"Maybe We Should All Go Out For a Smoke"
Monday, July 2--
The metallic tone
in her voice instantly loosed long-ago memories of cool summer mornings, a
honeymoon, and bakery walls covered with black-and-white photographs of celebrities
and politicians, including Hubert Humphrey smiling beside this elderly memoir
of a woman who once was. She once owned Stacy's Pastry in Sandstone and served
up crisp elephant ears and spunky cookies and to-kill-for raised doughnuts
from behind sparkling glass pastry cases, under a show-stopping blonde beehive
hairdo. Stacy had always been there behind the counter, dressed in a snappy
waitress uniform, graciously greeting--and remembering--infrequent visitors
and regulars alike. The hair remained a shrine, emphatic and constant, as
though formed with glue and detached each night and placed in a mold. Most
exciting was the way a great swoop of yellow hair swept down from on high,
gushed across her forehead and disappeared into dark passage above the right
ear.
The blonde beehive was gone forever, replaced by a gray helmet, still coifed professionally, but thinned and as sensible to the times as her ratted tower of old once was.
I surfaced to a reunion with this soul from the past and performed a Ralph Cramden double-take, after requesting, "four glazed doughnuts."
"You're Stacy?"
"Yes I am," she said with a fidget of doubt. Deep-set eyes showed no recognition of me. Nor, I doubted, much about yesterday.
"I don't know if you remember, but my new bride and I used to ..." And I told her of me.
She smiled vaguely, bobbing her head in affirmation. My bride and I patronized her bakery when we'd come to town, more than twenty years earlier. I sensed then that Stacy and us had become good old friends; she always knew exactly who we were and expressed delight about our new marriage and seeing us again, asking specifics about my job in Duluth and Dedre's college career. She always greeted us with gracious welcome, even though months had passed since our last trip.
Stacy's Pastry had been gone for years. This past winter I inquired to its fate and was told that her son had built a bakery in Hinkley. "Stacy helps out behind the counter most days."
"We've been here fifteen years now. I sold out when Jeffrey wanted to have a place beside the freeway. So we moved here. I've been doing this all of my life. My fruitcake is world famous, you know. We advertise in newspapers and magazines. It's been shipped all over the world, even to Czechoslovakia and Norway. I don't put any of that icky citron in it."
"I recall you used to have pictures of famous people on the walls, especially Hubert Humphrey."
"Oh yes." A journey through the olden days stirs behind her eyes. "He and I are good friends. I got a letter from him just the other day. My son built this bakery fifteen years ago. I help him. He wanted to be by the freeway. You know, I once had my own bakery in Sandstone."
Customers are queuing behind me.
"I'll take two doughnuts and an apple fritter too, and one of those pecan turtles in the case beside you." While she's getting my goods I grab a loaf of feisty-looking Minnesota Cheese Onion Wild Rice Bread from a display shelf behind me.
"Okay. That's 85 cents each for the doughnuts, 95 cents for the apple fritter, a dollar twenty-five for the dark chocolate coconut haystack, a dollar ninety-five for the pecan turtle with dark chocolate and fresh roasted pecans, and two forty-nine for the Minnesota Cheese Onion Wild Rice Bread made with native wild rice. Ten twenty-four."
"Oh, and a cup of coffee too please."
She looks at the cash register tape, then the digital screen, pauses, stares at the coffee maker across the way and says, "Eleven dollars."
I hand her a twenty. She puts it in her apron pocket and fingers change from the register drawer, three quarters and a penny.
"No, with coffee it's eleven dollars. Don't give me coin, just nine dollars."
"Did you have two coffees?"
"No. Just one. You said it comes to eleven, with coffee."
She drops the quarters into the penny compartment and the penny on the nickels, looks up at me, "you said that was eleven?" takes a one and a ten and hands them over.
"No, I owe you eleven. My change is nine. A five and four ones."
"Oh." She puts the ten in her pocket and the single with the tens, pulls four ones and a five from the drawer, smiles reassuringly, and offers them over.
Jeffrey swoops out of the kitchen balancing a tray of cookies, looks over her shoulder at me, smiles broadly, says "good morning," thanks me for my business and, still smiling, departs to a display case.
I gather my bags, pour coffee into a Styrofoam cup and take a table near the door, wondering if Jeffrey has trouble balancing his day each night. The cash register tape drapes over the register and coils like a snake on the floor. A minor but fetching quirk of the place. And I like it.
A pragmatic lady customer, waiting for change, spies it littered there at her feet, bends over, picks up the works, waves it accusingly at Stacy, tears it off near the register, says "do you mind?" leans over and drops it into a waste container behind the counter. She slaps her hands together like brushing off dirt and looks pleased with this act of tidiness she has wrought.
I decide to drive through downtown and return to Sandstone by way of old '61 rather than the interstate. Most commerce has moved out to the freeway; downtown is beyond hemorrhage and well into death. Little is new there, only decrepit buildings converted to consignment sales and pawn shops. One's called "Tinker's Clam," (it's a casino town) and used clothing, "Nothing is Musty." A Citgo station languishes on the north end of town; the only customer is checking the coolant on his Allis Chalmers. The old train depot has been converted into the Great Hinkley Fire Museum. I want to go inside, but change my mind when I see the admission sign out front expecting: Adults $5.00.
Five dollars? That's outrageous! Why not a dollar? Or free? Or a small one-time fee? Apparently this is private enterprise and must pay for rent and heat and employees and unemployment benefits without county or state subsidy. Why isn't a museum like this publicly funded? The Hinkley fire was a major public event, (and contrary to rumor did not erupt the same day as the little old Chicago fire), so why are they charging visitors to admire a tragic story which remains in the public domain?
And, FIVE DOLLARS?! Wouldn't a free museum, dedicated to communal disaster, be a public service to help citizens handle fire with care? Shouldn't Smokey The Bear fund such a cause?
