MR. C.

My neighbor is a guy who moved to rural Virginia from NYC back in the late seventies. He made his money as a sort of famous photographer and from what I remember his actual big money came through a book he helped create. He took the photos for the book and someone else did the writing. The book was about Christmas tree ornaments. It’s hard to believe that someone could make serious money on something so stupid but I guess he did. He took a bunch of photos of Christmas tree ornaments and then found that he was rich. He bought a brownstone in the city and married a woman thirty or so years younger than he was. He had it made.

Then he made a terrible but not unheard of mistake. He decided to pitch the city life and come down to the Confederacy where he could live the life of a planter/farmer. He sold his brownstone, gathered up his young wife and a pile of money and headed south. He found a large chunk of land in central Virginia that had an old house and barn on it. He let the local fire department burn down the house for practice and then proceeded to renovate the barn into a giant house. He did the renovation very nicely for he had a fastidious sensibility. I was only in that house once. The main room downstairs was the size of a gymnasium and you really could shoot hoops or have a short track motorcycle race in there if you wanted to. I guess it served as a sort of photo studio too. He could photograph a hot air balloon in there. But as I said, it was nicely done.

The trouble my neighbor had with the Confederacy was that he was pure NYC and therefor viewed the southerners as so many scruffy groundhogs to be dealt with like the rubes they were. He basically made enemies with every single person he met. The notion of southern chivalry, hokey as it may be in some views, is something that really does exist, though perhaps attenuated and somewhat superficial in this age. There are people down here who might do what they say and some of them will even tell the truth sometimes. Mr. C could not believe this. He fought perceived lies with real ones. He fought every single person he met over every single issue you could imagine. By the time I wandered into his territory looking to buy some of his prime land he was known as a monumental dick from NYC. The first time I met him we had the following conversation.
ME: I’d have to plant some deciduous trees.
C: No, I couldn’t let you do that.
ME: If it’s my land I’d plant what I wanted.
C: I’d have a clause in the contract and the deed.
ME: What’s wrong with deciduous trees?
C: What’s a deciduous tree?

He really did own some beautiful property. Originally it was around 150 acres of woods and fields. But as Mr. C’s young wife proceeded to spend money he began to gerrymander his land into byzantine forms which he would sell to bewildered people who wondered how they were going to drive across a small river to get to their house site. The piece of land he was going to sell me was a gorgeous 18 acres. Really, the only bad thing about it was a 500 thousand volt power line across the top of the property. Otherwise it was like something out of the Wizard of Oz. Just gorgeous views! Green fields and mountains in the near distance. I loved it. But just after I made my first offer I noticed that Mr. C moved the boundary stakes so that the piece of land was now smaller even though it had the same price. I told the real estate agent that Mr. C had cheated and moved the boundary stakes. The agent was mortified by not surprised. When I confronted Mr. C about the boundary line being moved he said he had to do it because his wife had spent some big glob of money recently. In his mind it was perfectly all right to cheat me out of some money because of his wife and her spending. It was perfectly natural because he was from NYC and I was a hick from Goobersville. I wound up telling Mr. C that I wasn’t going to deal with a criminal and a carpetbagger. But I still wound up being his neighbor because he’d sold a beautiful piece of land to a man named Dr Word who then sold the piece of land to me. It was more than I originally wanted but it really was my dream property. I loved it right from the get go and it was far enough away from the 500 thousand volt power line that I would not hear the special noise that would occur when there was rain or heavy moisture in the air. On the first piece of property, when it rained it sounded like there was a 2000 horsepower electric motor humming in the sky. Harmless but disconcerting to man and groundhog alike.

Mr. C lived about half a mile from where I started building my house. He would drive across my fields in his land rover and visit me while I was nailing boards and digging holes. He had two young children who rode around with him. He was kind of a busybody and I don’t think he really accepted the idea that the land he sold was no longer his. I think he imagined some sort of feudal rights running with the metes and bounds or something like that. At this point I didn’t really hate Mr. C or anything like that. I just thought he was a pest.

Our first battles started when he decided to “sneak in” a bridge across the little river that went through our properties. Like his house, it really was a well done bridge with iron girders and nice thick wooden road boards. It must have cost 30 thousand dollars. But while building it he kept driving bulldozers and backhoes over my land smashing part of my field into a mud hole. I don’t even think I would have minded if he’d asked but he didn’t. He just assumed that he could do whatever he wanted. So one day I went over here and chewed him out for fucking up my field. It didn’t seem to phase him. He moved his equipment off my property and kept building. And then I saw an article in the local paper about how a county resident was in trouble for building a whole bridge without any sort of permit or consultation with the authorities who manage rivers. He had to go before the county commissioners and get fined and chewed out but, again, it didn’t bother him. There was just no way he was going to negotiate with a bunch of rebels and peons from Dixie. The next thing he did was decide that he wanted to build a giant barn on the first piece of property that I was going to buy. I could not understand what possessed him to want to do this. This barn would be about half a mile from his house but about 500 feet from my house. He had every right to do this but it still bothered me. I felt like he was moving closer to my territory with his bridge and barn so that he could bother me and watch what I was doing. One of the big reasons I had for buying the property was that it was so private. I really liked privacy. I did not want Mr. C to encroach on me.

So Mr. C built his barn. It was a really nice barn but I didn’t understand why he needed it. He didn’t have any animals and had no desire to acquire any as far as I could tell. He didn’t cut and store his hay but rather let someone else cut it and sell it. Why did he need a barn? Well I have to tell you that one of the other things I liked aside from privacy was a lack of stuff. I was a very minimalist person. As it turned out Mr. C and his wife were not minimalists and so he needed a barn in which to store all his junk. I guess that wouldn’t have bothered me terribly since it WAS a nice looking barn. What bothered me was the fact that the barn was not large enough to store all their junk in. So Mr. C rented five semi-truck tractor trailers which he parked along the edge of my property. This was when I started hating him. When I confronted him he said, “We don’t have room!” and I said, “You mean you don’t have room in your giant house that used to be a barn, and you don’t have room in your giant barn which IS a barn. And a barn worthy of storing hundreds of cows or thousands of bales of hay? How much junk can you have? What’s the point of having it if it’s just sitting in a trailer?” But he couldn’t have cared less about what I thought. I came up with all sorts of schemes for destroying his trailers. I wanted to drill a quarter inch hole in the top of one of them and pour gasoline into it so I could light it on fire. I wanted to cut holes in the tires or write anti—Mr. C graffiti on all of them. Things like “I’m such a pig from NYC that I have trailers full of trash that I’m hoarding like a kooky woman with a thousand cats.” But really I didn’t do anything except pour steam out of my ears every time I looked out my window.

