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Yeh, I'm Awake
If you don't lock your door out here in Fence Post it is not unheard of that someone will turn the knob and poke their head in the door at 7:30 in the morning and give a holler.
Instead of paying 700 dollars for a dumpster to handle the remaining junk out here, that junk which will not burn or qualify as redeemable metal, I have hired Bruce and Pizza to haul it to the local landfill for me.
I had slept in most of my clothes but I put on a hoodie and my boots before exiting the one heated room in the house and heading out into the frosty morning.
The two of them were roaming around under the carport at 7:30 in the morning not apparently daunted by my ignoring of their phone call last night. I was in the middle of Star Trek, season 1, episode 1, last night when the phone rang. I had left it somewhere in the cold part of the house. And I was in this one little room heated with a 25 dollar space heater with Spock and Jim and Bones and one half of a pain killer and one shot of Herradura and two shots of Glenfiddich and I just didn't see myself going into the cold zone.
Hey guys, I said.
You was passed out in there? Pizza said, whether asking or stating as matter of fact I'm not sure because I was distracted, gulping the cold air like a tropical fish swimming in ice water. I just said yes while pinning on the badge of heroic worker dude implicit in my responding so rapidly to their knocking and hollering.
But down to business I said, so how you guys wanna charge this? By the hour or by the job and Pizza spoke up and said well was you thinking like a hundred dollars? I paused and said, well actually it's worth 2oo to me and Pizza not missing the opportunity to hustle a soft touch said--a piece? I looked at him like the crazy man he was pretending to be because their really isn't that much crap left out here.
I think we were communicating in the same language and that we agreed on 200 for the whole job but now that I think about it I should probably double check that before they start hauling stuff away in the morning. Bruce said they could find someplace for all the paint buckets (50--75 of them) and the tires (15--20 of them). Those two things are really hard to get rid of so I am happy to be in business. They had hauled off the rest of my metal while I was gone and they did a really nice thorough job, including the extraction of a 500 gallon fuel oil tank from the basement. This they did for free in exchange for the value of the metal.
I got some guys hopefully installing central air and heat next week and I think while I got Bruce and Pizza I'm going to hire them to tear down that shed close to the house, the one inside of which the previous owner blew out his brains, some twenty odd years ago.
Can I Get A Rim Shot?
The Englishman said to the bartender, that is why you will most likely remain a confirmed bachelor. The bartender had been waxing philosophically about those qualities a woman should possess to be in his eye the perfect mate. He had recently come to the conclusion that a new age grocery in his neighborhood had many of the same qualities he would like for his ideal mate to have. Her goods should be fresh, she should be convenient, she should be politically correct, she should offer a nice selection, and he went on to list a number of other things that arguably a good grocery store and good woman might have in common.
It wasn't until much later, riding in a cab near E.14th St, that passing the store in question I said, hey Bernadette, isn't that the grocery the bartender was talking about? She lifted her head from my shoulder and said yes it is, and went on to describe a few things about the place that might support the bartender's linking together of it with a good woman. It struck me then to ask Bernadette did she know whether or not this grocery offered a service which I do not remember the bartender listing but which I think should fit neatly on a list comparing women and grocery stores. Does the store, or woman, deliver? Can I get a rim shot? Okay, thank you. Thank you, no really, you're too kind, goodnight everybody. And don't forget, I'll be appearing weekdays, by the pool of the Adirondack Motor Lodge, just outside of town on Highway 17.
Into The Empty Space
Johnny Woodman said if I heard any shooting it would be him and his young son, Benny. It wasn't exactly deer season yet, in North Carolina, so I wasn't sure what it was Johnny and Benny would be shooting. I guess they could be hunting the abundant squirrels which populate the area.