I drive away in a snit, cursing private minds that profit from public calamity. Though the lights were lit no cars were parked in the gravel lot. A clerk leaned against the door-frame smoking and talking on a phone.
I exit town in a rant. EZ agreed.
Heading along the old highway--the route to The Woods in the 1960's--I mused about a two-mile-long pine plantation old enough to have seen our family car passing 40 years ago. Fantasizing how neat it would be if trees were video cameras and could show us those times we drove by, two little kids leaning on the back of the front seat, Dad flicking his cigar ash out of the wing window of the green Dodge, Mom reading aloud from Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I.
We got back to town just in time to watch a middle-aged woman in a Ford pickup truck--ten feet high at the cab and three feet off the ground at the axles and hauling a barking dog in the back--negotiate into a grocery store parking slot. She and dog were determined to the task, backing and forthing, barking and turning, consulting side mirrors for small cars to straddle. Then giving it up and roaring to park in the street. The woman lowered a small step ladder to the ground by a rope, lifted it, rotated it into position, then stepped daintily down in high rubber hog boots, put the ladder in the truck cab, slammed the door and limped to the store in a tube top and panties. Stenciled to the truck's rear window: "Raised To Sever Chevy's." The dog barked at cars.
I followed her in.
Settling on Shurely-Be-Good® brand toilet paper and Sump's Not The Source® bottled water (the two gallons I'd filled from the Store's spigot had hovering clots sediment) I discovered the lady's panties weren't panties after all but the bottoms of a cut-off swim suit, erotically frayed about the upper buttocks, showing a partially exposed tattoo of a leaping largemouth bass. (A bass on the butt is the latest fashion around here.)
Noon--
We returned to the cabin under gray cool sky, temperature mid-fifty. A perfect day for physical work if only the urge could be evoked. I had a few sharp words with myself about "no work, no eat," as Dad used to forebode, loaded the chainsaw into the wheelbarrow and headed around the path out back. Lethargy's cure is often nothing more than setting in and letting the adrenaline show where the fun is. I set about sectioning the sitting-bench oak Chuck and I pulled down in November--damning the branches and rocks lurking beneath ferns and tripping my feet. Moved to a leaning birch I'd sawn last year, sectioning it piece at a time until it stood nearly upright, threatening to topple and crush us.
A dull chain is a dreary thing. And they get that way in an instant when the sawyer isn't looking, when rocks leap up at it from two feet away. To the cabin for bug-free sharpening and a Jeffrey's doughnut. Back to the woods to finish the birch, then mowed the trail to reveal the wealth of dead wood waiting to be broken into kindling for next winter.
--"BOOM"--three feet behind me just now as I write, against the cabin glass. I startle and EZ, who'd been napping outside the open panel, has sat up rigid with befuddlement in her watery eyes, trying to get alert to sudden emergencies. I know this sound -- a bird flying into the window. I arise and go out around the cabin. A downy woodpecker, about the size of a robin, is wing-splayed in the grass, though attentive and rotating its head. A smudge of feathers clings to the window, dead center. I move a toe toward the bird and it flutters up to a nearby tree.
--Kindling candidates were dropped by the path for later. I loaded the wheelbarrow with two chunks of oak to replace the sitting log supports washed from the riverbank during April's flood. Wheeled it out to the clearing, loaded the chainsaw and gas and oil and the oak chunks and the mower into the back of the car. No room for EZ but she didn't mind running ahead as I idled the quarter mile.
The river is low now, barely moving its flanks, foam hats riding decorously
high. I mowed the bank open, leaving a fringe of foliage along the lip of
the stream, then set about cutting up and throwing the tag alder remains of
my Bonsai masterpiece into the stream. EZ got excited by these large floating
tangles and watched them drift slowly past, expecting they'd momentarily leap
up and perform a revue.
The bridge pilings haven't had any reason for being for the past sixty years. Strong in 1959, when large portions of concrete slabs still clung to their sides, only one still piling stands tall. The others rise rotting and frayed five or ten inches above the water. Where is the concrete now? Still there, sunk under five feet of water? Impossible to believe such massive structures, which certainly don't wash away or decay like organic old wood, could still be submerged in the narrow deep.
I finished mowing and carried the bench supports from the car, chain-sawed flat spots on each to hold the bench top from rolling, nudged it all into place, then sat, just as mosquitoes zoomed in and a brief drizzle moved through.
Got back to the cabin around 5:00 and set in to mowing. Cut grass for half-an-hour, then sat by the fire and opened a beer. Five swallows had me slurring badly and winking scandalously at EZ. I arose to stand but my body insisted I sit right back down and "stop it already!" I felt a shaking in the ground and watched stupidly as out of the earth rose a wall ten feet high and five feet wide. It leaned a bit north, then fell over me while I sat motionless to receive it.
I'd hit the wall.
Although the doctors assured I'd be "fully recovered in six weeks" from surgery eight weeks ago, my stamina has not.
Mechanical intervention--
I flicked away my cigarette at 5:10 a.m. on May 2, then wadded up the partially full pack and emphatically littered it onto a grassy spot at the edge of the hospital parking lot.
Daylight was raising her skirt in the east.
"Okay. Let's go," I said to Merilee, who had pulled into an empty side lot to graciously accommodate my final smoking request, making us fifteen minutes late for my 5 a.m. appointment. Surgery was scheduled for 7:30, but they like to get us in early, and naked--and promptly diminish all sense of personal autonomy. Official medical paperwork, received in the mail a few days earlier, had instructed us to use the Emergency Entrance. The day help wouldn't show up to service toenail fungus patients until long after I was scheduled to be unconscious and pried open. We parked under a squall of blue street lights and carried ourselves and library books and a fragment of brave dignity in through automatic sliding doors.
