"Can't Drink From a Rock"
Thursday,
June 14Ð
6:30 p.m.-
Chelsea's mowing
the grass, encircled in a riot of flies. She's wrongly attired against Wood's
bugginess in a turquoise tank top--sleeveless, and short-waisted, gaping up
in back and the front to present bugs with a catered fleshy feast, fashionably
tight flare-bottom stretch pants, prudent white tennis shoes and a baseball
cap. After nine-months of disuse the mower started on the fourth pull.
A fire in the outdoor
pit is smoldering and smoking, compelling me to regularly weep and stop breathing
against the sooty fickle breeze.
We pulled into the clearing by 1 p.m. Fifteen minutes into the four hour trip she and EZ had begun fidgeting: arm-wrestling the air, panting, bare feet and legs stuck out the window, standing on all fours, dozing, twitching, releasing gas. Later Chelsea read aloud, savoring the luxurious flavors of swear words; chewing and swishing them around inside her mouth before launching each out. Such fun as a child to speak naughty talk as written by somebody else, so it's not really you authoring the curse words for Dad, rather parroting somebody elses. The flavorful fun of damning the lord without parental critique or personal responsibility.
The two maples I transplanted six weeks ago are half-again taller and full of life, and leaves! Rain has been abundant, 1-1/2 inch just last night according to Herb. The four spirea are also fully leafed out, though canopied under ferns and a pair of shading maples I'd neglected to notice before foliage had appeared when they were planted in late April. No blossom buds yet. They may not bloom this year, or ever, having to re-set their feet and become accustomed to suffocating in shade and a change of soil. But it pleases me to have salvaged these friends who would've been lost when the house was razed for new construction.
Chelsea has shut off the mower and decided to heat a wiener over the campfire. She saws it briefly through the flames until charred.
Fire--
Earlier, soon after arriving, Chelsea broke and twisted and contorted and frazzled green twigs into kindling in a high excited desire to get the campfire fired as soon as possible. She sawed larger sticks halfway and whacked them against a tree, then flung them on the firepit. The humidity was high, everything still sodden from last night's rain. Fires in the firepit are, by tradition and commitment to strict Woods' ethic, fueled with deadwood scavenged from outside of the clearing (except when exasperation or laziness sets in and official stove wood is used, but only by me; then the rule still applies to everybody else). Larger fallen branches and deadfall trees are the source. First fires of the season are effortlessly fueled by an abundance of wood thrown down by winter's winds. Today the prospect of coaxing a fire was bleak, without resorting to stove wood, which although dry, is a breach of etiquette and a damn waste of perfectly good wood for nothing but gauche gratification. Chelsea piled a slack nest of sticks, jostled a fragment of birchbark under it all, then jabbed at it with a long-nozzled lighter, flailing her arms and shouting "Oooo! Burn it!," as deerflies careened about her head. She stabbed the lighter at them, blonde ponytail whipping side to side. Fire failed to survive.
After her failed second attempt, I mounted my snowy steed and demonstrated how to start small by using plenty of birch bark and hand-feeding micro-twigs into strategic spots of a struggling flame. Chelsea recommended a liberal splash of gas to get things moving. But the fire smirked, coughed and grew. She watched, then helped, while learning the mechanics of fire creation with insolent wet fuel.
EZ, who believes God grew all sticks for her to chew, finally lost interest in stealing ours out of the fire and became alarmed by a small varmint shouting sarcasm at her from under the cabin.
Caterpillars--
Chelsea is enraged by tent caterpillars. We were hopeful of escaping them by exiting Wisconsin where they have defoliated most poplars, many oaks, and other trees as popular leaves were consumed. Their numbers have been uncountable billions and gazillions. They have darkened and slimed roadways with squish-juice. Houses and storefronts and lone ornamental trees droop with thousands, like ugly brown tinsel. Neighbors spray them with soapy solutions and the caterpillars fall into deep heaps. Snow shovels are used to scoop them into wheelbarrows, which are rolled to the woods and dumped upon yesterday's mounds to rot and stink. Birds don't eat them. "Poison" claims my landlord.
