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Catfishing
The cat came down to the algae-choked pond to join me for a little fishing. Caught some algae. Threw most of it back. I put the fly rod down with the line all pulled out and was getting ready to wind it up and go back to the house...
...when the cat ran wildly from where I stood over to the tall grass by the willow tree and got herself hooked in the chest by the small fly. The line whizzed out from the reel for a second and then she snapped the leader. After I coaxed her up to the house she seemed mostly oblivious to the fly hooked in her chest but as someone trained her to be a playful biter it was difficult to calmly diagnose just how deep into her was the small hook. When she started gnawing at it as if it were a burr in her coat I began to worry that she would get the hook stuck in her mouth. This was quite a predicament. It was a Saturday evening so there would be no chance for a Vet visit until Monday. Just as I was about to lose hope the hook and fly just fell from her chest onto the brick sidewalk leading up to the breezeway. I was happy and resolved not to fish with my cat anymore.
The Ballad Of Teddy Goodman
I am for all practical purposes too pooped to poke through this preponderancy of paint pots and assorted personal particulate under this poplar, Slim said out loud to himself while the Cardinal above him offered a wheat, wheat, wheat of affirmation. Better you than me, the Cardinal said, to which Slim responded, go away Red. Red said, better Red than dead, better Red than Fred, better Red than you. I think I will call you Fred, Red, Slim said.
Maybe I sucked too hard on that Green Label last night, Slim mused, or maybe it was that half pound of hamburger for breakfast, I just don't know. I only eat bugs and berries and buds, and on Sundays, worms, lot's of fat juicy worms, said Red. Fascinating, Fred, Slim said. I think since we are becoming friends I will call you Ted, said Fred. I am not really in the market for a red friend, Ted said to Red Fred. Isn't that a pity, Ted. If we were friends I would gladly pick off you that tick which crawled from a stick and is on its way to your...
Red Fred, Ted said, I will pick off my own ticks but thank you for that kind offer. Ted, Ted, Teddy, how great to have a friend named Ted, said Red Fred to Slim Ted. Oh my friend Teddy, don't look so glum under the sweet gum. You might find a piece of treasure buried beneath this boneyard of iron and tin. Do you really think so Red Fred? Well actually T-T-T-Teddy, I think no such thing, the man before he had no bling to bring, only trash, trash, trash, he was a trash hauling man, he would bring trash in the morning and trash in the evenings, that trash hauling man loved his trash more than anything.
You are quite a singer, Ted said. Thank you Ted, said Red Fred, actually I am shopping around for a producer. I will admit, and forgive me for saying this, but when I first saw you out here I thought, well you know, with the long hair and all, well, I thought you might be a producer, like in the business. Do you remember those first few days how I sang from sunup to sundown? I guess I was trying to impress you, but I got the distinct impression I was annoying you, so I went away for awhile to Pig Hollow, to visit a sick aunt. Tell me the truth, did you miss me while I was gone? No? Not really? Well no matter. The day I got back I heard you singing and that was when I realized you probably weren't in the business, but Ted, I hope my candor will not impede on our budding friendship.
I'm sure the status of our friendship will remain fairly constant, Fred.
That is music to my ears good man Teddy. In fact I think I will start this minute working on a new ballad. I will call it The Ballad of Teddy Goodman. I hope you don't mind that all my title characters die in the end, I think it adds a gravity that so much music today is lacking.
That would be great, Red Fred, to be the inspiration for your song. As for the dying, I guess I'm ok with it.
I think we're going places, Teddy. But oh my I fear I have worn you out with the vibrance of my personality. A power nap, that's what you need my friend. Go in there and lie down and in one hour I will sing you awake.
Just one hour Red Fred, said Ted, before going back to bed.
Manure If It Pleases You
The drama regarding Slim's Internet connection rises to new heights after a technician spends 4 hours at the house, tries three different modems, confers by phone with a half dozen different fellow technicians, and leaves in defeat. I've been working with DSL for three years and I've never seen anything like this, the technician tells Slim. Slim takes a measure of satisfaction in the fact that his DSL problem is one for the ages. He imagines technicians a hundred years from now talking about this one during their coffee breaks. My great-great grandfather tole me about this one in Fence Post, there was this old scraggly lookin smelly hermit he live in a run down shack trying to get what they called high speed back in those days, they tore apart a whole relay substation trying to get to the bottom of it, but never did. The hermit I hear he died in his sleep, apparently with a phone pressed to his ear while on hold to one of our technicians.
