"Foowish Pwick"

Friday, September 27Ð
      Steve Buscemi, with a falsetto Strother Martin snivel, said, "Seventy-five cents."

      I clutched up my can of Mountain Dew. "Meg and Herb around?"

      "Ain'tall. Wedding in Nort Carolina. Actually South Carolina but they lit down in Nort Carolina 'cause the plane was too big for South Carolina's airport where the wedding is so they had to git picked up up there and ride to South Carolina but it's actually closer to the airport in Nort Carolina than the smaller one in South Carolina, is what Meg said. I'm helping out around here 'till they get back because I sold my house last Tuesday and I'm living in a camper 'till I move Sunday and build my big new house in Osage."

      There'd been an unnerving absence of Herb and Meg's Fords at the house beside the Store and Steve Buscemi, locking the outdoor ice cube freezer said "nuh" at me in a way that implied something big had transpired since I'd last come in June; Herb had dropped dead or Meg had dropped dead or they'd both run off. Or simultaneously dropped dead of some setback he'd surely had a hand in.

      Needing chainsaw gas and oil and bar lubricating oil, I'd gone to the Store for them and a refill of water. I rummaged through windshield washer fluid and automatic transmission oil and multi-viscosity motor oils and high-grade outboard motor oil containing TC-W3. A good thing for outboard motors, but unnecessary for an old Homelite. Steve Buscemi, on knees in the dust, tried to find what I wanted, but I was not prepared to pay more for the privilege of not going to town, and took up $2.95 for oil as justification to see Sandstone on a Friday mid-afternoon.

      "Bear hunting open yet?" I asked.

      "Since the first, or was it ... might've been the seventh. Thirty-six registered. One weighed in at 353 pounds. Yeah, the bulldozer will be there 7:30 Monday morning diggin' my foundation on the twenty acres I bought for thirty-eight thousand. I just walked in there and got a mortgage for a hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars and it took me exactly one hour and I walked outta' the bank with my money. In two years that place'll be worth at least two-fifty. Sell it in two years and build another house on my other ten acres next door. Make more money doin' that than working. And I ain't even got no house payment for the first year."

      A blue semi-trailer with a plywood ramp up its rear is parked beside the Store. I want to fill the water jug at the well spigot out back, but a gang of yellow jackets littering the air by the rear of the trailer chases me east through the hay field.

2:40 p.m.-

      In town. I stopped at Harsh Hardware first. It's a franchise hardware chain where I work at home and know that they sell what I want. Hideous Lady who'd disfavored me in May glared up from a bloodstained ledger but re-sheathed her shiv and paid me no further regard. A young woman in a short black skirt and white frilly blouse hung up the phone and disappeared into an aisle on the right. I browsed Housewares and pumpkin face garbage bags and rabbit traps and knickknacks and disruptions of harmony and heaps of maligned dirty merchandise loitering high and low like vagrancies expecting a scolding. Through the automobile department with radiator caps and hypoid gear lubes and grease guns and oil filter wrenches. No sign of chainsaw essentials. Into the back and through the outdoor living section; two Tiki torches leaned upside down against a lawn chair-webbing array. Sacks of fertilizer and cardboard dispensers of diazinon ant poison drizzled onto the floor. Nuts and bolts, nails, hammers and Visegrips and an overstocked inventory of mosquito net headgear. I returned to the front.

      "What do you want?" asked Hideous Lady.

      "Might you have chainsaw bar oil and a small bottle of 2-cycle oil?"

      "Theresa!"

      "Coming, Lucy."

      "Show him the chainsaw crap."

      Theresa, a remarkably cheerful woman--the one in lacy blouse and short black skirt, adjusted her bonnet, then curled an index finger for me to follow into the back where men repair haywire lawnmowers and leaky window screens. She lead me to a shelf and pointed out vessels printed in white and blue and loud yellow-green and made suggestions for one or the other and touched me long on the arm until I began to feel that I liked the place a whole lot better than before, especially this girl Theresa, who expressively indicated she was there for me. She spent time turning to and fro with product (I got to admire her fishnet stockings) and explained key advantages of one type of lubricant to another, quizzing me about intended sawing--hardwood or soft, like Norwegian pine. She sought after answers--"what size have you got"--and deciphered my unguarded fascination with grace, gazing deep inside my eyes to completely and flawlessly exact a fit to my woodcutting task.

      She silenced two blubbering lips with a finger to hers, then touched it to mine, clamping a compassionate hand to my wrist. She reached out, and with thumb and index finger of her left hand, gripped the top of a tiny sequined white bottle and lifted it from the shelf and brought it to me, held up my arm, cupped my left hand and nestled it inside, releasing it unto me with a satisfied pat.

      "This is just what you want. It will treat one gallon of gas."

      She again angled her arm to the shelf and raised up a white plastic jug.

      "This is the finest ash-less bar oil in the world. Trust me. Loggers in Ashland win awards using this. Do this for us, Sweetie."

      I got out of there in love. Theresa holding my hand and leading me to the front checkout was what did it. Hideous Lady at the checkout was improved (despite a winking booger) and friendly friendly, or so I remember. And my purchases set me back less than three dollars.