At home my lawn looks alive. It moves and flexes, each blade of grass animated. Caterpillars crawling, migrating, moving ... worrying the turf, the whole mess is gross and repulsive. Silent caterpillars fall from trees and crawl around on clothing and terrorize otherwise sane citizens who scream deliriously and run out into traffic. Some even vomit and go inside. So I stay indoors.
Here at The Woods, compared to Wisconsin, the population is bearable. It's the difference between Christmas shopping at Mall of America on the weekend after Thanksgiving, or the same foolish task performed at a small-town hardware store. Yes, there are shoppers, but they are far fewer and less dutifully frenzied by guilt.
Chelsea kicks one off her foot--"frickin' caterpillars all over," and stomps giant-step through a tall stand of ferns.
Breadbox--
It sits atop the propane fridge. Faded yellow metal with a chrome door, hinged at the bottom. It's been there as long as I remember, certainly during the early days when the Servel still worked. A cribbage board and a double deck of once-expensive cards sit up there, along with a cutting board and an eighteen-inch length of Styrofoam insulation with a broken pencil stabbed into it. These squatters have been there for years too, without purpose, like items that get set down on moving day "just for now," and are still there twelve years later when it's time to move. Next time I need a piece of 1 inch Styrofoam about eighteen-inches long and five inches wide I'll probably go buy it. The perfect piece atop the bread box will go un-remembered.
The Breadbox these days safeguards--from mice--a collection of napkins, playing cards, dish rags and towels, a BB gun, scratch paper. It is a curiosity magnet to newcomers and children.
Chelsea goes to
it, turns the clasp clockwise, lowers the door on its hinge and explores the
contents. Satisfied, she shuts the door, rotates the clasp, and turns away.
"Whump!"
The door bangs down, missing the back of her head by an inch. She shrieks, turns, slaps it shut, twirling the clasp emphatically but without apperception, releasing it. Flop.
"How do you stinkin' do this!?"
Holding it shut with the flat of a hand and twirling the knob with her other, body English whirling her wrist, it won't stay closed. Repeatedly. A wild animal dashing against its insides.
At last, confident it's finally holding, she releases both hands and the door starts to fall open.
"You know what? Forget it!" She slumps the door flat open, turns, and heads away.
"Figure it out," I goad.
She returns, examines the inside of the clasp on tippy-toe, closes the door, turns the knob, lets it go and the door falls open.
"I'm gonna' kill myself, Dad."
She again inspects the latch, twirling it from the outside, studying the scheme. She shuts the door, turns the knob, backs both hands away fractionally like a plea against assault, waits, then looks at me with triumph, whispering "Yes!"
2:30 p.m.-
We enter into a discussion of sleeping arrangements. There are two beds: a full-sized air mattress in the main cabin and a queen size in Red's Shed, which gets use only during warmer months. So when it is a warmer month I take every advantage of its amiable accommodation and sleep out there. Chelsea assumes we are to sleep in the main cabin on the full-sized airbed.
I inform her that I sleep in the sleeper.
She doesn't like that idea; it's paint-peeling and spider-webby, disreputable in appearance and haunted by implication. But she's never slept in it before, nor to my knowledge, even been inside. She prefers to sleep in the main cabin ... but not alone. I like sleeping alone. Previous sleep incidents with her have resembled nocturnal kick-boxing tournaments: knee jerks, frigid feet on the small of my back, dreamy swift kicks to my buttocks, elbow-jabs into the eyes and ears. She voices brave willingness about sleeping alone in the main cabin, but I know within fifteen minutes she'd be screaming and fleeing dark noises in the night to be with me, even though I offered her EZ's company. Hell, I didn't sleep alone at The Woods until my mid-twenties. Resolutely wide-eyed.
I will put us together in Red's Shed. In separate sleeping bags.
2:45-
Nap time.
I did. She didn't. But she did organize the cabin, unpacking and shelving food, creating a table centerpiece from fresh roadside daisies and buttercups and hawkweed, with a fern backdrop. Then she swept the floor and read her book and arranged table settings with plates and cups and real stainless-ware. Domestic instincts spoke.