A few months after the semis arrived I was awaken in the middle of the night by a bulldozer. I could not believe my ears! Mr. C just decided that he had to have some grading done on the drive way by his barn at 10:30 PM. One thing I forgot to mention about Mr. C was that he was extremely cheap. He had things done very nicely but he didn’t like to pay for it. So he hired the kind of people who could only work in the middle of the night, sort of “off hours” people who might be inclined to steal their employer’s equipment temporarily or insist on hunting rights during lunch hour which would be in the middle of the night. He fought constantly with the people he employed. And then he’d come over and complain to me about them. His employees would also come over to me and complain about Mr. C, about how cheap he was, how he cheated on the numbers, and how he was such a giant dick. On the night of the bulldozer I actually threatened Mr. C with physical violence. I slammed my fist into my hand and said, “I’m gonna kill you if I hear one more peep from that bulldozer!” He told me, with a straight face, “I had no idea what time it was!”

About a year after the bulldozer incident I came down my drive way and saw Mr. C directing some backhoes around up on the property with the barn on it. I stopped and asked what he was doing. “I’m going to build a house here. My wife spent too much money and we have to sell our original house.” I couldn’t believe it! Now I was going to have Mr. C and his wife for my close neighbors! What a disaster! So I watched as he built this new house. Ironically, this new house was built to look like a barn. Mr. C really liked barns for some reason. Maybe he thought southern people all lived in barns at one time and was trying to recapture something from history. Or else he just had more junk to store and needed barn-houses. The barn house turned out to look pretty nice like I figured it would. Mr. and Mrs. C moved in and went about their business. Mrs. C’s main business was spending money though I don’t have any idea what she bought. Stuff I guess. Anyway after about a year Mr. C told me that he had to sell the house he just built because his wife spent all their money again. “Where are you going to go?” I asked. He pointed to the barn and said he was going to turn IT into a house. I couldn’t believe it. He was slowly getting closer and closer. Barn/houses were creeping up on my house!

Sometimes Mr. C would decide to take a photo of my house. sign it, and then give it to me as sort of a token of neighborliness. Sometimes I would be nice to him because I thought, “Well, he’s an old man with a spendthrift wife and everyone hates him.” But I couldn’t be nice to him for long because he always found something else to offend me with. One Sunday I heard some of his employee hicks shooting guns across the little river. They were doing target practice with their 30/06 hunting rifles and it sounded like Vietnam right outside my door. This was the kind of thing that drove me crazy about Mr. C. Why, on all days of the week, would you let those red necks come out on a peaceful Sunday afternoon to do their target practice? But instead of going over to talk to him about it I got my own high-powered military assault rifle and went over to the little creak by the side of his barn/house. I fired off ten shots like a machine gun so that the noise practically dented the side of his house and then went back to my house. Within a minute he was zooming across the field in his land rover screaming at the hunter/target practice dudes to stop. I don’t know what he thought had happened but it was very satisfying to me.

One day Mr. C said that my dog came over to his house too much. I told him that he should stop feeding my dog then. He denied that he fed the dog. At that time I was a private pilot and sometimes I would fly over my house just to look at things. A few days after I told Mr. C to stop feeding my dog I flew over our houses at low altitude and saw a perfect trail from my house to Mr. C’s house. It was my dog’s path. I also saw with my own eyes, from an airplane, Mr. C dumping some sort of food into a bowl by his door and my dog hogging away at it. God I loved it! He was such a big fat liar that I didn’t even know what to say to him.

Over the years it seemed that we would go back and forth arguing about this and that but it really got to the point where I didn’t worry too much about him. I definitely terrified him a few times and then felt a little bad about it because I figured that he was too dense to understand what he was doing wrong. Aside from being wrong headed about social life he had a propensity for blowing up his cars and lawn mowers because he was one of those people who simply could not understand that engines absolutely had to have oil in them. His land rover machine was constantly drooling out oil where ever it went and that caused an epic fight between him and the rich woman who bought his original house. He would drive over to her place to bother her or watch her ride her horse and while his car sat there it would be pouring oil out on the ground. So this woman, who was an environmentalist hippy type, kicked Mr. C and his land rover off her property. He came over to my place to complain about it and I tried to explain that you had to keep your oil in your car engine. You HAD to for many reasons! But he just couldn’t understand it. He blew up a couple of cars, several lawn mowers, a weed whacker, and a tractor. All dead and out of oil! He also ran over monumental rocks and old iron farm implements with his riding mower. He liked to cut about ten thousand acres with this little John Deere riding mower that was meant to cut a little quarter acre plot. You’d hear this thing going along with the engine screaming and then a giant gnashing sound as the blades cut into a boulder or something. For the next few days you’d see his lawn mower in pieces on his driveway as he hired various dumb ass (cheap) mechanics to try fixing it. He liked cutting his grass so much that when he ran out of his grass he would start cutting mine. One day he came up to me and said that he’d run over a pile of rocks in my driveway and destroyed his lawnmower while trying to cut my grass. What could I say? Then there was the cattle battle. The one person Mr. C liked to fight with more than me was S. Fox the hillbilly cow farmer who leased some land around us. His cows would bust out all the time and tromp around our yards smashing everything in sight. At first they really made me mad and I would shoot them with my pellet gun, whack them with giant sticks, or throw big rocks at them as hard as I could. No matter how hard I hit one of those cows they would just look up at me like, “What?” and then continue eating like a fly just landed on them. I finally gave up on the cows and accepted the fact that I lived in farm land. But Mr. C would not accept that he lived in farm land. I don’t know how many times he called me and said, “There’s a cow on your property.” He really didn’t care where the cows went as much as he cared about the fact that there WAS a cow loose. One of S. Fox’s cows could be loose and over in West Virginia and Mr. C would be mad about it. Sometimes the cows made it through my property and over to Mr. C’s property. He would then call animal control, the police, S. Fox, me, and who knows who else. He would use his professional photographer skills to document the cow’s trespassing habits. He would come over to my house and tell me that S. Fox was a real bastard. “You wouldn’t believe what he said to me!” He’d say. But I could believe what he said to him. S. Fox really was a big bruiser red neck that reminded me of a bull and I liked to imagine him standing there in his greasy coveralls while Mr. C complained about his cows. I could see S. Fox with a piece of hay sticking out of his mouth and his eyes half shut in a bumpkin stupor while Mr. C went on and on about the cows. But S. Fox definitely didn’t care. What a perfect match! The ultimate hick against the ultimate NYC person. A pure deadlock of conflicting cultures! Two people who couldn’t care less about what the other one said. There was no way around it. We all wound up in court because of the cows. Somehow Mr. C worked with animal control to get S. Fox summoned to court and I was dragged in as a witness. I never saw Mr. C so happy. He must have thought that S. Fox was going to be publicly flogged or something after losing his case which he was sure to do. Mr. C had all sorts of big glossy photographs of cows who were trespassing. They always looked very happy standing there with grass hanging out of their mouths (ironically, like S. Fox looked) as they stared at Mr. C and his tripod. The problem with the photographs, as the judge pointed out, was that the cows could have been anywhere on the planet except the ocean or desert or the north pole. It was a pretty amusing trial. S. Fox actually hired a lawyer. I claimed that I didn’t mind the cows except when they trespassed on my “curtilage.” It was a new law word I learned just for the trial. S. Fox’s lawyer was a real performer and he strutted around the court room with his finger in the air like he was telling everyone “wait just a second here!” He accused my horses of trespassing on S. Fox’s land which I denied. He asked me how I knew it was S. Fox’s cows who were trespassing on my land. I told him that I could see them coming and going over the fence. The judge laughed a few times. At one point Mr. C and I were sent out into the hall for some reason. The bailiff instructed us to absolutely not talk to each other while out in the hall. As soon as we were alone in the hall Mr. C started telling me that S. Fox was a giant liar and a bastard and then asked me what I thought about S. Fox’s lawyer. The bailiff immediately came out and sternly warned us not to speak to each other. The second the bailiff shut the door Mr. C started talking again and I told him to be quiet but it was too late and the bailiff stuck his head out the door and said that we’d be cited for contempt if “we” said another word. It was unbelievable but Mr. C just couldn’t shut up about S. Fox and his lawyer, or understand that we were forbidden to talk to each other for some legal reason. I had to walk away and put my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t get a fine. When we got back in court it was announced that S. Fox was guilty of letting his cows go and he was to have a 100 dollar fine. Mr. C couldn’t believe that that was all that was going to happen. I told him he should sign some of his photos and give them to S. Fox and his lawyer but Mr. C did not understand my joke and said, “Why would I do that?”

