Sin Isn't Sin Out Here

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Sunday, September 16–
     3:40 p.m.-

      A swarm of fast-streaking fighter jets is roaring over, flying low and with great speed, heading toward Duluth, filling the world with jingoistic thunder, and the crux of my core with edgy dismay. An hour ago several others, or maybe the same flock, hurtled south toward Minneapolis, higher above the clouds. EZ and I are sitting on the bench by the fire. She has reminded me that terrorism can only be meted out to someone who accepts it. I do not know the state of the world the last couple of days since the World Trade Centers were deleted. I refuse to bring the radio, preferring instead the sounds of a natural world's busyness during the warm summer months.

      I do know the state of Herb though. Four amber colored flystrips swung against the outer Store door, oozy with glue and liberally specked with fly legs and other detritus. Herb was seated at his place beside the radio and coffee maker. A rifle aimed toward the door on the table near his left hand. Stepping inside and seeing his mood I raised my arms in surrender, hastily blurting that I was there only, "to see if you needed anything from town."

      Meg, back in the kitchen, produced wide-eyed delight and asked me to pick up her order at Ace Hardware. Herb said he was waiting for, "wha'cha-call." I looked befuddled until AT&T Don, chewing a cheeseburger, interpreted, "y'know, that Afghani guy, Pin Lay'dum."

      I have just finished emergency intervention on Red's Shed, where I'd been brought instantly awake yesterday morning at 1:35 by the sound of loud gnawing grating into the sleeper from underneath. I was annoyed to be summoned so rudely and irreversibly to the task, the sort that started inadvertently from within my sleeping bag: "I'll merely tack up a bit of poultry fencing under the sleeper in the morning to cover that spot where the porcupine is chewing the plywood floor a few inches from my head."

      (EZ, who was sleeping beside me and customarily arouses in a jiffy by sinister sounds only she hears, didn't react to this.) It's difficult, this discord, once heard from the warmth of a sleeping bag in the dead darkness of night, to expect it to stop without intercession. Although, I did constrict my hand into a fist and pounded the side wall in slothful fancy that the assault on our floor would stop.

      It stopped.

      Then started again, right where it had been, in the southwest corner, down under my head.

      I pounded twice more rapidly. It stopped. Porcupine tittered.

      "GNAW-GNAW-GNAW!"

      I reached for the flashlight, clicked it on, and struggled up out of the underinflated airbed, attempting, but failing badly, at stealth. But I don't know why I bothered. Porcupines don't panic. I shone the light out both windows and saw nothing. Then knee-walked to the door and cautiously pushed it open an inch and peered out, expecting--who knows, maybe a team of porcupine gymnasts balancing on their hands, tails raised high and poised to shoot poison-tipped quills straight into my eye?

      There weren't any, only dark dewy grasses as I'd left them when retiring. The sleeper is open at the bottom, twenty-four inches above the ground, permitting fresh air to circulate, and porcupines to forage. I stepped down, right foot first, shining the light ahead of me, imagining it a potent light sabre or high-voltage cattle prod. I crouched down on hands and knees and played the beam underneath from right to left--WHOA! My tormentor was monstrous and grossly dingy, bristling with poison-tipped quills glinting in the light. It was coolly gnawing a plywood skirt nailed along the south edge. The light pestered him a bit, I guess, because he rotated his head, slowly and purposefully, like a cigarette company executive preparing to deny everything to a 60-Minutes reporter. He did not glare, but stared, straight at me with disheartening self confidence. Then said, "I can explain everything."

      I hissed. He blinked. I rummaged behind me in the dark for something to throw, and clasped on a toad. Wouldn't do. I shined the light around and came up with a stick. Turning back to my phlegmatic foe, I saw he was chewing again. I flung the stick. It was rotten and broke in two, one piece plopping two-feet aside.

      The porcupine again leveled his stare on me, a trifle more menacing. I launched the second chunk of stick. It stuck, skewered across a row of quills. He lowered onto all paws, gave me a "trying my patience!" glance and shuffled away into the dark. I climbed back into the sleeper and found EZ in my place, down under my covers, snoring deceitfully, cigarette smoke fresh on her breath.

