An Irksome Run-in With Death
Thursday, April 26Ð
4:15 p.m.-
ROAD IMPASSABLE
Hah!," said my head, which at times is more impetuous than me.
Water's probably down by now. And besides, I've got four-wheel-drive! What else is there to do?
We had just turned off the blacktop. EZ was twirling circles on the seat beside me--I'll never understand how a dog knows a locale, or imminent arrival after two hundred miles. She aroused a mile before the turn, sat up, then stood on the seat next to me, as though she knew just exactly where we were and had been noting landmarks and knew our turn was just over the hill ... around and down the next curve. I'm sure she did.
The gravel road was recently laid with new fill -- harsh, fist-sized crushed rock. The truck rumbled, then quieted, as we rolled onto sandier roadbed. The road was not fine. Frost boils were deep. Many spots in the road oozed deep wetness at the surface. Pudding puddles.
Water everywhere. The swamps submerged, forest bottoms under water, orange flags mark warnings to slow down where floodwater had recently flowed across and the roadway is eroded--Ooof!, we shudder down into, and back out of, bad ruts.
Deep holes yawn suddenly before me. The truck groans and clunks, loaded with six hundred pounds of sidewalk blocks and shrubs and tree saplings, brought along for a new home at The Woods. Slow down. EZ on all fours. My window is open, receiving sudden screeches of spring peepers as we pass by. It's warm today, mid seventies and cloudless.
We are both ready to be there. Switch on the radio and seek All Things Considered. Linda Wertheimer comes to me from 89.9, beginning an interview with Senator Kerry who, it seems, after 32 years is coming forward to rid himself of atrocious horrors he committed during the Vietnam war.
"Cool!" I remark to his candor, ready to embrace his frank contrition.
Although immediately he's testy, evasive. Not contrite. Explaining the event in guarded bombast.
"It was night, we were 100 yards away, taking fire," etc. He defends receiving the Medal of Honor, claiming it was justified and, after all, he hadn't really done anything wrong. After all.
I was disappointed. Thinking a man of prominence was coming forward after many years, to clear his conscience from the taint of poor judgment during an incident of war-time terror and show us how it's okay to be terrified in terrifying circumstances.
Not so. He was there to defensively refute someone else's allegation. And the band played on.
We came to the intersection of another road leading east. Signs were stuck in the center of both: "ROAD CLOSED."
Hah! Nah. Not for us.
Another two miles, up a rise, past Herb's pasture, nearing the Store and the crossroads where life will be allowed to unwind.
An orange fence rose up from a dip. Then another, closer to us. Dammit! It's true. As we approached I saw the road cease to exist between the fences. Nothing but empty air and a sharp ten-foot cliff on the opposite side, the bottom deep out of sight. I cursed more vividly, turned around in a driveway, then stopped to consider the options. EZ, who knew the nearness of the cabin and was poised for maniac release, studied my face for reassurance that this was all just a joke. Maybe ... I could back up, go really fast, and do a Dukes of Hazard off the slight rise on our side?
I retreated. EZ settled into a curl on the seat and sighed. Extravagantly.
Okay. Not all is lost. There's another road--back along this tormented one, that heads west and meets up with a Logging road. I'll take that.
"ROAD CLOSED."
This sign leaned out over the road, draped with grasses and discourteous graffiti.
Okay. To hell with it. We'll retrace ten miles to the blacktop, turn west and take County 14 north. It's blacktop and meets up with another east/west road.
Wertheimer is speaking with a soldier who was there under Kerry's Vietnam night of command and has a remarkably different story; such as ordering a rounded-up cluster of yawning slumberous women and children, to be shot on the family doorsteps of their homes.
10:10-
The fire is roasting a polish sausage skewered on a stick across the open stove door. Spring peepers are screeching in stereo to the north. Outside for a pee, the stars are winking through leafless branches and the river rapids are a rarely-heard rush in the south. A shadowy moon crescent is lowering in the west behind Red's Shed. Is it possible the earth has changed so irrefutably from a month ago? Outside in only a T-shirt, I walk across the snow-less bare ground. I'm free! The next six months are all promises to roam where I want! Partridges are drumming. I slap a mosquito ... then smile to be able to do so. I'm in love with this release, this emergence from enclosured insanity. And no longer having to pretend that January in The Woods is just like July, only a tad cooler.