3:04-

      "What ever happened to the proposed drag strip?" I asked the woman behind the counter inside the Pine County Courier headquarters.

      "Oh. They're still fighting hot and heavy. We have articles almost every week. It keeps getting put off by one prick's objection or other brash tactic. Everybody in town's got an opinion. Nobody's neutral, except me. I live in Sturgeon Lake and don't give a Goddamn one way or another. Go through that doorway and look at back issues," she pointed.

      I did. Tag board covers containing years of back issue weekly newspapers were three-hole punched and held together by ring clasps. Flipping through I read excessive descriptions of tragic death stories. Teenagers soared a Thunderbird through a T intersection and slammed it into the trees. Two dead at the scene, one "choppered" to Minneapolis with severe internal and head injuries. Another double fatality resulted when an eighteen year-old male, suspected of playing "chicken," crossed the centerline on County 142 and smashed head-on into the car of a young female classmate. A seventeen-year-old girl, swimming too close to Grindstone dam, was pulled over the brink, swept down the spillway and dashed by the whitewater maelstrom before being ejected downstream minutes later. Horrified friends dragged her lifeless from the river.

      Noise is a primary issue worrying residents about the proposed drag strip, and whether they will be driven insane and indoors by screaming engines and squealing tires, so a noise study was proposed. A consulting firm was recommended by Dan Hennum, president of Sandstone Motorsports, LLC. The same company had "performed other noise level studies at other locations." Racecars would be brought to the site--the airport runway (a subject of grievance to area pilots). If the "track" proved smooth enough, cars would perform burnouts of no longer than 100 feet. If the track wasn't smooth enough (or if an airplane was scheduled to land) the cars would stay at the starting line and "race their engines for around 15 seconds." Types of cars could include supercomp dragsters (including one powered by nitro methane fuel), street racers, super stock cars and a "kiddie car." This medley would provide the community with an idea of the hubbub a typical drag strip might create. Residents would be recruited to stand in their front yards and record official "audible impression codes," ranging from "1, not audible," to "4, moderately audible." Concerned citizens suggested other useful sites around town, including the yard beside the nursing home, the parking lot at Wild River Senior Apartments, and Ramona Glinknee's back stoop, 50 feet from the track. The city council was debating whether to proceed with the study.

3:53-

      Over to Chris' for two cans of B&M baked beans, a package of wiener buns and a stop at the packaged meat display to admire the cache of Ambassador wieners. But I didn't take any. I've brought a jar of natural trans fatty acid free peanut butter to spread on my buns.

      Onward to the gas station where thirteen of the twenty-four pump nozzles were still covered with tattered brown paper bags and one bank of pumps still girdled by dangles of duct tape. I got out the chainsaw gas can and dithered with the buttons on the pump. (I am angered by the reordering of pump handle placement and have been tricked into buying expensive high-octane gas when a marketing smart guy reversed the order: 87 octane with 93. By habit I choose the nozzle on the left, where God intends the cheapest--87 octane--gas hose to go.) One button says CREDIT, the other CASH. Only the CREDIT button has a red light.

      Blink-blink.

      CREDIT demands a decision, so I push it. Fill the gas can, then start on the car tank.

      I notice a teen-aged girl with loosestrife purple hair standing outside the entrance, smoking a cigarette, protruding three inches of fat belly between a knit top and jeans. She becomes cross-eyed on something close-up, backs up a foot or two, swings the cigarette over her head, twirls around into the sun and bobs her head right as though avoiding a punch. Her free hand palms-out like it's high-fiving a friend's. She shrieks and throws her cigarette at the air, wrenches the door open and scuttles inside.

      Then I discover a yellowjacket stalking up the side of the gas can. Another glides past my face in a slow chilly drone. It's fall and I forgot how yellowjackets like to fly around in stuporous moods and pester people who are trying to get away and stay calm.

      (As I write Saturday night, the fire has warmed the cabin to 78 degrees. EZ is asleep on her mat by the stove. Darkness fell hard outside the window an hour and a half ago, and Minnesota Public Radio violins are soothing us, with only a brief break by Michael Barone to hawk a warning that he'll be conducting pipe organ business tomorrow afternoon by the time EZ and I are safely out of range in Wisconsin and listening to Anna Pigeon get into murderous subterranean fixes.)

      I went in and paid for the gas. The clerk was breathing hard and gasping her yellowjacket near-miss to a co-worker at the pizza counter in back.

3:34-

      Back to town, past the Community Worship Center marquee: GOT JESUS? IT'LL BE HELL WITHOUT HIM!

      The pumpkin building on the corner, the one painted by a portly man on a ladder last October, is vacant. In May I'd seen lettering on the front windows: "The Sandstone Assortment - A Gifte Shoppe." Large wicker adornments and voluptuaries looming on display through the storefront drew enough of my attention. It had become an orange Mainstreet concern.

      A fifty-year old oak just south of Red's Shed shed a third of itself sometime since June. The tree had a triple fork about ten feet above ground and the section on the northeast side toppled during a southwest storm surge. It's a strong double-take moment to notice the out-of-place tree, with its snaggy branches and dead leaves obscuring the sleeper, to be the discoverer of possible calamity, hastily scanning the sleeper, expecting broken windows and a shattered roof. Three or four trees stand where the oak would have landed, if they hadn't deflected it. The realization how what might have been, so often isn't.

