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14. A Magic Hat
- Minnesota Historical Society Press
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About a mile away from home, Lynnette Meas gets up from her seat and storms to the back of the bus. She sticks her finger in Gale Nygard’s face and tells her she’d better repent. “What does that mean?” I whisper to my sister. And then Lynnette orders Gale to ask God for forgiveness. “For what?” I say to Philly. But my sister does not have to explain any of it to me because Lynnette does for everyone on the school bus. “For the onehundredth time, Gale! Square dancing is a sin!” Something happened to Lynnette and her older brother, Randall, over the summer. They became Jesus freaks. That’s what Philly said they were. For the past month, the Meases have been telling everyone on the bus that we have to be “born again” and only Jesus can save us from our sins. But Gale doesn’t agree. “Square dancing is not a sin!” Gale yells back at Lynnette. “The worst we do is hold hands!” “Dancing leads to other sins—drugs and fornication!” I would ask my sister what that last word means, but I don’t want to know. It sounds worse than a swear word. f14g A Magic Hat 140 A Magic Hat 141 Once the bus doors close behind us, I look back and see Lynnette ’s finger still wagging at Gale, her mouth wide open and her teeth like fangs. I call for Philly to wait up because I want to ask her how that fight got started. She bends down and rubs Whiskey’s ears. My sister is in the same grade as Lynnette and Gale. She explains that their fifthgrade teacher, Mr. Reese, has been teaching the class how to square dance during phy ed. “Did you square dance today?” I ask her. “Yep, but Lynnette didn’t say a word to me about it being a sin.” “How come?” “Gale wears hot pants. I guess wearing hot pants is another sin.” I take off running to catch up with John, who is almost to the house. I can’t remember if Canada and Russia played in the final game of their hockey series while we were in school today. This week they’ve been playing in Russia, which means it’s dark there and daylight here. “They play tomorrow,” John says. “Are you gonna skip school so you can watch it?” I ask. But John puts his finger to his lips and looks up at the kitchen window, which is open. I hear a stranger’s voice once John opens the back door into the kitchen. Whiskey slips past us. He doesn’t bark at the stranger, who is leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He must have been here for awhile, long enough for Whiskey to get used to him. The stranger is a skinny white hippie, about James’s age, I figure. He has long brown hair that hangs past his shoulders and a brown beard but no mustache. And he holds a shiny black hat in his hands. [54.144.233.198] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:24 GMT) 142 1972 He smiles and holds out a hand to John. My mother pours a glass of orange Kool-Aid. My father digs through his milk can filled with his papers. Some of them are spread out on the table. I look back at the stranger and see him smiling at me with his hand out. I shake it, then notice how long his beard is, how it stretches past his neck and down his red and blue tie-dye shirt. When Philly and the other brothers come inside, he smiles and shakes each of their hands. I ask him what kind of hat he’s wearing. “It’s a fedora,” he says. “It’s made of fur felt.” “Are you a friend of James?” Philly asks. He nods and turns to my mother, who is holding out the KoolAid glass. He smiles at her and says thanks. He looks at all of us. “God, what a tribe,” he says with a laugh. His name is Michael Stoops. He drove up here from Duluth. James and his girlfriend, Terri, met Michael sometime in the summer at the Bible camp. Michael tells us he thinks Big Falls is far out as he takes out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his leather briefcase that bulges with papers. Michael decided to come back for a...