Now, every spring, Mr. C will call me at least once to tell me that there is a cow on my property. I think he would really like to continue fighting the south but he’s becoming too old. His final big war was with a fairly famous movie director who bought the house/barn behind the house/barn Mr. C was living in. I don’t know how the fight started. It may have been over the driveway. Mr. C loved to sell pieces of his property with the idea that the buyer could use some of Mr. C’s driveway to get to their property. And then Mr. C would get mad at them for some reason and tell them that they had to get their own driveway, usually at significant expense, or else walk to their house from the main road. I think that’s what Mr. C did to the director. But the movie director was fairly rich and used lawyers to attack Mr. C. So Mr. C decided to pile up a mountain of ripped out trees and brush behind his barn/house so that the movie director looked out his front window at a pile of withering vegetation. The movie director had two giant, exotic dogs of the type that the rich often own. They looked like tigers and ran around between the director’s B/H and Mr. C’s B/H. When they barked they sounded like giant dire wolves from the pleistocene and they were good at barking for long periods of time. The director trained them to go right up to his property line, aim their giant muzzles at Mr. C’s B/H and bark their balls off. It didn’t bother the director to hear the dogs bark because he was deaf. Unfortunately Mr. C was also deaf so the only person the dogs bothered was me. I would bomb them with rocks and then I bought a high powered sling shot to shoot them with but it didn’t matter. They were wily dogs and I couldn’t come close to hitting them. The movie director had a very shy wife who was also the inspiration for a character in a famous sit-com from the late 70s. Some times I would scream up into their yard, “Shut those fuckin’ dogs up or I’ll kill ‘em.” and I knew the only person who could possible hear me would be the shy wife. That made me feel bad. And all of it came back to Mr. C and his machinations. I was standing in my drive way screaming at dogs and then being embarrassed because of Mr. C. I think their war would have gone on a long time but the movie director wound up investing in his daughter’s internet company and lost all his money so he had to sell his house. I thought it was ironic that both the director and Mr. C seemed to pour all their money into women and then had to sell their houses. Mr. C started off with 150 beautiful acres and wound up basically living in the final barn/house which was sort of down in a ditch with no views and very little acreage. And then I found out that he was doing a reverse mortgage so that even his final house was being slowly taken away from him.

The other day Mr. C called me to complain about the phone company. He wanted to somehow have the internet without having the phone company or something like that. Evidently he’d had some sort of fight with the phone company and they were threatening to shut him off. The way he described it it sounded like it was, as usual, entirely his fault (he didn’t pay them!) but he didn’t see it that way. I told him what I knew about the internet out in the country and then recommended that he get one of his kids to come out to his house when he got the phone company out there so he’d have some savvy tech back-up. Then he’s like, “My daughter, I don’t know how old she is, 29 or something like that, …getting her to come out here is like pulling teeth. And my wife, she lives in another room and won’t talk to me. And some rats ate the wires in my land rover so it won’t start, and my lawn mower…..” and on and on. Before he hung up he said, “Thanks for spending some time with me.” It was sort of sad. After all our fights I realized that someday I was going to miss Mr. C.

cold gray

It was one of those gloomy, wet, winter mornings when you walk outside and think about there being a warm beach somewhere and the fact that certain people are on that beach being warm and loved by the sun while you’re blinking your eyes and wondering what is wrong. I was trying very hard to focus on something positive so that I wouldn’t just vanish in a depressive fugue because it was just that bad outside this time of year. If you got warm in a bed somewhere it was extremely difficult to go back into nature, and life, and the life of nature because there was simply no welcome. It was just the opposite, like nature was saying, “You no longer belong here. Go away!” But of course there is no going away. You just have to go out.

The positive thing I was trying to concentrate on was that I was meeting a girl for coffee in town. She was not a very special girl but good enough. I had a sort of crush on her and I’d certainly have some makeshift relationship with her if conditions were right. The thought of going to see her while I was driving along was like a small warm spot in a big bland coldness. But it was a very small spot in a very big blandness. As I drove along the trees stood tall and dark kind of looking down on me and the road with that dead grayness in-between them. It was flat out sad and as I drove along I just wondered over and over again about how I could escape. And then my truck stopped working.

On the side of the road I stood looking down at my engine. I knew a lot about engines but I couldn’t bear the thought of taking anything apart because my whole body wanted to stop and wait for the cold to be gone. But I wanted to get to the coffee shop so I popped a few things open with my pocket knife and looked around. I was probably out of gas. But I didn’t know how I would deal with that. I would miss my date and freeze my ass off walking up the road. I wanted something easier than being out of gas. It was very cold out so part of me thought that maybe I had some frozen gasoline in the fuel line. But it was hard to figure out because my brain was infused with cold and gray and it just wanted to stop. I put my hands on the fuel line and held it tightly thinking I could warm some frozen plug of fuel. But I knew it was hopeless. I was probably out of gas.

A car full of rednecks pulled over in front of my truck. I recognized a couple of them as dudes I’d seen sitting on various porches smoking cigarettes and throwing beer cans into the yard and getting up now and then to toss some horseshoes or kick a dog. I never waived at them and they occasionally gave me dirty looks when I drove by but all in all I didn’t think much about them. They all got out and surrounded me and my engine. A strange feeling came over me. A really unusual thing. I started feeling the little smatterings of happiness tingling in my head. I was thinking, “These guys might kill me.” and it made me happy. It was like there was a solution hovering about me. A solution that would require no effort on my behalf. I just stood there basking in a new warmness.