Meanwhile, in that world not ruled by fancy gadgets, Slim finds himself knee deep in dried chicken shit, with a crowbar and a sledge hammer, a pair of wire snips and a vocabulary to make a sailor blush. He was feeling pretty full of himself and unreasonably manly after he collapsed the first coop with three or four blows from the 8 lb. sledge, but the second coop was a test to his patience and the efficacy of his last tetanus shot. After a long day that had begun with him up on the roof removing a small limb blown there from the previous night's storm, the two coops were piled in two separate loadings onto his 8X12 flatbed trailer. The first pile he off loaded onto the burn pile and after the wind died down he struck a match to some paper below cardboard below twigs which he had gathered up from his lawn that morning and as the technician explained to Slim why he still did not have Internet access, the fire blazed in the background.
Earlier worrying that he had somehow distanced himself from potential ally, Johnny Woodman, the earnest, hardworking, neighbor across the street, Slim had walked over and confronted Johnny with a proposition. Did Johnny want this pile of cut lumber stacked in his backyard? Johnny was working on his log-splitter at the time but said he would take a break and come see. When they got to talking about, among other things, that bastard Danny Claypool, Johnny said he had watched Danny plant the corn and just assumed Slim had given him permission. Johnny also said he thought Slim was mad at him because Slim didn't wave back a couple of times and that maybe he heard that he, Johnny, didn't take no shit from Claypool and seeing as how we appeared to be buddies... but Slim assured Johnny that if he didn't wave back it was because he didn't see Johnny waving and that he held no particular affection for Danny Claypool. Slim told him about Claypool using his water and Johnny said the thing about Claypool was that if you gave him an inch he would take a mile. Slim said he had not intended to give Claypool an inch, just his 302 V-8.
Slim got to thinking and said, hey, Johnny, what would you think about you planting this garden in the future? Johnny said, well I already have a garden, but Slim said, well you could have another one, nice brown dirt over here, and Johnny agreed that it was a nice garden spot and that if Slim wanted him to, he would plant and maintain it in the future. They got to talking some more and about an hour later Johnny was backing his truck up to one of the metal piles. He took the aluminum pile first and then later in the day came back and got most of the heavy metals. Slim did not ask or care what amount of profit Johnny took from it.
There was still, after this removal, an unacceptable amount of junk on the property but Johnny's wife tried to encourage Slim by saying when their friends visit they are much impressed by the progress. Johnny kept telling Slim to cheer up. Apparently when Slim had his game face on it was a countenance dour to behold. Slim tried smiling but found it to feel counter to his motive, which at the time was was working, grunting, sweating, and cussing, in piles of dried chicken shit.
(As I was leaving for the 10 mile drive to post this a technician called and said give it a try and I did and it worked, something about a loop where there shouldn't have been one)
I Forgot To Eat
I was thinking about having breakfast down in the basement, eating my food right off the floor, but it may not be as spic and span as all that. I set the pile of burnable contents on fire last night. I am thinking about pressure washing the floor but will need to get a new sump pump before I do that. I am hungry but not feeling like cooking.
The diner is closed on Sunday. A few days ago I was eating in there, at the counter section to the left of the register, about which the waitress always says, oh I didn't see you, no one ever sits over here. I was thinking, I don't see why not, it is the best place to eavesdrop on this table of prominent old local men, among them an ancient doctor who eats in silence and a lawyer who tells stories about the goings on at the courthouse, with an educated but thickly accented tone, and there seems to be a garage owner and maybe a prominent tobacco grower or two. At the table there is a fair amount of guffawing which goes on and it is apparently an unwritten rule to not let there be too much silence in between stories. There is a polite rotation between the men and they rarely talk over each other. I can't really get the gist of the stories, partly because of the accents and partly because, even if I were sitting at the table as invited guest, there is here in North Carolina often the presupposition that the listener possesses intimate knowledge about things, places, and people, he really has no way of knowing anything about. I sometimes find myself falsely nodding, for example after being assured that I do know that road that forks off over by the shutdown two stall carwash, where Billy Jenkins flipped his Camaro?