5:25-
Down to the Store for ice and soda. Meg and Herb were both there. As we headed to leave, Herb said "follow me." Chelsea and I looked at each other in bewilderment, not quite certain what he'd said or if he'd meant us. He lead out the front door, around the side, and into the back yard where a three-week old fawn was tottering inside a corral of corrugated steel siding circled on the grass. An elderly couple was there ahead of us, snapping pictures, both of them dithering about the poor deer's bent hind leg, and the dumb flies. A motorist happened upon the two-day old newborn at the side of the road where it allegedly had been struck by a car and suffered a broken leg.
7:55-
Thunder was chafing in the southwest fifteen minutes ago when we moved inside to escape frantic flies and insistent mosquitoes. They escalate their riot prior to storms, as the air stills and grows bulky with caprice. Returning from the road for a look at the sky, we entered the cabin just as the wind briskened, and light rain sifted through the forest canopy. Temperature is 75, humidity near 80 percent. Now we sit at the round card table, two candles apiece, she reading A Man Named Dave (the one with swearwords), me writing. EZ is on the bed, all but her head hidden under a comforter.
Chelsea makes eye contact with her and the comforter twitches at the butt end. I murmur "you comfy there?" The comforter rises above her submerged tail, sinks, then lifts again rapidly. Chelsea giggles. EZ eyes me. I sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat ..." The comforter whips into action, metronoming the tempo. I launch, "I've been working on the railroad." The blanket leaps and dips. I speed up the tempo, so does the blanket, making time with the song. Chelsea screams with laughter and collapses on the floor. EZ keeps a straight face; all is motionless but her backside beating a silent baton to my chorus, pummeling the insides of her cover.
Friday--
7:05 a.m.-
EZ slithered into bed with us this morning, following a grunted invitation from me. She scooched on knees and elbows (ours too) from her nest at the foot of the mattress, through the ravine between our sleeping bags, squirmed onto her back, and lodged herself adjacent to our heads--paws up, within convenient licking distance of our faces
1:07 p.m.-
Sitting by the fire Chelsea coaxed out of soaked wood and humid air. We've both had a session of mowing. Grass is still wet and sparkly of the night's rain. Faygo cola in disposable plastic beer cups sit beside us, chilled by the rare joyous luxury of ice. The sun is showing itself after a morning of scudding low gray.
We made a trek to Jeffrey's Patisserie in Hinkley this morning for raised doughnuts. Sat inside and watched a steady flow of elderly patrons amble through, studying the selection, ruminating, consulting one another, asking endless questions of the lone clerk (who showed patient courtesy as those waiting behind fidgeted), selected sweet rolls, and carried them out.
We headed east across the interstate toward a casino that has grown exponentially during the past fifteen years. It's a grand place: acres and acres of clean-swept, visually callous RV parking, more than a hundred identical all-in-a-row "cabanas" new and civilly sanitized. A ten-story hotel twice the length of a football field disrupts the sky in the east, and another southern plantation style hotel spreads across the western edge of the complex.
We turned right onto Lucky Lane, then left onto Pair-A-Dice Path. The wide curving street pulled us past signs informing us of expediencies including "Fabulous Freddy's" arcade and "Wet Babies" daycare (for children through age 6). Chelsea spotted two swans swimming along the shore of the mote, excitedly shouting, "Are those swans? I've never seen swans before!"
A pavilion and parking area was across the way and I headed there. Huddled together under a roof and a concrete slab were twenty, five-foot square dog kennels constructed of chain link fencing. From each gate hung a padlock, big, brass, and brand new. An instruction sign informed users:
1. Lock shelter and take the key with
2. When your ready to leave casino, please leave the key.
3. Water is available. (which seems a silly statement in broader context. Water might as well be on the moon to someone locked inside, for no water is evident within the cages, or even a spigot outside for concerned pet owners to fetch some out of.)
4. Casino is irresponsible for your pet, so please make periodical checks.
5. For further information inquire inside the casino.
THANK YOU! HAVE A NICE DAY!"
