never Pay Attention and that he would rather have one boy than a dozen May Amelias because Girls Are Useless. I washed out the jar of yeast starter and we won’t have bread for a week. Wilbert has found me here on the Baby Island where I have to come to hide from Pappa who is Spitting Mad at me. Someday I will be a Pearl, but I will nag and irritate the poor oyster and everyone else up until then. My brother Wilbert tells me that I’m like the grain of sand in an oyster.
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