...I never did eat anything this morning, instead I beat senseless an aluminum carport frame into smaller pieces and added it to a pile and put some more stuff on the burn pile and now I'm at the hot spot getting ready to post this and then get something to eat. The tech guy just called me on my cell and he's very apologetic saying their "engineers" pinged to my modem, etc, etc, and they probably think there is something wrong with my computer, they don't care that I'm checking email and posting this from a hotspot. They are sending somebody to the house with a laptop tomorrow to get to the bottom of these crazy accusations that their service is faulty. I will be there I told Matthew the tech guy.
The Cheeky Bastard
Not really a very smooth beginning out here in Fence Post this time. I think I picked the wrong service provider for my Internet. I had a choice of two which considering the semi-remoteness of this locale is pretty good but I think choosing Embarq over Charter may have been a mistake. I have to drive 10 miles into Roxboro to check my email and make these posts in the parking lot of a small strip mall because my Internet is out and four tech support calls later I've finally gotten some decisive action but my Internet is still out. In the end I only had to just barely stretch the truth to convince them it is not a hardware or software issue on my end but something wrong with them. I've got "engineers" ready to pounce on the problem, maybe next week.
Let me unload a little more, oh the horror of my existence. Like I forgot to bring a pillow this time?, any pillow much less the 60 dollar pillow I prefer and I slept so poorly last night I could barely function this morning and working in the hell hole of a basement was out, couldn't do it, so thought I'd just lay about for a day and read, but I fell into a pretty good afternoon nap after one of my unsuccessful Embarq tech assistance calls, and woke up groggy as hell.
I got up and looked out the window and found out why the corn in my garden is coming along so well. He's watering it. I followed the line of hoses with my eyes and I'll be kiss my ass, that sonofabitch is watering the corn off of my fucking well. Oh I've been counting to ten most of the day after seeing that, got up to six thousand a couple of times but lost count and had to start over. I'm trying to chuckle about it in between plotting revenge. I turned the water off a minute ago, that's a minute after it had been running probably five hours.
And I skinned my shin too, tripping on the makeshift basement stairs the renter added by cutting a hole through the pine flooring in a closet.
I left my cat, Virginia, in Virginia. I don't even have a cat to play with. Oh cry for me, El Paso.
I'm trying to stay inside most of today. Whatever little bit of optimism I felt yesterday by the relative better look of this place between visits has been supplanted with a low grade dread for the amount of shit work still ahead, just to make the property look passable. Optimism too early in the game on a job like this is your worst enemy, got to keep the nose to grindstone and don't look up. But from this mattress on the floor I can only see the gently undulating leaves of a maple tree in the back yard. I know what unseemly manner of junk lies beneath it but I can't see it from here. Don't get off the boat and don't get out of bed.
6,241. That dickbob Claypool, plowing my earth, planting his seed in my dirt and watering it with my water with nary a word to me. That really does make him a motherfucker. I'm not cussing here, this is strictly definition.
1, 2, 3, 4...Oh hell, I don't have any real problems. I'm going to get back to reading Sublette's New Orleans history. A little historical perspective of what hard times really are, that's what I need. Not to say that the revenge plots have ceased...
The next day: this morning I got a little bit of my working groove back, getting up early, frying some eggs and microwaving yesterday's coffee and while the butter for the eggs slowly melted in the pan I hooked up the trailer and backed it up to the basement. I ate my eggs outside while a pregnant neighborhood cat snuck in the open door and I had to get up and shoo her out because it looks like she is going to drop any minute now and I am not a midwife. After breakfast I entered the basement.