As we studied this contemporary convenience a high-riding sport utility vehicle scattered gravel and skidded to a stop twenty feet away. A peroxide woman, clad in fashionable calf-length black slacks and a pointy black hat, climbed down from the passenger seat coiling a leash. She opened the rear hatch and clipped it to a shaggy white-faced golden retriever.
"C'mere, Gaw Dammit."
Coaxed by deadline impatience he limped down and followed her lead to the first empty stall, stepped over the transom onto the concrete slab, turned and stood looking out. The woman clicked the lock shut, kicked at a desiccated turd and trotted back to her red chariot.
Gaw Dammit sat. Then watched as the truck backed up and peeled away toward Gomorrah. Thirty seconds later, Gaw'Dammit and us unmoving and vacantly stupefied, the truck careened back in and slammed to a stop. The woman leapt out carrying a colorful stuffed monkey and an expression of infuriation. She carried the monkey--purple torso, yellow face, green ears, jaunty red hat--by a clumpy orange paw. She unlocked the gate and flung the monkey in. It bobbed off Gaw'Dammit's back and settled at rest along, and under, the bottom of the fence. The woman, looking as though struggling with a recent quarrel, stomped stone-faced--preceded by the basketball lodged inside her waistband, back to her car.
Gaw Dammit sniffed the monkey. Sat. Regarded the fleeing automobile. Then laid down.
11:15-
Driving back through Sandstone after a stop at the grocery store for peanut butter and apples, we whiffed charcoal smoke issuing from the pavilion out front. A sign: CLASS OF 1995.
Hot dog $1.00
Brat $1.50
1/4 lb. Hamburger $1.75
1/4 lb. Cheeseburger $2.00.
A chilly breezy morning it was. The pavilion was attended solely by two grand-motherly women. One sat at a picnic table wearing disposable plastic gloves, worrying them like O.J. Simpson on trial, the other wore a sweatshirt printed, "Kyja's Mom." Heavenly aromas of frying fat swirled on the day.
Noon-
Driving lesson, manual transmission. Chelsea's been persistently campaigning about how much, and why, she'd like to steer the car. Her last experience was two February's ago when she sat on my lap and steered the truck through snow-clogged backroads. Now, being near thirteen, she's too big to squeeze onto my lap and is ready for a solo go behind the wheel.
I stop just beyond the "bridge
out - road closed 2 miles ahead" barricade near the Store
and tell her to drive. She gulps, inconsequentially, rediscovers her confidence,
and scoots over as I exit around and head for the passenger side. By the time
I settle in she's already pulled the seat far forward. I stuff a wadded-up
sweatshirt behind her back, and two folded jackets under her butt for elevation.
Above her eyes a black baseball cap juts like a giant duck bill. She shoves
first the left, then right, sweatshirt sleeves up to the elbows, twists her
rear end side-to-side on the make-do risers to settle in better, and stares
straight ahead.
"Take the emergency brake off." She does, turns to me with a big grin, hands at ten O'clock and two.
"Push the clutch
in. Put the gear into first," me pointing, she grabbing.
"That was second."
She jams again,
back then forward.
"Pull it into
neutral." She slams the shifter up and back.
I cover her hand on the shift lever with mine like trying to contain a frantic frog, and waggle it side-to-side.
"Settle down. This is neutral." Her hand doesn't like constraint and jerks fitfully beneath mine.
"Pay attention. Think before you act. This is neutral." Our hands sweep together back and forth.
"This is first. Pull it down for second. This is third. To go from third to first you've got to pull it down into neutral, then over and up to first."
"Okay. My foot's
getting tired."
"Then give
it some gas, and go."
Motor revs. We don't move.
"Okay. I'm like, giving it too much gas."
The car starts moving. Without tribulation.
A big grin erupts, "oh!"
"Push in the clutch and shift."
Facial English contorts, eyes stare out, she jams it into second, then glances over for guidance.
"Let out the clutch."
The engine revs--"give it no gas!--LET THE CLUTCH OUT! PULL YOUR LEFT FOOT OFF. ALL THE WAY."