We were watching a man named Bruce, and his partner, Pizza, loading my metal junk from Johnny's trailer onto their trailer, for redemption across the state line in Virginia. Johnny has been trying to help get rid of my junk and had loaded his trailer from the pile in my yard a few times several weeks before. He had cashed in on two loads but this third load had been sitting in the yard for awhile now. As he needed the trailer for a Halloween hayride at his church, he hauled his trailer back to the local scrap metal yard but they said they weren't taking scrap anymore. Evidently it is another market out of which the bottom has fallen. On the way there and also on the way back he had seen Bruce and Pizza alongside the road, extracting from the weeds an antique hay rake, and asked if they would be interested in the metal and they said yes.
I was marveling at the amount of junk Bruce and Pizza were loading onto their rickety trailer, which to begin with already had the large hay rake and some other heavy looking metal. Their truck was a well dented Ford Ranger, a small truck, and looked to be sagging considerably from the weight, but they just kept piling it on. A heavy, 40 year old riding mower I thought would be the coup de grace but they just kept loading until Johnny's trailer was empty and theirs was what I would consider full. But then they came over to survey the diminishing but still substantial pile of crap in my side yard. As they tossed some lighter material--sheet metal roofing, broken down swing set parts, smashed flat gutters, etc.--onto the trailer, I told them I had a 500 gallon oil tank in the basement, a broken arc welder in one shed, and some metal toolboxes behind another shed, and a side by side refrigerator/freezer in yet another shed that they were welcome to as well.
There was still a flat tongue extending from the back of their trailer that was empty but seemed unsuitable for any of that which I had just mentioned. They took a look at the refrigerator/freezer though and decided it would be a nice final touch to the heavy junk sculpture they had created in barely thirty minutes of work. At first they considered the possibility that the shed had been built around the fridge but I assured them that the shed was there first. They took the door off the shed and while Pizza contemplated the necessity of taking the doors off the fridge itself, Bruce was inside the cramped shed figuring another way. Open the left door, he told Pizza. Pizza did this and Bruce shoved on the heavy unit while Pizza pulled on it. This ain't gonna work Bruce, said Pizza, but Bruce said yeah it is Pizza, twist it this way, and then, no, I mean the other way. And they got it out and shimmied it over to the trailer. It looked like Pizza, who is considerably thinner than Bruce, was going to try to lift that heavy thing from the bottom and place it on the low-lying tongue. I cringed.
But then Bruce said, no Pizza, we just gonna lay it flat like this, and with one swift push it was doing just that, laid longways across the tongue, with the doors facing up. I looked at the bald tires on the sagging trailer attached to the sagging, dented truck, but said nothing. Bruce opened up the refrigerator/freezer doors and said we can fit some more stuff in here, Pizza. Pizza went over to my junk pile and brought back a few little items and dropped them into the empty space.
Johnny and Benny had long ago disappeared into the woods and I waited for the crack of gunfire. I remembered then talking to Johnny the day before about a deer that had almost run into me while I stood daydreaming in a thin ray of sunlight out in my woods two days previous. I told him it had scared me, which prompted him to tell me that he thought there was some kind of large, mischievous, two legged animal roaming the woods surrounding his beehives. I did not know what he meant and wondered if he was talking about Danny Claypool up to no good as payback for Johnny's recent building of a fence. The sole purpose of the fence was to keep Claypool from trespassing. He said no, it wasn't Danny, it was something much heavier and I suggested it could be a large buck. He pretty much ignored that and said, no, this thing was throwing rocks at me, and shaking trees. I didn't want to insult him by again suggesting a big buck, maybe rutting his antlers against the base of a tree, and anyway, that would not explain the throwing of rocks. Johnny, his son Benny, and wife, Ivana, had all heard these strange, heavy-sounding noises on separate occasions.
So it struck me then that maybe this is what Johnny and Benny were out hunting. I never heard any shots though and later that day I left to drive back to Virginia (half expecting to see Bruce and Pizza broke down alongside a road scattered with scrap metal, appliances and heavy machinery).
Johnny is a pretty sober guy and not really much of a kidder so for now I am just taking him at his word. I don't know what to think of this supposed Bigfoot-type creature taking up residence in the woods surrounding my North Carolina home. I guess mostly though it gives me a little thrill. And for little thrills and Bigfoots--I say, the more the merrier.
