Walk It Off, Princess

by David Thorne

  “Prior to the air being let out, how much higher were they than the bridge clearance?”

  “About an inch.”

  “Right, so we’ll have flat tires but only two-feet eleven-inches to worry about.”

  “Two-feet, ten inches. If they’d only lowered the tiny house one inch, it would have still scraped.”

  Around 3am, we towed Bushpig to our friends JM and Lori’s house, quietly uncoupled the trailer, and left it in their driveway.

  “Hey, it’s JM.”

  “Morning sunshine.”

  “Morning. Guess what? There’s a big ass boat in my driveway.”

  “Is there?”

  “Yes. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”

  “Maybe you won it in a raffle.”

  “I did actually buy a raffle ticket recently.”

  “Was it for a boat?”

  “No, a ham.”

  “The boat might be second prize.”

  “It didn’t fit through your garage door, did it?”

  “No, we were about three-feet out. I tried letting some air out of the tires but that didn’t work.”

  “Why didn’t you just take it straight to the lake?”

  “We need to clean it and fix a few things first. I’ll work out somewhere to move it to today.”

  “It’s fine where it is. It’s a big driveway and we’ve got plenty of room to get the cars out. “

  “Thanks, JM. It should only be there a week or two.”

  Bushpig stayed in JM and Lori’s driveway for three months. We reupholstered the interior during the first week - I was going for a more contemporary look and I thought Holly was onboard with the design decision but then she bought four nautically themed throw-pillows at TJ Maxx. Two had fish on them, one had an anchor, and the fourth featured some kind of weird looking frog.

  “What’s with the weird looking frog?”

  “It’s nautical.”

  “Is it though? It looks like it’s dancing. Or being flung from a trebuchet.”

  “We’re keeping it.”

  “Can we at least turn it around so it’s facing the seat or is there an even weirder frog on the other side?”

  “They only had two fish pillows and one anchor. It was either the frog or a New York taxi.”

  “What’s in the other bags?”

  “ Just some soaps, candles, a bottle of olive oil with a sprig of rosemary in it, and a ceramic owl.”

  We went through six bottles of bleach inside the cabin as I don’t think the previous owners had ever cleaned. Walls we assumed were beige turned out to be white and cabinets we thought were white turned out to be a veneer of dry powdery mold. The mold inside the bar fridge was thick enough to easily remove in sheets like insulation batts but it took almost a full day to scrape away twenty-odd years of accumulated fecal splashes from the toilet before we could enter the head without dry-retching.

  The microwave oven in the galley wasn’t worth cleaning - the mesh in the door was rusty and when I tested it, my chest got warm. It came out easily and I replaced it with a new one - I know a guy named Gavin who works at Kmart and he sold me a Kenmore model in the parking lot for twenty-five-dollars.

  I paid my friend Spencer to wash and polish the outside. He’s poor so he did the whole hull for thirty-five dollars. I probably could have gotten away with paying him less but it took him twelve hours and I feel that’s a fair price for his time. Often when I go camping with JM, Spencer tags along and I pay him to put up and take down my tent in Skittles. That might seem lazy but I’d honestly rather sleep in my car than put it up and take it down myself as it’s over-engineered and has 798 tent poles of varying length and diameter.

  The other advantage to Spencer joining us camping is that he and I have similar tastes in music. When it’s just JM and I at camp, I have to listen to whiny songs about pickup trucks, working the land, and good-hearted women.

  “Right, if you are going to bitch about the song so much, I’ll change it.”

  “No, leave it, JM. If you change it now I’ll never find out if the rain eventually came and saved his crops.”

  “It’s not about the crops, it’s about his love of the land.”

  “I thought it was about how much he enjoys driving his pickup with the window down.”

  “Yes, because he loves the land. Here, listen to this one...”

  “...It’s the same song. I recognize that bottle-caps on a stick instrument.”

  “It’s a different song, listen to the words goddammit. That’s the problem with your beep beep boop computer music, you have no appreciation for well written lyrics with meaning.”

  “Is this one also about farming?”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen to it. How can you criticize a song if you don’t listen to the lyrics?”

  “That’s where our music requirements differ, I like a bit of bass with a drop and a tune. I don’t give a fuck how much a farmer loves his land. I’d assume he’d get another job if he didn’t. ”

  “This song isn’t about his love of the land. It’s about his unrequited love for a diner waitress named Stacey.”

  “He’s singing about tumbleweeds, they’re fairly landish.”

  “Stacey’s hair is the color of tumbleweeds. He didn’t say he loves tumbleweeds. It’s a metaphor.”

  “It’s farm emo.”

  “Fuck you, I’m going to bed.”

  JM’s favorite farm-emo singer is a hairy guy named David Allan Coe who looks like he probably owns a lot of guns and lives in a log cabin in the woods that his granpappy built. His most famous song, which I’ve heard far too many times, is about driving his pickup truck to collect his mother from prison on her release day but, before he gets there, she’s run over by a train. It’s pretty much up there with the classics like Achy Breaky Heart by Hannah Montana’s dad and Kenny Chesney’s She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy.