"Temporary Construction" signs directed us into an empty fluorescent room ringed by chrome and blue vinyl benches. It was decorated with framed photographic posters of leggy girl joggers along sunset beaches and sweaty male athletes gleaming in the mist, printed with motivations to be courageous: "Health - A Resistant State of Mind," and "Surgery - Not Too Bad."
An elderly Welcome Worker wearing a striped volunteer smock and hunched behind a windowed glass wall looked down at her desk. She startled from a paperback book as I approached. Then queried me with raised eyebrows.
"I am here for an appointment."
"Who are you? What! You here for surgery?"
"Yes."
I told her my name. She thumbed through a cardboard box of Mimeographed forms, brightened, and dialed a red telephone balanced on a black vinyl purse.
She brightened and pulled out a document. "Sit down."
It's flattering to be expected.
We sat. She hung up the phone.
I watched the unmoving room, Merilee was there beside me but I don't know where. We waited in silence. Soon a young woman pushed through a door and cheerfully gestured for us to follow.
Walking. Long hallways joined more long hallways. Monotonous artwork blurred past. We turned, circled back. Our young woman hostess chattered, then hushed. Shoes creaked, Dacron swished, far ends of hallways receded from our advance like cinematic tricks. We came to an elevator. The up arrow was pushed, then "bonged" that the ante to this journey was about to be upped.
And I noticed my wheeze was much better.
Exiting the elevator our escort pushed a metallic round disk on the wall, and wide double doors swept open in unison, declaring us unto a command post. We followed her into the brightly lit, but vacant Royal Arena.
Ah! This was the same preparation central where I'd had so much fun in April. We were told to wait. No chairs, so we stood, as assistance was rounded up down the hall. A nurse named Loxie with Koolaid hair slouched out of a doorway carrying a gown and a robe, buttoning her blouse and closing the door quietly. She gestured to an empty roomette and told me to, "remove every stitch of clothing. Then get onto the bed and brace yourself."
I did.
Merilee sat in a corner chair and watched. Within a few minutes a young girl about fourteen, in a swishing starched hoop skirt, wheeled in a cart piled high with exposed needles and fish filet knives--sticking straight up. Or so I recall. She cracked her gum and said she was Monica. I was poked until blood flowed freely enough. She gathered most of it into an empty tamale can, then packed up her sharps as an unsavory hulk wearing a nametag "SMEGMA" lumbered in dragging a satchel of tools.
"I am here to shave you from head to foot and will not tolerate any inflatulation."
It was evident why this individual was elected to lay bare, and maneuver, a man's nakedness. Little was the danger for passion if my shearer turned out to be female. Sex was not apparent; muscular shoulders and barrel chest absorbed all bosomy tell-tales. A facial mole sprouted three black hairs and a thick furry darkness ran the width of the upper lip, diminishing in pigmentation as it spread into sideburns beside each ear. What ended all speculation about her gender was incessant chatter about husbands and children, past and present, and uncle Bernie who "dug catfish," and her brother's nieces who regarded "all poetry as flagitious dreevil" unless it included fairies "tiptoeing stealth-wise through schoolyard sump pumps during Halloween's solstice." Or was it "grumps at the dump hollowing mortices?"
I was distracted and do not remember to well. I was concentrating completely on what she was going to do with me, then suddenly what she WAS doing to me, as the razor sliced close at my scrotum. Then her cold fingers flopped me over onto the other thigh and continued shaving (apparently without regard for what part of me she'd actually just flopped). She finished up, produced a cordless vac from her toolkit and cleaned up the floor (leaving me prickly with hair), patted my head and said Virgil her neighbor "had surgery once too and it wasn't too bad but he's dead. The Ford fell off the hoist."
An hour or so later, after counting 2,674 repeating purple print splotches in the wallpaper, two completely male guys wearing Green Bay Packer football jerseys and black NFL smudges under their eyes arrived at my cell--flexing big-veiny biceps and shadow-boxing each other, announcing that they were here to, "take you."
I, nonplused by the enormity of what was about to happen, cheered my sister with a brave smile and sniffled, "I love you." Then shuddered as the modesty curtain was screeched back and leaned into the curve as my bed was shoved out fast on two wheels, and shouted "I'm off to see the wizard," right fist held high in triumphant charge. My pushers grunted out numbers at random as we charged forward, then started counting--with great hilarity--backward from 100. They jerked me to a sudden stop at an intersection for the blur of another mobile bed dashing east, then accelerated fast, barely missing a running shrouded dark figure carrying a scythe and a paper sign Duct-tapped to its back: "I AIN'T FATHER TIME."
I was wheeled into a room--an ante room really, devised to introduce surgical virgins slowly to the hugeness of helplessness and the preposterous frailty of thin human flesh. This first room was just a haze though, because I was propelled full speed into an inner room which had big-wheeled gurneys lining the walls and many luminous technical instruments which required plugging in ... either to electrical wall sockets or a man's flesh, depending on which end of the cord won the coin toss. My hosts launched me toward "stall number 1," pushed a doorbell button on the wall, high-fived their palms, then sprinted away as I on my dray boomeranged off a large oily compressor and slammed into the corner and knocked over a set of golf clubs.
I expected to be asked--in fact had a speech prepared, if anybody should ask "may I help you?"
"I think not. I'll see myself to the door."
Nobody asked.
Then other Expert male health care workers took over. A late thirties-ish guy swung through a door at my left pushing a cart piled with gas masks and bright yellow cordless DeWALTs. Another guy wearing a George Gobel mask pushed open a door behind my head. He stared down, tiny eyes watering behind a dead plastic face. A third man hurried over, introduced himself as Doctor Knapp, and shook my hand. It was about then that the actuality of imminent major surgery, and utter loss of control, began to shape up in my mind. This was no longer a theoretical concept being pleasantly discussed inside an internist's office fifty miles away. Nor was it a dramatic television re-enactment happening to somebody else who, teary-eyed, could arise, swab away theatrical blood, and guzzle iced tea when the director hollered "cut! Ha-ha. Good show, Maurice."
