Scumbler

by William Wharton

  I’m going to have great fun building this place, too. I’m all charged up from my Spanish trip, ready to paint; I’ll use some of that excess energy to build. I’m also still trying to work Sandy out of my mind; give this old psyche some peace.

  I tie a shovel, a pick and lunch on back of Mike’s Honda. He keeps it down here, says it’s too dangerous driving a motorcycle in Paris. He’s right, but how else could I get around with my paint box? I work my way up into the place. His machine’s not a cross bike, but it’s good enough with careful driving to get in there. The old nesting juices are flowing madly. I’m building one more of my hiding places. I think all my paintings are probably hideouts, too. I make up my own world, crawl in, then invite people to join me. This book is something like that, when I come to think about it. Look around, how do you like it here, inside my head? A bit messy, isn’t it.

  WE INVADE EACH OTHER, ENTWINE

  OUR HEARTS AND MINDS IN A PLACE

  WHERE WE ARE NOT. COULD BE THE

  GREATEST MIRACLE OR A LOT OF ROT.

  I dig a hole twelve feet by eighteen—nice proportion. I dig down about five feet on the high side and three feet on the low. There’s one hell of a lot of rock; I save them.

  There’re tons of rocks in this country; makes for lousy agriculture. The houses around here are all built of rock; most of them don’t even have mortar, just mix dirt with lime and pile rocks up carefully. My mill’s built that way and it’s almost three hundred years old. Jet sonic boom from the military air base in Dijon most likely will shake it down if the government doesn’t get smart soon: houses, barns falling in all the time.

  It takes four days to dig and level the hole. I feel my gut tightening up. I always like to do hard physical work on vacations. Kate does most of the homekeeping on these long vacations when she’s not teaching. Digging holes, cement work—that kind of thing keeps my thick old blood flowing just right, maybe keep me living a couple extra years or so.

  I’ve decided to build this house the way the ancient Gauls did.

  I hunt around for straight trees to shape into poles. I find some small pines; cut out about twenty poles, leaving the bark on them—everything natural.

  Next day, I haul out a sack of cement, fifty kilos, a hundred ten pounds. It’s rough maneuvering the bike but I get it in there; trailbreak those last fifty yards. The practice I got beating Sweik’s Ariel up from Spain comes in handy.

  It’s amazing how these little Frenchmen around here can handle heavy weights; they throw these cement sacks around like medicine balls. The men in the Morvan are all about five feet tall: old worn Celtic blood; not enough to eat for generations; brutally hard work. They’re tough, hardhanded little guys. Most of them drink too much, usually dead at fifty. The women live forever. Old Monsieur LeCerbe, Mathilde’s husband, was the startling exception. Now he’s dead, too. I’m the only man in our village: cock of the coop, me and a bunch of strong old ladies. They can get together and bury me in the cemetery up on the hill: nice view.

  MY CEMETERY PLOT HAS A VIEW—FOR YOU

  COME SEE ME. BUT I WON’T BE THERE FOR

  LONG. HOWEVER, COME ANYWAY SING A SONG

  IN OUR HONOR; LOOK OUT AT THE ROLLING HILLS

  AND KNOW I’M PART OF THEM NOW. YOU’RE

  REALLY SEEING ME-US. DO YOU HEAR ME?

  I start mixing cement with the sand and dirt in the bottom of my hole. I just stir it around dry, then pour in water I haul from the stream. I do about a square yard at a time; takes me two days to lay the slab. I let it dry one day, Easter Sunday. I eat our Easter eggs till I’m almost sick, part of the family tradition.

  Next day, feeling sluggish, I start with rocks, building up sides. I fit rocks and butter the spaces with cement. I haul a new bag of cement every time I come in; getting better at it. The kids are helping now, making a clubhouse sort of thing with me, honing their nesting instincts. Mike’s good at cement work, a fine thing for a young person to know. Tim and Sara are mixing the mortar, hauling water up from the stream. We’ve got a real team going.

  I run our walls up a foot higher than ground level; line them with plastic on the outside to run water off downhill. I shove dirt against those walls to hide the plastic; can’t put off my nature folk with nasty plastic.

  Now the place looks like the cellar of a house that got blown away in a tornado. I’ve left a hole in the center of the slab. I set up and cement in place a center pole. This pole is about ten feet tall. I lash our roof poles out from this center pole to ground level, resting them on the edge of our wall all around and extending them two or three feet beyond the wall. Sara helps with this; she has an eye as accurate as a plumb level and knows how to use her body for shifting and holding heavy weights. I try not to force the kids too much with this building mania of mine but I’m convinced it gives them a security and life meaning they’ll need later on. Even Tim, at eleven, can drive an eightpenny nail into dry oak without bending it.

  This job is like building a tepee, but permanent. We anchor the ends of the poles in cement and rock. The whole thing is solid; the kids have great fun climbing over it, like a jungle gym. I cut the poles off short on the downhill side to give some window space and a place for a door opening. It’s going to be a Hobbit kind of door anyway, only about four feet high. I build and hang the door, then rough in three steps down to level.