  For those not familiar with She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy, here are the lyrics:

  Plowing these fields in the hot summer sun.

  Over by the gate yonder here she comes.

  With a basket full of chicken and a big cold jug of sweet tea.

  I make a little room and she climbs on up,

  I open up the throttle and stir a little dust.

  Look at her face, she ain't a foolin' me,

  she thinks my tractor's sexy.

  It really turns her on.

  It’s basically the musical equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey for farmers. Yes, Cletus, everyone thinks your tractor is hot. And your oversized Carhartt jacket and Wrangler boot-cut jeans with pig shit stains on the cuffs. When you’re blocking traffic doing 15mph on a single lane road, we’re definitely all thinking, “I’d love to give that tractor driver some chicken,” and not, “Pull over and let us pass, you leather-faced old fuck, we’ve got places to be.”

  The only farming-related song I do like is the one that goes, “You don’t have to be lonely, at Farmersonly.com”

  It’s pretty catchy and the video clip has fat girls wearing rubber boots and milking cows - which covers two of my three fetishes.

  I do understand we can’t all have the same tastes in music though; I grew up in the eighties listening to New Order and Human League while JM grew up listening to his grandmother screaming, “Your pigs are loose again, JM!”

  I also grew up around boats. My grandfather regularly took me fishing on his wooden skiff when I was young. My job was to bait hooks and untangle fishing lines because my grandfather had failing eyesight and arthritis in both hands. Sometimes he’d let me drive and he taught me how to dock; As we approached a pier, I’d jump off the boat and my grandfather would throw me a rope to loop around a pillar. Sometimes I’d miss the rope and he’d yell, “You wee useless cunt!” He wasn’t Scottish, just a dick.

  He also showed me how to tie several knots but I’ve forgotten them all now. I usually just use ratchet straps anyway. If I do have to tie a knot, I just tie several granny kn
ots over the top of each other and figure they’ll squeeze together to form the world’s best knot.

  “Is this rope tangled?”

  “No, Holly, that’s a sailor’s knot. A Sheep’s Hitch Double Shot knot.”

  “Did you just make that up?”

  “No.”

  “It sounds made up.”

  “Well it’s not. My grandfather taught me it.”

  “How do I get it undone?”

  “Ah, there’s a bit of a trick to it. You’ll need a pair of needle nosed pliers or a sharp knife.”

  My father also owned a boat - a speedboat that we towed to ‘The Spot’ on the River Murray on summer weekends. He named it Phil’s Thrills & Spills because his name was Phil. We had water skis and tubes but the best water-toy we owned was an inflatable Coleman queen-sized camping mattress. If the boat went fast enough, the person being towed on the mattress could lift the front to catch air and sometimes get as high as thirty feet.

  Almost every major injury I had in my youth was boating related so I understand how dangerous they can be. From slipping on wet decks to getting limbs caught between boat and dock, I broke fourteen bones over the years. Nine were in a single accident when the rope towing the inflatable Coleman queen-sized camping mattress snapped and I hit the front window of a passing houseboat.

  I’ve seen worse boating injuries though; once when my cousin Susan came to the river with us, she lost her balance as my father powered up, fell off the back, and hit her leg on the propeller. It looked like a shark had bitten a three-inch chunk out of her calf and just left splintered bone. It was the first time Susan had been to the river and she never went back. I think she had some kind of social anxiety disorder. My sister told me that they repaired the hole in Susan’s leg with meat taken from her bottom, which I believed for thirty years until she told me she’d made it up. She also told me that when I turned ten, I’d be able to teleport short distances but it was a closely guarded secret from under-tens for their own good because they needed to learn how to walk and run perfectly first.

  “Holly, you know what would have been a better name for the boat than Bushpig?”

  “Anything at all?”

  “No, That’ll Do, Pig.”

  “The thing the farmer says at the end of Babe?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s actually perfect. I love it. We should definitely name the boat that.”

  “Too late, I’ve already registered it and organized a boat slip at Smith Mountain Lake under the name Bushpig.”

  “Well change it.”

  “You can’t change a boat’s name. It’s bad luck.”

  “Who says?”

  “Sailors. The boat sinks or someone drowns.”

  “Since when are you superstitious?”

  “I’m not about ladders and cats but boat safety isn’t worth fucking with. Do you want the boat to sink or someone to drown?”

  “No.”

  “Did I tell you what happened to my cousin Susan?”

  “Yes, her entire leg and half her pelvis got chopped off by a propeller blade. I’m sure you exaggerated though.”

  “Well, I didn’t. She has a robot leg now.”

  Apparently it is possible to change a boat’s name but it requires a lengthy chat with Poseidon and splashing stuff about which seems like more effort than it’s worth. Besides, after arguing for the name Bushpig, I wasn’t about to admit that I hated it too.

  Bushpig was almost ready to be towed to be towed to the lake after three weeks but the faucets in the galley weren’t working. The fault was traced a leaking fresh water pump located under a cover in the floor of the dining area. The compartment in which it was mounted, about the size of a laundry sink, was full of water. I siphoned the water out and removed the pump from its mounting bracket with a cordless screwdriver. The bracket was also rusty so I unscrewed it as well and noticed water had managed to make its way behind it.