      The next morning I bicycled to the North Pool (the only other time I had a bicycle here was when I rode it to The Woods from Minneapolis in 1964; a red single speed Schwinn with a small pouch for clean underwear attached to the seat. Spent the night at a farmhouse of one of Dad's high school friends and finished the trip next day.) I "Whoops'd" upon a porcupine trundling along beside the trail, ten feet away. EZ had dashed ahead and somehow overlooked this interesting diversion. I shrieked something impulsive and stopped. The porcupine began climbing a tree. Then EZ saw it and started forward as my lips shouted "SIT-STAY." I whistled and clapped, then screeched the bike brakes threateningly to encourage the porcupine higher so I'd have enough time to fetch the rifle and return. This creature seemed not nearly so large as the one in the night, although conditions back then--that dead-of-night plight--were quite different.

      I put EZ in the cabin and returned in ten minutes. Porcupine had climbed high and was draped out on a limb. I shoved a shell into the chamber, put off the safety, took aim with the .22 ... "CRACK."

      It fell, there was no sound.

      "Thump" on the ground. A life instantly settled.

      Why is this unlike a leaf falling silently from its limb and landing on the ground? God kills a leaf. Trillions of them annually. I kill a porcupine. I guess the difference is, I'm being superior. God is superior. And I'm not God, but acting as one when it comes to a porcupine corpse hunkered lifeless in weeds in dewy darkness tonight, appointed there by me. What do I know.

Yesterday morning--

      I picked up a twenty-five foot roll of chicken wire in town without first looking at what ought be done with it, trusting my hasty glimpse through a flashlight's beam while attending to last night's disturbance. Getting back to Red's Shed I crouched peering at the task, which would be mostly on my back in the indelicate litter that had deeply accumulated through many years, put there by derelict animals relieving themselves out of the rain. Thirty-six inch wide chicken wire was inappropriate for the gaps between floor joists; closing off where the porcupine had been gnawing would invite it to merely move two-feet slightly north (where I'd shot another porcupine fifteen years earlier, eating the underside of the floor).

      Oops. Look at this. Daylight can be seen between the northwest support and the floor. And, the southwest corner is held aloft by only a badly leaning (and rotten) 2 x 8 atop a tipsy-tilting concrete block and it's all poised to collapse. The whole sleeper teetering on the brink of ruin and ... isn't ignorance easy!

      I collected the jack from the truck, a shovel and a crowbar from the main cabin, along with a package of shims, a line level, a chalk-line dispenser of string and a half-dozen sidewalk blocks. Loaded them in the wheelbarrow and rolled it all to my worksite. Nails were tacked to all four corners up under the eaves to secure the line level, and reparations began. I jacked up the southwest corner, re-centered the sidewalk block supports, then lowered it, leveling the southside perfectly. Then moved to the northwest corner, closely monitoring the tilt of the west side, which made the first side slope suddenly off-level. I become educated about the dynamics of inter-related dependencies, and sociologic truths. Cabin corners are dependently related to where the other three stand, and they certainly will not sustain anything for long on chill empty air.

      The sleeper is remarkably rigid, exasperatingly so. (Climbing inside and jumping up and down to force a corner to sag into compliance doesn't work.) I managed to settle all four sides into relative agreement but, finishing up, a thought came: the goal of sealing the undersides against vandalistic small animals would be more easily (and cheaply) accomplished if chicken wire were stapled to the plywood sides of the structure and submerged underground around the perimeter. But, the shelter is too high off the ground for the fencing I bought; it would require five-foot wide fencing to span the spaces.

      Oh!, so why not lower the whole works? Anyway, the two 2 x 8 support boards, one across the east end and one across the west, are warped and rotting and ought be eliminated. Why not remove the weakened wood and set the cabin directly on itself atop concrete blocks at the corners?

      So I did. Raised one end at a time, removing unhealthy lumber while the sleeper creaked loudly and swayed in the breeze, then set it all back down, making sure that the corner blocks were vertically aligned with the walls so the chicken wire would have a direct path downward into the ground. Then I dug in the rocky, root-gridlocked ground while EZ dozed in cool shade ten feet away. But I worried with a learned fear: what am I missing? Will I get halfway through and discover some assininely obvious detail that will negate all of the work I'd done up 'till then?

      I love working in low-fifties temperatures. It's cool, sweat stays at a minimum and insects are elsewhere, watching television indoors.

