Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller We wanted to show Adam the world, or at least our world. Adam is my sister’s 11-year-old son. He’s from a suburb of Dallas, Texas. He recently stayed with us for 12 days. My sister wanted him to get out of the city and see a different way of life. We wanted him to get to know our son Noah better, since they’re only a year apart in age. It was a dangerous proposition in a way. We only get three TV channels—no cable. Noah’s closest friend lives four miles away, not four blocks. Everything that you find in a city is glaringly absent in Birch Creek Township. No parks, no pools, no malls. I was a little worried that Adam might be impatient with our way of life. Adam I shouldn’t have worried. He said more thank yous than I could count, even to people like Palmer Dahl who sharpened Adam’s tomahawk. “You paid for it,” Palmer said in a surprised voice. He wasn’t used to a polite kid either, but Adam meant it. I knew the rest was working out on Adam’s third night. H...

By David Heiller The black flies struck with fury when we arrived at Kawishiwi Lodge. They swarmed over me as I fished for sunnies in the shallow water in front of our dock. They bit rings around Cindy’s legs, so that she looked like she was wearing red anklets. They chewed a circle of bites around my daughter’s stomach, where her T-shirt ended. My son’s neck had at least 150 bites. Ah, what a vacation. None of us knew what a black fly was before last week. We don’t have black flies here. We have gnats. They swarm around your head when you’re playing softball. You swing and cuss at them. Don’t cuss at them. Thank them for not inviting their big cousins, the black flies. Black flies are like giant gnats, with machetes. They land and stab. Their bites make big red welts. They itch, and stain your shirt with blood. They are worse than mosquitoes, because there is no repellant to keep them off. Nothing. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t make a spray to keep off bla...