The guys smelled like cigarettes, liquor, and bodies. They were all wearing greasy CPO jackets and ball caps. Their hair was long and oily but not like hippy long hair. Hippy long hair was on purpose. This long hair was ‘no money for a haircut’ long hair and it was animal like. All their boots were cheap Kmart things and their pants were polyester maintenance man pants which were so dirty the permanent seams were gone. They all stared down at my engine and then one of them asked, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Well,” I said, “It may be a frozen fuel line.”
And then another one asked, “Do you have gas?”
And I said, “Or, I’m out of gas.”
One of the guys was a fairly old man and he said, “We’re going up to the Little store if you want to ride along. You have a gas can?”
I did have a gas can and I got it out of my truck bed. Some redneck from the house on the hill across the road came outside and shouted down, “What are you boys doing?” One of my guys shouted back, “Our good deed for the day!”
So I got in the back seat of their car and a redneck got in on both sides of me. There were five of them all together. Three in the front seat and one on each side of me in the back. I had the gas can on my lap. It had about a tablespoon of gasoline in it which washed around and made the inside of the car smell like gas. The second the doors of the car shut every one of the rednecks lit up a cigarette. There were five flames all around me lighting up cigarettes and the warmness and happiness suffused me pleasantly. Could they smell the gasoline? God, what a life! No worries at all! The thought of being blown to pieces with the rednecks just made me very happy because it sounded warm and light. It was very warm inside the car. The guy right in front of me was named Bob and I had seen him walking up and down the road many times with a paper bag full of booze and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Actually, he usually did wave at me and everyone else when he was walking along drinking out of his bag. Just when we were about to pull out onto the road a cop car went by and the old man said, “There goes your friend Bob.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“He know’s you did it.”
“He doesn’t know shit.”
“He knows you killed him.”
And they left it at that. I knew they were trying to spook me by implying that one of them was a killer. I’d heard that exact kind of subtle implication in a few dozen conversations over the years so it didn’t really bother me. I found myself thinking, “I hope you are a killer Bob. I hope you kill this morning or at least this day. I won’t mind if you kill me.” The only thing that would bother me about being killed would be missing my date. I thought about my body lying out in the woods while my date cursed me for being late. And then I thought that I might be the most fucked up human being on earth. And then I thought that I had some unbelievable hubris for thinking that I could be the MOST anything on earth. And then I thought, “The driver of this car is drunk.” Because we were definitely weaving back and forth across the road as we headed up towards the Little store. Then Bob pulled a bottle out of the glove compartment and took a giant swig. He handed the bottle to the driver and the driver took a giant swig. He handed the bottle back to Bob who put it back in the glove compartment. I wondered why no one else was offered a swig. The three rednecks who didn’t have a swig definitely looked unhappy. I wondered about what kind of fights they had among themselves. I imagined them sitting around a table with a candle on it all holding hands. I imagined one of them saying, “Ok, let’s just let our feelings go and discuss this problem.” And then once again I thought about the plight of my own brain which was not working very well. I seemed to want to think up really unlikely things that didn’t collaborate with reality. Like I would think, “What would it be like to be cut in two by an egg beater.” and things like that. And it occurred to me that my brain was just casting out and looking for a pleasant thought to come from the abyss of senselessness. But the things I reeled in were not pleasant or even neutral—just annoying. My head was just too spent and lazy to put things in order. And the wane gray of winter was choking me down with its quiet dispensation of grief. What could a person do? I really wanted Bob to go on a killing spree.

