Feathers and Fritters and Bull Balls in Season
Saturday, May 6Ð
8 a.m.-
The cool of the day is a sweet thing. All is well-rested, recovered from the vigorous heat and sweat of yesterday's high eighties. Birds chirp cheerfully, tree tops wave "good morning" in a light breeze. Sun blinks through the green of leafing lower saplings, and back-lights limy uncoiling fiddlehead ferns.
A goose is honking to the north, quickly approaching, passing at treetop height, pulling along a slip-stream companion. Teacher birds, familiar staples of The Woods' cool summer mornings, are yelling "teacher-teacher-teacher."
Taking coffee by the firepit I see four birch trees near the cabin not leafing out or even showing buds. Seven months of the year I can't tell which trees are ailing or dead; foliage explains it. The largest of the four is fourteen inches in diameter. It has been a solid dutiful shade-giver since the early days of The Woods. Through a few nails and clotheslines this aged sentry has remained friendly to us. Everything passes.
The woodpeckers have made lacework of the high-up trunk. Do they weaken the tree? Or does a weakened tree invite burrowing insects, which attract woodpeckers who further weaken the tree? Birches have been described as a transition tree. In the evolution of a forest from pine to deciduous, birch surrenders to hardwoods like oak and maple. Although many thriving birch remain here, many have diminished and died since the late 50's. Where once the forest was mostly white to the west and north, it's now darker with smaller gray trunks, and the ground is white with cross-crossing cadavers. Changes happen while we're not looking.
Birch bark acts as insulator to the wood within. Once a birch dies it remains standing for several years, rotting from the inside out, top down. The bark holds in moisture and the tree rots in sections - breaking and tumbling to the ground over years. Its firewood is lost unless cut and split quickly once the very top of the tree has begun to show signs of failure: sparse new growth and dead broken limbs higher up.
The huge popple beside the driveway appears to have died. No sign of foliage, while companions of similar size are already fully leafed. A dilemma of sorts. It leans across the driveway and into the clearing and threatens the cabin. A lot of heavy work once it's felled, cutting and hauling. It's not even good for firewood. If only I could figure out a way to make it fall away from the driveway, devise a system of ropes and pulleys to coax it away from its natural lean. (It had leafed out by early June.)
Phoebes have been present and active these last few days. Generations have been building nests under the north eave of the cabin. There appear to be two couples making the underside of the roof their home this year, one pair to the southeast, one in the northwest. Phoebes are two-thirds the size of a robin, male and female are indistinguishable by color. Before a nesting site has been approved they are raucous mates, swooping and twisting through the clearing. Once the nest is underway, their vocalizing quiets, becoming totally silent as incubating and hatching and feeding begin.
The forest floor has dimmed considerably since EZ and I arrived two
days ago, when the leaves were only large buds and allowed the unrestrained
full blast of sunlight and heat to penetrate through. Driving back from the
Store this morning I noticed the ground has become shadowy, more secret. Aspen
fluffs float like wispy warm snow, accumulating on the road like we've just
had a snow.
Woodticks are in
full crawl. I quit counting at a dozen those I've picked from EZ; never started
counting those removed from my own clothes and skin. They are tiny tormentors.
Crawly sensations on a shin provoke a dropping of the jeans, but fifty-percent
of the time there's nothing there. I suspect they grab hold of the Jean leg
and cling hidden in the fabric folds until I've concluded that the creepy-crawly
feeling was imaginary.
The clearing is
losing shade. I've set a goal of digging up six trees from the woods out back
of the cabin and transplanting them in front. I just got back from a saplings
search. Everything of moveable size all looks the same, leaves with serrated
edges much like birch. I did find a tiny sprouting oak; it would be easy to
dig out, but had hoped to find one in the four-foot size. Swarming gnats and
constant brushing of the face to clear them from my eyes make the task maddeningly
difficult to concentrate on anything but escaping inside. EZ came along. Lazily.
She is showing signs of losing spirit. It's saddening to watch her listlessly
walk ahead of me, sometimes stopping to sit and watch, as though "I'll
just wait here 'till you get back." Yesterday I went down the road to
forage firewood. Until yesterday she'd been eager to plunge ahead and away
anytime I got near going somewhere. I kept looking back expecting her to come
hurling out. Never did. When I arrived back in the clearing she was sprawled
snoozing in the shade of the woodpile. She lifted her head in silent welcome
as I approached, panting, eyes watery. My tendency is to figure out what's
wrong. Ticks sucking her energy? Heat too much for her? Is she sick? Maybe
she's just getting old and tired. Losing interest as the pluck fades. I sit.
She rises and sits with her head in my hand.
Percival Von Plantagenet
12:30 p.m.-
I looked up from my chili as the door of the Store squealed and slapped a gizzardy man inward.
"Af'er-oon. Hi,... Meg."
"Hi, Percy."