  Hence my trip to Lowe’s to buy a spray can of Flex Seal.

  Lori was home that day. She doesn’t work and they have a cleaner so I think she just talks to her cat and watches Hallmark Channel all day. She used to be on the board of a community group that organized Christmas decorations for lamp posts but the two-hour meeting once a year took too much time out of her heavy schedule.

  She does occasionally leave the house but only after two or three days of extensive planning - the one time Lori and JM joined us on Smith Mountain Lake for a few days on a houseboat took two months of scheduling, eight meetings, and a seventy-four page document covering everything from required outfits to sunscreen SPF ratings. It was spiral bound and featured checklists, maps, emergency numbers, GPS locations and clip-art of ducks.

  “It’s a few nights on a houseboat, Lori, what’s with the eight large suitcases?”

  “It’s all I could fit in the car. I had to leave two suitcases behind so it better not snow.”

  “It’s ninety-degrees. What’s in the plastic grocery bag?”

  “JM’s stuff.”

  I lifted the cover of the pump compartment and gave the can of Flex Seal a good shake before spraying liberally. I used almost half the can on the area where the mount was to be reinstalled and, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to give the entire space a waterproof coating, used the rest of the can on the floor and walls of the compartment. The mount went back on easily, over the top of the still wet Flex Seal to create a good seal, and the pump connected to that without any trouble. I was in the process of screwing in the last bolt when the cordless screwdriver created a spark.

  Apparently the highly flammable propellant used in highly flammable Flex Seal is heavier than the air around it, and the gas collected in the sunken compartment. I was on my knees with my head and arms inside when the gas ignited and a fireball engulfed me. I remember, as the intense heat ripped into me, thinking, “So this is how I die, in an explosion.”

  It was actually more of a flash than an explosion, and more of a ‘whoomph’ than a ‘kaboom’, but it was violent enough to throw me backwards. The smell and sound of burning hair alerted me to the fact that I was on fire and I ran my hands over my head frantically to extinguish the flames. Fire raged in the sunken compartment and thick black smoke filled the cabin as I made my way out onto the deck.

  There were two mandatory fire extinguishers onboard, one was inside the cabin, cut off by flames, the other was deckside inside a life-vest cubby and readily accessible. I managed to free the extinguisher from its cradle and pull the pin out. I was shaking, probably due to adrenalin, but I wasn’t in a lot of pain. At that point, it just felt like a ‘buzzing static’ type of bad sunburn. I aimed the nozzle inside the cabin and emptied the entire contents, making sure the fire was completely out before climbing off the boat. I was half way down the ladder when the pain hit. My vision blurred and my legs buckled but I made it to the back door of Lori and JM’s house and knocked.

  JM and Lori have told me a dozen times that I don’t need to knock before I enter but I can’t walk into anybody’s house without doing so. Years ago, after visiting my friend Geoffrey, I realized I’d left my sunglasses at his house and went back. I’d only been gone a few minutes so I walked straight in to discover Geoffrey taking a dump in his kitchen trashcan. It was one of those flip up lid kind and Geoffrey was squatting over it, naked from the waist down, pressing the foot pedal down with his hand. As he yelled and leapt up in surprise, the lid closed and a half-out log broke off and landed on top. Nothing prepares you for this kind of social interaction so I stood there staring at the poo on the lid while Geoffrey screamed at me for not knocking. Apparently the plumbing in his toilet wasn’t working or something but who shits in a trashcan? Shit in the shower and waffle-stomp those nuggets down the drain like the rest of us.

  I realize the likelihood of walking in on JM or Lori while they’re taking a trash can dump is slim but it can’t be completely ruled out. I lock the doors when I’m home because Holly’s father, Tom, once poked his head into the b
athroom while I was in the shower and said, “Just dropping off a watermelon.”

  “Lori, can I come in? I was on fire.”

  “It’s open... oh my god!”

  “Yes, it hurts a lot. Can I use your sink to splash water on myself?”

  “Well sure but you’re bright red and blistering. Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No, I just need to cool my face and arms down. How do I turn this faucet on?”

  “It’s a touch faucet, you just touch it.”

  “Like this?”

  “No, higher up.”

  “Here?”

  “No, up a bit.”

  “Here?”

  “No, down a bit... closer to the middle. No? Try a light tap instead of slapping it.”

  JM and Lori have a lot of complicated gadgets in their home. I watered their plants once while they were away and it took me an hour to work out the door locks. It requires two keys to be turned simultaneously, like a missile bunker, while entering a sixteen-digit code with a stick held in your teeth. If you get it wrong, poisonous gas sprays out of a nozzle.

  Lori rang Holly and JM while I splashed water on my face and arms. It helped with the pain somewhat but my skin started to peel away under the stream of running water. JM arrived well before Holly. I’ve long suspected he has some kind of underground tunnel between his house and business premises so he can slip home for snacks and naps.

  “Oh my god!”

  “Yes, it hurts a lot, JM.”

  “You need to go to the hospital.”