We pulled into the Little store and the redneck on my left got out. I got out and the oldish man got out. I put my gas can down by the pump and then walked up to the door of the Little store. It wasn’t just a little store though it really was little. It’s proper name was the Little store as in the family name was Little even though person who owned it and ran was named Violet Maupin. She was a very old lady who every year would knit together these sort of Christmas puppets which she would fit over upright cartons of cigarettes and display on a shelf in her store. There was a line of cigarette cartons dressed up like Christmas personalities in the Little store. It was Violet Maupin’s big event of the year and when I thought about it it just made me sadder even though it was one of those things that was funny to a non redneck. What if I was becoming a redneck? What if those cigarette personages were not funny anymore because I saw the serious side of them and I was seeing the serious side of them because I was becoming infected with what ever invasive virus causes one to become a redneck. But what did it matter? If I didn’t mind being killed why should I mind being a red neck? I reached for the knob of the little store door and found it locked. “Closed.” I said to the old man who was standing next to me.
“She’ll be back in a minute. Probably changing Danny’s teeth.”
“Changing his teeth? What was he talking about? Did she have a baby with dentures or something?” I thought.
“She has a baby?” I asked though I don’t know why I asked because Violet Maupin was about 100 years old.
“No Danny, her gimpy boy who drives the tractor.”
I knew who he was talking about but I really didn’t want to think about it. I stood there with my hands in my pockets and looked at the tree tops which were swaying in the freezing wind. I looked at the old red neck who was bent down looking at a newspaper stand. He stood up and said, “I was watching about that British invasion last night.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. Did the Brits attack another island like the Falklands sometime between yesterday and today? It seemed like I would have heard about that.
“You know,” he said, “you look to be about my age, old enough to remember.”
“Do you mean the British rock invasion?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine this being what he was talking about nor could I imagine that he thought I looked to be about his age. Jesus Christ! “What the hell? He must be 70!” I thought to myself.
“Yeah, you know, the Beatles and those guys like the Rolling Stones. I saw this thing about it on PBS.”
PBS! What the fuck. I couldn’t imagine this guy or any one of the guys from the car watching PBS under any circumstances. But then you never know. For all I know they could be designing iPhone apps inside their shacks at night. Things like “beer finder” or “wife killer.”
“No.” I said. “I missed it.”
“Well it was really interesting. All about how the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came over and everyone went wild.”
“Hmm.”
Just then the door opened and Miss Maupin was standing there smiling through her hundred year old face. Her hair was like this frizzy stuff that reminded me of a mushroom for some reason. But it was weird, you could tell that she was probably a beauty in her youth. You could still see a certain shape in her face that looked nice. She was about four feet tall and didn’t talk much. A couple months ago she was robbed by someone who whacked her with a baseball bat.
That was tough to even imagine. We walked into the store and I told her I wanted to fill my gas can. She flipped the big switch that turned on the gas pump. Then she turned to the old man and asked what he needed. He said, “Pampers.”
“What size?” She asked.
The old man held his hands about as far apart as they’d be to hold an eggplant and said, “I don’t know. For a baby about this big.”
“Who’s baby?” Asked Miss Maupin.
“Building’s.” Said the man.
I walked out the door even though I wanted to stay and continue listening to the conversation. A woman named Building? Or maybe that was the father’s name. Jesus. I went up to the pump and unscrewed the cap to my gas can. I flipped the pump handle and started pumping gas. The old man came out of the Little store carrying his Pampers. I thought, “What a strange thing. These boozing marauders are out buying diapers for someone’s baby.” The dude who had been driving and who had had the swig of liquor on the way up came over to me with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He was really a frightening looking dude. Like he had all sorts of genetic malfunctions that were still working their way through his body. It looked like he had a small glob of axel grease in his beard and his nose hair came right out and intertwined with his mustache.
“You know you can put a cigarette out in gasoline?” He said.
I did know that but I wanted to say it in a way that was real neutral so that he wouldn’t feel compelled to put his cigarette out in my gas can.
“Yeah, I know. I guess you have to have an open flame to light gasoline.” I said as I walked toward the Little store. I was just putting my foot on the step up to the door when the clapboards sort of lit up and then there was a deep explosion that was more of a whoosh than a bang. “Holy shit!” I thought as I turned around and saw the dirty hairy dude jump into a water tank that was used to test leaking tires and which luckily happened to be right there on the island by the pumps. I actually heard sizzling from the water putting out the flames on his clothes. The rest of the rednecks surrounded the tank and were laughing their asses off. The parking lot was on fire but the car was over to the side and there was nothing to really burn but the asphalt. The fire burned out fast and a cloud of black smoke blew over the mountain like a signal saying “rednecks just did something again.” The hairy dirty guy got out of the tank and looked incredibly unscathed considering. His hair might have been a little bit curlier and his skin a little redder but he didn’t look injured.
“God damn! Now that’s the way to take a bath! Cried the old man. “Burn it loose then rinse it off!”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were all jumping around and slapping their knees to beat the band. Then, at the same time, all of them went into a coughing fit from laughing so hard. Next, when the coughing settled down, they all spit and then lit up new cigarettes. I didn’t know what to say. My gas can was split open and lying next to one of the garage doors of the Little store. Technically, the scruffy dude owed me a new gas can and all the gas that was in it. But it seemed weird to ask for reparation from a dude who was just completely on fire and was now charred and soaked and standing in the freezing wind. They were all still shaking their heads as they looked at the dude. Miss Maupin was standing in the door of the Little store with her hands on her hips. “You boys don’t be cuttin’ up out there.” She said and then turned back into the store. She really seemed to be pretty laid back. But then I’d heard she really didn’t say much after being hit with a baseball bat and if that doesn’t bother you I guess an inferno in your parking lot is no big deal either. Now the dude who’d caught on fire was saying that his skin hurt. I said, “Maybe you should take him to a doctor.”
I just said it because I guess if a normal person caught on fire I would recommend they see a doctor. But these were hill rednecks and it made me feel like a pussy the second I said they should go to a doctor. They didn’t pay any attention to me. The old man went over to my gas can and picked it up. “Look at her! Split right down the middle!” He brought the gas can back to me and asked me if I had another gas can. I told him no, that I only carried one gas can around with me. “Well,” He said, “Let’s go down to Marilyn Monroe’s house and borrow a gas can.”
“Marilyn Monroe?” I said.
“Yeah,” said the old man. “She’s Dawn Johnson’s daughter. Dawn named all her kids after movie stars. There’s Marilyn Monroe Johnson, John Wayne Johnson, Shirley Temple Johnson, and the baby, Don Johnson Johnson.”
“Well, I can probably get a gas can from the Little store.”
“No,” said the old man. “We owe it to you. Milt here used up your gas and busted your gas can. We owe ya. We’ll get you a can and some gas from Marilyn Monroe.”
I said I would have to call someone first to let them know I wasn’t going to be on time for a date. Suddenly all the rednecks were very interested in me. “You have a date?” Asked two of them at the same time.
“Yes, I’m supposed to meet a girl in a coffee shop in town. I’m going to be late so I’d better let her know.”
I walked up to the pay phone which was on the front of the little store. All the rednecks followed me. I would have used my cell phone but on this particular part of the mountain it just didn’t work so I dropped a quarter in the slot and dialed Janny’s number. She answered and I told her that I was having some car trouble up on the mountain and would probably not be in town for a awhile. She said OK and told me to call her when I was on my way in. I hung up and turned around to see all the rednecks looking at me like puppies. “What?” I asked.
“So who’s this girl you’re supposed to meet?”
“She’s just a friend.”
“What’s she look like?” asked Milt as he sort of patted his burnt clothing.
“She’s ok. Just looks like a girl.”