We did make it to the cabin, an hour late. The east/west blacktop bridge was intact, though badly eroded along the south shoulder. A "detour" sign was set up at the crossroads. "ROAD CLOSED TWO MILES" warning us not to go further past the Store.
The cabin still stood, high and dry as my father had planned. Turned into the clearing, sensing the saturated clay earth pulling at the tires. Turned off the motor. Sigh.
EZ was interested. She glanced at me, "yeah, so, let me out." But she was also unusually intent on the woods off to the northwest, which, in hindsight, I know why.
"Pay her no mind. She must have to pee, and run, and escape the truck cab. Cute girl."
She has a habit of exiting the truck and launching counter-clockwise around the back and off into freedom. That's just what she did today. But her enthusiasm was more focused than usual.
Out she went. Around the back. Full gallop toward the biffy--toward the back-end spray of a startle-fanned porcupine trundling slow, like a lame comedian trying to escape a shower of insults and cascading ripe cabbage.
"NO!
She hesitated. The porcupine loped. EZ ran again, nearing the quill-fan by three feet.
"NO!!
EZ circled back, glancing over her right shoulder. Then came to me. I invited her back into the truck. She jumped in as though, "what fun do you have planned next?"
I got the key. Unlocked the door quickly and took down the .22. Loaded it and went back outside. Porcupine had disappeared under Red's Shed. I crouched and peered into the jumble, scooted closer, pushing ahead a spirited apprehension. Was it clinging to the underside, waiting to whap me with a lively tail?
No sign. I went around the other side and scanned the woods floor. Porcupines are slow movers; he couldn't have gotten far in two minutes. I listened for telltale sounds of crinkling dead leaves, went further back, studied the leafless trees. They're good climbers. No bodies up high. It had vanished.
EZ was lucky. So was I.
Unpacked. Drove down the road and unloaded the four burlap-shrouded shrubs and two maple youths into swampy floodwaters beside the road. They'd been dug out and brought along for permanent installation here when I'd moved from my old house a week earlier. Continued down to the river to see what the flooding had done. The water, though still raging high, had been four feet higher earlier in the week. Only the two forty-pound sidewalk blocks remained of the sitting log I'd installed last fall were there, though one was ten feet down-bank from where it'd been placed.
"Damnit."
So started the argument.
"All the years we've been coming here--forty years!--and I finally got around to constructing a bench and within six months it's taken away. Gone, gone, gone!"
The bank and onward below is scoured clean, laid bare to biblical nakedness. Dead grasses strayed flat against the ground, all aimed downstream. Everything not rooted is gone, and even some of that. New layers of sand and silty muck have been laid down. The clump of tag alders I'd sculpted into picturesque Bonsai are mostly uprooted and laying sideways, root masses bare and free of soil. EZ stands chest deep in hazardous hard rapids, where only dry airy streambank had been last fall. I call her back, still pissed about good work being eliminated so easily by the river.
"The fun was in the doing."
"No it wasn't! It was work. But I succeeded. So for future years I and my heirs would have a place to sit and consume the calm."
"You can make another. It'll be even better."
"Be quiet. I made it perfectly. There is no 'better' for that bench!"
"Settle down. The second time is always better. Think what you've learned about how to do a superior design next time."
"Shut up! I scouted and cut the perfect tree -- an oak twelve inches in diameter. I pondered and planned and wrangled and sweated. It all came together charmingly. The incentive for doing it was that it would be here for years. To enjoy the fruit of my labor! And I don't like having to repeat a job well done."
"Ah, but this is teaching you perseverance, building character under adversity. The fun fruit of your labor was in the doing. Besides, what do you expect, you oaf, placing a bench in a river's flood plain?"
