Green Center Fiction

This is the story of a man named Joe who found himself in a predicament one Sunday morning. Joe had spent the night with some new found friends on a First Nation reservation in Northern Ontario. For those readers unaccustomed to life in Ontario, the First Nation is an association of Native tribes in Canada. When Joe woke up in the morning, he had no shoes. His new found friends had not taken them, at least he couldn’t prove they had. These were not just friends in the traditional sense, but rather ladies with whom he had spent the night, let’s be up front about this from the get go.


Joe is from central Michigan. Since the age of twelve he had been a member in good standing with his local chapter of the Future Farmers of America. When Joe entered high-school he was finally able to join the rest of his fellow Future Farmers on their annual summer trip to the town of Green Lake, Ontario. After his first trip north Joe was determined to return to this area as often as he could. He had fallen in love with Northern Ontario. He loved the feeling of truly being “nowhere”, and knowing that where he stood was somewhere to only a few. He even loved the smell of the fish cleaning tent.

If you drive straight north from central Michigan, just go straight on the the freeway, you will eventually come to the Mackinaw Bridge. This is where Lake Michigan meets Huron. You’d think you were crossing an ocean, but the sight of both of these lakes conjoining barely rivals the first views of Lake Superior. From the city of Sault Ste. Marie on you are driving uphill, and this feeling is not a subtle sensation. Up you go, and beside you for at three hours of this journey is the great body of water. The view from some of the higher highway climbs is at least fourteen miles, that’s when the earth curves.

So it’s a great sight, and it’s a great trip driving up to Green Lake. Joe loved the trip as much as he loved being there. Joe had spent the last six days in and around the Green Lake area when he happened upon his new found lady friends at a celebration in Joe’s honor. The party wasn’t just for Joe, it was also for his friend Rock whom he had traveled to Green Lake with. Rock was a farmer all his life, just like Joe. His real name was Allen, but he had earned the name Rock early in his life. He didn’t say much, but when he did, people listened. Joe and Rock had been best friends since fourth grade, and their annual trips to Green Lake were something they promised they would always do together as long as both of them were able. In the process of these fishing trips they managed to make a few local friends. There was the man who sold them gasoline and fishing licenses, he knew them whenever they came in his store, as they had been coming there since they were both in high-school. The man had a son named Patrick who lived in Toledo. Pat was about the same age as Joe and Rock. Pat’s dad had suggested that Pat befriend his clients from Michigan, as they seemed like basically nice guys with maybe a penchant for mischief. Pat would drive up to Green Lake and go camping with Joe and Rock. They wouldn’t camp in the Green Lake, but instead they would drive some boats up to the Ogoki River, about 2 hours from Pat’s father’s store. From there was another three hour boat-ride to a small lake where the guys would camp for three-to-four days. Now this isn’t some overnight stay in a Provincial Park with the portable toilets and patrolling park rangers. The only access to this particular lake is by boat.

So Joe and Rock are out in the North woods for five days and all they do is fish, drink beer, and sleep on the ground. They see another boat of fishermen every now and then, but other than that they are alone on an island in a lake filled to the brim with walleye. Pat’s job in all of this is to head to the lake after Joe and the boys have been up there for three days or so and make sure they are still alive.

Pat was single and knew a thing or two about living in Ontario. He also knew how to cook and camp. Pat would have to travel up to this tiny island on the tiny lake and extract Joe and Rock from the wild. When you camp you use a lot more water to cook over an open fire. For all their camping with the FFA Joe and Rock had managed to ignore this and many other basic rules of the camp. The first thing Pat and would have to do is cook food for the fellas, as they had only eaten fish and beef jerky for three days. Don’t forget the canned beer.

So Pat would get the boys into good enough shape so they could get in their boats and head back to the Ogoki landing. Joe and Rock had rented a cabin for their night back in town right across the street from the store belonging to Pat’s father. The building used to be duplex apartments, and the cabin came with a shower, stove, and of course television. This was a welcome respite from the island and the blackflies. Green Lake lies beside a First Nation reservation.. The area belonging to First Nation is much bigger than Green Lake, but sparsely populated. There is a small area resembling a village with dirt roads, a general store, some houses and a school. There is also a Catholic Church on the First Nation land, built sometime in the 1920s. No one dares set foot in the building as the floor boards are rotten, and hordes of Spruce Bugs and hornets have taken over the tabernacle. The grounds of the church are only used for pow-wows and a boat launch. Provincial statistics indicate that this particular reserve receives the most calls to the Ontario Provincial Police than any other reservation in Ontario. Unemployment is high, and alcoholism and drug abuse plague the community.

