“You would get more as you grow older,” Miss Borsch pressed. Beaming, she leaned more toward me, but still stared like most office workers.
I shrank back, my head tilted to one side. I wondered what would happen if I held out. I’d probably be sent to Red Wing, the state reformatory for boys.
“Yeah, all right,” I said. My decision was not sincere and I sagged into the chair looking nervously around. Sighing my defeat, I mumbled, “When would I go?”
“A worker will check with the family.”
“Somebody,” I cleared my throat, “needs a worker?”
“It’s not that you would go just for work,” Miss Borsch replied, trying not to sound defensive. “But you’ll be expected to help out. Anyway, the family lives near Rushford. We specifically discussed your Indian heritage and they say that’s no problem.”
Miss Borsch closed her notes. “It’s settled then,” she said with apparent satisfaction. “We’ll call you when the time comes.”
For a time it seemed Miss Borsch would make good on her promise to let me attend school. As August faded into September, I started ninth grade, riding with the other boys and girls to Owatonna High School, but the scorching wind of prejudice followed me there. One day the science teacher posed a question to the class. No one raised their hand, so for the first time I mustered the courage to raise mine. The teacher scanned past me a number of times. Finally he stopped and stared at me until I lowered my hand. I never tried to speak in that class again.
Despite the hatred of one teacher, those days were a heady time. I attended football games and pep rallies and, as the weeks passed, began to make friends. I felt better about my life and my future than ever before. Then, in late September, Miss Borsch called me into her office to meet a man and woman who had come to take me away.
Interview with John Schauls from the records of the State School:
John: Is anybody interested in Peter? Will they stop to visit him or take him on trips or anything?
Social worker: Peter has no visitors at the school. The only one seeing him will be a social worker twice a year.
John: Peter is just the boy I want.…
John thanked Miss Borsch and pointed at the outside door. “We’s chores to do. Best be going.” He started down the hall. Emma followed him and I followed her. We went through the large double doors and down the front steps of the Main Building to their two-tone green 1934 Ford sedan where I sat in the rear seat.
I said goodbye to no one except Miss Borsch, and there was less note of my departure from the school than from the cottage. We drove down the hill and past C-15. A pang of loss and helplessness struck me as I glanced back through the rear window. Then I sagged into the seat and stared out the side.
I was told nothing about a letter that came during the placement process, from relatives in northern Minnesota, nor of this reply: Peter is well. Social Services is seeing to his welfare. It is important that he has no visitors, as that might disrupt his life with a new family.
No one would know where I went.
2
Mr. Kruger, husband of Matron Kruger, was the first man to attack me. I was seven years old and in a deep sleep when a nightmare flashed—my arms were bound tightly and I was being torn from bed. I moaned, then froze when I recognized Mr. Kruger and went mute. Holding me by the left armpit, Mr. Kruger lugged me out of the dorm. My feet slopped the treads going downstairs and banged the doorframe as he carried me into his apartment. A newspaper hiding Mrs. Kruger’s face lowered and I glimpsed her frozen smile. Mr. Kruger flipped me in the air and, when he caught me again, he gripped my left ankle in one hand, my left wrist with the other. Suddenly, I was flying in wide flying arcs, and the room became an insane kaleidoscope. I could only grunt as everything started to gray and I urinated. I must have sprayed Mrs. Kruger as I flew past, but I was unconscious by then.
I awoke, dizzy and cross-eyed, in the infirmary and was told I had been there two days. Hospital records describe treatment only, not cause, and I have no further memories of that day or the following weeks. Sleep and dark, after that, were frightening. My memory of the next three years is nothing more than flashes—like a lantern blinking in the night.
…
John sat erect in the front seat looking straight ahead. His shoulders were broad, his head unmoving except to speak—which was seldom. Even when he did speak, he seemed stiff, his comments awkward. He glanced around once, laughing, it seemed. “Sa weather look rainy, like cat’n dogs,” he said, followed by a long silence. It was soon clear that he couldn’t smile. He was stiff-jawed, and when he tried to smile he instead bared his teeth like a cornered animal.
I was glad when we stopped in a café where we each ate a hot beef sandwich. I sat on one side of the booth, John and Emma on the other. Emma talked little, mostly nodding and murmuring assent to what John said. Though I felt uneasy listening to them, how they talked and acted seemed normal. Neither of the Schaulses asked questions of me. I understood that, too. Hospital staff were the only employees at the State School who asked me how I felt.
John seemed incapable of small talk. After minutes of silence, he said, as though suddenly inspired, “You to learn farming.” When I glanced at his face, he stiffened with his head tilted back, aiming his eyes along his nose at me.
We first traveled the flatland of south-central Minnesota, then through forested hills with scattered farms. Valleys deepened and, as we traveled farther into the Mississippi River drainage, hills became bluffs. By late afternoon we descended a long, curvy hill into the Root River valley, then went through the village of Rushford. The road between Rushford and Houston twisted past farms and cropland along a wide river corridor. Short of halfway to Houston, John turned south onto a narrow gravel road, which meandered alongside a creek around high crowding bluffs. A mile from the highway, we crossed two small bridges within sight of each other, turning left into a driveway just across the second bridge.
“’S chore time,” John said, stepping out of the car.
My new home was closest to the road and the other buildings stretched farther into the valley. The creek entered the farm under the second bridge, flowed along the driveway, and turned north to exit the farm under the bridge we first crossed, all within a few acres.
The tiny house sat on wood posts. It had a small kitchen, living room, and bedroom. The outside was white wood siding, the inside walls were covered with drab sheeting. Electricity had not reached the farms between Rushford and Houston. Many had windmills and 32-volt wind-charged battery systems for electric lights. At the Schaulses, candles on the kitchen table flickered on windy days as if from someone breathing nearby. A water pail sat alongside a washbasin on a small stand near the door.
John pointed to a door in the living room. Motioning me to follow, he started up a narrow stairway that had two bends without landings—like sneaking between walls. Both of his elbows touched the walls as he climbed.
John motioned to an old bed pushed against a collection of household goods. After sleeping fifteen years in spotless bedrooms, I would now sleep in an unheated shamble. The gable ends were open vertical studs. John couldn’t quite stand erect in the center of the attic below the apex of rafters, which disappeared behind the bed to the floor. There was space only for the bed and a fruit crate on which a candle sat.
“I go to barn, you to change, come quick,” John said.
Anxiety burned as I watched him disappear down the stairs. I sighed and sank onto the bed. I wasn’t worried