"To hell with you. I'll buy a plastic lawn chair and tie it to a tree."
Peepers are loud above the sound of water rushing. Sun is still high and hot through leafless trees, at 5:30 p.m.
6:40-
Stopped in at the Store to say "hi." Asked Meg how much rain they'd had, to create such disorder.
"Oh, five or six inches."
"That's all?"
She became indignant at my lack of regard for the magnitude of her rainfall. "Yeah but, that was on top of all the snow melt!"
Meg was testy by all the phone call inquiries how to get from place to place. Property owners "from as far away as the Cities" had been seeking her advice as to which roads were passable, and which had been washed away.
7:13-
Extruded fly sun-shadows marching up the screen, throwing monstrous black echoes, mimicking what they do. Partridges pound all around, like teenagers advertising for action passing in booming bass cars.
A fire is built outside. Black sooty smoke rising out of birch bark. I rake in the cooling sun. Black flies are not out, yet.
Friday--
8:15 a.m.-
I walk to the truck through a ground covering of leaves. Am forced to stop and catch my breath before climbing inside. You may recall references back in March to wheezing and having to rest to replenish my breath part way to the cabin, because I'd gotten horribly out of shape.
I was further out of shape than imagined. In early February I had trouble sleeping at night. Breathing was the flaw. Within fifteen minutes had to arise from the bed and fight for air, like allergy asthma, which I've had some experience with during spring pollen season. Sitting up helped, but not as much as an albuterol inhaler would've. In March I begged to borrow an inhaler from Merilee. It didn't work. And thanks a lot Sis, for giving me an empty.
I dialed the doctor and requested a prescription for a new one. Picked it up, used it that night, then murmured pharmacist death threats in the dark because he had given me an empty one too.
Made an appointment with the doctor. He took a quick listen to my heart and lungs and said "you don't have asthma. You've got congestive heart failure. You recently had a heart attack."
I denied it. A victim of wrongful identification denying participation in last night's train robbery, or slanderous involvement in a paternity suit. I called him a liar and told him he'd not know a stitch from a stench, then sullied his ancestry and threatened to rebuke his license. He nodded affably and infuriated me further. I'd never had a hospital stay or a broken bone, or anything more medically serious than a quick office visit to remove a predicament from my side. (It was a silly teenage diving mishap. Moral: don't swim under water with a three-foot long sharply-barbed frog spear in your hand aimed at your torso. When you're seventeen).
"I want to run some tests: EKG, echocardiogram, blood work-up, stress test, chest x-ray."
"I can't afford it."
"We'll work with you. You must do this."
"Or what?!"
"You'll die."
"So? I will anyway."
He said I had a severe heart murmur (a valve not closing good enough for him, allowing blood to whoosh backward through my (his alleged) derelict device. He explained that my lungs were filling with fluid, especially at night while I was prone, thus the difficulty breathing.
I denied it. Must be some simple explanation, or merely a touch of the flu. Just give me stronger drugs quick, and I'll surely get through.
He handed me a clutch of pill samples and a stack of test orders and a prurient wad of prescriptions to fill, instructing me that it was too soon to know at this time just what was going on--or had gone on, in the very center of me.
I humored him and took the paperwork and pills, agreeing to show up at the free clinic on Tuesday for some of the tests.
I returned to work and took a diuretic and, WOW!, within fifteen minutes--and every fifteen minutes for two hours--visited the men's urinal and marveled at how efficiently--how powerfully--my weary old prostate could pump when provoked. I mean, I haven't been able to pee that far since age seven, when it was clocked at 35 mph and twenty-three feet. The bathroom at work is only ten feet wide, but with my back to the wall ...
I showed up on the day of the echocardiogram, and was invited into an examination room. "T-shirt off, Hon. Lay on your side."