      So nudity, although not discussed and neither encouraged nor avoided around here, is seldom an issue. Unless one has an overpowering desire to go naked, this is not the spot most likely to induce that caprice. Either it's sub-zero, and that's incentive enough to keep a few layers of clothing in place, or it's a season when bugs take over and go bare-naked themselves. Cutting firewood without clothing holds little appeal, especially for males. Chainsaw blades whirring and razor-sharp axes guillotining down close by are usually enough to discourage the urge. Even while sweating in safety, behind screening inside the cabin on ninety-degree days, one is not likely to think, "Gracious, I ought to be naked!"

      But, when the need to pee comes around and announces its need, anybody who decides to can walk out the door and, with no concern for modesty, empty the bladder mostly where he or she wants. The Woods is a holiday from restraint, where anything goes, but with that in mind, the natural balances of temperature and insect aggravation--and the Woods' innate freedom from guilty sin march in unison, so sin isn't Sin out here, thus has no allure and doesn't get committed. Buggy summer torments or winter's frigid air and lack of religious constriction puts back into balance a person's God-given sense.

      Since the early days of The Woods, visitation by outsiders has been easily detected through the low rumble of a car motor approaching out of the east. It's a dead-end road. There is no other way in. We see few pedestrians hiking or jingle-carts selling ice cream, or off-course paratroopers setting down in the midst of our vacant road.

      I am accustomed to that.

      I was accustomed to that.

      I like to have fun while I play at Woods projects. And a video camera is one device in my tote of toys. So, I set it up on the tripod and recorded the sleeper repair, short segments to show the progress, short segments of myself wearing--suddenly--changed clothing. An amateur survey of the whimsical techniques used on the 60's TV shows Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie. (I once or twice even nodded my nose.)

      Ooo, wouldn't it be fun to progressively disrobe--a sudden burst of scene without chamois shirt, then instantly no jeans, no T-shirt, no reading glasses swaying on their cord, etc., you get the idea.

      So, as I worked, I played this amusing diversion. And of course nobody but me will see the final clips anyway: sickly white legs and scrawny bare buttocks vanishing from view, then abruptly, full frontal nudity with an ax handle handling the modesty disguise and enhancing my masculinity, as you might imagine. I had some giggles visualizing how it would all turn out, then got back into my work clothes, and resumed digging.

      Ten minutes later I swiped away some sweat and glanced at the road. A guy 'n girl couple was silently passing by, L.L Bean-ishly clad in red matching plaid.

      "Well, isn't that interesting," I thought to myself. "A few minutes earlier and they'd have gotten quite a show. They must be starting a stroll up from Anderson's place.".

      Although ... I hadn't heard any activity down there ... screaming or shooting, or loud rock and roll.

      For good reason, I found out later. There wasn't any activity. Nobody was home, no cars were parked in the driveway. So, these hikers must have walked in from the main road past our yard and ... when I saw them they must've been returning. (This might explain why the woman was hurrying.)

      I pondered how to dissuade animals from burrowing under or digging up the fencing. Rocks? Quickcrete brought from town and mixed, then poured from the wheelbarrow? Cut and trimmed two-inch thick straight trees would do. The bottom edge of the fencing could be rolled onto it then stapled. I bought half-a-pound of poultry staples--u-shaped and sharply pointed at their ends and, I hope, galvanized or zinc coated to dissuade rust. A burrowing animal could dig down, but would have to dig up the whole eight-foot length of tree, and probably hurt itself on the sharp fence edges along the way. I'm depending on that being too discouraging. So will a sign: "WARNING -- DON'T DIG HERE -- SHARP OUCHIE THINGS BELOW.

      A tightly coiled, shrink-wrapped 25 foot roll of chicken wire is a marvel of constriction. Releasing it from its shrink-wrapped plastic, then prying open the securing clips takes some swear-worded maneuvers but, unwinding it is a comical chore.