I raised my right hand. When called on by a man (poised to puncture my left hand after whittling out his needle from a crow quill), I suggested a time-out to reconsider this excessive extravagance and, "maybe we should all go out for a smoke."
I was ignored. My left hand was impaled to a tube, and shortly I began to sense that things were going to be just fine, that mankind is delightful after all and takes a too-constricted view of trivial matters, and how needlessly we get worked up about the darnedest things. A short man in a tweed sportcoat, eating a Twinkie, shoved his way through the work crew and peeked tippy-toe onto the mattress where I was humming. He watched for a moment then nodded approval.
I asked if I knew him.
"Yeah, I'm Doctor, the one who consulted you (He sneezes Twinkie creme onto my chest) in April that you need a triple bypass and a heart valve repair. But I won't know what the extent of the damage is until I get in there ... no way to know at this time." He finishes his snack and assures me that, despite pesky spring allergies, everything is going to work out fine.
I shake his hand, then let it go quickly not to gimp it. Knapp elbows him away and explains that he will be keeping an eye on my vitals.
Activity escalated. Legions of nurses marched through my room two-by-two. Several patted my foot and winked, before pulling up masks and pushing head-down through the swinging saloon doors. Dr. Knapp said he was going to put me to sleep now and I was being dully irritated by tight constraints around my arms and a bulky length of 3/4-inch PVC plumbing pipe running between my lips and submerging down my throat. I raised my hands--what the hell--and discovered Ace bandages confining both forearms. Tourniquet tight and inconvenient.
I stroked the left arm with a right hand, musing how perfectly spaced were the wraps, and ... oh my, surgery's not such a big deal. I knew who I was and why, lucidly, and that my arms moved and, I had no pain.
I had not been told prior to surgery that, preferable to veins from the legs, arteries would be "harvested" from my forearms and used to reroute the heart's blood flow. Traditionally, veins--mere simple tubing--are taken from the legs. But arteries are preferred, being muscular by nature and designed with a lifetime guarantee.
Cool!
Then I surfaced again, more irritated at the brutal tightness of the forearm restraints. And pain.
Before surgery I was told that nurses are trained to read lips, because the breathing tube would prevent speech. They were right. I tried nice words, then nasty words. Then gestured brutishly with a particular middle finger and formed "hurt" with my lips. Nurse understood and leaned over, twiddled a valve on my umbilical hose and eased me back into the ether.
I awoke at 6:37 p.m. to the harsh gripping of the damnable windings around my arms. The doctor was there, monitoring monitors and ordering withdrawal of the pipe from my throat. Two nurses dragged it out from the depth of my chest, complimenting me at the state of its cleanliness and freedom from blood. I blushed, then croaked, "can somebody loosen these arm bands?"
Doctor said, "take them off."
I adored the great comfort and marveled at evenly spaced strips of Scotch tape holding the guts of each arm inside. I mumbled "hurt" and a nurse again sent me far away from it.
This submerge-emerge went on for hours. I was in a private room, although there was always somebody present.
Sometime during night hours I began to crave water, and lots of it. A thirst never before known began to make Christly negotiations with the nurse: "if only you'll wet this tongue I'll grant you anything." I was given an ice chip.
I slept. Then awoke, alone, more urgent to be given a big drink and a bigger bucket of morphine to ease the shuddering hurt. Pain was everywhere, toes, knees, chest, the air in the room. I swept my arms through the bedding in search of the alarm gizmo. Somebody had stolen it. Movement was restricted by four or five tubes jutting out of a snaky confusion clamped to my chest; another thick hose sprouted out of the jugular vein at the side of my neck. The IV was there of course, and other unidentifiable psychiatric complaints. I became frantic, and incensed. Stranded and dying in the dark dread of night.
I quickened my hands over and under and through frazzles of wires and tubing, and God knows what else, seeking my call button, then stopped. I silenced my blustering lips. Then reminded myself that panic never cooperates to work things out right. I felt as a prisoner getting his due. I called hoarsely, although carefully too; I didn't want to be a nuisance in the night and provoke a scolding, or an unscheduled enema. Clearing my parched throat I rasped a polite "help," although I doubt I wasn't out-shouting Sprint's pin dropping. I began plotting plans to disconnect something important, a heart monitor perhaps Or maybe I could attract attention by toppling the tower of blinking machinery off on my right. I didn't.
Instead I turned up the volume on my pitiful cry ... "help."
I spied through a slit in the door. No movement. No rushing footsteps, no tear-stained attendant hurrying repentently to rescue me.
"Help."
Surely that would get someone stirred unless, maybe, due to the current nurse shortage, none are working tonight.
"HELP."
"HELL-HELL-HELL-HELL-PUH!" A shadow stirred on the wall in the hall. But that was all. Probably a nocturnal spider weaving a trivet. I pawed around on my chest for something to unplug, desperate, thirst urging me onward. Suddenly she was there, rushing to my side as I whimpered regrets for causing such a ruckus, but that I hadn't been able to locate my ding-a-ling thing. Nurse filled a tot-sized Dixie cup 1/4 full and I drank. Oh God, the luxury, the implication at contentment, the endorphin release! I grabbed nurse's wrist and petitioned for more.
"No. You mustn't drink too much." Nurse nudged a knob and sent me away.
I dozed.
"More water."
What I would give for an 8-ounce glass of water all of my own, cool water--even warm if they wanted--to swallow molecule by drop. I understood more fully what Jesus went through, high on that cross.
"Water?" I tried a pitiful sallow voice, tinged with innuendo of threat. I was given half-a-cup of ice water. But it did not satisfy, only intensified the tenor of my thirst. I silently schemed to avenge this torture by my caregiver named Rachel and mentally signed the dotted line on her subpoena.