Herb sat at his place reading mail. Meg stood behind her counter, peeling potatoes. I was eating chili at the round table near the soda cooler. The newcomer was short-statured--about five-foot four. Clad in a soiled T-shirt, he pushed ahead of him an unconstrained large abdomen, myopic belly button staring beneath a ragged fringe. Black suspenders, taut with exertion, harnessed his trousers. His lower lip jutted low, ponderous with tobacco. But his chin, although stubbled, was clear of bronze juice.
"Ca I geath f'thum gaw'tham gaff?"
Meg says, "Sure." She turns and clicks on the gas pump.
Herb is pretending to read, watchful under the brim of his hat.
The man reaches into his pants pocket and leans forward as his hand searches low. He grunts. Then raises it back out clutching a fistful of quarters, spills them onto the counter, and begins building one-dollar stacks.
"Gaw'tham hawt ow derr ta'thay. An' duh gaw'bam bugs are fo' sit!"
His hand dives back inside the pocket. He exhales. A tongue pokes out a left cheek. The hand settles deeper and snags another clutch of coins.
"P'som vitch! Thur nee'th 'som wain! Dwy'ern'a bas'ud out dâ'ah!"
"Sure is." Meg records each stack of coin on a scrap of paper beside the cash drawer, then begins filling a coin tube.
The man is pleasant, despite his blustering denunciations of the bugs and the heat and the lack of rain, and tirading over how, just yesterday, he'd turned "damn stinky" through vigorous loading--then off-loading--a load of dirt onto the wrong "sit-ass th'pot" on someone else's lawn.
He mines money from the other pocket, chasing deep. Meg totals, Percy ciphers. Pockets empty, the suspenders relax.
"Seventeen ninety," Bev reports.
"Gooh'd. Gaa me f'wom th'nuff an' Beesh nuft." He heads out the door. Meg grabs up a Magic Marker and hurries to the cooler beside me. She slides it open, reaches in, picks out a cylinder of Copenhagen, slides the door shut and inflates the price of snuff from $4.25 to $4.75, doing her part to discourage tobacco use. Young people are lectured passionately. Older folks pay for their sin: $5.25 for premium cigarettes, $4.50 for generics.
"Go look at his car."
I walk to the front and look out the window. An old Checker cab squats on the far side of the gas pump, faded canary yellow, black & white squares still visible hood to taillight through a thin veil of yellow spray paint. But the enticing charm of this car is that it had been converted (I use that word guardedly as it may inaccurately excite images of quadratic formulations and metallurgic procedures) into an open-ended cargo van/pickup truck. The roof is peeled forward, rolled open like a sardine can, coiled inward into the passenger compartment where the curl stops head-high behind the driver's seat. A floral sofa pillow (harvest golds and avocado greens seeping through greasy smudges) is duct taped to the sardine coil, apparent to the purpose of head protection in the event of a rear-end collision.
I went outside.
Percy unplugged the rag from his gas tank and set it on the pump, nuzzled the nozzle inside and began filling. He stared as I sidled around the front end of his car.
"T'see's my th'weet haut. Ewe yike 'hur?"
The headlights dangled on springs like goofy trick eyeballs. The hood ornament was a pair of bronzed tin snips, pointing forward. The hood, a mosaic of oxidized hues and crinkly paint cracks, a subtle art work by the artist of time.
"What year is it?
"Gaw'tham fit'y na'wn." He slides a soiled middle finger inside his lip, probes a gob of gook out, whips the finger toward the road. The flying brown wad staggers a daisy and disappears in the weeds.
"You had it long?"
"It's true, all true as the heavens are blue,
my soulmate and I make an impecunious crew.
An ignescent old torch is this lady of mine,
but I'm in love in spite of her acrimonious clime."
"Huh?"
"The earth could dispatch itself right out of my sight,
the sun might extinguish herself one noteworthy night,
but sensorium central would woo into eternity.
Others may pride over their Lexusical and Mercedical carriages,
swooning and spooning inside serenity's clinch,
and they'll rapidly go vapid, but not this here marriage."
"Where did you get her?"
"I drove her in Philly during the sixties and seventies.
They depleted the fleet when I departed the team.
It was '77 when I brought her to me,
I wouldn't part in the least with my dearest esteem.
The boys back there all hooted and gestured
--that pack of poltroons--
when I ecstatically proposed to make her my spouse.
I named her Teeny in nineteen and sixty plus three ...
she's carried me mercifully by thousands, three hundred and three.
A galliard she was, so tidy and fresh,
when we first joined up at Top Hat Express.
A commodious barge, but she toiled with a grin, my friends all back then
--the sententious lot--
liked to malign her and discharge their traducic sin.
Teeny and I stayed affable. Those prurient prigs ... hah-hah, they were laughable."
"Oh."
"I've quaffed with kings and supped with schlepps!
Teenie and I have staggered and panted,
through Asia most minor and to Chile's south tip,
then northward to Alaska's legions of proud mountain cliffs."
"But this car is rusting away."
"That's kingly galloon, you prosaic buffoon,
not dowdy decline one infects in the foulest saloon.
She's aging right ripe with uncommon ease,
her decorous corium evinces nature's enriching.
Like wine and fair cheese."