      I pull out the outside edge and raise it high, cursing the sharp ends in my hands which keep curling back into themselves. Holding the end high overhead ... now what? I set it on the ground and the rest of the roll recoils at my feet. I step on one end and stretch my legs lengthwise, then kick at the roll, sending it flat away. But it's a Slinky, zooming out, then retreating back into my foot. The end in my grip is springy with attitude of its own, sharp raw edges writhe and scratch hands. I try again, jerking it high over my head. The coil rolls away, reaches the end of its run, then shoots back, surging halfway up my legs. I hoist the free end again, then stomp onto the unrolled wire before it springs back, kicking it further open, dropping the free end, then standing perplexed as both ends coil up and nudge hard into each ankle. The sun doesn't shine, nor does the wind blow. EZ doesn't care, she's sleeping unhelpfully fifteen feet away.

      I rolled the looser end of the fencing along the grass, retreating my way backward, the rest of the coil kept pace. EZ is called over. She is petted and kissed then told to, "lay down," on the far end. She does, arching her paws up and abdomen open in licentious expectation. I leave her there with a sharp command to "stay," and unroll my fence ten feet out. (I mistakenly make eye contact with EZ and she starts an abrupt about-face. "Stay!" She sinks back down.)

      The tape measure is hooked under EZ's backside at the fence's loose end, then unrolled and locked where I can read, "96," inches. A pair of rusty tin snips trims me off a length. The mutinous mess is stapled against the side of the sleeper under the window. A small sapling is cut and trimmed, then rolled onto the lower edge of the fence. I hammer and twist, then vigorously blaspheme the Lord, when a staple flips away and my index finger gets pounded. This entire exercise is about manual dexterity and acquired experience ... but how many professional fencers need to shut out porcupines by stapling chicken wire underground, without pneumatics or a cordless staple gun?

      Gun shots ring out. I ignore it at first. Then third and fourth blasts burst the silence. I hate it. A savage intrusion.

      The wiry confusion gets stuffed in the trench, shuddering with dissension. It stays. The side of my boot quickly kicks in weighty mounds of earth and rock. The shovel is grabbed and the cleft is filled. Grass and ferns and shards of window glass (don't ask) all tumble in and are stomped. I run for the cooler and open a beer thirty-four minutes early.

7:40 p.m.-

      It was dark when we arrived in Askov, population: 362, a tiny town of Danish ascendancy a few miles northeast of Sandstone. A broad main street bisects small neighborhoods and empty buildings along either side. A newer building, East Central Middle School, takes up a sizable share one block east. A tractor without lights thumps out of darkness, rounds a corner and disappears down a sidestreet. The lumber and hardware store stands empty on the east. One parenthetical end of the Askov CO-OP ASSN. building is decrepit and tumbled, shedding red paint, although the rest of it looks to still be in business. A meat market storefront has been empty since spring. A For Sale sign tacked to the window has an extra sheet of paper taped below, "Or Rent." Two doors down, beside Bank of the North, is the Askov Area Youth Center. The front window was decorated by child-sized hands dipped into primary paints then schmooshed around the perimeter of the glass, creating a garland of handprints. Inside is a dark space the size of a moderate bedroom. Two empty Mountain Dew bottles sit on a table. A sign is taped to the door, "Wanted: AAYC volunteers to spend quality time with children."

      A man dressed in black, wearing a wide flat-brimmed black hat, rides past on a bicycle.

      Four diners talk at a table inside the Partridge Cafe, draining water glasses, turning to watch an unmoving street. A pickup truck with an ATV on its back is horizontally parked across diagonal markings near the sidewalk. A trash receptacle, painted as a tin solder, stands near the door of The Askov American newspaper office. Three doors down is Lena's. A sign along an outdoor wall spells out "Scandinavian Gifts and Coffee House, Soda Fountain, Gardens." Across the way a picture window shines a, "Mainstreet Grocery," shadow onto the street. Two girls giggle toward it in the shivery air, one swinging flappy jacket arms, hands pulled up inside, both are swinging blond ponytails. Rising in the east like a floodlit rocket, the white painted water tower with black ten-foot high ASKOV letters looks ready for launch.

      A recycling shed behind the feed store cascades trash out across the alley. Somebody forgot to secure the doors against dogs.

      Laughter and a single shriek ricochet toward me from some sort of revelry two blocks north. I back up the truck and U-turn toward the sound of action.