The chief of police for the reservations was a man by the name of Waboose. One night, years before he knew Joe and Rock, Pat was driving outside of town on the main highway, and he hit and killed a bear. Pat’s car was totaled, but he was okay. Pat caught a ride to the Green Lake O.P.P. office to report the accident (still pretty shook up mind you), and in walks Waboose. “I hear you murdered my grandfather” said Waboose. “What?” said Pat, astounded by what he’d just heard. Waboose just laughed and walked away. Pat had never heard the stories about the Bears and the Ojibwae. This tribe believed that after death their spirits traveled into the bears. Waboose was making a joke, and Pat didn’t get it.

But back to Joe.

Joe and Rock had been camping for the better part of a week. They came back to Green Lake to get ready for the long drive back home to Michigan, and maybe visit some of the local watering holes in the process. Pat came to pick the guys up at the cabin and they headed for the local pizzaria. The basement of the restaurant was a bar, and they went down there, ordered a pizza and some pitchers of beer and began to rehash the week’s fishing action. Everybody was glad to be out of the woods, but they also knew that they couldn’t wait to get back to Green Lake next year. After the pizza Pat’s friend Denny came into the bar and more pitchers were bought. After another hour or so Denny suggested that everybody proceed to his house for more drinks, and when Denny said everybody he meant everybody. Denny had invited most of the bar crowd back to his house for many hours of drinking, loud music, and some low-key mayhem. At one point Denny was seen dancing and singing along to “Brown Eyed Girl” with two ladies from the reserve.

In the morning everybody was tired, cranky, and most of all hungry. Rock had slept on Denny’s floor. Pat had cut out early, right around the time Denny began to sing, and he came back in the morning to make sure the guys got around and on their way. When Pat got there it was already pretty apparent that Joe was nowhere to be found. The guys sat around for awhile and talked about where Joe could possibly be. He obviously hadn’t made it back to the cabin as that is where Pat had just come from. He wasn’t sleeping in the backyard, entirely possible, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t asleep on the spare couches in the garage.

He wasn’t even asleep in the truck.

Where was Joe? The question of the hour. They left the house and headed over to the store and asked Pat’s dad if he had seen anything of their wayward companion. Joe hadn’t been to the store. So they headed out in two trucks, and drove around town looking for the missing man. Pat’s dad even called the O.P.P. to see if they had picked up anybody fitting Joe’s description, no dice. It only takes about 15 minutes to drive down every street in Green Lake, so the guys were all back at the store within an hour. They had no sooner pulled up in the gravel driveway when low and behold, here came Joe walking by from the back of the property. Behind the store lies railroad tracks, and just beyond the rails is the lake. If you walk straight east on the rails you will travel right by the reserve. It didn’t take long for the guys to notice that Joe had no shoes and his feet were the color of black coal, the sort of coal used on railways. Joe had walked nearly a mile, in his bare feet, on railroad tracks.

He had left the party with two young ladies in hopes of further adventure in the great North Woods. His beer fueled imagination led him to believe that he was headed off to an evening of native love secrets in beds covered with real furs. He wanted to learn trapping secrets from the village elders, and maybe even learn some genuine legends and lore. He was really drunk.
When he woke up that Sunday morning he was laying in a ditch behind the general store. His shirt was in tatters, and his shoes were nowhere to be found. He soon realized in his inevitable sobriety that the First Nation reservation was no place for him on a Sunday morning. As he walked back to town he tried to remember how he had gotten on the other side of lake without his shoes. He began to remember the ladies and the spontaneous displays of affection they had all shared. He tried not to remember the countless drinks he had bought. It’s bad enough to nurse a rye whiskey/lager hangover, but to do so while walking barefoot on railroad tracks, in the summer sun is probably the worst thing Joe had ever experienced in all his years of visiting Green Lake, worse than the fish hook he stepped on and had to have removed with pliers by Mr. Wilhelm in the bow of the FFA fishing boat, worse than the year he got food poisoning from the old can of ravioli causing him to spend the whole trip either in his tent or on his hands and knees in the brush. The closer he got to town the more he hated it.

Pat and Rock didn’t do much to heal Pat’s wounded soul. Pat quickly understood the meaning of Joe’s bare feet and the coal stains covering his toes. It was bad enough to be humiliated in front of Rock and Pat, but there was a crowd of tourists at the store buying their licenses, junk food, and bait. Joe was ready to go home.

Before they left Pat took the guys over to the only department store in town, and Rock bought Joe a cheap pair of running shoes and a pair of aviator glasses. Pat treated the guys to a meal of poutine and sweet corn, and by the time they were done eating Joe was starting to see the underlying humor of the situation. It was over lunch that Pat gave him his new nickname, Shoeless Joe Track-Walker. Ten hours later Joe and Rock crossed back over the Mackinaw Bridge, downhill all the way from there, down in to the August heat of Central Michigan, down into the fireflies and crickets, down to the cornfields and flat expanse. They drove all night, arriving home just before dawn.