With a flat shovel I scooped up piles and piles of bark mulch and soot which were coating the cement floor of the basement and loaded it into buckets and put the buckets onto the trailer along with leftover firewood and bed frames and lumber and aluminum ductwork elbows and boxes and old boots and coils of wire and empty jugs, nuts and bolts and rusty tools and chunks of cast iron from an old wood burning stove. An antique kitchen cabinet I have set aside but most everything else went into one of the metal piles or the burn pile. With a sledge hammer I broke apart the heavy wood couch and chair and the pieces sit on the pile now, awaiting the match. The cushions I will toss on one by one after the fire is blazing. The TVs and the VCRs and some other assorted junk has gone into a separate pile and are destined for a construction dumpster when I get around to getting one delivered. The bricks and cinder blocks are in the bricks and cinder blocks pile. I loaded up the trailer twice and another small load sits scattered outside the basement. I would leave it there for a few days to annoy Claypool but I saw him loading up the Winnebago this morning so I would guess he and family are off on one of their NASCAR junkets.
I don't know what happened to the guy that was going to get the rest of my car parts and metal but I'm not counting on him like I was. There is plenty to keep me busy for awhile without worrying about him. Pretty far down the list but obviously necessary is going to be the constructing of some sort of lock box to go over my well pump. The existing hollow plastic imitation granite boulder did not appear to be enough to keep that cheeky bastard Claypool away from it.
Fence Post
A local boy was pulling weeds on the property when I left Mt. Pleasant this morning. There is an art to pulling weeds and I don't know if the boy is an artist. In time, I think, when I return to Mt. Pleasant and am able to school the youngster and his absent partner on what it is I am after, this little money I pulled from my wallet and gave to him might be considered a signing bonus, or money withdrawn from an on the job training fund.
Here in Fence Post, North Carolina there is still much work to be done and I am the boy. Not really an artist of anything but grunt. Whatever I accomplished on the last visit was at least enough to make my afternoon arrival less depressing than the previous arrival. Randy the renter did not remove anymore of his yard junk while I was gone, although it appears he did salvage some of his usable paint buckets, while leaving a most unsatisfactory amount of them behind.
There was a box of books waiting on my steps when I arrived. Shiny new books delivered from one of the Internet Book Giants. Some slave narratives, the U.S. Grant memoirs, a bestseller, a recently released New Orleans history book (which my sampling of earlier has left me feeling very enthusiastic about) and a Nelson Algren (which I have previously read but have decided to read again.)
I studied the basement briefly, the focus of this trip being its cleaning up and perhaps the securing of the broken door leading into it from the outside.
Still too much work ahead to be engaging in what I am almost artistic at, daydreaming, but I stare out the windows anyway and think about things and move about the small house and occasionally step over the exact spot where in early 93 I received the phone call from my father telling me he would be dead soon. I remember the exact spot for the first Kennedy assassination, and the King assassination and the house I was working on in a New Orleans suburb on September 11th, 2001. And the dirt alleyway behind the house in South Oak Cliff where I first kissed a girl.
I look out at my plowed but unplanted 15,000 square foot garden and wonder about the uniformity of the weeds growing in it. But then I go back to reading and sipping on this Scotch with a green label. God bless among other things, Scotland.
Later, at dusk, I walk outside half naked and offer myself to the tiny flying bloodsuckers. When I had earlier been looking out the window I noticed the corn in Danny Claypool's little sad patch of red dirt didn't look very healthy. Clearly they haven't had much rain out here in the two weeks I've been gone. Why it is that 50 feet away from Claypool's red clay/dirt my soil is brown and, if properly tilled, almost sandy, I cannot say. It is not exactly alluvial, my soil, but compared to those cracked clumps of dried up play-do next door I am bottom land next to the Nile.
As I might have previously mentioned, the Claypool's have always had a hard on for this land. The father did and now Danny is every bit his father's son in regards to encroaching on this property. His propane tank he placed just across the line on my property. Back when me and M lived here we had a lawyer advise us on letting senior Claypool curve his gravel driveway just a tad over the line, and the other brother, the part-time preacher, Douglass, has his house built as close to the line as possible (and I'm curious what a re-surveying would show) and pretty much uses a section of my woods as his front yard. He's real nice Douglass is and Danny has always been on one level a respectful neighbor but I'm pretty sure my apparent mellow nature is being seen as an inroads for the Clayton's to have what they have long ago decided should be theirs. But they don't really see paying for it as an option.
