Memory Boy (18 page)

“But I'll warn you right now,” Sarah said, “it would take a small miracle for me to live in that shack this winter.”

“I hear you,” I said easily. In the quiet moment that followed, a fish splashed in the shady corner pool; I thought about finding my fishing pole and making a couple of casts, but he would be there tomorrow.

“You know, I think I'll turn in,” my mother said sleepily.

“Me too,” my father said.

My mother hugged me—and then, awkwardly, so did my father. I hugged him back.

After Sarah secured Emily, she too headed into the tent. “Don't stay up too late, Memory Boy.” It was her way, too, of apologizing for doubting me.

“I won't.”

When my parents and Sarah were in their tents, I stretched out by the fire and watched the stars come out and listened to night sounds. An owl went
“whoo-whoo-whoo”
; the campfire whispered. Then, when I closed my eyes, I heard Mr. Kurz's voice:

Burn too much pine in your stove and you're asking for trouble. Creosote tar builds up in the pipe, and the next thing you know, you've got a chimney fire
....

Upstream there's plenty of wild rice. Listen for mallards—the ducks that quack loudest—they'll tell you where to look. There's plenty of rice for everyone. Cook it dry and slow when you parch it. In winter boil it in water with a little salt. It's better than potatoes any day
....

I suddenly opened my eyes and looked around—but there was only Emily, the tents, and the campfire. So I closed my eyes again and listened to every story Mr. Kurz had told me. Some of them had parts missing because I hadn't listened well; others came back whole. They flowed out of my memory like a river.

If you need venison, take a small deer. One that might not make it through the winter. Find a deer trail, make a little brush blind twenty yards off it, and wait there. Keep the wind in your face and stay quiet as a tree. The deer will come. Aim for the neck. One good shot is all you need. Dressing out a deer is messy, but don't worry about the gut pile. The fox will clean it up overnight
....

Living in the woods is like swimming in deep water. If you fight against it, if you're scared of it, you'll drown. But if you learn to trust it, to take what the land gives you, you'll be okay. In fact you'll be more than okay—you'll be fine
.

I suddenly opened my eyes: It was almost dark, and there was one last thing to do.

I eased my backpack from the tent, and from it took out the small, well-sealed bottle. It felt lighter than ever.

I went to the river and knelt there. Carefully I unscrewed the lid. Before me the water was blue-purple now, and darker still where it curled into the dusky forest. With a flick of my wrist, I tossed Mr. Kurz's ashes onto the water. For a moment they rode high, then sank in a swirl of gray. I watched their lighter shape drift on the current, turn, spin—almost like dancing—and then he was gone.

You live in Northern Minnesota and are an avid outdoorsman. What survival skills have you developed from living in the country?

Having grown up on a farm and as an outdoors kid, a lot of lessons from my father and grandfather have rubbed off on me. For example, how to make a fire, identify animal tracks, and catch a fish. It's reassuring in a primitive sort of way to know that I could survive—and provide food for my family—if there was some huge calamity like Miles and his family endure.

As a former teacher, do you have a memory as sharp as Miles? What are your tips for retaining all of that information we learn in class?

No way do I have a Miles Newell kind of memory! But like most of us, my brain holds the important things and lets the trivial stuff slip through the cracks. In terms of retaining information from class, I like the term “take away.” As in, okay, what were the key points that I should take away from that class or that meeting? If we write down the “take away” in note form, all the better.

Miles is skeptical about the “Adopt a Geezer” project, but he ends up learning a lot—and it helps save him and his family when they need it most. Who have you learned something vital from? How did it help you in a particular situation?

I've learned the most from observing and keeping quiet, at least to start with. They say we seldom learn much when we're talking. But vital stuff? Hmmmm, good question. I think I've learned as much from reading as from real people. Reading lets us try on other people's lives and learn from their mistakes without actually making those mistakes. Is that a good deal or what?!

Which book or character affected you the most as a teen and made you think about or act on something differently?

We all have books that strike us like meteors, that come out of nowhere and rock our world. Mine was an unlikely one called
The Honey Badger
, an adult novel by Robert Ruark. The story was about a playboy-type fellow, a big game hunter but also smooth with women and at home in the bars of New York City and other worldly watering holes. The novel struck me because its story was so
very
far from my life on a small farm in northern Minnesota. It was like, “Whoa—people actually live like that?” The lifestyle of the main character seemed unimaginably sophisticated and cool.

A lot of natural disasters have happened since
Memory Boy
was first published—Hurricane Katrina and many others, tsunamis, and major earthquakes. Did a real disaster inspire this story?

Memory Boy
came from two sources: a family trip to Yellowstone National Park in Montana when I was small, and the Mount Saint Helens eruption in Washington State in 1980 when I was an adult. As a boy at Yellowstone, I was fascinated by its geothermal activity—the enormous power just below the surface. (And by the way, Yellowstone could eventually be the volcano that makes
Memory Boy
and
The Survivors
seem very real.) But Mount Saint Helens and its eruption was equally fascinating. A fiction writer by then, I asked myself a short question: “What if?” What if Mount Saint Helens had been ten times as big? Or a hundred times as big? What would the effect be on our climate? On us? The answer, it was clear to me, would make a great novel.