I didn’t really like thinking about those guys thinking about Janny though I don’t know why. It’s not like they would ever meet her but I guess I just didn’t want her image being inside any of their heads. I could just see her silhouette lingering inside the dark cavern of one of their brain pans. Dark woods with eyes peaking from behind rotting logs and tongues hanging to the ground. Ugg! Just then a guy came walking down the road and one of the rednecks said, “Speaking of the devil. It’s John Wayne!” John Wayne had long black hair and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He was wearing sunglasses and a button down cowboy shirt that was unbuttoned down to the navel exposing his bare chest. The rest of him was blue jeans and cowboy boots. His unbuttoned shirt was untucked too.
“Damn, he must be freezing.” I said.
“Not him.” said the old man, “Those Johnson kids were all born with out what ever nerves it is that feels cold. They have no blood pressure either.”
John Wayne walked up and asked what was up. He had a toothpick in his mouth.
The old man said, “Well we were buying some pampers for Building and Milt here just caught himself on fire.”
Bob said, “You could a lit a cigarette off him!”
Then the other rednecks told their version of the story embellishing a little bit so that you would have thought a small atomic bomb had gone off in the parking lot. I thought it was kind of bizarre to have to embellish a story about one of your friends being completely on fire in a parking lot. It seemed like enough of a story to me without extra credit. The old man asked John Wayne if Marilyn Monroe was at home and he said yes. Then the old man asked if John Wayne wanted a ride to Marilyn Monroe’s and John Wayne said he had just come from there but might as well go back. The whole time, I have to admit, it did not appear that John Wayne was the slightest bit cold. It made me freeze just to look at him. So we all went over to the car and piled in. John Wayne and I sat in the middle of the back seat with a redneck on each side of us. The redneck next to me was Milt. I noticed that John Wayne was wearing a lot of cologne. It smelled like something I remembered from a long time ago. Milt really smelled bad, like burnt hair and grease. I started thinking that I probably wouldn’t be able to go on my date without having a shower first. It was pretty ironic actually. This particular girl had an acute sense of smell and often said I smelled like an animal of some sort. She would really have to say something now unless I showered. We drove a little further up the mountain and then turned into a rutted driveway that wound into the woods. We then started to go downhill at a precarious pitch. I saw an upside down car way back in the woods and wondered how it happened to be there. I mean who goes for a drive and winds up up side down in the middle of the woods? Trash was strewn on both sides of the road and I noticed that, for the most part, it was made of liquor bottles, beer bottles, and plastic toys. Now and then there would be a lawn mower part. We came around a giant rock out cropping and there stood a house which was leaned over pretty far. Coming out of the side of the house was a trailer home and then coming out of the side of the trailer home was a tin shack of the kind you’d put rakes and shovels in. On the side of the tin shack was a small lean-to which might have been used to keep wood dry but was now used to keep trash dry. Next to that was a little creek. It looked like they added on until they hit the creek. We pulled up to the house so that the bumper of the car was almost touching the porch. Everyone got out and the front door of the house opened to reveal a chunky woman with bleach blond hair who was holding a small dog across her chest. I assumed that it was Marilyn Monroe herself because she looked like Marilyn Monroe in a very remote way but as it turned out I was looking at House. House had a haircut that really did remind one of a roof. It went out at the sides like her face was a gable. The old man said, “Hey House! Here’s your wrappers!” and tossed the pampers to House who sort of turned to the side so they bounced off her hip. “You almost hit Pebbles!” She shouted as she petted the little dog furiously. She bent down and picked up the pampers then went back into the house. We were all walking up onto the porch when another girl came out the door. She looked kind of cute I thought but then I saw that she was cross eyed and a little bit toothy. “Who we got here?” She asked.
“A stranger.” Said Bob.
The girl looked at me with a sort of disapproving expression and I thought, “I’m like an Martian to her.”
“What’s he here for?” Asked the girl.
“Well Milt here put a cigarette out in this fellow’s gas can and it blew up so we’re here to get him some gas.” Said the old man.
“Why did he do that?” Asked the girl.
“Do what?”
“Why did he put his cigarette out in the gas can?”
“Well, I don’t think this guy believed you could put a cigarette out in gasoline.”
“I did believe it.” I said.
“I don’t understand.” Said the girl.
Then she turned to me and asked my name.
I’d been dreading this question. “Cathy Poste.” I said. And then to quickly explain I said, “My parents were extremely boring so they made up for it by trying to be different. Dyed hair and crazy names. Stuff like that.” But none of the hicks seemed to think anything about my name or at least it seemed that way.The girl kept looking at me but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I actually wondered what it would be like if I fell in love with this girl, married her, had kids with her, and was part of this family. I thought it would be like jumping in front of a train but it would be an dramatic change. And then I thought that I was thinking like my own boring ass family. Wanting change for change’s sake. But it wasn’t totally illogical. I did need a change. But it couldn’t be aimless. I couldn’t do that anymore. The girl turned to John Wayne and asked, “Did you get my wax?”
“I forgot.” Replied John Wayne with his toothpick still hanging out of his mouth. Suddenly tears started welling up in the girl’s eyes and she stomped her foot then ran into the house. John Wayne turned to the hicks who were all standing on the porch and said, “I was supposed to get some candle wax. She wants to melt it onto some hairy spot of her body and then pull the hair out with the wax.”
“I know what part she’s talking about.” Said Milt.
“I’ll bet I know too.” Said Bob.
“And I’ll bet you’re all wrong.” Said the old man.
I really felt sorry for the girl right then and had the idea that I should somehow steal her from this life of squaller and misery. Now that she’d gone inside I was already forming an idea of her in my mind which I was sure would render her better than reality. The old man turned to me and said, “That was Shirley Temple. A thirty year old maid. Doomed.” I shook my head a little bit and asked about the gas can. I didn’t think that girl was 30. Maybe 35. Milt opened the door and they all started filing in. I followed them into a house that looked pretty much like I imagined it would. It was filled with junk to the point where you really imagined small animals packing away as many nuts as possible whenever possible. Surprisingly it actually smelled nice though. A sort of woodsy smell with something sweet underneath. I imagined there being so many smells that they all canceled each other and left only a few nice ones. I was thinking about that girl which made my mind cast in a more positive direction. I probably should have been thinking about my date. But this hick girl was able to generate an even warmer spot inside me than my coffee date had. And it was only a date anyway. I couldn’t disregard pleasantness in any form. I would take all of it and use it against this dull grey day. I didn’t really even have a choice. I stood there in the middle of the living room and looked around. It was very dirty and worn. There was a TV going playing cartoons and on a couch in front of it sat three small children in various states of dress. They were all eating out of a plastic bowl which was sitting on the middle child’s lap. It looked like jello and they were spilling it all over the place. “Imagine looking under the cushions of that couch!” I thought to myself. House came in from a hall behind the couch and the little dog she was holding appeared to be wearing Pampers. All the children burst out when they saw her and the dog. “Let us hold Pebbles!” They shouted.
“Kiss my ass and shut up!” Replied House.
She turned to me and said, “They only want to hold Pebbles after the know I just changed her diapers.”
“I see.” I said.
Another woman came from the hall way. She was pushing a walker that had wheels on it which looked like they’d come from a lawn mower. There were also some of those fake chrome wheel covers on it like the ones on gang banger’s cars that spin backwards at traffic lights. Leave it to the hill people to hop up a walker with custom equipment. Every time the woman took a step the walker shifted back and forth in a way that made it look like it was much harder to walk with the walker than it might have been to walk without it. The old lady looked at me and said, “So you’re the one courtin’ Shirley Temple.”
“Uh. I don’t know about that ma’am. I think your confusing me with someone else.”
“He’s here to get some gas ma.” Said the old man. He turned to me and said, “This is my ma. Lucretia Lee. She’s a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee.”
I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed but in a strange way it felt pretty good. It was like I left my house half and hour ago in a bored funk and now I was in a foreign country meeting foreign people. “A direct descendant of Robert E. Lee.” I said, “That’s impressive.”
“She has the hind leg of Traveller hanging in her bedroom.” Said Milt.
“Traveller?” I said.