      A Saturday night wedding reception is in progress at the Community Center/Fire Station. The parking lot is jammed. So is the street. A teenaged girl shrieks as her date carries her to his Smoky and The Bandit era Trans-Am. He puts her down. They kiss. Outside the wedged-open Community Center door older males, with ties unclipped and white shirts unbuttoned, smoke and toss arguments up into the night. Small children swoop around door posts and dodge between grownup legs in a pick-up game of liberation. A young woman in an important looking burgundy-colored gown is hunched, weeping near a shrub. The windows of the building show darkness inside, no light is visible but from a ceiling globe inside the door. Laughter echoes. Cars move slowly through, park, dome lights pierce bright, car doors "whump," couples trudge. A pair in their teens approach the building, holding hands. The boy struts enthusiastically in a baseball cap and fiercely silk-screened black T-shirt and droopy jeans, suspenders swaying behind his knees. The girl is wearing high heels and a full-length burgundy gown, half-covered by a shiny waist-length leather jacket. Her hair is whorled high, swaying with hairspray. He shakes his hand free as they approach the open doorway.

      A blond girl in her early teens appears in the doorway holding hands with two blond-haired children. They pause in profile. The youngest girl, age five or six, stands ramrod straight in profile, page-boy haircut, pink dress hanging to the knees, feet together, tummy bulge. A Carl Larsson pose. They stand silently. The small girl, arm looping down from the shoulder then angling up to hold her escort's hand, looks up at the sky and purses her lips. The other young girl, about eight, has outgrown her dress; it is too short and tight across the chest. Self-aware, swinging a left leg, twiddling her free hand, watching the men smoke and argue.

      A middle-aged couple arrives, black trousers and white shirt, plaid skirt and dusty rose blouse. She hasn't yet accepted that overweight is especially impressionable when presented in a short skirt and tight wrinkled blouse, stored in a Mason Jar between functions. They greet the girls and submerge into the maw.

      Bride and groom bustle from the building, veil streaming back, gown gathered up in her left hand. He leads a plastic drink cup high by a right hand, well away from his tux.

      "You brought our drink?," she says.

      "I thought I should."

      They cross the street, bride gathers the front of her gown off the pavement, layers of lace whispering her knees. Newlyweds glide through the post office parking lot filled mostly with Fords. They stop at a Cadillac. She seethes something about Tricia. He, on his knees pleads, "sorry-sorry-sorry," then reaches up under her dress. They conciliate vigorously, swipe away parking lot gravel and walk affectionately back near the entranceway lights. A moth swirls out of the night and swoops up under her veil. She screams, drops her hem and slaps at her head. The groom is alarmed but doesn't know why. He slaps at her head too, more spiritedly than she. It jolts forward, the veil drifts free and flutters to the blacktop. Bride backhands groom flat on his nose, his head tips back, the drink falls free and splashes onto pavement. The old guys by the door stop mid-gesture to watch this sudden act of marital awakening. Newlywed man lets go of his nose, regains the cup at his feet and the veil at hers, gives her the finger, and saunters in through the door. New bride shrieks, "Travis don't go," raises her skirts and runs after him, knocking into a young father carrying a toddler with a balloon.

      Three fifteen-year-old boys, concealed under backward baseball caps, stray in from the dark and disappear through the door. They reappear three minutes later carrying two cups of beer apiece, heading back into the night, breaking into a run.

      An illuminated mirrored ball twirls into life through a window. Music thumps and an amplified voice demands, "Get up and dance!" Young bodies streak past the window with unconstrained zeal and grandmas and grandpas escape out a side door. One woman yells back over her shoulder. One of the men in the clutch by the door walks to a window, cups a hand to see in, and scratches his crew cut.

      The teenaged boys appear from the shadows and stumble back through the door as a freight engine horn blasts through the town. Red lights blink three blocks up the street, gates lower, and a train streaks through doing eighty. This is a grand sight for me and I tend to it with awe, so silent its passing, cars hissing along tightly seamed rails. Nobody at the party pays this occasion much mind, it happens all day.

Monday--

10:45 a.m.-

      Moving to the final side of Red's Shed, the shovel "pronged" into concrete half-an-inch under the soil. It uncovered one, then a second and third sidewalk block, placed there as accommodations to civility when the sleeper was first constructed, launching pads upon which to remove shoes before crawling inside.

      The final job for Red's Shed will be a new coat of paint, but not this year. The exterior walls will require hard scraping and much elbow grease to remove layers of flaking paint. A Roto-Flailer!" inserted into a cordless drill would do the job most violently, but effectively.