I submerged. Then resurfaced to plead for more water, which was reluctantly given, as though against good common sense this young woman was acting out of compassion for human suffering, rather than prudent medical sense.
Some time later, only moments for sure, I awoke to discover a coterie of medical persons crowded around my bed, nurses--at least three, (one dabbing tears), and Doctor, standing on a stool stroking his chin and looking worried, studying light-emitting diodes out of sight behind my head. It was 6:30 a.m. and something was amiss. Maybe I was dying.
After a half-hour of consulting, and brow wiping by me, he ordered two nurses to do something literally gross: shove a fat long tube down inside me to relieve the distention of my stomach and its large flood of water. Apparently my digestive system had not yet awakened from anesthesia amnesia to resume life as we knew it. Rachel and another real pretty nurse got busy and drew out a polyethylene hose about three feet long and bobbed it phallically close at my nose. They raised me upright while one of them explained that they needed to insert it in through a nostril.
"Through my nose!?"
"It's not so bad. It's actually kind of fun. Really. We gotta' drain your stomach. You drank too much water, you naughty boy."
I was not aware of the problem. I felt fine and said so. Then ordered a drink.
The cuter of the two (with blond frizzled hair like a poodle), raised the tube to one squinting eye and took direct aim at my nose, moved it near, then nuzzled it inside. Hairs started to tingle. The tip hit the back of my head and stopped, so she gave it a shove. It curved and poked at the back of my throat. I went wide-eyed at this invasion, my throat swallowed and choked; the girls cooed compliments as they performed their relentless bum's rush, and assured me I was "doing really great!" That's a relative term, passed blithely onto those who can't fight back by those who do. It slid in, I felt its cold sides scraping my throat, threatening to gag and send all of my stomach hurling straight out onto them. I mean, to evacuate the stomach, why couldn't they induce vomiting with a big glass of egg yoke or flash me pictures of Pierce Brosnan? Why this attention to emptying me slow? I'd even have been glad to submerge a forefinger down my own throat, to avoid this half-witted tubular incursion.
Nurses cheered "hip-hip-hooray" when the exterior tip nudged my nose. They jabbered congratulations and wiped their hands on some towels, then laid me back just a bit and said I'd be, "fine real soon," though the gag reflex stayed alive and active, working to expel the trespasser. A few hours of it--nurses ebullient at my abdominal recession, and the doctor ordered it withdrawn. It was about then that I expressed how curious it was that I still had not needed to pee, and what an adventure it would be when I did.
"You have a catheter."
I denied it.
Another new experience; no sensation of urination or fullness, or urge to go, for three whole days and nights. How does it do that from ... you know where.
Nothing was expected of me for the next day or two, a curiously pleasant time. Except to lay there, fiddle with the motorized up-and-down buttons on the bed and invent retro-designs to make it go faster, frequently pass out from too much morphine, and wonder what the big deal is about major surgery.
Until a gentle man named Jeff arrived on the third morning and announced it was time to "pull the tubes." Great. More freedom. He adjusted my position and pulled down my gown, disconnected green and blue and red and yellow tubes from the bank of appliances behind the bed, sat directly in front of me and said "we do this all at once. It's better that way."
"Fine."
(I mean, I was in no position to argue for a more expedient rigmarole, especially since I did not know what was about to happen).
He gets into sitting position on the bed near the end facing me, places one foot on the left and one on the right against the iron side rails, testing and jockeying for maximum resistance, peels back two corners of medical tape up high on either side of my chest, and says "on the count of three. One, two, THREE!"
Fists clench, arms stiffen, he pushes off and away from me like on a rowing machine. There is a loud ripping sound, my eyes bulge at the unexpected violence of his act. It's over in a jif. Down at my crotch steams a big bloody pile of guts, pumping, squirting, spasming. I see my heart. Interesting. Patches of darkness, a few lighter in color than the blackest parts, healing new tissue I suppose where I'd recently outgrown some guile. Winking through torn stitches on one side of the heart I glimpse a shiny new valve clicking against bare air. Jeff reaches into my chest and tightens up some threads--"OW, DAMNIT!," then retracts himself from my glowering space.
I looked down at my lap but saw only white sheets and a calm settling of gown and clean blanket on my lap. Jeff hummed Barcarole and coiled my colorful tubes. He said, "that's all," wiped his hands on some towels and wheeled the cart and himself away down the hall.
Much of this ordeal was unknown in advance. I'd had no prior experience, nor knew what was coming at any moment, or what to expect. Ignorance is a very good thing. And I am sorry, dear reader, to impart this dismal information in such cavalier terms. I mean not to alarm you about what some day is coming your way. But, surgery's not too bad.
The food. It was as extraordinarily bad as it had been delicious after testing (and a good jolt of Valium) in April. The career chef must've been let go and replaced by a sweep-upper named Stew who smoked mildewed cigars and flicked putrid ashes into the chow. It is difficult to describe that swill, concealed at delivery by brown plastic covers--which everything arrived under, as though to forestall the murderous shock. What I would order from the day-before menu-- "mollycoddled spring chicken marinated in organic Stew's sauce drenched over suffusions of wild grains" was cardboard poultry brooder crates ground up (including the chicken shit and feathers), then formed into whole chicken-shaped patties. Some of the supplemental seasonings were bad-mannered too. Tiny pouches of salt-replacement magnesium and napalm slag only made things worse, so I didn't eat them again.
I lost lots of weight. And that was fun. Although I don't recommend this technique for neophyte day dieters.
The kids came for a visit the fourth day, after my eviction from intensive care. My wife brought them there along with her new husband, a cautious manservant aberrantly disinclined to be seen. My two girls and one son shuffled into the room looking furtively panicked and ready for flight. I immediately impressed them with hideous purply bruises and forearm lacerations (which actually didn't hurt at all), then in detail reenacted for them--with gesticulated earnestness, the horror of my affair.