  I use extra slate left over the roof job on our mill. We hang it on lath I get in Château-Chinon. The slate I bought secondhand from a scavenging mason. It was only fifty centimes a slate, so I bought all he had. This is real hand-cut old Savoyard-style slate, almost impossible to find now.

  I leave one hole on the back wall for the chimney opening. We work like wild people and have that chimney built and ready to burn in one day. We build it from rock and now we’re gathering rock from all over. By the time we’re finished, there isn’t a reasonable-sized stone within a hundred yards.

  The next day, I rig the windows with heavy-duty transparent plastic. Real glass is too expensive and would be a bitch to transport in on the bike. My nature folk will have to put up with this plastic, better than having wind and rain blow in, better than total darkness. I make the windows double and tight, each rolling up for good weather.

  Mike and I cut down tree branches to improve our view out toward the stream. We use these branches to build furniture. We make rustic kinds of porch-type chairs and stools. Sara designs them, Mike cuts them out while Tim and I do the nailing and fitting. They’re crude but comfortable.

  I haul in a piece of foam rubber from the mill for a bed, and build a small platform beside the fire on which to put it. We hustle up some extra knives, forks, spoons and a few plates. We find an old cracked pitcher and a bowl for washing up. I bring out a butane stove we don’t use anymore and a butane tank. We dig a john about twenty yards downhill toward the stream on the path to water. A little bit of pollution can’t hurt. Mike builds a one-holer and shields it with a barricade of branches. The roof isn’t much but there’s a fine view of the stars. Sara even puts in a roll of toilet paper, hinges a slate over it to keep off the rain—all the comforts of home.

  Our nature nesters can haul water up from the stream, use candles or oil lamps for light, cook on the stove and have the fireplace for heat. A real nature person could live here in great style. When it’s time to head back for Paris, we all hate to leave.

  Sara and Mike want to keep Tim with them and stay on a few weeks more, but their school would blow a gasket. They’re already upset with us because we let the kids stay home when they want to. There’s a true kind of sickness we call mal d’école, sick of school, and the best cure for it is a day in bed reading. Feeling a prisoner in school takes all the joy out of learning or thinking. The headmaster is one of those types who spends more time checking to see that all the “inmates” are locked in than that they’re learning anything; should get himself a job somewhere as a warden.

  We get our whole hut done for under a hundred and fifty bucks.
It’s the kind of nest that’s really fun to make. We’ll rent it for fifty a month. I know there’ll be a high turnover; kids won’t stick it out; we’ll just insist on three months in advance, minimum. Actually be doing them a favor, helping them find their true profile, what they can realistically handle; might even come up with a modern-day Thoreau; that’d be nice.

  A CHANCE FOR LEARNING STEPS TO THE DANCE

  OF LIFE; TO STRIDE OUT ON THE BALLROOM FLOOR

  UNDER STEADY STARS AND CURVED BRANCHES.

  THE WIND IS THE MUSIC AND ALL LIVING THINGS

  ARE YOUR PARTNER. READY? ONE—TWO—THREE!

  We’re not more than a week back in Paris when a son of friends in America comes for one of those late, spring fever springtime visits. He has a woman friend with him; she’s wearing white overalls and a beaded headband, looks like an Algonquin carpenter.

  He starts off by complaining because we’re using detergent to wash our dishes. He doesn’t volunteer to wash dishes himself, with or without detergents, but he’s an impressive expert on how detergents pollute the streams and rivers. We talk. They both wallow in non-language: “Like, you know what I mean—like, real beautiful—how come—right on, man—” It’s hard having a conversation, getting them to say something. They only roll over the same set pet phrases.

  It turns out he’s “deep into” how he wants to find a completely “unspoiled” corner of the world where “human beings can live like human beings.” That’s a direct quote. The girl friend has her spaced-out, wraparound eyes pinned on him.

  I tell about this place I have. It’s in tune with nature: nothing disturbs the natural forest; everything made from nature, the indigenous materials.

  “And there’s a clear, clean unpolluted stream flowing right by, not a detergent within ten miles.”

  He sits back behind his fifty-dollar handmade Indian shirt and thick leather belt. He pulls at his two-hundred-dollar Universe boots. He squirms. The girl friend’s excited in an underwater way.

  “Beautiful! This is what we’ve been looking for, Dyn.”

  What the hell could Dyn stand for? They’re both packed to the eyeballs with traveler’s checks from seven banks in five countries. They don’t want to be caught in any dollar devaluation; prepared for anything. They have a thousand dollars in camping gear, which, incidentally, they dropped right off their backs as they walked through our apartment door. THAT’S pollution.

  They have tents that roll up to fit in a pack of cigarettes; sleeping bags made out of Reynolds aluminum and hummingbird feathers, tested by astronauts on the moon; compasses with built-in computers; a stove the size of a flashlight; solar flashlights that will burn a thousand hours.