5:45 p.m.-

      Out for a drive south and west through undulant farmlands I came upon a vast wide field, rolling high and low, overgrown with pastureland grass. A parking area presented near the road. It invited me to stop in for a smoke and let EZ out for a pee. A four-foot by eight-foot banner sign hung between boards.

      "WELCOME PAINTBALLERS!!" - "THE COMBAT ZONE INC."

      In medium letters: "Please take your wallet, clothes, coolers, equipment and lock your car. If you need help, go up for assistance. Follow the arrows and lets play paintball!" At the bottom, fine print instructions inside playful splashes of blue paint: "DO NOT enter the playing field!" And: "For safety reasons you will not be allowed to return to your car until the end of the day, even if shot."

      Which sounded like absolutism to me.

      I got out, EZ too, who'd been whining and pacing for the past several miles. I filled my nose with the fragrance of ripe noble smells, limped a kink out of my hip. Studied the sign, curious about paintball and the fun it must be to stalk and hide and gang up on friends, then shoot them capriciously dead. As I put EZ back in the truck and climbed into my seat and got out my tobacco to roll up a smoke, I saw through the rearview mirror a boiling dust cloud erupt far off across the meadow. I lowered my head, pretending the world around here really was a quiet calm place, and resumed my regard on contriving a smoke.

      A roaring motor shot out of a tornado beside my window and a black Chevy Suburban skidded to a stop right here. I acted casual and did not peek out as a discordant male voice hollered (from eight feet away), "WHAZ GOIN' ON!?" I counted to ten (including "Mississippi"), then peered out over the frame of my reading glasses and saw a churlish mean man and a hideous fat boy on the passenger seat scowling stupidly at me.

      "Rolling a smoke. The dog took a pee."

      I have learned through experience that librarian glasses attached by a red harness around the neck works to disarm those burdened with militant demeanors. My truck does not have a gun on a rack within quick easy reach at the back of my head, or fighting-stance tires. Nor do I sport big-breasted girly silhouettes on my mudflaps.

      Hideous Boy gawked at me through two mis-aligned eyes, rocking his atrocious big head sideways. The boyfriend beside him blustered, "prive'prop'tee," and "wat'chit yew." Then he reared back in his seat, grabbed up a brochure, and waved it at me, abruptly altering from Guardian of The Kingdom to a role of Recently Learned Businessman.

      "Prices lower than what dis say. Lots lower." He hands it to Hideous Boy who leans out and flails it toward my truck, but it's too far to reach. He spits and gives me a glare. Then opens his door, steps down with spit on his chin, hands off the literature and climbs back up inside.

      "Thanks. I'll be sure to look it over."

      The exhaust pipes underneath my truck tink a tune as they cool and contract. Overblown lugged tires blast sand and the pair is gone from my sight as quick as Santa's sleigh.

Tuesday--

10:30 a.m.-

      Built a fire this morning to take off the chill. It's sixty degrees both inside and out, the fire is companionable, warming the space quickly. Acorns are falling, sudden clatterings from on high, oak missles plunging through leafy layers. It's a constant raucous sound on this quiet morning, papery exclamations, "pinging" off the truck hood, bounding off the cabin roof, "thucking" the forest floor 360 degrees around. Three or four release simultaneously and create a ruckus as though a high-up branch is tumbling. Earlier EZ and I wheeled our heads toward the sounds, to maybe see a big drunken bird crash-landing into the yard. But we've grown wise to what's happening. EZ has moved on to a more stimulating activity: sniffing, circling, pawing, then sitting with head cocked sideways, studying the woodpile from six feet away. A chipmunk or mouse lives inside.

      Just now a leaf floated straight down, hovering it seemed, leaf tips curled up like a bowl, unmoving, not spinning or see-sawing as the earth rose up to settle it gentle.

      Driving to the Store for ice I tuned in public radio. The topic was what had been done to New York and Washington D.C. three days ago. A woman caller was speaking her heart:

      "... and the other side would lose all the wars that ever might be."

Host:   "And how would the other side respond, do you think?"

Caller:  "I have no idea, but it would be a shock at first if America did not respond in kind. Any terrorism they tried after that would fail."

Host:   "Huh? No it wouldn't. How would it fail?"