She does, giving it a lot of gas; the car lunges fast.
"Woo-hoo!"
"Push in the clutch and shift into third. Okay. Let the clutch out."
Another big grin right into my eyes. Blonde hair whisking in the breeze, self confidence percolatin'.
"That's too
fast." (20 seemed like 75)
"Stop on the
bridge." A narrow old bridge is approaching, the sort where you don't
want to meet an oncoming car. None is.
"Push the clutch in. Put the brake on. We zoom across the bridge deck and she applies firm braking just beyond.
"That's pretty good."
--Although she's not yet learned, or put together, that you can't stop a car with the clutch still engaged, without killing the motor. Car bucks, she jerks, raising a demure "Oops" hand to her mouth.
"I forgot to put the clutch in."
"Yeah."
She reaches for
the key, turns it before I respond, and the car bucks forward with a grinding
vibration.
"I have to push the clutch in."
The motor re-starts, she puts it in first--"that's right"--looks down at the pedals, roars the motor and launches smoothly.
"That's good! Now put it into second ... push in the clutch--push in the clutch! You don't have to give it gas. Now shift into third. Push the clutch--(Grinding)--PUSH THE CLUTCH IN ALL THE WAY.
She, grimacing in battle.
"There!"
Even EZ's lips are clenched.
She checks the rear view mirror, exhales largely.
"Stop on top of that first hill up there. On top of the hill."
"Push the clutch in ... that's right. Now shift into first ... that's right. And go.
"Alright. Now shift into second right away--push in the clutch!--there you go. That's fine. Now shift into third. Let out the clutch--DON'T GIVE IT GAS!" When you shift from any gear you don't have to give it gas.
"Okay."
Period of calm.
A horsefly ricochets off the rear view mirror and slugs into Chelsea's chest. She screams and slaps, car swerves, I curse and grab the wheel, car skates through a thicket, alders screeching the sides before slewing back onto the road. EZ barks with the fun.
(Another thirty-second span of serenity)
Approaching Bridge Out.
"Slow down."
"Don't go on the side here," me reaching over to turn the car out of a muddy ditch.
"Push the clutch in."
"I AM pushing it in!"
"Don't push the brake, put it in second, now let the clutch out and keep going."
"Where am I supposed to go?"
"Up by that pile of wood on the road. Stop right there."
She guides the car near a heap of construction debris, and brakes.
"Turn the motor off--DON'T LET THE CLUTCH OUT ... until the motor's off. Start it again."
"Clutch in. Right?"
"Um-hmm. (Motor started) Put it in first ... there you go. Shut it off ... now let the clutch out. Good job. That's right." I tip back the bottle and guzzle hard.
12:55 p.m.-
We meandered around a newly set concrete deck. The bridge is not yet ready for traffic and the narrow temporary bypass installed last summer, erased by floodwaters in late April was not rebuilt. EZ and Chelsea explored the mud along the riverbank. EZ waded her deposit of muck away, Chelsea scrubbed her sneakers sideways through tall grasses with movements resembling a motorized sawhorse.
1:25.-
Back in the car.
"Okay. Sh'I put it in backup?" Transmission clunks, car shudders. "Is that right?"
She starts back, looking over her right shoulder, then into the rear-view mirror. Then over her left shoulder as the car accelerates back, fast.
"Slow DOWN!"
She looks out some other mirror, then straight ahead.
"You gotta' look behind you. You can't depend on mirrors."
She peers between the head rest and door pillar ... turning the car, which from my point of view appears to be heading directly for the deep watery ditch.
"Wait a minute--where you goin'?!"
"I'm turning--"
"Put the brake on!"
She doesn't put the brake on, instead turns to an easy stop right where she'd been aiming. Then glances at me with a "what's the big deal" expression.
She shoves the gearshift toward first.
"Is the clutch in all the way? Okay."
Motor whines, then kills.
"Dang it."
She restarts and pulls easily back onto the road, heading west. Then shifts from first to second, over-revving the engine. "Don't give it gas when you're shifting! How many times I gotta' tell that to you. DON'T GIVE IT GAS!!"