“That’s Robert E. Lee’s horse.” Said the old man.
“She has its leg?” I asked.
“She does.” Said one of the hicks I didn’t know the name of.
“Did a taxidermist stuff it?” I asked. I don’t know what made me ask that. They all looked at me like they did when I suggested they take Milt to the doctor. Like I was a retarded city slicker hardly worth aiming an eye at.
“Let’s get that gas.” Said the old man as he walked into the kitchen which was open to the living room and only demarcated by its ancient linoleum floor. He opened a cabinet over the stove and took out a red gas can. He shook it and said, “Probably a gallon in here.” I could see why these people were inclined to catching on fire. I really wondered how the house remained unburned. I was debating asking about storing gasoline above the stove when Shirley Temple came out. Now she was wearing a little green dress with flowers on it. Lucretia looked at me and said, “Now doesn’t she look nice. She really does look just like Shirley Temple. Have you ever seen Little Miss Broadway?”
“I don’t think so.” I said. I really didn’t think the girl looked much like Shirley Temple but she didn’t look bad.
“Let’s watch it.” Said the old lady.
I looked around at all the hicks to see if they heard the same thing I heard. I had a partial image of sitting on that couch surrounded by hicks watching Little Miss Broadway but I just couldn’t bring the image into full bloom. Before I knew it the old woman was shooing the kids off the couch and telling the old man to get Little Miss Broadway out of the cabinet. Shirley Temple ran over to the couch and sat down near the end and then patted the cushion between her and the armrest indicating that I should sit there. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I started walking over to the couch but then Milt said, “Oh no. You’re not going to sit on the end there where no one can watch you. We know about you at the movies!” The way he said it I, at first, thought he was talking to me and I was about to be really confused but then realized he was talking to Shirley Temple. Milt pointed to me and said, “You can sit in the middle.” Shirley scooted to the middle of the couch. I could’t believe what was happening. I wasn’t thinking about my date anymore. I was starting to think about adventure and how it comes about. I just didn’t really have any good idea about what to do so I went over and sat on the couch next to Shirley Temple. The old granny, Lucretia, sat on the other side of me and then Bob, Milt, House, and one of the other red necks slouched down onto the couch. John Wayne came up behind the couch and put his hands on the backrest right behind Shirley Temple and stood there with his toothpick. The old man put the VHS into an old whirring machine and off it went. Little Miss Broadway. It was like being in a scene from the Beverly Hillbillies. Cigarettes were lit and smoke rose over the couch. A liquor bottle was pulled from someone’s CPO jacket and passed down the line. I took a small sip. I didn’t want to be drunk but I found it very appealing that this whole family thought it was OK to have a drink at ten in the morning. I knew too many people who only sipped craft beers and did not drink for the alcohol. I couldn’t stand those people and now I was with their opposites. Shirley Temple tried to take a drink but the bottle was snatched from her by John Wayne. I guess she wasn’t allowed to have booze for some reason. My can of gas was sitting on a coffee table right in front of us. As Little Miss Broadway proceeded I thought first, “The real Shirley Temple looks nothing like the Shirley Temple next to me.” Two, “The actual Shirley Temple only has one dimple.” and finally, “Why do I feel so semi-comfortable in this unusual setting!” The old lady started telling me that George Murphy, who was the leading man and Shirley Temple’s dancing partner, was the inspiration for Ronald Reagan’s political career. “He was the first big star to make the jump from Hollywood to politics.” She said. I thought it strange that she would know this. It made me actually wonder if she did in fact have a horse leg from general Lee’s horse in her room. Why couldn’t this be some fallen family? Like some aristocrats who’d gone to seed. I asked the old lady if their family had lived in this house long. She told me they’d been there for over 580 years. That made me think, “So much for the horse leg story.” Then the old lady told me about how Shirley Temple was one of the most effective ambassadors we’d ever had. I didn’t really know how effective a diplomat Shirley Temple was but I did know she had been a diplomat so, again, I was wondering about this old lady’s intelligence. Then she said, “You know it was Kissinger who got her going in the foreign service. He recommended her to Nixon and Nixon appointed her as a representative to the UN.” I couldn’t believe she knew this. “How do you know all of this?” I asked her. “Why shouldn’t I know it?” She responded. And then I thought “Yes, why shouldn’t she know it?” She then told me that the Shirley Temple sitting next to me won the Augusta Farm Bureau Ciggy Piggy Beauty contest four years ago. I smiled and said I could see that. Shirley Temple leaned to my ear and said, “Emma Sump almost won it but she was too corny when she sang.”
“Well I’m glad you won.” I said.
She leaned a little closer to me so that her shoulder was touching mine. I was a little nervous but it felt nice to be so cozy with this girl who was sort of forbidden. Then she put her hand on my knee and firmly squeezed. This made me a little more nervous. I sort of looked to the sides and it appeared that all the hicks were absorbed in Little Miss Broadway. I wondered if John Wayne was also absorbed. Was he still behind us? I scratched the back of my neck and then pretended that something might have brushed against the back of me so I could turn around. John Wayne wasn’t there. Now I was feeling less nervous about what Shirley Temple was doing. I found myself thinking that I wished I could be alone with her so we could talk. I was curious about what she was like. The old lady now pronounced out of the blue that we should alI go to Richmond soon. I didn’t understand what the granny was talking about. Now Shirley Temple’s hand was working its way up my leg while the Shirley Temple on the TV was singing something about not being a frumpy head. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the old man nudge Bob. I stole a look and saw that they were both looking at Shirley Temple’s hand on my leg. I looked to the other side and saw that the old lady was also looking at Shirley Temple’s hand. Why couldn’t Little Miss Broadway be a little more interesting right now? They were all absorbed a second ago! “Shirley Temple was certainly talented for a little kid.” I thought. Now she was tap dancing and she was pretty amazing. The living, breathing Shirley Temple was still moving her hand. I was torn between the two Shirley Temples and becoming concerned for what was going to happen in the next 30 seconds both on and off screen. I felt agitated but couldn’t think of what to do. And then I said, “Look at that girl dance.”
The living Shirley Temple smacked my leg with her hand and everyone snickered. The old man said, “Don’t make her jealous! She can be a polecat if she’s jealous!”
I felt like I was on a first date back in high school and the entire family of my date was with me. But I wasn’t on a date. I was getting some gasoline so I could go on a date. And then I found that I didn’t care about my real date anymore. She would want to talk about what was happening on Facebook and what she heard on NPR and I would tolerate it because I simply yearned for human contact. But now! Talk about human contact! Then I imagined us as not humans but a bunch of raccoons or groundhogs curled around each other in a nest where everything was confused and overlapping. That really was how these people lived. They overlapped. They didn’t sit around pontificating about their relationships. They simply related all over the place. This was just the opposite of me. I wouldn’t say that I was a snob but others might. Generally, I didn’t like being bundled together with a bunch of people. Also I didn’t really like to be touched which was strange since I liked touching other people as well as inanimate objects and animals. In fact I could be very touchy. Sitting here on the couch I felt like I was being touched all over the place even though it was just Shirley Temple’s hand that was really doing the touching. I guess my shoulders were touching the old lady’s shoulders. I started going into a sort of daydream about my touching and anti-touching tendencies. “Why was I like that?” I wondered. I thought, “I like acting on others but don’t like being acted upon.” Could that be true? I felt a little sick thinking about it because it suddenly struck me as my own psychobabble. I don’t like thinking about those things just like I don’t like being touched. But I wasn’t minding it now. Being touched that is. I looked over at Shirley Temple and saw that her eyes were flecked with little spots on her irises that sort of went along with her freckles. Her eyes were really just barely crossed and her teeth were not so bucked up close. I felt like I could lean over and kiss her and it would be just fine. And that’s what I was getting ready to do when the front door opened and a giant person came inside. He looked like the rapist dude from the movie Deliverance. I mean there didn’t look like there was a friendly bone in his body and he really made me think about the missing link. The granny picked up a cane that was lying in front of the couch, pointed it at the dude and said, “Well