Caller:  "Because we would keep saying, 'we will not retaliate.' There is an end in the United States of America. There is an end to violence for all.'"

Host:   "Uh-huh."

Caller:  "A unilateral declaration of peace."

Host:   "It would also require though, because they are trying to change, I would think significantly--in a very twisted way, American foreign policy in the world. Right? So if you didn't retaliate, would it achieve their aim, which is to change American foreign policy?"

Caller:  "I'm not sure it would achieve any aim of theirs because the world would be entirely different. The other countries in the world would suddenly be engaged in making things right, the way they can't be when America is a flawed mixed nation ... losing the greatness that we could have. I realize this is a very visionary and spiritual kind of thing, but I believe in it whole-heartedly and I think it needs to be spoken to."

Host:   "Remember the old sign from the sixties 'what if they gave a war and nobody came.'"

Caller:  "Well, what if they killed half of New York and we said, 'we won't kill you back.'"

      I stopped briefly to discard the steeping teabag from my teacup, and consider this radical un-American proposition toward nonviolence.

      Another female caller asked to "share a meditation I've been saying to bring in the feminine images into the world?"

      Wide-open with eagerness to hear ... I gave over my mind. I listened. Then turned up the volume. Clarity was becoming a problem so I turned it louder ... I was missing connective tissues along this body of expression. Or else my reception was deteriorating.

      "... surrounding the world with light ... all our methods are fervid hinges in a way ... um, light streams forth from God into all human minds. Say what you like but shadows disunite in tragedy and the point of love is in the spurious heart of God or the slaymaker's soul and does not spring forth. From the will of man doth spring a pestilence of irk. The light divine waits for angelic redemption, catechismal compassion and great swirling powers provoke minds attuned to--"

      "Oh, shut-up lady," I pronged off the power. EZ was twitching and foaming fitfully, head draped in through the window from the back of the truck, whimpering, sleeping legs chasing lost sheep.

10:45-

      Taking a break, I ask EZ if she wants to "go for a walk?"

      She is in the mood, leaping straight in the air, scrabbling circles with her claws above the plywood floor, then landing and streaking out the held-open door. We head down to the river under a canopy of overcast, EZ galloping ahead. The roadside ferns are an ugly dead color. The only hints of cheer raise out of ripe goldenrod stalks and haggard pale asters, solidly clutched in the ground by brown hardened mud.

      The water is low, bald rocky heads have appeared. A deer waded silently into the river while my mindfulness was engaged downstream, then I startled to see it so close; nearly full size, faded fawn dots still visible on the rear flanks. EZ has seen it, she's sitting quietly on the bank staring, not vibrating as is her custom when excitement is nigh.

11:35-

      "Not really," was the response a woman shopper received in the Amoco station when the youthful male clerk was asked if they took American Express. This is the same station that has concealed a fourth of the gas pump handles under paper sacks wrapped tight in duct tape to indicate they're out of order. Since February.

Noon-

      A parkbench sits near the sidewalk along Askov's downtown street. It is constructed of lumberyard wood. Horizontal 2x4's are painted red  for the seat, alternating white and red for the back. Running vertically down the left side is a white stripe. The Danish flag translated onto a bench. The top board is chiseled "Donated by Lutheran Brotherhood 8631."

      Across the street is Lena's. Chamber music and brisk polka tunes entertain the empty street from an exterior speaker tucked up under an awning. In front, a milk can supports a dry-erase board, "Unite In Christ," printed in red. Christ's "T" is shaped as a Christian cross. Beneath, in blue: "Pray for those who are suffering. Reach out and help each other. God Bless America."

      A young man walks a black Labrador retriever on a leash, a small girl dawdles sniffing flower blossoms, then hop-skips to catch up. Parking space is not in demand, two cars and a pickup truck are diagonally parked a half-block apart. The truck displays "Lena's" decals. A car drifts into view, pushed by a slight breeze, then nudges into a slot half-a-block south. Two halo-haired women exit, reconnoiter behind the trunk, then holding each other up, amble across the street, headed for Partridge Cafe.

      This is Ford country. An old one idles past.

      The garden beside Lena's is still in production. Lovely cornflower blue sweet pea vines are eight-feet high and pink blossoms, like miniature Victrola speakers, are fresh and lusciously scented. Lena's side patio has a 12-foot square black-and-white chess board laid into the blocks.