A quarter-mile from the Store I instruct her to pull over. But she wants to drive straight through to the cabin, and steps on the gas. Only a daughter can get a dad to do what a son never could. I oblige.
"That's fast enough."
The Store and crossroads loom suddenly over the hill--
"You're goin' way too fast ... SLOW DOWN!"
Daisies whip by in a blur. Children run away screaming.
"Keep off the middle of the road!"
A pickup truck veers across our path into the Store parking lot. A brass quartet is playing "Semper Fidelis" beside the gas pump. Meg and Herb are at attention outside the Store, waving miniature American flags and cheering.
"Signal right."
The left blinker flashes. Then the right ... nearing the intersection and our turn.
"Slow dowwwnnn. Put the brake on! Turn! HURRY UP!"
Chelsea whips the wheel right. EZ slams into the rear side window as the rear tires fishtail. I scream and snatch at the wheel, but Chelsea's already countered the skid.
"PUT IT IN SECOND DON'T GIVE IT GAS. GO!"
We crest the hill. EZ is crouched low, ears back, panting. Chelsea up-shifts to third, flounces her hair back like a Miss Piggy "so-what" and whistles Jesus Loves Me.
2:35-
Chelsea tenderly--lovingly, coaxes a tent caterpillar onto her sweatshirt sleeve saying "watch this, Dad." She walks to the fire and flicks it in with a cold witchy cackle in her throat and evil glee in her face.
4:15-
After a nap I find Chelsea sitting on the cabin bed beside EZ, playing cards, rows spread before her. She methodically turns each pile, right to left.
"What's the name of that game?"
"There's no name. You count all the aces and twos and threes all the way up to kings, putting them each in a pile."
"Why do you do that?"
"It takes up time."
6:25-
We decide to walk to the Store, mile-and-a-half away. The evening is perfect. Temperature just fresh enough to encourage a brisk pace. The sun is still out, and EZ is rarin'. Herb's cattle are lowing beside the road and Slim Whitman's voice is on the evening air, yodeling of cowboy days.
Within a quarter mile of the Store I notice a darkening broad expanse of clouds clawing over the western treeline. I look again a few minutes later and see it advancing like shoppers charging through doors at opening time on half-price day.
"Hey Chels, I think we better head back. See those surreal cloud banks coming?"
We turn around as lightning zaps through grayness northwest of our course. A disheveled panic surges through me as I realize what we could be in for: electrocution, drowning, tornadic sightseeing spin from 500 feet high. I set a brisk pace. Chelsea and EZ fail to appreciate our peril and continue dawdling through ditches and watery places in search of tadpoles or human remains, or whatever else might turn up.
"We've got to hurry," I prod, still more than a mile from the safety of the cabin.
We enter the woods road and head west into a black maw, zapping with electric eagerness. Chelsea has sensed the doom. I'm sniveling and she's scampering ahead, shouting at me to "get movin' buster!"
EZ doesn't care.
Five hundred yards from the driveway the wind arrives, blowing trees and cows sideways, hurling flecks of cattle shit in our faces. Slim Whitman has been yanked off stage and replaced by a heavy metal band screaming "DIE-DIE-DIE." We crest the rise just as the sky vomits. We run into the driveway and across the clearing, slamming into the cabin as lightning ignites a tree across the road.
Saturday--
8:55 a.m.-
Another walk to the Store. The morning is classic early summer in the northwoods. The sun is warm, air is dew-filled fresh and cool, temperature in the early sixties. The heavy metal band passed on during the night; Gordon MacRae is nigh over the horizon, singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning. It's a sweatshirt forenoon. We affix deerfly strips to the back of our caps, double-sided duct tape that the label said, "Stop Biting Flies." We set off down the road, EZ tearing ahead, prancing and dancing and torpedoing through brush. A gust of wind catches Chelsea's hair and flips a gob of it sticking to the flystrip at the back of her hat. We stop to correct it. Her hair is dislodged, then wound into a knot and stuck up inside.