I got to watch the pretty colors on the monitor: red and orange and blue signifying meaningful misfortune to the technician (who was pretty and vibrant and held the instrument against my chest in just such a way that her hand touched my skin. We blushed.) She gasped "oh my God," and telephoned my doctor, who happened to be in residence that afternoon. He rushed in, then called for the traveling cardiologist, who also happened to be there that day. The three of them consulted in terms of "regurge" and "imminent" and "arrest" and "collapse." They didn't even whisper in my presence, but exclaimed professional phrases and kept tapping the monitor glass, as though to startle tropical fish into action. Although not certain, I even thought I heard one of them mumble something like, "curtains."
The doctors departed to consult and research the manual. The technician turned off the machine, turned on the lights, showed me a brave rueful smile, looked down at the floor with a trembling chin, then turned and hurried from the examining room. Pity for the deceased who just don't know it yet.
My doctor returned with a foreboding poker face and a full house. I told him I felt quite well. I had no pain--anywhere, and was "doing just fine." This was just a lot of "hullabaloo about nothing after all and, can I go?"
He listened patiently, then told me that, after consulting with the itinerant Expert, it was determined my heart valve required repair. And, "while we're going in anyway (they never say "to slice open your skin, saw your bones, and pry open your chest") you need a heart catheterization beforehand, to inspect the condition of the aortic arteries. The test has been scheduled for April 17. It's an outpatient procedure and you'll not spend the night in the hospital, unless something unfortunate occurs. For that reason, plan to spend the night. Pack a bag with pajamas and bring your best dark suit, although that isn't usually needed. But, just in case, clean your fingernails and scrub your neck."
"Who is this Expert!, this virtuoso of my ventricular orifice who has tattled bad things about my perfectly good health? How do I know he's not just a traveling salesman out drumming up business for the corporate home office?"
"He's not a traveling salesman," rebutted doctor. "I've known and worked with him for fifteen years. Trust him. This is serious."
"How long do I have left,?" I asked wholly perturbed, when I spied a hearse's rear bumper backed up to the curb.
Doctor departed. I put on my shirt and left the examination room. The technician who'd performed on me was weeping tear-stained behind the nurse's station, garbling something about "so unfair, waste of such virility, etcetera." I passed the villainous cardiologist on my way out and stuck my tongue out, and almost got caught.
April 17--
I showed up at the Hospital at the appointed time of 7:30 a.m. I was driven there by a good friend who'd had bypass surgery twelve years earlier and assured me it was "relatively possible" to live through. A low-slung woman asked personal questions-- "You want a religion with that?" then came from behind a reception booth and said I should follow. She told me her name, and as we walked kept swinging her head at the floor, snarling "It's Ethel not Bethel! ... like Mertz, not the church."
She escorted me to a large room divided into smaller rooms, each separated by sliding curtains printed with clumsy florid designs. I was instructed to undress and put on the gown, then put the robe over. It took a few moments to sort out gown from robe. They both opened in front. A nurse came in, told me to lay down on the bed, and said she was going to install "my IV."
Not the IV, but my IV as though from then on it would be mine to tinker with, liberating the flow as I pleased. She listened to my heart, whistled "who-eee", and ran out. She returned immediately, dragging two other nurses by the ears, and urged them to "git a listen to this will ya!," as though she'd discovered a two-headed dwarf with eyes for ears. Each yanked out a stethoscope, placed it over my heart, grew wide-eyed, then grinned and bowed proudly at me.
The IV was plunged then taped into place. I was shown how to operate the television remote--it only surfed upward and presented The Hospital Channel (bingo Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m.) and selections of: House and Garden network, Golden Age network, Eternal Word Network, The Macho Network (guys in dark sunglasses standing in huge fishing boats yelling "Yow-zers Danny!, look at this one" and dangling wriggling big bass up close to my screen), and network television, which had begun it's mid-morning soap opera programming. (Oh, and Fox, which was in the midst of a pledge drive to raise money for struggling bi-glandular children in Scadislud, or somewhere near there.) Another button on the remote--red against beige--showed an icon of windshield washers in action. It didn't do anything, either volume or channel. I pressed really hard, again and again. Then swore at the damned device and flung it away.
