Familiaris

Walter is working on a run-down boat, the Maple Frog, owned by Percy DuGreen, the Captain, and Jess Folquist, the first mate. They are at the Bassoon Saloon in Marinette, Wisconsin—a twin town to Menominee—when a wildfire reaches the area. Everyone leaves the saloon in a panic, and Percy orders them back to the boat, which can’t support fleeing people. Jess fires up the engine, Walter pushes the boat away from the dock, and Percy yells for them to hurry as people approach. Four people try to swim to the boat, and another fires a gun, but they get away from the shore. Percy wants to go far into the bay, but Jess disagrees, saying it is too dangerous.

Walter was on the boat for three weeks. Originally, he was traveling to live with his sister, Louise, who claimed she could find him work laying railroad tracks.

Walter’s father gives him $50 to fund the trip. Walter struggles to find passage to Waupaca, Wisconsin, where his sister lives. He travels in the hold of a boat to Menominee, where train tracks have yet to be laid. Walter rents a room and goes out, storing his money in his hat. He goes to the Bassoon Saloon and gets severely inebriated, waking up in a pasture with his hat missing.

The proprietor of the boarding house puts two nights on credit for Walter. Walter watches people enter the Bassoon Saloon, not spying his hat on anyone. He enters, using one of his last two dimes for a beer, and then he asks Joanie, an employee, about his hat. She has him meet her in the back, and she explains that he left with his hat and shady lumberjacks. Joanie tells Walter to buy another beer at the bar, and she later approaches him and advises him to join two men—Percy and Jess—who are looking for a worker. They offer him a job at $3 a week helping load the Maple Frog. On the boat, Jess mocks Percy for not being able to swim, and Percy claims he could if he had to.

The Maple Frog catches on fire after embers land on the canvas. Walter helps put out the fire and then stores the canvas in a barrel. He watches the land burning during clearings in the smoke. A strong gust of wind blows embers and heat at the Frog, then the wind rises in one large and several small fire whirls. A tree is lifted and lands on the boat, and Percy falls into the water. While Walter deals with the tree and burning sap, Jess searches for Percy. After Walter knocks the tree into the water, he and Jess spy a badly injured goat in the water and pull it aboard. It dies, and Percy appears behind them.

Percy steers the boat, and they float all night. He brags about knowing where they are, claiming a women in the lake is guiding him. She pulled him to the surface when he was drowning, and she was steering him toward the Menominee River. The woman is trying to save Walter.

Walter, Percy, and Jess find someplace serving breakfast but soon realize it is a chow line for a work crew. Jess and Percy sneak away, but Walter is swept up into the crew, which goes to Peshtigo, Wisconsin to search for survivors. Peshtigo was destroyed in the fire, and the scene is horrific. Walter is extremely disturbed. Trying to cross some water, Walter slips on what he thinks are rocks, but which turn out to be a deceased mother and her children.

Walter decides to flee but stops when he hears an infant. He finds the newborn girl—likely born during the fire—next to a deceased woman by a cabin. The infant is under a globe of melted glass. Carefully, Walter breaks the glass and extracts the infant. When she grabs his finger, Walter feels a strange force: “as if some animal, frantic after being caged and mistaking him for a means of escape, had rushed against him, or into him” (259).

The force is Nyx, who entered the baby’s body to escape the fire. She had to sacrifice so much of herself that she is now trapped within the infant.

At first, Walter decides to walk away and leave the infant, but he can’t. He carries her away, and the cabin collapses.

Walter passes the infant to a worker at a temporary hospital then returns to the boat and sleeps. He wakes to find Joanie has sent him food. He eats and then tells Percy and Jess about Peshtigo, leaving out the strange experience with the infant and his initial attempt to desert her. Walter says he will leave soon.

The next day, Walter returns to the hospital. He sees Joanie, thanking her for the food and asking about the baby. The infant’s family has not claimed her, but a woman named Alma took her overnight. However, Alma’s baby, Rosalie, who was sleeping in the crib, was deceased in the morning. The infant was blamed and brought back to the hospital.

