Slime-coated
Blatz
Saturday, October 14Ð
Mandy-Jo and I arrived by 1 p.m. Stopped for ice and a quick hello to Meg. Axel was back from western states fire duty, as though never gone ... sitting at Herb's table drinking a Busch. He explained that the last time he'd been called to duty he was back home within 24 hours. The fire chiefs flew him out to Montana, put him up in a hotel, decided the fire was out, and got him home by dinnertime the next day.
The mood in the store was testy silence, an undertow of enmity, tensions running silent and inexplicable. Evil was at hand, lurking high in the corners, exhaling rank smells of sulfur. Something dreadful was present. Everybody was disrupted with an infectious pester.
On to the cabin, release the Tazmaniacal EZ from her cooped-up quarters in the rear. It's a shock to see the woods mostly leafless after becoming accustomed to summer's leafed-out fullness. Russet fringes still cling high up in oaks and a few scattered maples have yet to release their dull gold leaves. What had been impenetrable dense underbrush is now open and airy, gray trunks, zigzagging infinity.
Temperature dropped from sixty to forty-nine since leaving home. Fifty-two in the cabin. Fire built, bedding brought from Red's Shed, gas turned on, wheelbarrow and lawn mower rolled outside. I'd planned to walk to the river with EZ ... but thought I'd maybe first rest for a minute or two. That's when the hunters began shooting. It's grouse season. The blasts were close, to the southwest, no more than a quarter mile away. The hunter was a bad shot, missing the same bird for an hour and a half. The prey never ranged further than a few hundred feet. Two hours later an energetic dog rousted us -- "damnit" -- and we headed to see how the river looked. A silent mist began falling. EZ beat us there, already soaking and dashing, and exploring the opposite bank, gleefully writhing her neck into something on the ground across the river.
"NO!" Contrition is not EZ's talent until after the stink is set.
We headed north along the trail as mist livened into light rain, then drizzle. Mandy-Jo's hair made a wreath of dewy drops. We consulted, then nixed a walk to the North Pool for another time, having brought no protection against rain.
Retreated to the cabin, lit candles, unpacked and filled a kerosene lamp I'd bought at work; originally $12.99, then $11.99, then, when I queried the boss about what sort of price he would take for it, splayed five fingers of a left hand and peevishly pleaded "get the damn thing out of my sight." The lamp is mostly glass -- the hexagonal base is promoted as "cut glass" and has repeating horse and buggy scenes on each of six sides. The chimney is large-mouthed, with a gracious contour. The wick mechanism is adequate but, typical of retro old-fashioned designs, is manufactured at the thin edge of decoration, rather than functioning device. But it works, once the wick is trimmed for maximum radiance and minimum soot.
Coleman was refilled, pumped and hung adjacent to our game table. A couple of plastic restaurant filler candles were arranged nearby, each less than half-full, gathered by Caleb who bussed dishes at a restaurant this summer.
Three rounds of Rummi-Kub, one of Trivial Pursuit and two of Yahtzee. Dinner at midnight of Mandy-Jo-doctored Prego over Rotini, a couple of Little Debbie Nutty Bars. Lights out.
Sunday--
Arose to the new day by 9:00. Boiled water for swamp coffee, drank it, made a list of needs to buy in Pine City -- propane cylinders, spray paint (we're going to use leaves as stencils and decorate the cabin interior), Diet Coke, rawhide bone for EZ, white tag-board (as light reflector beside our game table), taper candles, Windex, t.p. and p.t. We stopped at the store and asked Meg if there was anything she needed. Her own home-grown tomatoes were nearly gone, and could we pick up six more.
In the book aisle Mandy-Jo referenced a "My First Atlas," then a "My First Encyclopedia," before pointing with garrulous confirmation that there is an Arctic Ocean, thus winning a silly vainglorious bet prompted by a Trivial Pursuit matter last night.
Homeward we drove, continuing our attention to Carl Haissen's Sick Puppy on cassette.
Chris' Fairway was mobbed with rushed shoppers; Mandy-Jo decided most were Vikings fans stocking up for today's game.