A nurse came in and asked if she could get me something. I said "No. But thanks for asking," and she left. I picked up the control and again tried to find something to watch. One channel menacingly displayed "IO/input error." So I fiddled again with the windshield-wash button, stabbed it and held it, and cursed it extremely for being broken. A different nurse came in wanting to know what she could do for me, because I had called.
I denied it.
"You pressed the 'call' button."
Then it dawned bright and clear, as I put on my glasses, grabbed the remote gizmo, but still didn't see.
"What button is that?"
"The red one with the nurse's hat."
"That's not a nurse's hat. It's windshield washers."
"No it's not. You see any windshields need washing in here? Just stop it!"
I read a book. Then looked at the wall. A Pain Index chart on the wall showed iconic human faces, from grinning to contorted, running the range of zero discomfort (happy demeanor, but vacant elsewise) up to ten (what the French got to see at the bottom of wicker guillotine baskets).
My test was scheduled for 1 p.m.
At 11:45 another two nurses swished back my curtain and begged to hear to my murmur. I humorously said "I'm going to start charging admission for this sideshow." They ignored my demand, gave me a listen, were properly impressed, and said how they'd heard about it down on second floor. Then, in unison said, "You're great! Who ever would'a guessed."
I read some more.
A bit later a man with whiskers stopped in saying he'd heard down at the bus stop of some excitement up on the third floor and was there, "to listen to my commotion."
The nurse came in at 11:55 and asked if I was okay or did I want a Valium? I asked how much I was in line for?
"Ten milligrams. Once."
I am familiar with the joy of ten milligrams of Valium, and much more than ten, from formerly trying to live a life unsuited. (It didn't work.) I opted to savor the expectation and wait.
At 12:05 my nurse swished in with another nurse. This newcomer-nurse had heard of a marvelous murmur in the building--and also my condition of admission. (Earlier, as a monkeyshine while waiting, I'd made up some signs stating reviewing schedules and my price of admission and placed them around on the walls of the ward.) She pressed a dime into my hand and requested a listen. We laughed. But she left me her dime which at this moment is carried in my wallet, visible through the little plastic window, which for normal people shows a driver's license and a grisly personal photograph.
At 12:09 a man wearing a suit and tie entered my apartment and asked if he could hear the murmur. He introduced himself as "administrator of this excellent facility," and wanted, "to assure stockholders that fine work was being undertaken."
I murmured, then waved him away when he refused to show me the dime.
At 12:11 a young woman dressed in serious blood-room greens whizzed back my curtain, whipped out a stethoscope and violated my rule. (I wasn't going to say anything that might cause worse hurting later in that room where bright lights blast the eyes and heart monitors are known to inexplicably stop beeping.) Another young woman dressed in school clothes: plaid jumper, white blouse, knee highs and saddle shoes, was watching. Blood-room lady asked, "you want to hear too?," as she explained that this other young woman was in medical school and doing some, "real life training today." Young lady, dimply and substantially constructed out front in a way trashy guys like, and who had a big grin I liked very much, chirped up and said, "we're working on the heart chapter this week and I'd love to hear too. Can I watch your catheterization too?"
Knowing where a catheterization enters a human body and relinquishing my modesty unto her, figuring it'd make a good headstart on our marriage, I asked, "Is this a date? I'll bring the flowers, you bring the wine." She accepted.
As they departed my nurse came in holding a tiny white cup, "here's your Valium." I brightened and snatched it away.
Valium is a deceptive drug. It fails to do much at all, unlike LSD or gin, or a cast iron skillet brought down hard on one's head. All I know is by the time four burly orderlies with unshaven chins and chest hair sprouting everywhere, escorted by blood room lady (with hardly any hair sprouting), swished back my curtain, I was giggling and chortling in my charming abode, enraptured by bingo and the vast lucre I'd won, the ludicrous arty clouds on the wall, and having a good time singing sea chanties all alone in my room and craving a good cup of tea.
"Hi, y'all! You here to fetch me? Let's go!"