      Crossing from Lena's I enter Mainstreet Grocery to see what's up. Inside is a space about the size of someone's large living room. Two shelving gondolas take up the center, a bank of coolers and a freezer case drone in the far wall. The floor is old, fashioned of twelve-inch square aqua and beige tiles; shelves show assortments of snack foods and soda pop, pet food and feminine goods. I locate the candy department and select a box of Crows, noting that the word "black" was expunged by the manufacturers sometime back. I haven't seen this brand of snack for many years. The top half of the box is red with large yellow letters: "Crows." The bottom is an artwork jumble of black gumdrops. A jovial black crow stands on the top of one of the gumdrops, leaning against a cane and tipping up a railroad porter's hat. (They were fresh, soft and delicious and licorice-ly bold.)

      Waiting to pay my tab an elderly lady fawns, "Very good chops. Never had nothin' like them 'til now. "

      The man behind the counter is asked how long he's been doing business: "Let me see ... six years ... ah, yeah, six years since I got hurt."

      "Best store in the United States, you bet," assures the lady.

      All of the street signs are red with Danish names. Beneath each foreign word or phrase, in parentheses, is an English translation. KØBMAGERGADE (MERCHANT STREET), ENGVEJ (MEADOW WAY), H. C. ANDERSEN ALLE (DANISH AUTHOR AVE.), SKOLEGADE (SCHOOL STREET), DANNEBROSGADE (DANISH FLAG ST.), BROGADE (BRIDGE STREET), GUVERNØRSVEJ (GOVERNOR'S WAY).

      Sebald Motors is the largest economic establishment in town, providing new and used Fords and taking up half a block for showroom and service shop, with another sizable portion across a sidestreet to the north for outdoor display. Ford Excursions, and pickup trucks and Explorers are collected in a semi-circle on one lot. Used and new cars are arranged in a lot to the south. I park near the "pre-owned" lot for a look around. Each used car has a lime-green half-sheet of paper dangling from the passenger-side visor. Black Magic Marker lists a few highlights of each vehicle. The model year is printed in large numerals top left, and the price is shown bottom left.

      A '92 Taurus features: "* CRUISE, * POWER SEAT, * COLD AIR, * LOCAL TRADE." A legal-looking form with a lot of fine print, scotch-taped to a rear window, has been check-boxed "AS IS - NO WARRANTY."

      A "clean" '95 Escort is $1995. But the back seat is missing, in its place a carpeted hump. An '87 Buick LeSabre is brief with details: "* RUNS, * STOPS, * DRIVES,"  "ONLY $695," "AS IS!"

      EZ is barking furiously at a stray dog peeing on our truck at the corner.

3:15-

      Back at the Store Meg insists I pay a visit to the fawn. We head around back, she detours into the meadow to pick clover blossoms, "his favorite." Herb has constructed a sizable pen from heavy galvanized fencing. The deer hobbles near as we approach. The left hind leg is deformed into a useless forward-curving arc and supports no weight. Meg thrusts a stalk of clover inside, fawn nibbles. A ring of fur shows dingy around its neck where the dog collar abraded off most of its fur during the summer.

      We do what we do, the human quality of compassion compels us to do for sick animals what nature does not want. What will be the fate of this captive if or when it is released to live or die on its own? Predators will promptly cull it from existence. What has been gained by nurturing this cripple? Deer are already too plentiful. Is there a point to saving a hobbled animal? Other than human kindness expressing itself, an affirmation that compassion for frailty is still afoot out here?
      Along the county road heading for the cabin I notice Herb's aborted Quonset hut construction languishing across the pasture. A single strip of semi-circle steel was installed from kit blueprints more than two years ago, but nothing proceeded further as I had expected. In the fall I inquired about its halt. Meg grimaced, shook her head with woe, then explained that the footings had been put down an inch or two, "wrong off," the whole intention had been mis-read by an incompetent person who had been hired to do it right.

      During the two years since its beginning I've watched the single narrow span (a miniature replica of the St. Louis Arch) droop into a twist. Today as I drive by, a ladder still stands at the north corner, the spiraling steel section dips sculpturally curvaceous.

Can Trespass be Called Trespass When it Comes to a Dog? | Contents