Cap'n Crunch, lemon tea, and a bag of six wizened tomatoes, then back outside through a suffocation of Viking purple attire--hats, sweatshirts, jackets, and snappy rain gutter Vikings flags protruding above car roofs. One gets the sense that to utter, however demurely, the words "'da Pack", or "Packers" (or even "green 'n gold" in the same sentence) would courteously, but promptly result in a lynching. So we headed out.
Stopped to drop tomatoes for Meg, then ordered burger baskets and bowls of Herb's chili. Got the kerosene jug refilled: $2.50/gallon for grade #1.
Set about clearing windows of accumulated fly specks and remains of shmooshed bug carcasses and smoke haze. Mandy-Jo read, then napped while EZ and I walked to the river, then on to the North Pool. The water was low, lazy current barely moving its foam. We angled north through Johnson's 40 acres, passing a plastic-covered stack of wood-frame storm windows they had acquired in hopes of constructing a shelter similar in design to Dad's. They've been weathering for thirty years, the top few shattered to uselessness, but the remaining four-foot high pile is remarkably intact and rot-free. Plans for this adjacent acreage came too late. Their interest in roughing it, and the aging of their children, afforded only a few brief years on their own property before reaching retirement and riding the sun south, Airstream in tow.
But they did build a four-by-four foot biffy and painted it light institutional green.
It has remained unused and locked (I don't understand the rationale for locking a biffy, especially with a stout padlock; does anyone know where the key is?) It remains solid, narrow vertical windows hung with threadbare lacy curtains; a pair of tall man's coveralls droop from a hanger on one side. A shelf, high under the interior ceiling holds up jelly jars full of nails and screws, spider webs criss-cross. Thirty feet away in the ferns stands a stenciled aluminum sign atop a three-foot length of conduit: "POWDER ROOM ---->."
What is the attraction dogs enjoy (especially as they get to be eight years old) toward eating feces? And rolling their neck-sides in feces or dead stinky horrid-smelling rot? Ambling toward the North Pool I spied EZ, head down, fifteen feet off the trail, chewing. I stopped. She glanced up at me over her right shoulder, eyebrows quizzical, "yeah, what?"
I've well-learned this pose and sharply commanded "NO!"
She flinched, circled away, but without remorse. I investigated. Her prize: fresh deer droppings, still moist. A canine bonanza.
Disgusted, I pondered the useless question "what the HELL do dogs think," then continued down the path, only to discover her again, a hundred feet further, chewing the same thing. I recognized the futility of regulating her activity out here in the wild, so said "to hell with it" and pretended not to notice where she was or what she was eating.
Access to the North Pool is gained easier in mid-October than late August. What only a few weeks ago had been nearly impenetrable tropical foliage now manifests the biblical promise "all will be laid bare."
The North Pool Sitting Log has weakened and sags low, one end no is longer willing to support my butt. It's stronger toward the center where it rests directly on the ground, but not for long. I sat, EZ splashed and waded then ran up close to shake herself on me.
We stayed for fifteen minutes, then hiked up the ridge overlook and angled through Herb's property. I stopped to photograph a heavy truck he abandoned there fifteen years ago, enthralled by the oxidizing paint colors on the side of the old International. Walking is more difficult than it looks. The covering of leaves is fluffy and level, concealing submerged branches and sticks, rocks and roots. One's steps are constantly adjusted to odd angles, tripping is frequent; so is cursing. The only season to hike here in comfort is the several-week period between snowmelt and green-up.
Mandy-Jo was asleep when we got back. EZ went dead asleep too.
I wrote, the girls slept, fire in the stove murmured and sighed, filtered sun soft and warm on my shoulders. This place is just here. It doesn't entertain; no toys, no sensational stimulation, nothing but itself. It doesn't expect anything back. It's not designed to impress. Or demand. Visitors are expected to do nothing but what they want, at the moment, moments buttoned together in long segments of calm, to hear what can not be heard in a piano bar or a whore's abode.
Inside the soul or outside the windows, sometimes what is heard is strident confirmation to continue believing what has been obscured through life's day-to-day folly. At times the messages are fresh and startlingly quirky. Over intervening weeks and months they become friends with us, more lofty than renewal. Sometimes the messages arrive by watching a spider race frantically for escape at the end of a log placed into the firebox of the stove, or while splitting birch. Place a chunk on the block and discover the end is shaped, through years of growth and storms and heat and ice, into a perfect heart shape. What does it mean? What I want them to mean. It's an abrupt pulling-up by the lapels, an invitation to mull.
