PROLOGUE IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT ME, YOU at least know I’m a cautious kid and watch out for number one, me, mainly. But I’m not what you’d call (and to my face) a scaredy-cat, or a sick-looking sissy, or even yell to the world I live in I’m a Mama’s boy, one reeking of hugged-on Chanel No. 5. No. I’m just cautious. I’m that way, looking out for myself, cautious and careful, so I can make it through life in Quarry Town without dropping dead or without enduring Job-suffering pain from a log jam of splintered arm and leg bones at the end of a day. Or a night. I’m cautious. Sometimes, to help me mogate life, I’ll seek the aid of anything useful, like hocuses and hexes, potions and proverbs, cantrips and curses, and word-weaving combinations of any kinds, just as if they were Merlin’s own words but now mine. I’ll use them all, if I have to, because they might be life-savers, under the right conditions. I’ll even throw in a few of my old man’s alphabetical swear words for seasoning, as a newt gives to Baba-Yaga’s stew to give it power and an aroma worth paying attention to. When I’m desperate to protect myself, which often happens, I’ll even go as far as believing in superstitions, those that’ve sprung up corpse-like from the clan bone orchard on Grandpa August’s hill and walked their way into family lore. They, too, might save me or protect me and mine from slouching, stinking evil. Everybody, especially the tribe of Norskies I belong to, seems to believe in superstitions one way or another at one time or another and in their power to ward off evil or bring about a rescue. In a Dakotah spring, I’ll thumb-stamp the first robin I see. Stamp it again and again, I will, if I need luck to be in quantity. Birds are good in a pinch or in an alley, what with ages of men using birds’ feathered and gut properties. The birds’ revealing and protective powers have been spoken of and used by wizards, even by juvenile warlocks trying to make a name for themselves and thereby obtain their union cards in the fairy tale world of magic and spells. In an extreme circumstance, maybe close to the last stages of desperation, I’ll even take to heart and mouth, that is, try to use as my own and put my voice to, the gruntings, snortings, and throat-clearings that sometimes pass for Norskie conversation. Those noises I’ve heard in kitchens, parlors, or from those exiting outhouses under a hunter’s moon in Dakotah. You know what I mean, so I’m probably not telling you much you don’t know about prairie-locked and transplanted Norskies and the ways they’ve used to protect themselves from legions of Old Country frights, people, animals, trolls, Iowans. And evil. I allude to those individual or group sounds that slip from lips in fear, surprise, or wonder and are used for protection, say, at certain times in Norskie life: like when day tumbles to night and Norskies, huddled in apprehension in the kitchen, sing, “Kan du glemme gamle Norge . . . ?” I mean all those sounds of homemade and otherwise safeguards Norskies sing or speak, for example, after finishing their Old Country meal of brenn nesen soup, when shadows flicker from corncob or straw fires in cook stoves and onto paint-peeling walls, thrice-bolted doors, and spike-nailed and shuttered windows. Children sit on braided rugs and listen, while the smallest of children sit on calico laps with their heads against their mothers’ chests and hear rapid heartbeats. Adults try to hold hands or look at the shadows, or the fire. Fear is present and makes an entry into the minds and souls of the gathered. Some cross themselves; others swear. All the above attempts at protective songs, sounds, and methods of defense are fair game to me, and I’ll use them or will remember them and use them later when the moment’s ripe, especially during a time when, say, a one-eyed bogeyman slouches down Ninth Street, takes a left, enters the alley behind The Greek Isle and Circe’s All-Girl Bar, and leans against a white building with a green cross on it, that building soldiers often enter, never staying long. There, by that building with a green cross on it, the one-eyed bogeyman waits with his sidekick, that odd-legged, stinking beast from hell. A pair of Evil. I’m cautious. There are things, however, I know I can do to avoid getting into trouble or confrontations with the bogeyman and its hound in the first place, so I shouldn’t have to use Old Country ways as a last resort to protect myself. If I don’t have to, I’ll try not to go into any body-hurting confabulation or anything close to it, even if I’d entered that ruckus by accident, or on mistaken purpose, or had commenced swinging a dead black cat around my head (as Huck Finn did) for good reasons. The best thing I can do is to stay out of trouble, keep my eyes open, my mouth shut, and to hell with the black cat. Those things like the ones I’ve used when I needed to bugle them up like an Errol Flynn cavalry charge if an instance ever arose, say, like at a slugfest with a town bully of the meanest damn kind on a playground after school. Or, say, like at an out-of-control and life-threatening moment at a Tent Revival Meeting and baptism horror on the banks of the Serpent River out west where flatlanders dwell. Or, say, like at the center of an alley off Ninth Street with police, sheriff, and ambulance present on a night as cold as a whore’s heart. I’m cautious.
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