I asked where Pillbug (the new Dad) was. He was there, but hiding out of sight in the hall. I called out to Dogwash--(his name has changed many times during the last year and I have difficulty remembering it. First it was Ricktus, but I'd misunderstood and boorishly bastardized it as Rickets; then someone changed it to Gonadooze, then Usufruct, before finalizing on Sumpgas).
I sweet-talked and hooted. Mumpgas finally peeked one pink eye around the corner from his lurk in the hall. I lied and told him, "Hi." He curtsied, quickly glancing (between splayed fingers hiding his eyes) to my wife, awaiting his nod of approval, then sat on the floor by the door and nibbled his fingernails and quietly mimed Eentsy-Weentsy Spider. He daubed at his eyes when I reminded him he'd better not get caught maritally knowing my wife.
Hitting the wall is a grim event. It is untimely exhaustion, unlike mild fatigue after a hard day's labor while, if needed, you can still jog to the mailbox when it catches on fire. Hitting the wall is when, at 5:35 p.m. you fall asleep nearly while awake and can't imagine the possibility of walking--or crawling--to your pallet. Right now. Five-year-old children, called to bed while they're still full of play, know the feeling of weariness, but always reserve some stamina to fight with a mother who beckons day's end. It's their bedtime, while for those hitting the wall, it's still early in the day. Alas, there is no choice. A nap will not do. Napping until 7:30 p.m. to resume the remainder of the day isn't an option.
So at 5:45 I stumble from the rubble, shake off the mortar dust, fetch the flashlight, call EZ, and totter to the sleeper, Betty MacDonald's Onions in the Stew and lantern in hand. EZ is invited up ahead of me and she settles just about center-top of my sleeping bag. She's peevishly told "no." I pat at the space at the foot of the mattress where she should come. She ignores with an innocent look. Calling her back outside, I again tell her "okay" and she jumps back in and settles further center-top, half-covering my pillow. I set everything down, again, and pat her place at the foot of the bed. She goes there as though she'd never done that before. I read for five minutes then awaken to see it's 8:35. The book is jumbled into the bedding somewhere, but it'll still be there tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 3--
8:05 a.m.-
58 degrees
Great sleep! But EZ's ready to leave the confines. She stands in the narrow space beside the mattress and "booms" her tail against the wall, then leans near to answer my kissing lips with one of her own, sneezes enthusiastically into my ear, then sits back by the door thumping the floor as I crawl to set her jostling self free.
I let her free, get dressed, and head for the cabin as the sun begins to play hide-and-seek with the breaking cloud cover. It isn't the clouds moving, but the earth, and we're going fast today. EZ sees me coming and tears around the wood pile, trips over a yellow plastic rain gauge and sends it flying into too many directions. Its splintered base stays in the ground.
"Damn dog!"
This is the same rain gauge Ally tripped over two years ago and did it almost as badly. I'd finally remembered last year to bring along Superglue to fix it (the water reservoir hadn't been damaged, only the plastic support). This time it was a goner. EZ stepped on it after knocking it asunder; the container was cracked down the middle and it won't hold water.
8:31 p.m.-
I am in the cabin, chased here by mosquitoes starting their nightly feed. It's not yet dark and the sun is brushing the treetops out on the road, crickets are "creeking." A chemical stickiness is clinging to my arms from, fully against my will, spraying them with repellent an hour ago. Crows are "cawing" away through the woods and EZ is motionless on the bed. The teacher birds still haven't figured out it's not morning. Herb's cattle are bawling. The wind has quieted and the fire is ebbing.
Today's lack of physical labor is showing. I've written most the day, with a trip into town for coffee singles (teabag-like and very convenient) and ice for the cooler. The grocery store was mobbed on this afternoon before July 4th. Shoppers pushed overflowing carts through four checkout lanes. Two boys, about twelve, scooted into line behind me wearing rollerblades, one carried a loaf of bread. The lady ahead of me was just finishing piling the conveyer high with food. She looked at my meager purchases and said "why don't you go ahead." I did. The lady ahead of her (wearing a black pointy hat) was engaged having her check rejected by the computer. The cashier ran it through twice and the same "CALL MANAGER" alert flashed red on-screen and sirens blared throughout the store. The manager bustled over, quizzed the clerk, then pulled a bad check list from under the cash drawer. He looked at the shopper, looked at the check, looked at the list, index finger scrolling down the page as he searched. It stopped at Gretchen Pulltab. Gretchen argued that she'd paid the debt two weeks ago and that this was, "high outrage." The manager said, "yes." He recalled that that balance was paid, but not the twenty-five dollar bad check fee, but would, "settle it right now for ten."
She opened her checkbook and wrote out the amount. Manager hesitated, stating, "we customarily accept only cash for NSF charges."
"It's good. My husband just deposited a big casino check. Trust me."
So he did.
Next stop, the library for a book or two on Sandstone and Pine County history, especially the Hinkley Fire. The library is attached to city hall, a newer annex with skylights and full shelves, and mounds of stacked disorganization balancing behind the circulation desk. A single librarian appears friendly, but harried at 11 a.m. She finishes checking out a patron, turns to her computer monitor and asks, "what can I do for you?"
"Do you have books on Sandstone or Pine County history?"
"We sure do!" She rounds the counter too sharply and slams a hip into the pointed corner, blurting, "Ooo!"
She massages the spot and leads me to the history shelf.
"We have this one, and this one too. They're great."
"Do you have visitor cards available?"
Pause.
"Well, yes. Are you a summer resident?"
"Yes. From Wisconsin."
She looks abashed then says "It's $10 for three months and I don't like it. I want to change it, but for now, that's the way it is."