Walter returns to the hospital the next day, finding the infant isolated in a separate room. He asks Percy for his wages that night, stopping for one drink at the saloon and telling Jess he is leaving. The next morning, he goes to the hospital and takes the baby, hitching a ride out of town. He tells the driver that he is taking the baby because no one else wants her. He names her Ida.

For 24 years, Walter and Ida travel around, living for short periods in different locations until people start to realize there is something strange about Ida. She does not grow as quickly as other children, and people who touch her have strange premonitions. In 1895, Walter’s mother offers him his deceased Aunt Hildreth’s house.

They go and see the property, referred to as Popcorn Corners by James Adamski. The house is larger and in better condition than Walter expected, but the layout is strange, and the kitchen and dining room are on the second floor. There is also an odd, purposeless room. Walter decides they will stay in the house, and he turns the ground level into a small dry goods store. He does relatively well on his first day despite his low stock, and he impresses his customers by documenting their requests and facilitating catalog orders for free. He tells people that he is Ida’s father and that her mother, Isabelle, died when Ida was a baby. Although Ida is in her twenties, she looks like a 10-year-old.

Walter enjoys his quiet shopkeeper lifestyle, and he makes improvements to his store and business practices. Ida helps, but she is not supposed to talk to the customers. Walter obscures Ida’s slow growth by re-styling her hair every six months, and he pretends she is homeschooled.

Ida struggled in school because she was forced to repeat grades based on her young appearance. Her second time through first grade, she snapped when the teacher, Mrs. Bundris, started going over the alphabet. Making an example of Ida, Miss Bundris grabbed her switch and Ida, but she collapsed when Ida grabbed her back. Walter picked her up and knew they had to leave the area soon. Before leaving, Walter confronted Miss Bundris, and she told him she had a premonition screaming her brother Jimmy’s name in a bloody house while holding her father’s gun.

Walter’s store is robbed in 1908; the robber—a man with a sack on his head—takes Walter’s money and some red hots and knocks Walter unconscious. When Walter wakes, he and Ida go into town so Walter can report the incident and warn other shopkeepers. Ida roams around touching people, and Walter finds her in a bar, where she is convinced one of the patrons, Kelaas Minch, is the robber.

The bartender forces Kelaas to turn around, but Walter can’t identify him since the robber’s face was covered. Ida continues to accuse Kelaas and tries to hit him, but he stops her. During the encounter, Walter notices the red hot in Kelaas’s mouth.

In 1887, Walter read an article about Miss Alice Bundris, who shot her mentally ill brother, James, after James killed their parents and set fire to the house. She was charged with three murders and executed.

The day after the robbery, the sheriff, Wahl, warns Walter to stay away from Kelaas, a known violent criminal. Weeks later, Walter and Ida, stopped by their wagon, cross paths with Kelaas with two others. Ida goes to them, tells them to leave, then runs and jumps on her horse Pat’s back, covering her ears. The two others flee, and Kelaas is struck by lightning from a nearby storm.

Walter yells, correctly accusing Ida of tricking Kelaas into touching her in the bar to give herself a premonition. He noticed wrinkles in Ida’s face after the incident.

Walter stops Ida from hitting him and has a premonition, refusing to share it with John.

Kelaas is disabled after the strike, and Ida stops talking to Walter, coming and going as she pleases and staying away for days at a time, sometimes returning in shocking conditions. With time, Ida speaks to Walter about commonplace topics, and she resumes helping in the store. However, Walter hears Ida has been returning to the bar. He finds her there and apologizes. Ida explains she wants to get rid of the “lookahead,” which she thought was Isabelle but is a different force. She is scared of hurting Walter.

Ida and Walter agree that she will help at the store during the day and do as she pleases at night. She also helps by predicting which customers are trustworthy of credit.

One night, Walter goes to the bar and finds Ida, who now looks like a mature woman, although she refuses to dress the part, wearing undershirts and overalls. Rumors of the incident with Kelaas and Ida’s lookahead keep her safe from potential assailants. Ida now knows that the lookahead builds up inside of her and must be released or else it becomes uncontrollable. She finds subtle ways to diffuse the energy, sometimes transferring it to animals and objects, which then come into contact with people.

Walter first saw John in a bar, the Hollow. Ida transmitted the lookahead to a dog, Cappy, and then John petted Cappy, looking pensive afterward.