They rolled me out of the room, past other occupied hovels harboring patients laggard and dull, down the hall, me whistling "Yankee Doodle," chattering how, "exciting all of this was," and holding the hand of my new girlfriend. Blood woman pushed a button on the wall and my bed swerved into a wall, whose doors swung open in the nick of time.
This area was large and cluttered with electronic devices swinging from the ceiling. Cascades of blinking black machines and large monitors lined the walls--except one, where a burly cross-eyed technician (draped in a shroud) off-guardedly wheeled a drapery in front of a cabinet housing machetes, and a striking variety of dripping wet garden shears.
My bed was bashed into an operating table and I was told to, "get up there quick. The doctor's almost here. We gotta' get you shaved."
With that I was settled, in a manner of speaking. Two technicians--Benny and Bluto, whipped off the sheet and began working at my groin behind a large Plexiglas panel, as my lover looked on. (I guessed the plastic glass was there to protect workers from sudden blood squirts.) A lady attendant said she was going to slip me some "happy juice through my IV, to help you forget."
I was amenable, you bet!, though in no position to stop it. I felt loud electric tools nudging my crotch, then was told I'd feel a, "little prick," where the local anesthesia was inserted. (In my pre-forgetful state I thought Bluto was telling a dirty joke with "prick" in it.) Suddenly another man, wearing a mask, and looking official, appeared down there. I asked if we'd met before. He said he was "The Doctor," and would be faithfully performing my test. I felt nothing but slight tugging. I turned to watch the monitor at the left of my head and saw someone's fast-beating heart. Then a tiny string appeared on-screen. Then a sudden gray cloud flowed and a warm sensation surged through my chest and legs and head. Then Doctor was gone.
My sweetheart swooped in, saying she'd brought the wine ... now where are the flowers?! I kissed her hand and promised to fax them. An attendant applied numbing hard pressure to the right side of my groin, and pushed it for fifteen minutes.
I was brought back to my nook and nurse took over the pressure on my incision. I asked for my fiance to take over the chore, but was told, "quit being such a bore." She chatted about her new boyfriend and what a "cool guy," he was and how they'd met just last weekend at a flea market in Elmdale and how he was taking her bowling in Irma real soon. Finally she withdrew her fist and laid a sandbag across the wound and departed the room with instructions to "lie still and be good." The fun was wearing off as the drugs dissipated. I tried to recapture my enthusiasm by fiddling with the television remote, but nothing worked. I dozed until the curtain was whipped back to the words, "you have to stay here until the surgeon can see you. It might be a few minutes yet."
"Thanks."
I read for a time, the clock hands barely moved. Patients in neighboring cubicles moaned and gibbered at inarticulate spouses and one chipper nurse told how a friend had, "had this done, so cheer up."
The sound of swiveling wheels and clattering utensils neared my department. A female voice from behind the curtain inquired, "Mr. Mattison, would you like a tray?"
"For what?"
"Of food. Are you hungry?"
I wasn't, but said to bring it in anyway. She did, negotiating a bed table over my lap, set it down, peeled lids off a dish of custard and one of stewed prunes, a cup of coffee (decaf), then opened a carton of milk and lifted the lid from the entree. To say it was hash would be a discourtesy. It was hash with paprika on top, prepared by a half-witted druid, subsidized with a portion of mashed potatoes drenched in kerosene fluid. Alongside was a wilted pile of last Thursday's carrots mixed in with some boogers.
"Now I get to hear your heart." She whipped out a stethoscope and shoved it rudely right onto my chest. I clicked my teeth and squeaked them together. Disheartened, she said, "it don't sound so big a deal," and ran out.
I tested the hash, then sampled the potatoes, and a carrot. It was fabulous, and I dove into it with gusto. Cleaned all of it away including the boogers, wondering why hospital food is so badly maligned. The tray was picked up with promptness and cheer, then away went another new mistress with a wink and a leer.