      Spent an hour limbing and sectioning and throwing branches into a pile for bonfire burning this winter. Noticed that two birches near the sleeper finally died; high small branches leafed out earlier this summer were leafless and dead. Took one down and sectioned its bottom half; the rest was too punky to split.

5:58-

      Walk to the river. Pleasant sun low along the road, crickets squeaking in the grass. Two black curls of scat dumped at opposite ends on the sitting bench. Do animals climb up there to comfortably move their bowels, or is it some sort of political action? EZ was already sitting in the head-high ferns, staring across the foam-dolloped pool. Four ducks startled into flight by my arrival. Then swam circles and chattered on quiet water upstream.

      A diaphanous transparent naiad about a half-inch long, hovering in lazy forward motion and struggling to maintain altitude, passed inches over my head--without divergence--and disappeared into the brush.

6:25-

      Drove past the Store, heading east toward the new bridge. Though not in the mood to stop in then, I am now. One of Axel's pickups was parked by the hollyhocks, all drooping and dying. It was the truck he'd driven during Eagle Lady's visit, the one bristling with spotlights and light bars and tarnished chromium mirrors from one side to the other and high tangles of discouraged old machinery loosely loaded in back.

      Both doors were open. Pepper sat on the hood. Picturesque blue smoke curled up from every space below, where Axel's boots stuck out and kicked empty air. I wish I had stopped. I wish I had petted Pepper and sat on a chair and watched all of it happen. Whatever it was, it would've been great.

      But EZ and I dropped east, down into the swamplands where the parade people with Orv Ohlson and foil-hatted children and the hydraulic Sunliner convertible Ford turned around two years ago, re-rallied its fun, and rambled back west.

6:34-

      There is too much traffic around here in the fall. Expecting these roads to be mostly vacant, as they've been for forty years, I become testy when travelers appear in the rear out of nowhere and merge suddenly inside my dust. When out on a jaunt with nowhere to be in four or fifty minutes, I enjoy a sedate pace, and drive accordingly. I see no reason for trees to whip past my view or potholes to emerge without warning and shudder the car, upsetting the teacup.

      Okay? I like setting my own pace. I dislike feeling pressured to accommodate antsy motorists who rush up behind and stay right there in line. So I slow slightly and pull to the right (or to the left when a raccoon barges into the way) and let the pent-up parade get on with its date.

      I slowed for the bridge and pulled to the right. The pickups behind me slowed and followed right too, then, I guess, realized one at a time they didn't want to go there, veered left and accelerated past, ghostly faces dark behind tinted windows, tongue-lashing my bad driving.

      EZ leapt out. We walked to the bridge deck and watched black water flow fast. Tag alders and trees siding the streambanks were thick and still mostly green, a strange scene so late in September.

      East further, then north toward the sluiceway. Hunting shacks occupied with men and machines and fires and smoke and hunting caps and denim, doing activities that bear hunter men do. Subtle salutes, but not too expressive lest someone think someone's effeminate.

      The sluiceway was still ugly and scary. High water raced out of three culverts on the right. An eighteen-inch high lopsided Cat In The Hat hat twirled in a vortex near the upstream side of one, where Ally got caught. But it's family and I love it anyway. The patch of poison ivy was still growing in the turn-around but looked drear and tired so I left it alone and resisted smearing it over my face.

7:18-

      Turn around. Up Stateline road. A palatial hunting estate the size of a large house is occupied. The yard is parked with six big trucks; never before have I seen anybody there. Miles of beaver water swamping the road and places, two or three, where authorities have dynamited their dams and refilled the eroded road with new gravel. More hunting camps with beer kegs on ice and faltering fun spilling out across my course; staggering male bodies stopping to piss and glance over left shoulders at a passing white Honda with a dog and her man.

      West toward Belden, bumping, jittering, groaning over road under water until recently. Headlights appear, then brighten past. A dozen ATV's blurring through powdery dust carrying serious gritty faces. Up onto Belden Road, the old railroad grade. Flat, straight, infinite. Lights far ahead. Speed up. Turn onto the former Rash Road entrance, abandoned several years ago due to beaver-dam high water. Stop twenty yards in when high water reflects, covering my way. Reverse back onto the Road. Lights rushing closer. Hurry to the official Rash Road entrance, swerve inside, and exhale some relief. I don't hunt scary bear, but only want to revisit the minor roadside shrine and pay respect to a man I didn't know. I only want to stand in the darkness where he kind of died and regard his stars and his sky.

      Darkness everywhere except straight ahead within high beam range. I know, generally, where the cross and the tipped-over vase and the dead plastic wreaths are. But not exactly. The ditch is a dense cattail screen, no conspicuous breaks or township poison spray maintenance, or mowings by recently pilgrimaged children.