Hey, that's newly planted corn in my 15,000 square foot nearly alluvial garden. And although smaller, it looks on it's way to being way healthier than Claypool's. Of course, it's Claypool's corn in my garden and while I don't really give a damn, I give a damn. He will offer to give me some and I could say, some, I'm taking all of it you beer-soaked cracker. I can't really eat but a few ears myself though and it looks good having a crop out there and I'm not going to grow anything but shouldn't a person ask before he plants corn in your dirt? Randy the renter says Claypool would get drunk and till up the garden, sometimes after Randy had planted his own vegetable crop. Randy also told me that Claypool tried to convince him to let him cut down all my 60--80 foot white oaks, and the few shag bark hickories and the maples and the poplars and dredge it out and build a damn and have a pond over here in my sweet bottom land. His father had shared that same dream with me many years back. Randy cut down for firewood a few of my big trees his ownself (said the bugs got 'em), but luckily his dislike for Claypool kept that pond from happening.
The thing is, you can't really disappear without much of a word for fourteen years and expect things to be just perfect when you get back.
Business One Seven
Bernadette, some time ago I dropped you at the airport and as per your request it's exit 9A out of the airport, towards Centerville, and then to 66W and at the hour you will be traveling a couple of weeks from now probably best will be the Gainesville route which is 29S on the far side of Manassas, but you have to remember a few miles in to veer right for Warrenton. You know, during the day I always continue on 66 to 17 towards Warrenton, which is exit # 28. I've warned you about all that daydreaming you are prone to but more than warn you of the dangers I cannot do. For example if you blink and miss exit 28 you will at exit 27 see a sign that says 17/Business and the exit and crossover will look to you, or perhaps even to me--for example were it me making this mistake--exactly like it does at exit 28. I don't want to be too harsh on you, there is nothing inherently wrong with daydreaming, so let's just say it was me making this mistake, and even realizing it right off I continued down the road unknown.
A woman is a couple of steps onto the road removing a giant snapping turtle who was on his way to his own adventure, which in this case turned out to be its death. I veer around her but looking in my rear view mirror see that the turtle has in its jaws her index finger so I pull over and offer assistance. This requires me clamping a big pair of vise grips onto the turtle's neck while the woman screams at me--don't hurt the turtle! It's really too late for that, this turtle is soup. Even near death it's not going to let go of her finger so with no encouragement from the woman I pry open the turtles jaw, with a strength tantamount to lifting a car off of her, which would in my mind have been a preferable feat seeing as how I was to her now just a cold-blooded heartless turtle-killing bastard. A farmer in his field has come over to the fence to watch and I offer to him the fat turtle in exchange for taking the woman and her severed finger to the nearest doctor, explaining to him that I am not from these parts.
I did not exactly spin gravel out of there but pretty close to it and as the road snaked under a lush green canopy and then opened up on hay fields back dropped by mountains, I forgot about the turtle incident and felt coaxed by the scenery into a firm determination for getting lost.
Past a cemetery with frankly a better view than dead people deserve the road narrowed quite a bit and it now seemed as if I were going up someone's driveway. That turned out to be just an illusion though and after a fair distance passing distinctly quaint dwellings I came to a stop sign in the town of Ada. From my brief survey looking left and right it appeared the townspeople of Ada had chosen this week for their annual vacation to the Old Dominion Power Plant Museum.
There was then a tapping on my window and I turned to face on the other side of the glass a freckled-faced red-headed boy who was motioning with some urgency for me to roll down my window. I pressed my face up to the glass and peered down to make sure the boy didn't have a headless snapping turtle with him and only when I was convinced that he did not have one did I roll down my window.