now Ollie, it looks like you might have some competition.” Ollie! What a name for a brute! Was he a cute little baby at one time? It was hard to imagine! As soon as granny said that Ollie might have some competition Shirley Temple put her arm over my shoulders and pulled herself closer to me. I could imagine her saying, “I’m done with you Ollie. I’ve met this city slicker.” And then I could imagine Ollie tearing my head off and putting it on the TV set for the hicks to watch. I kind of liked the idea of fighting such a brutal looking man though. It was like, how could I go wrong? I would die in a hail of bravery. No one could fault you for being killed by Ollie. I mean I wanted Bob to kill me a little while ago when I was riding in the hick car. And I was still having some problems seeing beyond the horrible grey day which was so oppressive. Twenty minutes ago dying in a fight seemed OK and now dying in a more romantically tinged fight seemed even better. It was weird. It was like just the opposite of what I was just thinking. Being beaten to death in a fight certainly would count as being touched by someone else. This was extremely annoying. I was overthinking everything. I just wanted everything to be ok without having to apply myself to making it so. I was just being lazy. But that was what cold grey weather did to me. It just made me lazy as could be. Ollie stood there to the side of the TV and I couldn’t help contrasting him to the Shirley Temple in Little Miss Broadway. Talk about humans from opposite sides of the evolutionary chain! He had more hair on his knuckle than she had on her whole head. He leaned down to the TV and looked at it for a moment, and the said, “Little Miss Broadway?” It seemed like he shouldn’t be able to say those words. I wondered if he would even know how to watch a TV. He sort of put his fists together in front of his stomach and pressed them so that the muscles bulged in his shirt like his sleeves were full of plump groundhogs or beavers who were arching their backs at threatening animals. I could smell him from ten feet away. He smelled like someone from a South American war. I timidly and quietly asked Shirley Temple if that was her boyfriend. I really wasn’t a very timid person and I wouldn’t exactly call myself a pussy but their was just no use puffing up in front of this guy. Shirley Temple said, “He was my boyfriend but now he isn’t.”
“Uuh,” I said, “What went wrong?”
“I found someone else.”
I was sure she would say it was me if I asked so I didn’t ask. I know there was a certain amount of presumptuous thinking there but as I told you I was lazy in the head and I was ready to accept any plausible explanation for anything that might have been complicated or dangerous to think about. I folded my hands on my lap and concentrated on Little Miss Broadway. The original Shirley Temple was now being dragged away back to the orphanage and all the hicks were staring at the TV with their mouths hanging open. I was relying on my ability to vanish into a story in order to not think about the real world around me. I imagined being in the movie, maybe as the plainclothes policeman taking Shirley Temple back to the orphanage. I imagined the feeling of a stiffly starched shirt and the course material of a suit from the thirties. I imagined holding Shirley Temple’s plump little hand as I dragged her away from her birthday party celebration. She pouted and her adoptive parents scowled. But Ollie was still there. I could feel his dark presence next to the couch and then I could feel him behind the couch. He put his hands on the backrest and leaned down causing the bones of the couch to creak and groan. His breath was going down the back of my head. I tried harder to be in the movie with Shirley Temple. I could have easily grown a pencil mustache and worn a grey fedora hat. I would have fit right into the thirties fashion scene. I would be willing to take up tap dancing in order to dance with Shirley Temple on top of a long table in a marble mansion. But it was awfully far away from where I really was. It felt like a steam pipe was leaking on the back of my head as Ollie took long deep breaths and expelled them, purposefully I thought, down the back of my neck. I thought of my coffee date who was probably wondering why I wasn’t getting in touch with her for a progress report. She was the kind who wanted to keep track of everything. She wouldn’t move without a plan. But now I was with people who didn’t plan a thing. I too did not like to plan. But what had it gotten me? I had had a girlfriend who every time she called me would say, “I know you don’t like to plan, but…” and then proceeded to form a plan. I just did not live that way. But sitting there surrounded by hicks watching Little Miss Broadway while Ollie breathed down my neck made me think planning could have its advantages. I guess I always wanted to be free just like an animal. A creature who went from moment to moment with no idea what was going to happen next. And I wondered if it was an adventurous nature or laziness. I looked around at the hicks and thought about their lack of planning. What had it gotten them? Well it seemed like they lived in a dirty hell hole but I sure couldn’t say that they seemed to be unhappy. On the contrary. They seemed to be just fine. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be just fine. Suddenly, Ollie flicked me on the ear. It was just like something someone would do in high school. A slight perturbation of the status quo. Now I had to think very fast. This was the exact kind of provocation that I would myself perpetuate on some innocent person and so I knew exactly what was going through Ollie’s mind that very second. Every moment I waited was increasing the likelihood of a more serious attack. But what was I to do? I was a guest at some people’s house, people I barely knew. Should I jump up and demand an apology? Should I jump up and punch Ollie? Time was ticking away and I could feel the heat of Ollie’s breath increasing in intensity. I decided that I would count to five and then do something. I had no idea what but that was the only way that I could think of to make myself move. I counted to five and then stood up. I turned around to face Ollie and saw that he was just standing there looking pretty neutral. I felt like if I punched him as hard as I could that he wouldn’t even bat an eye. These were the kind of moments that you typically didn’t get a lot of time to think about, where the animal instincts kicked in causing you to dive for the door or lash out with everything you had. But I just stood there thinking about the fact that I was standing there thinking about it. I wondered how long I could stand there thinking about it. And then, incredibly, I thought about the fact that I was wondering about the derivative nature of my thought, how I was wondering about my wondering. What if this derivative thought went on for ever and I just stood there for ever and turned into an ornament at the hick house? They could hang their dirty jackets on me and toss their shoes around me. And someday I would be dumped out in the yard with the rest of the junk. But none of this happened of course. Because Ollie blinked. While I was standing there Ollie evidently misunderstood my rumination as some sort of unknown psychological maneuver. He blinked and then he put his hands in his pockets and moseyed out the front door. I didn’t know whether to feel bad or good about it. I had just won one little battle of the day but it was purely by luck that I did so. It made me feel good. I felt so good that I announced to the hicks that I was going to get back to my truck so I could be on my way to my meeting. Now they were all staring at me with their mouths hanging open and I thought that if I had some marbles or ping pong balls I could play a game of trying to toss them in the hick’s mouths. Even Shirley Temple who had just been feeling my leg was looking stupefied. It was like they were in a trance of some sort. I actually had an urge to wave my hand in front of their faces to see if they reacted but instead I turned around and walked over to my gas can. I picked it up and headed for the door thinking that any second one of them was going to say something to me and try to stop me. But they didn’t make a peep. I walked out the door and started up the drive way. I had walked for about a minute when I heard someone running up behind me. I turned around to see Shirley Temple huffing and puffing in her little green dress. She grabbed my arm and said, “You have to come back some time you know.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind coming back to see you sometime. But what was wrong with all of them back there? They seemed like they were on drugs or something.”
“They’re just sleepy.” She said.
“But it’s only a little after ten in the morning.”
“Well none of them have been asleep for about two years now.”
“Two years?”
“Well Shirley Temple Johnson,” I said, “I don’t understand a thing about your family but I’m glad I met all of you.”
I really didn’t know what else to say. Shirley looked at me with her face slightly askew and I really did think she looked beautiful standing there on that cold gray driveway in her light dress. What could I believe about these people? She appeared to be truly warm even though though it was freezing out. And she appeared to be truly happy despite the slog of grey light that filtered through the woods trying to press me down and down. What did they have that I didn’t have? Or maybe what did I have that they didn’t have. I didn’t know. But I felt better and believed that maybe the cold and the grey might not be able to kill me after all.