      Turn around. Re-enter Belden road. More lights shine from the north, small and distant. Speed up. Lights brighten large and fast. ATV's plunging headlong, chased by a truck. I ease over and slow. They blast by spreading dust and rocks and fists-up jubilance. We curve back down onto real roads, studded with stones, deceived by skid marks and shadows. Lights tear out of the trees just ahead, lugged tires spewing clay. Man after man hugging horsepower between his knees, steering Sportsman red Hondas and Polaris 4-wheelers tattooed "ES" and "600" with rich Byzantine stripes. EZ barks, I tremble. There is no law enforcement within fifty miles. I just want to go home, on beyond. I don't want no trouble, just leave me alone. A curve, then left, straighten out. More lights behind. I stop. Eight, ten, twelve back-farting motors carrying men swinging Jack Daniels by the neck rip past and skid sideways into a driveway six yards from my bumper.

Saturday--

10 a.m.-

      Started preparations to lay more hardware cloth to the side of the cabin. Light sprinkly rain tapping the leaves. The work is under the eave and safe from petty wet. Caleb had cleared the wood-storage spot of remaining firewood in June, bless his helpful heart. So far, the barrier has been installed by digging a trench and submerging it deep, then pushing dirt back in. Would make more sense in this section where sidewalk blocks are laid, to dig up a row of blocks and fasten the hardware cloth along the cabin as before, then bend it at right angle to the ground, re-lay the blocks over it and preserve the wood storage space. So, since I was foreman today, and EZ didn't object, that's what we did.

Noon-

      Through a hard rain into town for beer and ice, two new long-nozzled lighters, and a blue plastic tarp to replace one unraveled and leaky from too many winters guarding firewood from weather. First stop, liquor store where two guys in hunting fatigues teetered multiple twenty pound bags of ice to their truck. Miller's "Live Responsibly" banner was gone.

      Inside, the lady with the amiable manner who elicited my attention about middle-aged drinkers ogling her chest three years ago, greeted me with cheer across her counter.

      "You sell soda?"

      She balked and thought through her thoughts for a moment.

      "You mean pop? All we have is two-liter bottles of Sprite on that bottom shelf behind you. But truthfully, you'll get it cheaper at Chris'."

      "Thanks. Can I get a twelve-pack of Busch light please?"

      She pulled it from the cooler behind her. "Seven eighty-five."

      I signed the debit card receipt.

      "Damnit," I blurted absently, then, "OOPS, sorry."

      "What."

      "I forgot ice."

      "A small one?"

      "Yeah."

      She whirled and disappeared into a side room, returning with a five-pound bag of cubes. She set it on top of my beer, waving a hand at my quizzical eyes, smiling, "Just take it."

      I love that town.

      Rain. Hard, decisive downpour. Over to Chris's for Mountain Dew. Three young women are smoking a passed cigarette under the parking lot pavilion. In the soft drink aisle I wait while two women quibble between Shurfine cola or Shurfine lemon-lime. One has "Saint Paul Harley Davidson" printed on her T-shirt. The other wears exasperation on her face and is bitching about Benny who "better have the DVD fixed so I can watch Monsters Inc."

      One moves reluctantly aside as I reach down for my twelve-pack, then steps an ill-tempered pace beside me to the end of the aisle. I turn toward the produce department, feigning intent on a craving for roughage, then double back when set upon by a voice urging me to "see how the Ambassador wieners are doin'."

      A responsible mother was there, selecting turkey dogs for a little boy wearing a sport coat and yellow Tweetie Bird bowtie, sitting politely inside his shopping cart. He nodded favorably to Mom. I looked over my shoulder, then to the right to see if anybody was watching, then tipped a pound of the wieners into my basket.

      "Foowish pwick," the kindergarten boy murmured with a suburban sprawl lisp, wagging a priggish finger at me.

      As I write, my vacuum-packed sin is safe inside the cooler by the door awaiting heating and eating.

12:26-

      Heading back up Mainstreet I catch sight in the mirror of EZ's head down out of sight, back humped high and convulsing. Then sounds of barfing. I yell, "wait," then remember that throwing up isn't like peeing or sneezing and cannot be held in. So I veer us into the park beside the tracks, whip past the band shell, and stop behind a barrier of shrubs where, while she, feeling much better, frolics free and chases a squirrel. I freshen up her station in back and litter the yellow mucusy Kleenexes under the lilacs.

      On to my favorite hardware for two long-handled lighters and a tarp. Mister Karp, the proprietor, is yelling at a glaring wifely-type character beside the paint-mixing machine down Aisle One. He doesn't want to hear about hideous mix-mixes and, be damned, isn't in the mood to discount wrong colors to the town's heart-weary poor.

      I find a two-dollar tarp priced at $3.99. Scanning for lighters in the notions department I greet a young man I'd first met at Harsh Hardware store in the summer of 1997. Right arm in a sling, withered arm, useless fingers dangling. He said a dirt bike mishap had broken two bones and severed some nerves. He was cheerfully optimistic about it all coming out right. I saw him around town through the years, with his friends at the gas station once or twice, where he pretended not to notice me, then at this hardware store where he'd come to work and expressed--through a scoff and a sneer, his feelings toward working conditions one block north. He acknowledged remembering me.

      "How's the arm doing?" I asked, though out of the sling, withered fingers still dangled at the end of his hand.

      "I still can't feel my fingers or anything below the elbow. I'm going to Mayo Clinic to see what they can do."