Mandy-Jo awoke around six, rarin' with energy. We dragged the cooler to the truck, EZ jumped in the back, we into the front and headed north into drizzly dusk. After a quick loop through Askov we headed back east, nearing the end of Sick Puppy, refusing to quit driving until the end was done. Miles of dark muddy road, Ed Asner's voice marvelously suited to the gritty humor. Arrived back at the cabin to sit and absorb the final paragraphs.
Inside for two rounds of Rummi-Kub at our well-illuminated table featuring two brand new candle holders (24% authentic lead crystal, $1.47/ea.) each with a candle: navy and burgundy. White tagboard, thumbtacked to the wall, as a reflector cast great light back. Then on to re-teach Cribbage to Mandy-Jo who hadn't played it since childhood.
Monday--
Awoke to heavy fog, dreamy silent, settled over and through our world.
1:05 p.m.-
"Go sit outside in the sun."
"It's too cold."
It wasn't, once I dragged out a molded plastic chair, propped it full of pillows, submerged into a sweatshirt, heated a mug of tea and settled down, feet up under a canopy of bright October blue. The woods is mostly quiet now; those creatures who depart for the winter have. An occasional bluejay "jee's" away through the trees, crows shout schemes to one another half-a-mile distant, chickadees and nuthatches (which don't seem to be here during summer months) flit and burble through the clearing. The sun warms the air near sixty degrees by mid-afternoon. By 2:00 it's time to gather wood for a fire in the rock-rimmed pit. Mandy-Jo's been doing dishes and spraying, point-blank inside the cabin, the pestering population of flies ... and one "old angry hornet." She's been reading like a fiend: two books finished and the third well-into. Along with gathering dead wood for the fire, I felled 8 - 10 birch and oak as a start on next winter's supply of firewood (or, if desperate, spring's emergency supply).
Mandy-Jo started a fire while I raked a ring clear of leaves around the firepit, a gorgeous sight, bright green grass still healthy and vibrant, a silent-ground oasis amidst a floor covering of brown.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon until fading light reading, writing, burning leaves, sponging the sun.
"We should get EZ drunk tonight."
"Why wait until night? Let's pour her some brandy right now!"
A few sloshes into the water dish, splash it around to attract her attention. She sniffs, slurps a tentative lap of this strong strange stuff. Mandy-Jo pours it straight-up into a cupped hand. EZ licks, snorts, turns away, sneezes. And comes back around for more.
"She likes it."
Another slug into cupped hand, EZ lapping, grimacing at the bite. Another large splash into the water dish.
She did not get drunk. It reminded me of the first time I tried to get drunk. It was here at The Woods. We'd found an Indian who was known to provide "runner" services to a local adolescents. We picked him up some miles distant, then drove across the border into Wisconsin where beer could be sold to eighteen-year olds and the beer was "strong", not 3.2 ("contains less than 3.2% alcohol") which is sold in Minnesota outside of liquor stores. Money was gathered (the runner's fee was two dollars) and into the tavern he went for our case of Blatz and his two quarts of wine.
Walking back to the cabin we hid the beer in a culvert under the woods road where the shady swamp water would chill it for later. Trouble was, the month was August and the water was brackish and stagnant, and warm, like worn out bath water.
"It'll cool when the sun goes down."
It didn't. We returned
at 7 p.m., fetched a couple cans each and set off down the road to get drunk.
Sweating isn't conducive to getting drunk. Neither is walking. Neither is
warm algae and slime-coated Blatz. Neither are the palates of fourteen year-old
males who've never drunk beer before. Half-hour later we'd managed to choke
down a half-can each, searching for symptoms of drunkenness. Describing nuances
to our gaits and stumbles over
road rocks as evidence to ourselves that we were splendidly under the influence.
To assist the alcohol's properties we walked backward with eyes shut, then
twirled 'round and 'round. Verification of our inebriation never surfaced.
After a can-and-a-half, gagged down over an hour-and-a-half, we sat and smoked
in the sunset atop a ridge overlooking the rootbeer river and discussed our
condition.