Long Way From Alaska
Today for the first time in two weeks I checked my Virginia mailbox. I took my mail into the cafe next door and seated myself at a table for four.
The cafe was busy with out of towners seeking in this Shenandoah Valley the pretty fall foliage. The hills though are not so infused with color this year. That big tree on Main St. in Sperryville is looking good again with its bright yellow leaves but overall the color is not so spectacular around here. It has been raining for 12 hours in this drought-stricken region so that could help and it is possible to have a fall color peak as late as early November. Or it could be another dull year.
I looked both at my mail and at a table of hipsters in black clothing and vintage head gear. In my mail was a new Gempler's catalog and I looked at it briefly before checking the numbers of a dwindling bank account and something in a non-descript envelope that turned out to be a credit card renewal.
I am a registered independent voter which perhaps explains why I received two glossy fold-out pamphlets from the McCain campaign suggesting that I might not know who is the real Barack Obama. According to one pamphlet he was a terrorist sympathizer and the other alerted me to the fact that he was soft on crime and also that he recently spent six hours with Leonardo DiCaprio and Barbara Streisand while only allowing twenty minutes to study the financial crisis. I studied the hipster table while digesting this news. I was hoping they would do or say something provocative but whatever they were saying was drowned out by a man at a table closer to me, explaining to a ten-year-old boy, in excruciating detail, all the features of a zero-turn lawn mower.
I frequently looked out the window to my right to see how it was different individuals heading for the post office handled themselves in the rain. There were two main groups--the cringing tiptoe-ers and the rain-gear-wearing sloggers.
I received an email this morning alerting me that two Democratic friends from California have booked their flights to be here in January for the presidential inauguration. I am guessing they did not receive, as I did, the glossy pamphlets from the McCain people, who judging by their wording are clearly desperate but still expect to be the ones greeting the cheering throngs in front of the Capitol building in January.
And I sincerely hope this is not an omen but waiting to pull into my parking space as I backed out was a car with Alaska plates.
Self-Employment
Cantrell Jefferson awoke as he did every morning, with his work clothes on. The bluejeans and socks and t-shirt he wore as pajamas could only be imagined as a fashion statement if one were to consider it a conclusive fact that the unwitnessed tree falling in the woods does indeed make a sound. Cantrell was of the opinion that if no one saw him in bed fully clothed, on those sheets and tangled blankets covered with the previous days’ sawdust and leaves, then they could not assert that he was during the day some eccentric type who walked around in his pajamas. He was comforted somewhat by this lack of judgment from the outside world even though, working and living alone as he did on a construction site at the end of a dead end and sparsely populated road, he felt pretty certain there was very little of the outside world thinking about, one way or the other, his habits.
The previous day he had looked out the kitchen window and seen in the driveway a local sheriff talking to Johhny Woodman’s wife from across the road. It could be seen as a barometer of his maturity that his first thought was not to retreat through the hole in the floor of his bedroom closet and escape via the basement into the woods surrounding the house. Cantrell had done nothing wrong, unless somehow his very appearance was a crime. He had not brushed his long hair in a few days and it lay dirty, matted, and unruly on his head. His face was a picture of unevenness, for while recently shaved, it had been done so with a dull razor and a disregard to detail. While there was a mirror in the unfinished bathroom, he chose not gaze with any length at who he appeared to be. The downside of this solitary, non-reflecting lifestyle was that he sometimes forgot who he was and what it was he should be doing. And some days he felt a lack of urgency to accomplish anything, and instead just gazed out the window of the one heated room in the house, marveling at the leaves of a maple tree and the changing shades of green as the sun moved across the sky. Other days he would berate himself for not being a more productive member of society. He could be hard on himself but his internal dialogue of discontent was usually ended with a self-deprecating shrug and the reminder that since he worked for himself, it was a given that his boss would be a lazy asshole. Don’t let him get to you Cantrell, look how pretty the leaves.