      "How old were you when you had the accident?"

      "Sixteen. I'm twenty-one now."

      Months and years whir like a galloping horse animated by flip cards, and I'm suddenly seeing him--hearing his voice--as an adult, not the juvenile he'd been until a moment earlier. A pleasant young man whose disposition chose cheer over misery.

      I don't want to leave town yet. So I park beside the bowling alley where an A-frame sidewalk sign stands indecisively, OPEN 8 - 4, and watch melancholy shoppers and pedestrians pace under umbrellas. Rainy brake lights dissolve and ooze down the windshield.

      The old bank building on a corner is constructed of sandstone. For years I've wanted to see what's inside, enticed by a cardboard window sign, "History Center." But it's always been closed and the curators absent and windows boarded up and disheartening dust deep around the padlock on the door. Today there are lights on inside. A new bronze plaque imbedded in the corner of the building says it's now the "Art and History Center." A fresh cardboard sign on the door says OPEN.

      I get out of the car, regretting EZ left big-eyed through the blurry back hatch, and begin worrying about the word "art" added to the concern. "Art" implies commerce and hungry artists and tin-cup despair. I round the corner, submerge into the entryway, step up the stairs to a sticky square of pink paper stuck to the center of the door window: "BACK SOMETIME."

      Inside, four men in pinstriped plumber uniforms quickly click short lengths of 4x4 lumber in an asymmetrical circle and three-quarter time shuffle, alternately staring at the floor and ceiling chanting, "E-EYE-E-EYE-OH."

      But it doesn't matter. A full-sized white paper taped at eye-level announces a price of admission, if the Art and history Center were to re-open soon. Retreating past the front picture window I see vivid portraits of cows (or big-headed dingoes) drinking blue fluid from tree-lined drainage ditches painted on giant circular sawblades and a solo blue-wash study of fuzzy nude peaches.

      Outside, along the side of the bank building, a crew of four blaze-orange rain-jacketed teens pokes the ground with spears, moving listlessly and sheepish and bored, ready for a cocktail. Another sign, of the sort home re-modelers erect on front lawns, explains that new sidewalk is being laid with authentic sandstone slabs. A slight man with a gun on his hip stands pointing at a hole on the ground where he wants sidewalk to be. Along the curb and hitched to an extended white government-ish van is parked a covered trailer with bullhorn professional printing: "CHALLENGE INCARCERATION PROGRAM WORKCREW -- SERVING THE COMMUNITY -- Restorative Justice Exacted Before Your Eyes."

      Maybe these boys spit on the old sidewalk.

2:10-

      Inside Ben Franklin Johnny Nash was singing, "I can see clearly now."

      "It looks like that's what she's workin' towards, is what it looks like," said one covert clerk to the other. She was sipping soda through a bent straw, hissing news about Martha who'd just--weeping--exited the rear of the store. I, browsing impulse pegs at the checkout, perked up my nosiness at "Industrial Piercing."

      "It's really big in the Cities," she was saying. "Like I was saying," she said, pulling hair back from a right ear, "he used a eight gauge needle."

      The other girl dabbed pus from a pimple, coughed lightly, and gaped at the impaled ear.

      "It wasn't so bad. They don't use no gun. I seen it in the mirror and got to hear the needle crunch through the cartilage."

      I gawk between refrigerator magnets and grease pencils and dirty Smurf key chains. A steel rod, about the thickness of a Bic pen cartridge and two-inches long, bisects inside the ear curve from the lower outside arch, across the skin-covered cartilage nearest the inner ear tunnel, and exits the dome of the ear near the temple. The gray metal is shiny wet between the span where it's squashing scabby white skin.

      "I'm going back down to Fridley on Monday. I don't think it should smell like this. I called Skinner and he said he'd put in studs 'til it heals. But it's worth it. You should see how people look at me now!"

2:14-

      The Colonial Cafe has a FOR SALE sign on a smeary front window, "OPERATING BUSINESS."

      Richie's Barber Style is closed. Fifteen minutes ago the red, white and blue barber pole was cycling and lights lit inside showed smoke and men sitting. Now the shades are shut.

      Signaling to turn out of town, on the corner opposite where had been The Sandstone Assortment is The Sandstone Assortment - A Gifte Shoppe. I pull over and park and trot in rain through the open front door. The portly man I recalled from last fall was delicately lifting protective tissue off of a curvy tall flourish of bent tubes, with light bulbs at the ends. A Mega-Bass!" stereo thumped classic rock through the small wicker salesroom. Trunks, end tables, leaded cut glass lighthouses, Tiffany lamps and beaded reading lamps with old-fashioned shades. Large area rugs with burgundy tassels hung from the ceiling. Cardboard tags pledged reduced prices: $579.00, NOW $179.00.

      "Everything's marked down sincerely to make room for new items," he stated with a wink. "We were across the street until a month ago. I bought this building and moved here so we can integrate the other building with the Gaslight (a coffee bar/beer tavern) and open a great restaurant and not serve fried food. Just good stuff."

      I pet the translucent top shell of a pair of copulating illuminated turtles.