"How did Teeny get cut open? Did you do that?"
"Gosh no professor, you peculiar protester.
She was rear-ended by a pulp truck near Portland one day,
advancing sideways on mountainous ice.
The skid made that slice when she got in the way.
I couldn't forsake her, my malleable mistress,
so I nursed her episiotomical wound and bandaged her back,
we drove day and night, her tappets a-clack.
She still works with me, uttering hardly a grumble,
I remain oh so flattered, though her system is battered and she produces more rumble.
I ask her to help with all sorts of deliveries, whatever the reason ...
like feathers and fritters and bull balls in season,
pinecones we pick up and cartons of curtains,
chickens cluck-clucking and stinking most foul,
the maligned good fortunes of manure and dirt.
She even totes dead livestock, when critters get hurt."
Percy finishes fueling, pulls the nozzle from the hole, drizzles his trousers, and hangs it up. I wink at Teeny, just to see what would happen. He trundles past me, scraping a finger inside a tin of tobacco and plants a fresh charge inside his lip, slaps in through the screen door, gasoline vapors rising off a darkened pant leg.
I follow back inside and take my seat.
"Gaw'damn hosf wan all o'fer my yeg. P'som vitch!"
He belly-bucks the back of my chair, surging me forward, then strains between tables to reach an Evian from the cooler's shoulder-high shelf. Gasoline fumes settle around me, in my hair, nostrils, transforming my chili into a petroleum puree. He grunts "gaw'tham vas'ud." My ribcage is jolted against the table edge. The cooler door creaks wide.
"C'meah, p'wick."
Percy snorts in triumph, clutching two dollars of water. The door thumps shut and my ribcage is relaxed. I push back my bowl and reach for a smoke, lighting it quickly, then the man starts to choke. He coughs up a curse and gives me a stare, twisting his face with a disgusted hot glare.
"Ewe dum p'som vitch! Ewe gonna kill yeh'sef d'une that!" He turns away, "dum vas'ud."
6:40-
Gnats in continuous pester mode have chased me indoors. Fire built outside in the pit, teacup filled, final few minutes of Lake Woebegone. Vigorous winds have mostly subsided, but for a high fluttering in the tree tops. It's quiet and warm, 78 degrees.
Had a nap this afternoon. I invited EZ on the bed with me, contrary to dis-ease over having a tick-crawling dog laying beside me. I picked six off while trying to sleep. When we got up I cut five maples for next winter's wood supply, halting the uptake of moisture into their veins. Rediscovered a leaning dead oak I'd cut and abandoned last winter; too dangerous to bring down fully back then. Got it sectioned and stacked. Gnats were mostly absent. About an hour later by some unspoken signal the mosquitoes and gnats got up from their naps, swarming and biting with ferocious intent. I don't know what triggers such activity. Must be the same secret phenomenon as how fish suddenly start feeding when only minutes earlier they hadn't.
A man in a ten-year-old full-sized Ford drove past, waved and continued down to the dead-end. He re-approached from the west, rumbled to a stop, shut the motor off and came over to talk. I recognized him as the garbage hauler and the man who last year knew about the death up on Rash Road. He shambled over, introduced himself with an outstretched hand. He apologized for failing to empty the garbage two weeks ago and promised to get it next Tuesday. We bitched together about the gnats and the ticks and the lack of rain. People in these quiet places are decent folk. They know they aren't bigshots, so they long ago gave up any interest in playing the part. Whether by choice or fate or opportunities gone awry, the majority of people who live in this rough country do so with resolute equanimity.
After wood cutting I decided for a change of scenery, bundled beer and dog and cameras into the car. Stopped at the Store for a pack of smokes (more of a ruse to see other people). Lingered at a table with a glass of ice water. Two tables sat couples I'd never seen before. At another table was a man named Don who telecommutes for AT&T from an old farm several miles to the southeast of the Store. I moved off and left him to an extra-giant cheeseburger basket with skin-on homemade fries and an Orange Crush. I sat for ten minutes at an adjacent vacant table allowing serendipity her chance. Mr. Karp, the owner of the Ace hardware, walked in, sat down and ordered the Saturday night special: Fried chicken, baked potato and veggie, $7.95. Said he "couldn't go wrong" and sat back with a Birch Beer to read today's Minneapolis Star Tribune in silent escape. I drained my water, set the glass on the sink sideboard, complained to Dolly about the defective ice she sold me yesterday--most of it melted--and exited to EZ and the car and drove under brilliant cumulus clouds.
A mile or two north
of the cabin I had to stop and back up to see if my eyes actually saw what
my head said they had. Dangling from a snag of tag alders was a white plastic
bag with catchy red printing "United States
Census 2000." The lane had a fire number, but was rutted and muddy and
disappeared out of sight through brush and tangles of overgrowth. I counted
as I drove, then lost interest when the tally reached twenty. The government
temp had done a thorough job. Branches and fenceposts and doorknobs of tumbled
down hunting shacks were all draped with governmentally drooping red and white
bags. I'm embittered though. I didn't get one too.