I assume she's the librarian in charge, but under the policy-making authority of a city council, and not at liberty to make important library decisions for herself. She is apparently the only employee and worrying hard just to keep up with the weight of daily demands.
I take the books to the children's section where the tables are empty. Leafing through I find snippets of information and record sections with the camcorder, expecting at any moment klaxons will sound and big men in crisp uniforms will pounce through the door and arrest me for copyright violation.
Replacing the books and passing the circulation desk on my way out I smile at the librarian. She grins sheepishly with a Band-Aid on her hip and says, "I'll have that policy changed by next summer."
1:35 p.m.-
Back at the cabin I lunch on Minnesota Cheese Onion Wild Rice Bread and Mountain Dew, in a teacup over ice. The bread, though gorgeously deep cheesy yellow and filled with morsels of wholesome goodness, tastes nothing like its ingredients; rather like a slice of Wonder Bread. For $2.49 it oughta' taste like onion and wild rice and cheese and Minnesota, or at least occasionally like one of them. I bought it with money I don't have ... well, I did but now I don't. The wild rice is crunchy and stabs into sensitive teeth, reminding me that promotion is seldom the truth. But Wonder Bread and Mountain Dew over ice in a teacup is a tasty meal in the warm stirring breeze.
4:00-
Wishing to mow but needing to get my hat as protection against the flies I head for the sleeper. Approaching, I thought it a good idea to open the windows and air it for the night's sleep. I went to the south window (hinged at the top), unsnapped the hooks, leaned down for the prop stick, stood up with it ,and suddenly felt a hot coal fall on my right forearm--then another on my head and left wrist, and saw brief sun shadows of insects zooming against the sleeper wall. Hornets! I dropped the prop and window, which slammed down hard, and ran like a youth hell-bent for hormone the 20 yards to the cabin, diving inside just behind EZ, who always likes a good run, stung or not.
There is no more highly effective defense against intruders, and getting them the hell outta' there, than bee stings. Unlike straying into elephant or grizzly bear territory, which permit a prudent man some time to consider his options, irritated hornets eliminate contemplative lag time with a single hot sting.
An hour later, after the angry mob quit diving at the windows where I cringed--a n'er do well who wished only for pleasant air in his sleeping quarters, I tip-toed back up to have a look, still not knowing if I'd riled a yellowjacket's nest (they build in the ground) or hornets. EZ watched through a window inside the cabin. I stopped with binoculars 10 yards away and studied the exterior of the sleeper, which, being elevated, could accommodate a nest underneath.
The nest was a familiar round papery balloon, cemented above the window on the underside of the eave. Hornets were busily stalking the entrance hole, launching away in search of me, no doubt, returning to slap and sniggle at the fun they'd had an hour earlier.
What to do ... There is no hornet spray. Knocking the nest down with a ten-foot two-by-four doesn't seem a shrewd thing to do. Neither does dousing the sleeper in kerosene to burn the place down. Enough bees would escape to fabricate a new nest on the main cabin.
5:20-
A trip to the BRIDGE OUT Chelsea and I drove to in June. At the intersection, where the detour sign says, "Road Closed - Bridge Out," somebody has taped (no doubt in stealthy dark night) a hand-scrawled scrap of cardboard with the words "No Its Not!" At the bridge site the orange snow fence has been shortened and the barricade is centered in the road with plenty of room around the north side to maneuver a car through at 60 mph. I consider there are some glad homeowners to the east. Officially the bridge is probably not open because the county can not legally declare it ready for traffic since the gravel side ditches are not yet completely landscaped; potential lawsuit if someone should drive there and incur an anomalous act.
There was a setback several weeks ago, according to Meg. She related it through clenched teeth and bitter contortion. The bridge had over-wintered, prior to the pouring of the concrete deck, with rebar (rods of steel) criss-crossing the top. When the temporary bypass was washed out, halting passage across the river, ATV'ers discovered the vulnerable unfinished new bridge and, "tore it up something awful." She describes--with sign language and violent hand gestures--ATV's jumping, flying, landing, and distorting the steel, damaging it severely to the point it all needed redoing. At "great taxpayer expense."
"Those people come up from the city, they don't care. A bunch of outlaws. Then they go home and leave us to fix their damn vandalism. It's just not right."
I stop 50 feet from the bridge and turn off the motor. Sit with the window down in the streaming low sun and listen to the quiet. A ridge of cumulus cloud muscle is edging slowly above the treeline to the north; benign loveliness riding the late afternoon wind, reflecting bright off rustling river rapids. Amber water riffling two inches deep over patterns of pebbles in the shallows, deepening, deepening, it all goes deep dark. Aromas of roadside grass and deep woods humus and memories of childhood rich on the thousand mile breeze, radiating through my hair and soothing down into my mood.
Granite Falls, Minnesota, 1961, climbing a bulldozer in a potato field, the sun dulling, down into the day's dust. Looking out over miles of rolling brown farmland, smelling the earth and the endless prairie, and the wide sky's yawn, not comprehending what it all meant. Late afternoon sun is supposed to be felt, and heard, and tasted, and run us through completely. It carries notions we won't hear from the morning sun. It's restful and soothing and slows everything down.
EZ's jolting in back and wants to get out. The horseflies have found us, some even sneak in through my open window and buzz violently against her back window, where she pays no attention. I ask, "want to get--"
"Rooor-roooo-roooo!"
I open the hatch and the riot of flies flies free.
"Okay." She jumps out and peels off toward water where smells wait to be sniffed. EZ has a distinct personality. Dogs have a capacity for high character if they spend time with people of personality. A dog left in a kennel and away from human contact, but for feeding, is not exposed to the personality-building influences it innately needs. The more time they spend with lively people, the deeper their whimsical nature develops. For instance, EZ has learned that the word, "Okay," said with a bit of enthusiasm means, "come in the house," or "jump in the truck," (or onto the bed), or break a "sit" and launch away when we're out for a walk. Or tear around the living room, then look bewildered about what it is she's being invited "okay" for.