Hey mister, we're having a parade today but we don't got no grand marshal and we need one we can't have a parade without a grand marshal and so you're it we need you to be it. Well this was not something I expected to happen today. This was almost like a reward for daydreaming past the proper exit. I quickly ran through in my mind the catalog of responsibilities for the rest of the day and almost as if he were reading my mind the boy said, come on mister, you can't have anything better to do, you just can't. That pretty well settled it and the next thing I know I'm sticking up through the sun roof of a 2006 Lincoln Zephyr waving, but only from the wrist, and blowing kisses to all the young girls up on their daddies shoulders. The parade only lasted one block and when it was over I was awarded in a brief ceremony the key to the town and a peach cobbler. As I drove off the freckled boy ran along beside me and said make sure you come back next year, you can drive the fire truck. I assured him that I would, but only if I got to run the siren AND the lights.
As I drove on still buzzing from that brief taste of celebrity I saw a sign to place that I knew of and though unsure of where it lay in relation to where I was going, I headed there.
The Old Missle Silo
Yesterday I cut down that dead hemlock tree by my driveway. I wasn't really into it, I just did it because I was feeling antsy. It had two trunks growing off the main trunk and I felled the one to the east and the other to the west. Then I came in and read some from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a first time novel from David Wroblewski. It came in the mail the other day from Mr. BC. It's a good one. It's got plenty of dogs and a mute boy living the life in rural Wisconsin. Later in the day I sawed off the limbs and cut the trunks into manageable sections and sawed the main stump down pretty level to the ground, and left it all lying out there.
This morning one of the twins showed up about 8 a.m. to start the mowing (one of them just drove his mower down the driveway. He's wearing a bright, multi- colored mini umbrella on his head. I won't tell you which twin it was because you couldn't tell them apart anyway.) But this morning I had to rouse myself from the loving arms of Bernadette and get those limbs off the yard. Baby, I gots to wrangle those limbs. Reading this she is thinking that's not exactly what you said. But she didn't hear me right anyway, we later ascertained that, so I'm sticking to my version. How's the nuclear missle silo? she asked me over coffee after I had finished up the tree removal. I'm sorry, what? I grunted. When you got out of bed this morning didn't you say the nuclear missle silo had fallen down? I said, I most certainly did not (and just left it at that.)
The one twin, who was up way too early on a Sunday because he's moved back home, drove up on the mower and we chatted while I sat in the utility vehicle piled high with limbs. He said, well, I left the old lady for good. You did? Yeah, I had to. Actually she kicked me out, but when she saw me start to pack up my shit she just stood there with her mouth open. Took me an hour and a half to get it all together but I was gone, back with the parents now. I said well I guess it wasn't going to good for you guys? He said naw, and, oh she called me yesterday saying don't you want to see your baby? but I just said not at all, not right now, this isn't a good time for me.
I kind of ran out of things to say after that, making the excuse that I had just woken up but really I was just feeling bad for everybody too early in the morning. The last time I talked to him they had just finished fighting and scratching and screaming in the front yard while the neighbors watched.
I had some homemade bread with my coffee. I didn't know what to put on the bread because there were only 14 jams and jellies to choose from. One day last week I said Bernadette, don't you think we may have to make room in this fridge for something other than locally made jams and jellies? She wasn't feeling that though and it's not so bad really, and besides, who wants to spread a lonely jam on their morning toast?
Bernadette said she was going to do some weeding up the hill there in what appears to be about a half acre of formal English garden. It has been very helpful having her out these last couple of weeks, weeding and dead heading roses (what? Oh, 250 rose bushes) because without her I would probably just look those ne'rdowells right in their weedy eyes and cry out--all you weeds and wilting rose blooms can kiss my ass.
I loaded up a bunch of stinky garbage and headed to the dump. I stopped and picked up cat food at the Quickie Mart on the way. I picked up a bag of Alley Cat brand but then changed my mind and went for the Meow Mix. I think they were shooting a campaign commercial in there but I'm not sure. A bunch of old farmer men are congregated over by the coffee machine talking seriously early in the morning, as coffee will sometimes make you do. One of them says, I'm not saying I have the answers but something is wrong in this country and its got to change. I didn't hear anyone say cut, and, print, so maybe there was more to it than that.
At the dump, Linda from the diner waved to me on her way out and spying her windshield I wanted to call out to her--you better get your new county tag, that old faded yellow one is going to get you in trouble.
