The Gunflint Trail
By Kirsten Culbertson

Sandy’s stepfather Jack wasn’t the type of guy you messed with. He liked whiskey and Coke at five p.m. after his shift at the factory, and if I happened to be at the house when he came home, he’d call me into the kitchen to pour him a drink. I was taller than Sandy, so I could reach the whiskey cupboard above the stove, and I imagined he was kinder to me than to her for that reason alone.
“Pour it half full,” he’d say. “Now add some Coke.” I’d drop two ice cubes in, then push them down with my finger to mix it, just as he’d taught me. “Now lick your finger clean and bring it over here.” The face I made as I tasted the strong liquor made him laugh, and he’d take a long sip off the top, then tell me to go back to the living room.

On this day in particular, the day we headed up the Gunflint Trail, I remember his grey flecked brown hair, his wide, hunched shoulders and back, clothed in a forest green flannel shirt, as he leaned over the steering wheel. The tip of his long, angular chin and turned up nose pointed north, and he kept his steel-blue eyes on the road. Sandy and I sat on a bench in the back of the pick-up cab, the cooler and collection of 8-track tapes nestled tightly between us. Her mother, Judy, sat in the passenger seat, hands on the dashboard in front of her. “Jesus and Mary, slow down,” she said, “you can’t see a god-damned thing.”
We’d awakened before daylight, but now the sun was rising and the early morning mist made it seem like we were looking through the frosty soda bottles I bought on hot summer days from the Pop Shoppe.
As we crossed from the blacktop highway to the gravel trail, Jack’s large hand reached back toward us, opening and closing, opening and closing, like the mouth of a Muppet. “Let me have that new Willie Nelson,” he said.
The trail was empty this time of day, except for a few picks ups parked at side of the road.
“Should’ve gotten up earlier,” said Jack. He hit the accelerator and dust flew up behind us. We crested each hill fast enough that my stomach turned and I remembered the smelt I’d eaten the night before.

“Go ahead and stick the whole thing in your mouth,” Jack had said.
I’d finished all but the tails and the heads of the crunchy little fish on my plate, when he leaned over and stabbed the remaining pieces with his fork. “Open up.”
More than once I’d been sent home from a friend’s house for refusing to eat my vegetables, so this time I opened my mouth. Sandy, however, would not, and I couldn’t blame her. Who ate fish heads with eyes still in them?
 “Eat it, or you can stay in the cabin all weekend,” he told her.
“Leave her alone,” said Judy.
“She’s a baby,” he said, then took her plate away.
That night she’d cried herself to sleep for fear that we would all leave in the morning without her.

At the top of the trail, Jack parked the truck and I helped pull the gear out of the back. Jack was the first person ready, and as he stood watching the rest of us struggle into our hip-high waders, he shook his head. Perhaps he pitied us, or perhaps he was imagining what the trip might have been like had he left us all at home. There were times that I liked Jack, thought his gruffness was funny, and I didn’t mind receiving his praise, being the person he held up as an example, but there was no way around the fact that he picked on my friend, picked on her like the boys at school, who told her she was too short or too smart. Jack picked on her for the way she ate, the way she sat, the way she put one finger in her mouth when she was thinking, and once, when she wouldn’t turn off the TV, he’d slapped her in the face.
As I pulled the straps over my shoulders, Sandy stumbled away from the truck, lugging each leg forward as she went. “I can’t walk,” she said, “They’re too heavy.”
“Quit your whining,” said Jack. He held a tackle box in one hand and slung two fishing poles over his right shoulder. “Let’s go.”
We walked for what seemed like hours. Sandy cried quietly the whole way, and I told her to walk ahead of me, so that it would seem like I was the slow one. The forest was thick already, though the summer had only started, and the cool air made me glad I’d worn long sleeves. Moss grew at the base of the trees and several times we had to cut our own path through the tall bushes. Jack, however, seemed to know the way.

Sandy heard the waterfall first and perked up a little. As we neared the clearing, the roar became so loud it was difficult to hear anything else. Jack headed upstream and motioned for us to follow. After a short walk, we came to a quieter part of the river, but the current still seemed swift.
    “This is good,” he said.
    “Here?” said Judy.
    “They’ll be fine.” Jack baited his hook and cast his line into the river.
    I tiptoed out onto the rocks. By now the morning mist had burned away, and the sky was clear blue. As I stepped off a large, flat piece of granite, I slipped but regained my balance just in time to see Sandy fall backward into the river. She tried to stand, but the water pulled her downstream toward the waterfall, and I imagined that if I fell, I would never make it to the river bank in time. The water was too fast. It swirled in angry circles around the rocks that stuck up above the surface.
    Jack, his fishing pole in one arm, grabbed Sandy and pulled her to her feet. “Stand up, god-damn it” he said, “stand up and keep your feet still.”

    By the time we made it back to the truck, we were exhausted. Sandy climbed into the back, wrapped herself in a blanket and fell asleep, but I kept an eye on the dashboard as we drove, recalling the names of the dials my father had taught me: odometer, speedometer, gas gauge. A bobbling compass alerted us of a direction change at every curve in the road, and I expected we would be heading south for some time. Shortly, though, Jack made a right turn. We left the trail and entered a narrow path into the forest, and I saw a sign that read Cook County Sanitation.
    The path led to a clearing, and Jack pulled his truck up to the edge of a large pit. Sandy stirred from her sleep, and Judy told us both to be very quiet. We crawled out of the truck, leaving the doors ajar, and as I neared the edge of the pit, I saw them—three black bears and a cub feeding on raw meat and oranges.
    “Look how big they are,” said Judy.
    Sandy held tight to her mother’s hand and Jack picked up a handful of gravel.
    “Watch this,” he said.
    The first handful didn’t even startle the mother bear. She was too interested in her food. But then Jack found a rock. He threw it in an arc, and it landed in a nest of garbage bags right in front of her. She looked our direction, and Judy grabbed our hands.
    The bears were far enough away that they weren’t an easy target, but it took Jack only four tries before he hit the mother bear in the head, and by that time Judy had had enough. “Get back to the truck, girls,” she said.
    As we three sat in the cab of the pick up, Jack stepped down into the pit and picked up a few more rocks. With each rock that struck her, the mother bear came further up the steep incline, then walked slowly back to her dinner. She was trying to scare him away, but he was too stubborn to scare. By the forth or fifth rock, she, too, had reached her limit, and she ran at him full speed. Her body rippled as she bounded toward him; Jack struggled to get back over the edge of the pit, his waterproof boots slipping on the smooth iron-rich soil. The rest happened in slow motion.
    “Unlock his door,” screamed Judy. “Unlock it.”
I held the knob with my fingers and pulled. “I’m trying,” I said, but I wasn’t. If I opened the door, would the bear climb in, too? Would we become her dinner?
As Jack reached the door, the mother bear pulled herself over the edge of the pit and roared, and for that one very brief moment I thought we might be safer if the door stayed locked.