An hour later, (during which I solved quadratic notations and interpreted Rangoon's insidious debt), I was reminded that I was expected to wait for the surgeon who needed to talk "to me." Not with me but to me. I reflected on that choice of word and the eternal ramifications for twenty minutes until a man transporting a halo under his arm peeked around my barricade, rapped on the wall with an Icabod-ish thin finger, and asked, (lisping ambiguously), if he could have a "moment with me."
(My God, if this is the surgeon I'm leaving right now!)
"Come in."
"I thee you are here for a heart teth'ting procedure. That ith very therioth. It meanth the end could be near. Is Jee'thuth your friend? Do you know Jee'thuth, my friend?"
"Who?"
"Jee'thuth."
"Oh, Christ."
He chattered at me. I nodded amiably. He departed, after loading me up with free literature to review, "early and thoberly."
I put on the slippers they outfitted me with, white terry cloth, thin rubber soles. The fitting department missed by two sizes. I left my cubbyhole and strode down the hall, making sounds like walking in skindiver flippers. Curtains were drawn, carrying low voices and tears, carried on currents of horror and fears. I walked with strength and youthful vigor, making it known to the nurses that I'm not decrepit like all them others.
By 4:30 p.m. I had most of the ward to myself. I heard a knock on the wall outside my curtain and a male voice asked to come in. A pleasant young man in a surgical dress stepped into my room. He introduced himself as Cardiac Surgeon. In addition to the Mitral valve which needed work, I also needed rerouting of three aortic arteries, commonly known as triple bypass. Doctor said he would do everything possible to repair, rather than replace, the valve. A prosthetic device was least preferable, and if installed, would require my taking blood thinning drugs the rest of my life to prevent clotting around the mechanical surfaces, which could cause troublesome strokes and lung problems, or an irksome run-in with death.
Did I have any questions?
Yes. I certainly did, but couldn't recall them at the moment.
He left the room to work out the schedule while I got back into street clothes, then he handed me a surgical appointment for May 2, next Wednesday.
10:45-
Chuck arrived mid-morning, to bring his birch logs out of The Woods for supporting the center of their new home. He has brought along a contraption made out of square tubular steel. It has two large pneumatic tires and an ice-pincer device attached to a tubular steel handle. It's called "Arch Junior" and is capable of hauling heavy logs out of the woods, if everything is properly balanced. And if the ground is steady--hah-hah, which it never is around here in late April.
He starts the chainsaw to remove the end on the ground. Susie, the miniature dog, runs close in for a look. Chuck picks up the toy she has flung down under the tree, throws it away, and sets back into sawing. The end on the ground separates from the whole. But the remainder stays leaning and long, and heavily pointing like a cannon barrel aiming high for maximum distance. Chuck unleashes the log-hauler contraption, jockeying it into position at the end of the leaning tree, nudges the pincer ends into the sides of it, and puts his weight down onto the handle. The end lifts slightly and slowly--with great "rraggggh'ing" from Chuck--the tree is pulled half a degree more horizontal. Whether two tons or three, means the difference of one, which matters little when it's all heavy as sin.
"Well, this is the way the book said to do it."
The ground is very soft and not helping a bit. It would be a more convivial task if this was performed on hard seasoned concrete. The truck is brought around. Clinking chain is unfurled and wrapped in two circuits around the tree trunk. A critical factor constricting this chore is preserving the bark from scarring, or blemishing, since the whole of its white beauty will be on domestic display for years into the future.
Susie runs up with her toy and plops it down for all of us to admire. Then barks, "Goddamnit!," like a fiend for one of us to enjoy her by throwing it.
The winch is unwound through loud electrical whining, slowly lengthening as Chuck pulls the hook in his left hand. Operating the remotely wired control in his right, he leans back into the tug. Then all noise stops, so does his backward movement. A moment of confusion. The reach of the electrical cord was breached. It unplugged from its seat.
I chuckle, then strike a sober face, (like a fully engaged brother-in-law should at such times), and save my guffawing on the ground for another time.