He went outside and Johnny Woodman’s wife called out, he’s not here to arrest you. This was funny but since Cantrell had not spoken out loud for a few days, he was distrustful of his voice and chose instead to just smile inwardly. I hope my hair looks all right he said to himself while approaching the sheriff. The sheriff looked smart in his neatly pressed uniform and his close cropped hair further suggested to Cantrell that there was something to be said for neatness and attention to detail. He’s here to see about cutting down your tree, Mrs. Woodman said.
Johhny had weeks ago told Cantrell that he had a friend that would drop the giant maple tree, the roots of which were clogging up his septic field. Johhny would then cut the tree up into logs to feed to his woodburning furnace and water heating system. The sheriff and Cantrell talked about the tree and the longer they talked the more realistic its removal became. It was fifteen years overdue. After a slightly awkward pause in the conversation Cantrell began wondering what it would cost him to lose the tree and the next thing out of the sheriff’s mouth was him saying he had an idea of what he would charge. Cantrell knew that tree removal could be very expensive and that a tree this large, over three feet wide at its base and probably 45 feet tall, could put a serious dent in his meager budget. When the sheriff said 175 dollars Cantrell just nodded and said that would be great. Cantrell said he would leave the cash with Johnny and the sheriff could have at it even if Cantrell were not around.
After the sheriff left, Cantrell went back inside and stared at the gaping hole in the kitchen floor. Certain aspects of its repair confounded him. While it seemed intuitive that tearing something apart would reveal clues about that thing’s repair, Cantrell found that in equal measure he just wanted to stare at the leaves.
One VP On Acid
Carlo Johannsenburgeroflensteinerigltz contemplated bent at the waist the garbage before him. Raybeams from God's bag of tricks flourished diligently crackling leaves like sushi left in a toaster oven. What must the man have been thinking Carlo thought bent. Morosely happy dowel rods and persistent candy wrappers embedded intertwined with rusty cans of paint. Have we no more use for you partially buried? Mosquitoes try to land on Carlo's eyeballs but that bent at the waist or not will make it harder to see, the swelling itchy eyeball not so good. Oh St. Moritz your toaster ovens come home to roost. In dappled light. Leaves like a book of leaves words unwritten. And then some. Probably.
From Frat Boy To Subversive
I proudly told the person who asked me if I was registered to vote that not only was I registered but that I was registered in a swing state and that given the chance I would vote twice. I am just kidding about voting twice. Not just because it is illegal and unethical and probably impossible, but because my candidate already has enough controversy surrounding him. The first two controversies revolve around his name and the color of his skin. His full name at least reminds good Americans of the two people many of them wanted to consider as interchangeable masterminds in the 2001 attack on America. His black skin affords to these same Americans the chance to remind others of their ability to associate with a black person or two and thus redeem themselves from harsh labels, while also using their "black experiences" as a way to support through first hand knowledge their belief that--I just don't think "they're" ready for such an important office. Confronted with the black man's Harvard education these good Americans will stick to their strength for defying reason and fact and cry out against affirmative action and possibly even, among friends, admit that "uppity" is really not such a stretch to describe this guy. And moving right along my candidate is in favor of killing unborn babies and teaching sex to those ones that are born and make it into kindergarten. He is known to associate with American terrorists and some have said harbors a long-held desire to overthrow the country, and despite the fact that some of what is said is pure fiction, and that this country would probably benefit from a comprehensive overhaul, an overthrow is just wrong, subversive, uppity, and just like something a black person would say, so whether or not it is true that he ever said it is besides the point. Did you know that the man who raised my candidate for seven years of his youth was a child molester? Oh and there will be more, be sure of it, with some twenty days to go until the election the masterminds of spin will be hard at work. So you might well ask after my listing all these potentially subversive points about my candidate, why am I voting for him? I have to dumb it down for myself because the promises from any candidate always strike me as having not so much to do with what happens when they take office. Primarily, for whatever faults may lie behind his cool, educated demeanor, I cannot get the impression that he has anything but the best of intentions for this country. As for the possibility that he is paving our road to hell with those good intentions, I just find it inconceivable that he could do as much damage to this country as the previous guy did during his two terms in office. And although I think it is laudable that many fine, misguided Americans have been able to sustain a sense of pride these last eight years, I, and I think many around me, even when we try to ascend from the depths of self/country-loathing brought on by this abysmal, horrendous 8-year leadership, what we most want is just a minute or two to be proud, and feel some hope, just like the rest of you, who voted incorrectly, twice. And we have the candidate to help us achieve that. Obama 08.