      "That's an imported rare gift. Genuine native polymerized pearl. Imported, hand-painted. Perfectly proportional. Sightly on a loved one's bedside right out of the crate, you bet! Retro crystal radio hidden inside. Yup. Christmas bells are jingling."

      I browsed Asian craftsmanship then stood in the doorway and considered a portrait of Marilyn Monroe translated of yarn scraps and hand-painted butter beans. On the sidewalk, raindrops beaded reflective half domes onto two slick wooden stools, $129.00 NOW $39.99.

4:22-

      Eight ATVs, headlights dimmed by mud and encumbered with hunting gear accelerated toward town, flinging pinwheels of muck ten-feet in the air and into my windshield.

4:35-

      Leon, AT&T Don, and Steve Buscemi are sitting alone in the Store. I pour a cup of coffee and sit at the round table with Leon, who's explaining why his support of Mansavage For Sheriff changed recently.

      "Melvin told dad that Curt's brother heard for sure that Mansavage signed the petition to split the county."

      AT&T Don: "Mansavage did?"

      "Well-ah, like, I think, yeah! Dad said that that's what Art Mantz found out on the, he heard, wha-because... (clearing throat). I think Jeb and them were big against that and I'm sure they kept tabs on everybody who was for it. (Cough) But anyway, but what Bart was saying was, 'geez, what is Mansavage's job anyway? What is he--why promote it from within.' Them guys, the last time that shit happened, Bart is like, 'Cocksucker's bullshit,' and all this shit that goes on. Norm is like, 'Fuckin' break-in's. And whatever. You know, call your insurance company or whatever.'"

      "They don't give a shit," Steve Buscemi blurts.

      "And, I think it was Mantz, I think, sayin' this to Dad, someplace that got broke into and mugged. Shit, Mansavage's prick kid was one of them. So, my tide is ... my ideas have turned. Maybe like all them was sayin', we do need new blood in there."

      "The dozer'll be there at 7:30 in the morning pushin' a hole in the woods to build my house," says Steve Buscemi, creatively twirling a stained orange fly swatter around his index finger. "When I sold out my business I was twenty-thousand dollars short and the bank guy told me to just forget about it."

      "And Jeff actually heard a coupla' deputies talking about Harkins wanting more equipment and more deputies and one deputy said, 'what the hell for? I just did an eight hour shift and didn't respond to a single call or nothin'.'"

      Steve Buscemi walks outside.

      "They oughta' at least get rid of those two queers," Leon asserts, continuing his lecture.

      Steve Buscemi steps back inside, gripping a black garbage bag by the neck. Leon laughs. AT&T Don and Leon crowd close.

      Steve Buscemi sets the garbage bag by the jukebox and unwraps a twist-tie, opening the bag tentatively like a dangerous animal might leap out. They lean over and look inside.

      "Nope," says AT&T Don. "There's two crawling around the front. They ain't dead yet."

      "Close it up!" yells Leon. "Tie it shut. They're gonna git loose! Mom'll kill me." (Meg and Herb are expected home at noon tomorrow.)

      "Before you gas 'em again, whap it against the door to get them excited. That way when you gas 'em again they'll be more active and suck more gas and die quicker," suggests AT&T Don.

      Steve Buscemi says, "Wait for Axel. We'll use his blue truck with the blue smoke, the Bluemobile. Or he could just breathe in there too--oo-who!

      Leon laughs, doubles over. "That'll make 'em fly funny and be really mad!"

      Steve Buscemi found a hornet's nest and put it in the bag. The garbage bag was secured outside to the tailpipe of his idling Oldsmobile. "Gassing the bastards."

      The bag is resealed and put under Bear Table by the door where snapshots of dead bear are displayed to visitors--lynched heavy and black from high branches with heads and noses pointed at the sky, or crouched alongside by men with rifles and dogs and triumphal grins. It's a pedestal table, supported in the center, and the bag can't submerge completely beneath.

      "You still with AT&T?" I ask AT&T Don.

      "Nope. I was nothing more than a data-entry clerk. They wanted me to violate procedure and do in three weeks what protocol requires five. I emailed my supervisor that conditions were intolerable and recommended that Singapore and Chicago and Sapporo be diverted to other hubs. I informed her that my last day of work would be May thirty-first. And that was that. Now I'm a full-time yak farmer and EMT."

      "You miss it?"

      "Not in the least."

      A thumping motor approaches and we run to the window. A red Farmall pulling a hay wagon slows, pulls into a field across the road, turns around and pauses. The driver points at the Store. Fifteen or twenty moms and dads and children in disheveled hay all gape at us hiding inside, then cheer "Hip Hip Hooray!"

      Steve Buscemi: "What the hell is that? A fuckin' hayride? I hope they don't stop here and all them assholes come in at the same time." (He's surrogate cook.)

      AT&T Don, voice rising, "They're stoppin'."

      Two women at the back sitting on crows nest bales see us spying. They wave.

      Steve Buscemi: "That's that prick that came in and got them goddamn ham and cheese last night."

      The energized crowd dismounts. We scatter to less conspicuous roosts.