The only time she does not enjoy the same eagerness to lunge at, "okay," is when we are standing beside the bathtub with me pointing inside it. It's also the only time she seems to understand where I'm pointing, and where it means to go, but she doesn't want to. But she obliges, then stands churlishly, inching nearer the door with each mixing bowl of warm water, tapping her toenails impatiently on the plastic.
I walk to the center
of the bridge and stand. Artwork is here: the surface is narrowly ridged,
drain vents of smooth concrete arc casually in a broad curving sun. At the
center, a steel grillwork grin for rainwater to drain down. The bridge is
wide, the approaches are spacious and shallow. The ditches are groomed, sod
has been laid in circumspect places as immediate defense against erosion.
The county has gone all out on 
this
new construction. A bridge of this caliber seems out of place here; it's more
fitting for high-traffic highways around a suburban city. It will carry twenty
or thirty cars a day. The river lazes down below, root beer water carrying
dollops of foam along miles of woodsy banks.
A dust swirl approaches
from the west, a motorist who knows the bridge is open. A clattery Ford Escort
moves slowly by. The driver, a male in mid-forties, raises a hand in greeting
as he crosses the deck. Then he's beyond and coaxing up speed.
EZ's on the scent
of a chipmunk around a pile of brush. It came out of hiding wearing a tophat
and tails, and announced itself, "chittering" loudly to summon her
over, then disappeared beneath a dismay of dust.
5:40-
I've refilled my teacup with two sloshes of brew, now rolling a cigarette--my effort to slow the smoking pace down. I'm smoking exclusively Top tobacco and rolling each by hand to make it an intentional act, one that is harder to do while driving at 60 mph. (Although the left knee gets dexterous enough, and a callous is growing there where none grew before). It's a troublesome task to stop what I'm doing and get out the pouch and tear off a paper and fold it just right and load the leaves evenly just-so in the crease, then moisten the fingers--not too much spit--and roll it all home. I'd rather be riding the range at full gallop, and grab in my pocket and pull out a Marlboro, then light it in a hard blowing zephyr with the windproof old Zippo engraved with the silhouette of a big-bosomed lady. But that's not what I do as I sit in my old Subaru.
Flies, flies, everywhere flies ... in the face of winter.
One thing about this surgery of mine, nothing new but I'm hearing it better. It's given me greater appreciation for each moment of life. As in: it could all end quicker, and more finally, than I used to believe, you invulnerable man you. It's an inevitability that arrives irrevocably, without advance billing. Maybe this is all temporary after all, not just conceptual ephemera.
7:20-
Deerfly count: 12.
It's disconcerting, and slightly villainous, to be walking upright and moving around carrying a deathbed menagerie of deerflies attached to my hat. I'm minding my own business and forget that they're there, until an echoing drone erupts by my hair. I brood on the noise for a moment or two, then fetch the hat off and study the glue. Forty-eight legs are stuck in the goo, while twenty-four wings buzz a great cry and hue. I place the hat back feeling a sneeze coming on, it moves on inside, then out with a burst. "A-shoo" my lips say loudly and my head jerks to the right, I see two crippled flies land on my shoe.
Shoe flies.
We are back at the cabin after going in search for the stand of lupine I found last June, hoping some would still be in bloom. All gone. Nothing left. For some silly God-contrary reason the county or township, or maybe high school vandals at night, sprayed the roadsides with poison and killed every suspicion of something growing. Fifteen-foot wide swaths of dead brown ground and leafless everything wind through the forest on both sides of the trail. Where the lupine had lit up my life last summer, just a few yards west of a beaver-clogged culvert, is now numb barren ground. The only show I get tonight is one of indolent government work. Bastards.
8:05-
Sitting by the fire. (I love stoking the campfire, but smelling singed hair tells me my hand was almost on fire.) The stack of firewood under its blue winter tarp to the east is glowing gold by the sun. A woodpecker is tapping a tree in the east; it'll need tending in a year or two. The chainsaw is squatting on the grass in the drive, reminding me to try using it on an evil beehive. EZ is dividing her time by searching for a mouse or a stick, or maybe a chipmunk to share time with, and sleeping by the fire.
Earlier today, while in town, I resisted the urge to pick up a vacuum-packed pound of animal fat, wrapped in natural casings and lusciously flavored with citrates and salt for $4.39. Ambassador wieners. I've eyed them before, even bought some last winter before my arteries told me not to. They are a succulence from the past and a late childhood marriage; memories come flooding of a time way back then.
A trailer house, tiny 10x45, and two teenagers playing house with a new baby. Skating off the dock on thin ice in the darkness of November, and feeling the freedom of being out on my own. Friends came over Saturday nights. We would mix sweet alcoholic drinks and behave just like grownups and play drinking games around a sheet-metal kitchen table, and laugh and slosh gin messes, and once in a while change a messy diaper. Into the living room we would retire to smoke dope, and listen to McCartney and Rod Stewart and become deified with a dash of The Doors.
A staggering fall
toward the kitchen I'd fly, when all had come crashing and I wanted to die.
But eat first before puking, my friend, before it all ends. Heat up a wiener
on the end of a fork, right over the flames of an easy stovetop torch. The juices would run and the skin would erupt,
creating a mess, and a childish wife would start screaming "enough!"
I'd gobble the char with the fat and the salt in a bun free of anything, but
black ash and some gall. Then into the bedroom I'd stumble and swerve, and
pull off most of my clothing--a hell of the nerve! I'd summon my bride and
foretaste her numb flesh, then finish off with great haste and dull flash.
By morning the friends had gone home and the wife was asleep, the baby was crying and I needed a pee. The kitchen was spattered and nobody cared, least of whom me, who clattered a pan and heated a bottle for this screaming young nuisance right there on my knee.