Miles and his family are forced to flee their house in Minneapolis in the wake of the volcanic eruption, on the
Ali Princess
. Where would you go if you had to evacuate? And how would you get there?

Evacuations take many forms, but most often people simply have to walk—in some cases for many, many miles. And few people are prepared. I'm not some kind of survivalist fanatic, but I do think we could all benefit from at least
thinking
about a “worst-case” scenario. In fact, let's hear some survival ideas from Miles!

Learn how to get through the toughest situations—

straight from Miles

You don't think it's going to happen to you. A disaster, I mean. One day you're rolling along down the highway of life, and then out of nowhere looms the texting driver. Or the tornado. Or, in my family's case, the volcanoes. Old Man Kurz warned me about “hard times.” He said they'd come again and he was right. Luckily I was mostly paying attention. My family got through it, but some people didn't. They just freaked. Well let me tell you, that's not the way to survive. And if I had to go through it again, I'd be way better prepared.

There's one thing for sure I'd have on hand: a “Go Bag.” That is, a backpack or duffel bag stashed somewhere, like under your bed, which you can grab and go if you have to leave. Here's what I'd have in it:

This leads me to another sad fact. Most people don't know their cardinal directions. I'm talking about north, south, east, and west. Believe me, you need to know these things. Can you give directions to other people? Follow a map? Most people depend on global position satellites (GPS) and some annoying voice that tells them where to turn. But when the grid goes down, all these people will be screwed. They'll be wandering around like zombies.

And one last general survival tip: Let's say you belong to some club or group, and you're going on a summer canoe or camping trip. You have a parent or a guide who's the leader, and off you go down the river or into the bush. Well, let me tell you, adults know way less than you think they do. So why trust them with your life? You should have your own map, your own compass, your own information, your own survival gear. Because what if your great adult leader suddenly tips over with a heart attack, or gets struck by lightning (which happens all the time in Minnesota where I live). Then what do you do? You save the day, of course, by being the cool one. The Prepared One.

THE SKY IS NOT FALLING.
At least not today. No yellow haze, no volcano dust—it's a hot, late August afternoon with a mostly blue sky. Life feels almost normal, which means that Sarah and her brother, Miles, are arguing.

“—just saying, how many kids would go to school if they didn't have to?” Miles asks. He stops sawing to look at her.

“Lots,” Sarah replies. She's watching him work, which always annoys him.

“Not me, that's for sure!” Miles says. He touches a finger to the bright handsaw blade. Tests its sharpness.

“You're still in school.”

“Alternative school—which means I don't have to
go
there,” Miles replies, turning to grab another board. “I can do my class work at home. You should try it.”

“And why would I want to stay
home
?” Sarah says sarcastically as she glances at their cabin in the woods.

Miles doesn't answer. He gets all adult-like when he has a tool in his hand. Sarah kicks a pinecone, which skips across the ground in little explosions of fine gray ash—or tephra, as scientists call the stuff. “Maybe I like regular school,” she says.

“You never did before,” Miles says, bending again to his work. The shiny handsaw blade goes
RASS!—RASS!
back and forth against the wood. His tanned arms glisten with sweat, and the piney sawdust odor is strong but does not cover his stinky smell. “Back home—”
RASS!
—“hated—”
RASS!—
“skipped—”
RASS!—
“the time.”

“Not all the time. And we weren't homeless then,” Sarah says.

Miles quickly stops sawing. He points the shiny blade toward their cabin. “We are
not
homeless.”

Her gaze follows his to the little shack tucked into the pines. The trees behind are shaggy gray with the volcano dust that coats everything, and that has totally screwed up her life. Less than two months ago she lived in Wayzata, a western suburb of Minneapolis. Her family's big house in the cul-de-sac, her life of hanging out with her seventh-grade friends at school and at the Cinnabon in Southdale and the Mall of America and Valley Fair—all of that now feels like a dream. Either a dream or else she is stuck inside a cheesy disaster movie about a suburban family trying to survive an environmental disaster.

“Yeah. Some home,” Sarah says. “It looks like it was built for trolls.”

“Hey, think what it looked like when we first arrived,” Miles says.

Sarah is silent.

“Trashed,” Miles continues. “Now we've got gaslights, a front porch—Mr. Kurz would be proud.”

“He's dead,” she says sarcastically. Miles pauses to give her a glare but doesn't go off on her.

“Well, we're not dead,” he says, “and thanks to him we at least have a safe place to stay.”

Mr. Kurz—another character from the bad movie she's stuck in. He was an old guy whom Miles had met at a nursing home in Minneapolis during his ninth-grade oral-history project, or “interview a geezer,” as Miles called it then. The old man had a crazy story about living in a cabin hidden in the north woods all his life; Miles was crazy enough to believe him; and their parents, Art and Natalie, were crazy enough to let Miles bring them all here. Then again, it wasn't as if they had much choice.