      "Oh, look at this! What a nice store," squeals an older woman, stepping inside in a hooded sweatshirt with "Saturn" on the back. She is the gregarious one, moving quickly to the far counter where candy is displayed. She leans beneath the bug-zapper for a better view of Steve Buscemi twirling his fly swatter by the grill. "We want treats."

      An orbiting small boy finds a rifle-shaped Bold Blaster squirt gun and pulls it off its nail. "Mommy, I want this." Admiring it inside the bright cardboard package, he carries it to her.

      Saturn goes to the door and yells out the screen, "Bob, get in here. We want treats." She heads for the grocery department, stopping to study dead bear photos. "Hey everybody, look at these bears." Bob, the chauffeur, "blams" through the door, flapping his hand like shaking down a thermometer. To AT&T Don behind the checkout counter, "Brought you some customers."

      Leon is swigging beer against a doorway into the tavern annex. I am seated at a table near Dead Bear display. Knees and toes bump the garbage bag. Browsers nudge it back, without success. The Store is twenty degrees warmer than outdoors and growing hot with adrenaline.

      It's a scene of high excitement. Tourists itching to spend money after being cooped up. T-shirts and toys, Slim Jims and big fish postcards, bottles of birch beer and bulky bags of Cool Ranch Doritos are clutched to jacketed chests as further cash options are sought. Frenzy builds, unquenched men and girls and small children blur through the circuitous course. Passing up pancake mix, skipping canned peas, rejecting battery terminals and antifreeze, absently fingering used paperback books, dismissing hygiene products and ignoring a free art display of old black & white logging camp photos, whiskery men and dogs with strange eyes crouched in snow outside low log shacks.

      I hear buzzing. It is faint, but growing more animated each time a visitor ruffles the black bag or bumps it with a sneaker. I smell car exhaust.

      "You mean we could eat here and you're making us cook outside!?" Saturn's good-natured complaint raises a ripple of laughter. Excited voices chatter.

      Steve Buscemi drops his prop. Leon edges over and whispers, "tell 'em we ran out of food."

      AT&T Don: "Just think how much fun it'll be to make that campfire in the rain, and cook over it. And the smoke. Just think of the character you'll build."

      Saturn: "Bob! Buy me this hat would'ja?" She emerges from the clothing department modeling a baseball cap with a clock on the front. Bob and a girl lean in to see. They laugh.

      Someone yells, "Bob, what's your commission on all this?"

      The cash register "plinks," a 1940's model with columns and rows of keys and a hand crank along its right side. AT&T Don works each transaction by punching three or four keys. The crank is pulled through a wide arc, clicking metal gears against internal stops. "Pling." The drawer opens.

      I like these people. Wholesome. It's not shameful or Rockwellianly unnatural (though it is old-fashioned) to see ordinary people enjoying each other, without base compulsions and vulgarity's tide teetering over and under and in between. None of the crew ran first for a beer. There is no strife or seething deep down. Bob has easy silver hair and is quick to be cheerful. I like that the young boy got to have his cherished squirt gun on this day of his birthday. The teenagers are content to explore, then sit sociably with the group and chat as though they know they're respected. None has a tattoo or pierced cartilage or shudder-colored hair. Such groups are quickly categorized as religious spoilsports when they don't go along with beer house norms. I don't think they're religious, unless their religion is liking life. Wholesome should not be an obsolete word. I like these people.

      At five-after-five they round up and straggle out the door. Back to the wagon, climbing up onto weather-smoothed boards comforted with scratchy soft hay. A dad ascends to the tractor seat. Bob points at one lever, then another and the motor starts. The fuel is adjusted, the clutch is popped, nylon bodies lurch to the rear and issue loud shrieks. The dad looks back, laughing, turns back to the wheel and gives it the gas.

      I like those people.

      Axel drives up in his Bluemobile. Sheet metal screeches and he dismounts toward the Store. Steve Buscemi hurries to the hornet sack under Bear Table, grips it by the throat and carries it to the kitchen.

      Axel steps up inside, nods at the floor, and heads for the beer.

      "Hey, Axel! C'mere and take a look what I got in this bag," smirks Steve Buscemi.

      Axel picks out a Busch, opens it and pulls out a resolute gulp. "What is it?"

      "Open it," says Steve Buscemi, handing it over. "I found it under the roof of Burston's shed."

      Axel takes the sack and unwinds the twist tie at the top. In one explosive action he shouts "bees!" drops it on the floor, trying to free his hand of five or six hornets crawling over it and up his sleeve. The sack hits the floor beside the sink. The neck collapses, buzzing loudens, wings and dangly long legs lift free, circling his flailing arms. Hornets stream from the sack and whiz through the kitchen. Steve Buscemi thrashes his fly swatter and a saucepan. Leon exits the bathroom and freezes at the scene. Then screams. Dark tiny terrorists swirl over his head. AT&T Don picks up a cardboard box full of empty aluminum soda cans and "whumps" it against the refrigerator, trapping hornets and clanking cans against the stainless steel door.

      I escape out the front door, propelled by shouting and swearing and the crashing of upending furniture.

Sunday--

9:20 a.m.-

      Cool, cloudy. Jacket weather. Sparse fall color in the trees so far; the season is two or three weeks later than usual. Grasses and weeds and seed heads though are brown, retired for the year. A scattered sampling of reds and oranges has appeared in shy distant spots, showing themselves costumed early.