I volunteer to take over the easy part of pushing buttons so Chuck can assist the big tree onward. The mighty winch motor tightens the cable, then the chain, then lowers an octave as dead resistance sets in. But it keeps retrieving itself and the tree begins to move, pushing out ahead a Titanic bow wake of dead leaves and brown clay. The truck is rocking; the ground shakes. But onward comes the tree, becoming more and more prone, releasing from the embrace of its all-winter family. It's finally laying full on the ground, now a log not a tree.
Susie barks somewhere from under a fern. EZ, who has yet to take pleasure from Susie's raucous screaming and affectionate heel nips, lowers her head and sinks back down to the ground.
Through the magic of physics and leverage and balance, and a stump notched as a secure fulcrum, the two nine-foot long logs are loaded into the back of Chuck's truck and secured with a nylon strap.
Logs are round and, being round, have a spirited tendency to roll. Especially in curves, unless nailed down, which is not easy to do in the back of a truck. The strap, which has a nice hook on each end, is wound around each log (to shorten its length), then dropped through a hook eye inside the truck bed. But there's nothing with tension present, like the elasticity of rubber or a modicum of mucilage. The strapping is wilty and needs a strong pull.
I dither about it internally, pestering with worry. Chuck unhooks the hook and takes another stitch around the pair, cinching the straining connective strap, which tightens between their airy space, then again sets the hook into eye. My concern is kept quiet. It'll all turn out all right. But six hundred pounds of loose cannons careening around the rear end of a pickup truck reminds me of bears in the attic dancing on thin plaster, just above my head in the bedroom late at night when I'm wanting to sleep. Efficient knots are applied. So are high hopes for the best.
Saturday--
7:45 a.m.-
Chuck takes a leak beside Red's Shed. EZ stands guard.
Susie and EZ politely share ball-throwing fetches. Although Susie is more adamant about the ball staying in motion, she concedes when the throw is in EZ's favor.
8:00-
Chuck has become concerned about Susie's vulnerability to woodticks, realizing the repellent was forgotten at home. But, a simple cell phone call to Merilee should bring the matter to rest. She is driving over today with daughter Sarah and can bring it along.
Chuck walks to the road with cell phone in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other. Susie circles his feet and flings her ball at their strides, cursing and barking for more action from him. Chuck doesn't notice because he's a man on a mission. Thumbing digits with his left hand, then finishing and raising the phone to his head, Susie drops the ball directly in front of his feet. He kicks the ball ahead. EZ runs up behind (she knows when fun is nigh). Chuck sips at his coffee then disappears behind a tree, then emerges showing pissed-off body language. And stabbing at phone-pad numbers with his right hand, inspecting the keypad display, then stopping and raising the phone to his ear.
Then lowering it, studying it, being a good sport.
The signal is poor.
Contact with home is finally made on the third try, just as Susie starts yapping
for a throw from the ball. Chuck kicks at it violently, then hangs up the
phone. And yells naughty words.
He re-dials, then
yells toward the instrument, held twelve inches out front.
"TICK MEDS! TEE-TOM, EYE-IDIOT, SEE-CLOD, KAY-KNIGHT!" then puts the phone to his ear, and curses and shouts at the whole world nearby.
I am washing up
a few breakfast dishes inside, so as not to notice the technological commotion
stirring out on the road. Susie, though admittedly still a youth, doesn't
seem concerned about ticks, and flips her jingle ball high.
Chuck puts the phone
in a pocket and heads out fast for the county road.
1 p.m.-
We take a walk down
to the river. The dogs are good friends now and run up ahead, but keep an
eye on each other and monitor what's said. The sky has cleared of all cloudy
potential and is pouring out sun and warmth. Our shadows are stark against
the bare ground. The water level has fallen six inches in two days, although
it's still gurgling against places it shouldn't be if the world were back
in its boundaries and playing fair.
Meandering through
the downstream alders I came upon the five-foot long sitting bench wedged
lengthwise beneath rotted debris trees.
"OH!"
Gracious be. Salvation from complete flight of my work is to be had. Chuck
picked it up, balanced it on a shoulder and delivered it back to the streambank.