A Brief Timeline Of Recent Events
I was walking around a park in Long Island with a few hundred others in a fundraising march against ALS and the rain came down only after its completion.
Pretending to be suit and tie wearing bird watchers at noon under umbrellas at a park in NY we all together witnessed the marriage of two dear friends and the sun came out. Another glass of wine? Oh, I guess so. And then to that fifth floor gym of sin where we stair walk and work the free weights which are magnums of champagne and bottles and bottles and bottles of other intoxicating liquids with labels understood by only a few, oh the bottles carried up and down those stairs.
In the southwest. I can't see how I would object to another margarita and to make up for the lack of exercising stairs we drink them from personal shakers heavy with ice and tequila. One sip rest, two sip rest, three...
Bernadette asked when does it cool down in the evenings and I said never but what I meant was, late October.
The water was fine though, come on in.
In these economic hard times the larger group was unable to chaperon the married couple to Barcelona but the ongoing slide shows of culinary porn have kept us all in varying measure jealous and happy for their well-being.
In PA we were forced to take solace in the mildly grotesque slow rotation of a pig over fire and for the 17 hours anticipating the first slice we kept ourselves distracted with new friends and old and beer and wine and moonshine.
No one ever hits it to me the children would cry as the shuttlecock landed gently on their foreheads.
Mr. Fastidious
Cantrell Jefferson was squandering his clean clothes. For two weeks running every new shirt put on was within minutes dotted with mustard squirted from between dog and bun or stained with some dripping Korean sauce or soup spilled from a spoon.
Evander Fastidious, known more often than not as Mr. Fastidious by those who admired his always clean and seemingly condiment-impervious attire, was not always true to his name, for although he did demand of himself exacting and sometimes even daunting standards regarding all things within his control, he did not lord over others his obvious superiority, and could not only associate with lesser beings, but be gracious to them.
Oh it doesn’t look that bad, Evander said to Cantrell, who at the time was smearing with a budweiser-soaked napkin the small dark yellow mustard stain into a large light yellow one.
That’s very nice of you to say, Mr. Fastidious, said Cantrell, while searching for just a single speck of anything on Evander’s shirt. Knowing that Mr. Fastidious would soon grow wary of his sloppy company, Cantrell tried changing the subject and began telling his meticulous associate about a recent trip he had been on to visit his relatives in the South.
After the second margarita I apparently lost my mind and began discussing politics with my brother, who still lives in the South and is apparently still deeply entrenched in those conservative southern beliefs that the liberal northern elite find so alien, if not laughable.
I suppose my phrasing was condescending to begin with, for I had asked my brother how he and his fellow party-members felt about the selection of a single-celled organism as a potential vice-president, especially considering that his presidential candidate was so old and with certain health issues that might prevent him from finishing out his term. I mean if, God forbid, your candidate should die in office, we would have an amoeba running this country. Are any of your people concerned about that? I asked him. He countered by reminding me that my candidate was a foreign-born, homosexual-loving, baby-killing, terrorist, who wanted to tax us back to the stone age, and take homes from the rich and turn them into housing projects for the poor.
Mr. Fastidious listened to Cantrell Jefferson without so much as a blink or nod, and when Cantrell paused that first time, Evander remarked, you’ve got a bit something...and pointed to the right side of his own mouth and made a flicking motion, to clean off that bit of errant food that he so often observed on others, but never in his own mirror.