Chelsea finds a caterpillar on the road. Rhetorically: "Should I kill it?" She doesn't want an answer, but raises a shoe over it and taps. A dark squish appears. She walks on.
9:14-
A deerfly is caught by the toes on Chelsea's glue pad. Straining against the cling it buzzes furiously and hopelessly wing-beating the air.
The daisies are at their height of perfection. Flawless snowy petals radiating from brilliant yellow buttons, bees sing, water drops sparkle, miniature lenses reflecting a tiny sun in the east. The roadside is succulent yellow and purple and orange ... all of it washed in the surrounding well-watered ground. Sunny sweet with unrestrained green. Fields of hawkweed, the color of Monarch butterflies, billow and sway--some are Monarchs, flitting. Rainwater is abundant in roadside pockets and ditches; even the grasses nearest the road are robust with life, leaning slightly with the breeze and their ballasts of dew.
Deerfly count: Chelsea 2, me 0.
In a shady spot of the road we stand on a still-spongy frost boil; it's like jiggly semi-firm Jell-O with a mucky surface three feet in diameter. Amazing in mid-June, after two months of thaw, to see areas that winter's freeze has not yet completely erased.
Axel's dog Pepper is laying by the Store door, ears drooping, sedate
with age, Axel is asleep on the bench. Hummingbirds and swallows swoop and
dip. Meg has all five hummingbird feeders out and they get constant use. We
go inside for refreshment: a bottle of orange juice for me and a $2 bottle
of Evian for Chelsea--after my insisting she could get a drink for free from
Meg's faucet. "You can even have ice with it!"
"I want to bring it with."
Once again a daughter's coy flipping eyelashes and daddy-I-love-you-so-much-and-I'll-be-thirsty-on-the-road overwhelm. She gets her way. EZ held her "stay" outside the door pretty well, grinning and snuffling and scooting only once to greet Herb who surprised her from out back. We spent ten minutes chit-chatting with Meg before heading out.
The bottle of Evian launched into the sky before we were fifty feet from the Store. Chelsea missed it on the way down. It "bunked," then skidded into the ditch. She retrieved it and threw it high again ... this time interrupting its descent briefly before it again "dunked" against the gravel road.
"Is that what you wanted a two-dollar bottle of imported French water for? To play catch?"
"It's something to do."
"Why couldn't you just throw rocks and catch them?"
"I can't drink from a rock."
So we walk. She flings her refreshing unbreakable toy into the sun and catches it three times out of ten.
My deerfly count: still 0.
But the flies have been pestering EZ continually. One is drilled into her muzzle, directly on top. I remove my hat and, with careful courteous aim, whack it, fly-tape side down, against her nose. EZ blinks. I pull the hat back, and now have my first captive. Deerfly's wings both stuck to the sticky surface, flat on its back, legs kicking furiously.
Back on the Woods road. Chelsea has tired of catch, and walking, and pesky flies. But the Woods road population of flies is greater and more energetic then out on the county road. They've been awaiting our return. Part way over the hill Chelsea unties her sweatshirt (which she'd had secured around her waist) and holds it by the sleeves around her neck, flapping it down her back like a Superman cape ... hopping along like a contestant in a sack race.
"Dad! Why are they attacking me and not you!?" She wraps her face in the sleeves and screams hatefully.
We walk another thirty feet.
"DAD--oh, my gosh!" She panics, starts to run, then slows, pulling the sweatshirt from around her neck and, gripping it by one sleeve, waving it wildly about her head, like a maniac does from his deserted island when a ship slinks across the horizon. She flinches her left shoulder high, a contortion of arms flailing above and behind. "Why aren't they bothering you!"
"It's because
I'm not you." The main deerfly irritation is one of persistent swirling,
around and back, describing concentric circles like planets around small suns
... us. Some respond to northern hemispheric physics and swirl counterclockwise,
others peal opposite. There are complicated systems of air traffic control
at work. Each fly has its own altitude. There are no mid-air collisions; it's
a highly orchestrated affair.
12:45 p.m.-
Back at the cabin: "Where's a like stupid glass of water or something!?"