      EZ got shagged off the bed earlier than is custom, then waltzed in the yard, dipping on forepaws and barking riotously up at my face for me to make up my mind--east or west--I-don't-give-a-damn-where, just go!

      In early July, during a quick unscheduled appointment to drain EZ's unresponsive-to-antibiotics infection, the vet called me at work while she was under anesthesia to say he needed to modify the procedure.

      "The mass is harder than I expected. It has advanced in extent since I saw her four weeks ago."

      He didn't need to say more for me to know he was after a biopsy.

      I picked her up late afternoon. She was in no condition to drive or sing circus tunes and had a wet rear end from the quick bath she'd been given for--the girl apologetically explained--"pooping herself in the cage."

      I hated that she'd suffered such indignity.

      I was given her results in three days. The Vet had spent time studying the report and researching her diagnosis.

      "It's called an epulis. That's a bony tumor. It's growing into her jawbone at the juncture of the hinge. A bad place to treat. We could try radiation at the University in Madison. That's expensive, about thirty-five hundred dollars. The other option is surgery, but it would be highly disfiguring. Neither treatment is likely to cure, only extend her life for a few months. I've gotten conflicting opinions from the articles I read last night. Some call it benign, some say it's malignant.

      "So," I entered, "we keep her comfortable with pain medication as long as reasonable?"

      "That would be best," Ray said.

      So, I picked up a few cans of pasty tasty soft sick food and a prescription for Percoset at a regular pharmacy and began giving her a pill crushed into the goo twice a day. Her mood brightened a half hour after each dose and we had drug-induced good times out on the river, her barking and living full speed on her deck in the bow. I didn't know what to expect, other than rapid decline and quick death within a week. Maybe two. She yelped in the back of the car once in a while if I forgot to give her a fix. We picked out a burial spot on a high bank beneath a trio of birches. A spot where we'd spent a lot of time picking blueberries and being harried by deerflies and napping together anchored in the current. It's about six feet above the average height of the river, though prone to floodwaters during abnormal years. We agreed that a small matter like being washed downstream as dust was relevant to the eternal scheme of things.

      Heading for the river after work one Sunday she shrieked twice within thirty seconds, so I turned around and drove home and fixed her a treat of two pills.

      She reminded me of her need less frequently and we'd go a whole day, sometimes two, without even one pill.

      July became August and she exhibited less lethargy. I quit giving her pills altogether and enjoyed their good moods myself. In early September I began seeing her yawn wide, not the tortured head-leaning gape she'd been wincing through for months. We kissed and sang an ignoble chorus of "What A Friend We Have In Jesus."

      So, though not confirmed by costly veterinary inspection, I suspect her infirmity has healed itself or is in acceptable remission.

9:50-

      Nearing the North Pool through waist-high weeds clogging the path, the sound of honking geese clamors out of the southern sky. Twenty-two winging west in a half V, except for a lone goose following the leader to its right. I've known forever that geese fly in a V because of reduced air resistance. But the question I never thought to ask, until learning the answer in physics class a few weeks ago, is why they don't just travel in straight single file rather than behind and to the side of the goose in front, as though to avoid watery bowel discharge from the goose just ahead.

      No. I used to think that a good explanation, but according to the textbook, vortexes of draft are created at the ends of flapping goose wings. That is the perfect location to fly in if a goose seeks maximum ease from 40 mile-per-hour air resistance. Thus the V-shape to a migrating gaggle of geese.

      But I still maintain a conviction that the secondary advantage is less shit splashed in the eyes.

9:57-

      EZ is sitting in duck scat atop the biggest mid-pool rock, leaning over with intrigue and sniffing it at her feet. All six rocks sticking above the water have droppings distributed around, glued to slanting sides. She rousted a ballad of mallards who threw themselves high with passionate last words. Some of the littery poop is laid down in tubular form, some is shapeless and void, splashed out of a duck or two's behind who must've had diarrhea. EZ's butt is settled in all of it, but most will wash off when she swims back to shore.

      High water is pushing hard over the rocky bottom. Yellow leaves, caught against submerged stones, illuminate the deep of the stream with gold. Reflected gray clouds pour through rapids in the sky. Tiny pinpricks appear on the pool surface, disappearing in an instant as raindrops wink wee eyes open and shut.

10:06-

      EZ is still sitting, considering her world through drizzle. A crow is bickering with another somewhere in the east. The pool is swarming with miniature ringlets; reflections blurring the harder it falls. In a slab-rock backwater behind me, brown and silver and rusty orange leaves have settled softly upon layers of each other.

10:11-

      A dead leaf idles close to EZ's rock, arresting her attention. She raises her rear to get a more purposeful look, but her front paws and rear are too close together at the apex of the rock, forming a tippy unsteady triangle. She teeters forward, losing the center of balance, and re-sets her front paws near the edge of the rock, then again higher, tip-toeing unconsciously, slipping and squishing through wet shitty footing trying to discover the personality of this leafy allure.

      It moves away. She sits back down to await other fun flotsam.


Jesus Wept, EZ Slept | Contents