Trafford Publishing: Silver Fish Up The Red River

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Silver Fish Up The Red River

by Wanda Staples

190 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0607; ISBN 1-55369-794-4; US$19.00, C$21.95, EUR16.00, £11.00

Silver Fish Up The Red River is a sequel to Staples' first book The Conscientious Man.

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about the book about the author sample excerpts catalogue info

About the Book

Silver Fish Up The Red River is a sequel to Staples' first book The Conscientious Man. This is author Wanda Staples' autobiography of the first 6 years of her life. She tells of an unsolved mystery in her family revolving around greed and disappearing people.

About the Author

Wanda Staples is the author of two previous books and a collection of short stories. Now retired, former careers include being an agent for a tax and accounting business, being a full-time housewife and mother. The first book in this series, The Conscientious Man
, is also available through Trafford Publishing.

Sample Excerpts

Introduction

Through the years, I have heard about amnesia, but I did not know that that was the problem when, as a child of six, I was taken on that train to Northern Minnesota to be the child of another family.
I was afraid about going north on that train, but I did not know why. I knew that I was six years old, although the man who was taking me north insisted that I was only five and a half. I knew that I had come from the hospital because I knew the ones there had send me with him. They had insisted that I go. I was confused. I wanted to object but did now know what to say. By the time we reached the train, I knew that the main was not my father. But by that time, I was concerned about something else. I felt that we should be going south; the train was going north. What was I to do?
After boarding, the man in the funny hat (the ticket taker) asked me how old I was. Standing tall, I announced, " Six." And then the first squabble began. The man in the grey striped suit said, "No." He argued with the ticket taker and finally pulled out some papers to show. It seemed that if I was six, I had to pay full fare. That was all right with me because I would not have to go north. But it was settled. Looking very angry, the man who insisted that he was my father, settled down in his red-plush-covered seat and ignored me, glaring out the window at darkness.
It was the over-night train and there were a few people in the car. But the smell of cigar smoke was strong. The ticket taker fixed the seat to face the angry man and helped me onto the seat with something for a cushion for my head and my coat to cover me. I was wearing a difficult to adjust to long-leg brace that had to stay straight, and with it, I had trouble sitting in a chair. As it was, he had me lay down because he said, "It's a long trip. You should sleep, Missy. Don't worry. Everything will be all right. I'd forget too if I had to be in a hospital." It was my age, he was talking about. And I stubbornly clenched my teeth. One thing that I knew for sure, I was six years old. They could not take that from me.
Life was strange for me when we reached out destination. The train station was at Blackduck, Minnesota. Jim Hill, the rich industrialist, had built his main line to the iron range where his investments were. From Blackduck, we traveled by a Model A flat-bed truck to Rosy, a small farming center and from there to the farm beyond. I did not recognize anything. It was a silent trip. The driver was still angry with me and I was still not able to think of him as a relative let alone a father.
At the farm I met the family. Two older boys, one older girl, one younger boy and one two and a half year old girl. They were all strangers to me. The mother was kind looking although frowning as she heard the account of the trip and the verdict of the husband, "They said this is her. Her hair is black because of ether. It has been two years. She has grown. We just have to get used to it. She will wear the leg brace the rest of her life. Otherwise she seems to be healthy."
When the mother tried to put her arms around me in sympathy, I pulled away. I just stared at her. Trying to remember something. When she walked away, I sat on the edge of that chair and felt the curious eyes of the siblings. I just couldn't take this. I got up. Went for my coat and asked, "Will you take me home now?" Everyone laughed, and then the mother began to cry. And the other children glared at me as if promising some retaliation. I had done something very wrong. And there I was.
As time passed, I was slapped several times because I tried to argue the facts. But, thought I settled in, they could not change the inner knowledge. I did not belong there. They criticized the way that I talked. They, especially the mother, said it was an affected English accent and that I should forget it. Her Quaker training forbid "airs" as she called them. She would have none of her children pretending to be better than they were. This caused the two older ones, June and Kenneth, to dislike me even more. One day June said, "Why don't you go back to the hospital where you belong, you cripple." I didn't know that this was already in the offing. By fall, 1928, I was sent back down to Gillette Hospital for many such trips over the years but always to be sent back to the same family. They never denied me as their child. But I always had reservations....

Chapter One

It was always a question of names. Everyone seemed to have several. Of course some were just pet names, but I was not aware of that at first. And some were like Papa saying, Regular all day, as a name.
It began in the twenties, the 1920's, in Northern Minnesota, USA. But then, maybe it began in Montreal, Canada, or to the East. Papa said he came from Norway. But he said a lot of things. And he said them in a language that was not always decipherable. He could talk to the Indians of Northern Minnesota, the Crow, with whom he worked, though. He worked for a company called Hudson's Bay Traders. He would go with the Indians on their shopping trips to tell the storekeepers how much credit the Indians had with the company. I went with him once, but had to be very careful and I was not to say anything. All of that was before the tomahawk was buried in our open cabin door and everyone went quiet. It was months before I understood.
Papa said that they had come from Montreal, Canada. They had had to walk all the way to the Indian encampment in Minnesota where they had been given the cabin where we were living. In Montreal, Papa had been a music teacher. He had a violin and sometimes played it. Mother had taught painting at the Estuary where a Catholic school for the Indians had been established. Papa said that one day my mother's brother was stabbed on the street and killed, and they had to leave because the Ghost of Petrograd would find them. They often talked about these things in the evening in the cabin. How they had had to leave a place where they had had friends and social company, but now they only had the unpredictable Indians.
I vaguely remember hearing the piano played. Mother's brother had played it. And Papa had played the violin while I was on a bed in a back room. I have no idea whether that was the apartment they had or some other place.
My mother said that I was born at the estuary where there was a lying-in place for Indian women. She said that I was born with a cowl over my head and the Indians said that I was born with a cowl over my head and the Indians said that I was Shaman. She did not like that. She had my horoscope read and learned that I would have a bitter life. That I would live to old age, but that I would not succeed in anything that I tried. I certainly did not like this saying of hers although I did not understand it until years later. I don't think it came true in the way she understood it. But she added that it was not my fault. She said that we had to live with our destiny and I would find a way.....

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