])• anyone speaks Finnish any more, and their old neighborhoodrn—the north end of Tower Avenue down to the docks—isrndead. Where there had been shops and office buildings, restaurantsrnand dives, there were now only empty spaces and parkingrnlots for nobody to park in. One of the few buildings left standingrnin the desert of free parking is 314 John, formerly a house ofrnill repute that sailors had made famous around the world. Uprnhere, they used to say the meanest towns in the world were Hayward,rnHurley, and Hell, but Superior from Fifth Street to thernharbor was wild enough to make a fourth. It is all gone now, exceptrnfor Edna’s place, which the city fathers have preserved, apparentl}’,rnas the city’s only historical monument.rnIn the ruins of Superior, the Finns are making an effort tornhold on to their heritage: They read the Kalevala, write up storiesrnof their immigrant ancestors, make frequent trips to the oldrncountr — FinnAir used to fly directly into Dulnth. It is a losingrnbattle. Without becoming Anglo-Americans—playing Hamletrnin S’perior would be like performing Mozart in a disco—theyrnhave lost the language and culture of the old country.rnGie them this, he thought as they shook hands and saidrngoodbye, these Finns had kept their faith when most of thernAmerican left was jumping on the imperial bandwagon —orrnshould that be paddy wagon? When Weikko was asked what hisrnfirst political priority was, he answered without hesitation: o prnposing war.rnLeft and right meant nothing anymore, the alien tried to explain.rnOnce upon a time in America, liberals made fun of conservatirnes who went to church and aped T.S. Eliot. Well, Eliotrnwrote the epitaph on the best of them today: decent, godlessrnpeople. Not that the left was any better, and truer. He was sick,rnhe said, of red scares—and of black scares, brown scares, andrnwhite scares, too. His father had gone out on the town with JoernMcCarthy and pronounced him a good fellow whose worstrnfaults were political ambition and an Irish taste for liquor.rnCompared with Dean Acheson, McCarthy was a great American,rnbut in pursuing the well-worn path to dictatorship of “dividernand conquer,” botii the McCarthyists and their opponentsrnset American against American as surely and deliberately as thernEnglish pitted Muslims against Hindus in India.rnAny dichotomy will sen.’e, if it nourishes the concentration ofrnpower: Finns against Norskis, Anglos against Latinos, Africanrnagainst European, left against right. South against North, laborrnagainst business. Catholics against Protestants. As soon as thernestablishment champions Marxism or feminism or minorityrnrights, the fools on the other side will dutifully respond by burningrna cross or calling for white identity politics or setting up anti-rndefamation leagues to protect Catholics or nominally straightrnmales. Americans will do anything but stay home to mind theirrnown business, rear their own children, and cultivate their ownrnminds. Better to stay in Superior, drinking his wav through thernlong winters, fishing in the spring and hunting in the fall, thenrnever to get sucked back into worrying about which set of rascalsrnlooted the country.rnWith these melancholy reflections, he walked down TowerrnAvenue against the hot wind that was being suckedrninto the changing weather across the lake. He looked up andrndown the street, trying to simimon up impressions from thernpast, but the effort was ftitile: It was like a senile husband tryingrnto recognize his wife, thinking, “I might have known someonernonce, who looked something like this, but she was muchrnyounger and prettier.” Above the squalid and huddled downtownrnbuildings, the orange sky was ribbed with clouds bumpingrnuncertainly like a slow freight around a curve. The wind wasrnchanging, and it would blow up a storm within an hour. Hernthought of what a sight he must make: The only man in Superiorrnwearing a jacket and tie, with hair and beard blown wild inrnthe wind—like an anarchist under cover.rnHe found the good old rebels still making merry in the ElbornRoom, and for the sake of health and sanity they ordered a pizza.rnNursing their drinks as they waited for their food, they listenedrnto the thunder overhead and watched the people, gigglingrnand wet to the skin, bustling in for dinner. More rainrnmeant high water and bad fishing, but it had also broken thernback of the heat wave. They repeated the Finlander jokes theyrnhad heard, and then moved on to Polish jokes and redneckrnjokes. When Wisconsin said he was shocked seeing a Southernrntribute to “The Good Darky,” Mississippi rose to the occasion:rn”We had our problems, but we had a prett)’ clean record on thernSioux and the Navaho.” When the last ethnic joke is told, therernwill be five minutes of silence, and then the killing will start.rnAnd so it went until late in the evening, swapping insults. Finally,rnthey moved the debate across the street to the Dugout,rnwhere the girls were prettier.rn”It’s sad,” he heard somebody say. “In five years they’ll bernbroad in the beam like their mothers. It’s a Celtic curse on thernVikings.”rnThey had to leave early (it was now 11:00 P.M.) to fish BigrnLake on the Brule the next day. When Calvin Coolidge spentrna summer on the Brule, the President kept his office at CentralrnHigh School, where the returning alien had spent the firstrnsemester of ninth grade. He wondered aloud whatever had happenedrnto his English teacher, a pretty young woman 40 yearsrnago, fresh out of college and full of life. It was from her that hernhad learned that words were more than beads on an abacusrnmarking abstract values, that they were more like reflections onrnwater, hinting at the depths beneath the surface and giving a visionrnof reality beyond the pool itself Chemistr)’ had been hisrnfirst love, because it went to the essences of things. Words wentrndeeper, he found out at the age of 14 and condemned himselfrnto a life of poverty and inconsequence.rn\Tien he came to tell her he was moving at the end of thernsemester, he thought he saw her cr)’ing as he walked away, althoughrnhis memory might have inserted that detail in laterrnyears.rnThe writer, who knew her as he knew virtuallv everyone inrnhis hometown, said she had been married—her husband died arnyear or so ago. He rang her up and put him on the telephone.rn”Hello, Miss M.,” he said like an unwelcome ghost. Hernwould have liked to say that the years melted away but they didrnnot. Forty-odd years lay between, 40 years of encrusted ironyrnand resignation.rn”It’s so nice when something like this happens,” she said.rn”You mean when one of your writing students becomes arnwriter?”rn”No, when they remember their teacher.”rnHe walked back to the table and finished his beer. It was timernto leave before they all started getting maudlin about old timesrnand new friends. The alien promised to come back for the fallrnfishing, though he knew that the fishing was only an excuse.rnThey stood to say goodbye and left the Superior native sittingrngroggy and contented at a table in the middle of the barroom inrnthe heart of the Superior he had made the center of his knownrnNOVEMBER 1999/13rnrnrn