  While we’re talking, Mike and Sara come home from play practice at school. We’re having pizza for dinner, so they were supposed to pick up some dough from the baker around the corner. In French it’s called pâte, said like a combination of “pat” as in patty-cake and “pot” as in pots and pans. Mike puts his books in his room, comes out with the paper package of pâte. He hands it to Kate.

  “I could only get a kilo of pâte, Mom. That’s all they had.”

  Our guests are electrified. It takes me a few seconds to figure what’s the matter. I pick it up.

  “But, Mike, we have guests, a kilo won’t be enough. Try the guy on Basfroi.”

  “He’ll never sell us pâte, Dad, he saves it for his Algerian customers. It’d be a waste of time!”

  They’ve actually turned green, with shock or envy I’m not sure. No sense having any heart attacks on the premises so I tell them about French pâte. We all laugh and they giggle nervously, Dyn fingering his pouch and papers.

  TOXIC FLIGHT, AFRAID TO FACE THE

  PANIC GLORY OF WHITE NIGHTS.

  That weekend I drive them down and we hike out to the place. Dyn lies on the bed; she sits cross-legged on the floor—getting vibes, she says. I build a fire. I walk them down to the stream; show the john.

  “Very organic,” he says.

  “Beautiful, far out!” says she. I get them to pay three months’ rent before they know what’s happened. I help them buy a secondhand motorbike in Château-Chinon, so they can get in and out, do some shopping. It just might be the greatest experience of their lives.

  He’s going to write a book. He has a black leather folder and about twenty sharpened pencils with his name on them in gold. He won’t say what it’s about except it has to do with youth looking for reality in a false world; “A sort of modern-day Don Quixote,” he says. He says it “quick shot”; took me a while to figure what he meant; I’ve always said it something like “coyote.”

  She’s going to make her own loom, weave. The whole deal turns out so well I search up six more woods and buy the batch for under fifteen hundred bucks. I’m going to fix and build more nature nests in the summer with the kids helping me. It’ll be a sort of private summer camp for American overprivileged overaged teenagers.

  On the drive up to Paris, spring really shows itself; the closer we get, the greener everything is. The chestnut trees are just coming into blossom. I’m dying to start painting; it seems I haven’t had a paintbrush in my hand for years.

  THE PAINT HAS BEEN LEAN IN MY BLOOD,

  BLEACHED OUT BY FEAR AND PSYCHIC PANIC.

  BUT NOW IT THICKENS, THROBBING IN MY TEMPLES.

  THIS OLD TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST-RESURRECTED.

  XVI

  CRS = SS

  When we get settled in Paris, I roll on back into the Marais. I’m planning a painting of a façade with a little grocery in front, the shop door open; there’s a courtyard in the background and I’ll build that in, too. It’s going to take a big canvas, a 50F. The paint box is stored at Goldenberg’s, so I’m hauling the canvas down there roped on my back. I’ve done it plenty of times before, like sailing a small boat in a squall.

  It’s on the edge of rain, so I’m wearing my crummy fake black leather jacket I bought in the flea market for three bucks. I’m also wearing my helmet with my name printed on it. This helmet nobody’s going to steal it’s so old, especially with my weird name painted on it in acrylic paint. I hate carrying the damned thing and, worse yet, I despise locking it to the bike. I just leave it on the seat. Nobody’s going to steal that old bike or that old helmet. One of the ways to feel safe is not having anything anybody else could want enough to steal.

  IF YOU CAN’T GIVE IT AWAY,

  YOU SHOULDN’T OWN IT.

  IF YOU’D DIE FOR IT, THEN

  YOU CAN’T LIVE WITH IT.

  I prefer not wearing any helmet at all, but the cops are getting very touchy about people on motorcycles without helmets. The French now have a mandatory helmet law. It’s not going to cut down on accidents; in fact, it’ll probably increase them. You can’t hear or see as well and you get a false sense of security, take more chances.

  If I’m willing to have my head broken open, that should be my choice. I know I’m safer without a helmet. You start out a government to help people and the next thing you know they’re running your life.

  MOM AND DAD ARE BIOLOGY. BUT

  YOU’RE MOST LIKELY SICK IF YOU

  GET YOUR KICKS FROM POLITICS.

  WEAN YOURSELF NOW, CLEAN YOUR

  OWN DIAPERS. WATCH OUT FOR

  SHOE TIERS AND NOSE WIPERS.

  Anyway,-I’m-cruising-along-Boulevard-Saint-Germain on the bike in my jacket and helmet, with the canvas strapped on my back. I’m completely legal. I’m just turning there in front of the bridge over the river where it turns in to Henri-IV when two CRS police bastards jump out in front of me with submachine guns. I stop. Of course I stop, and these jerks pull me off the bike before I can even get the kickstand down. The bike falls over and when I reach to pick it up, they pull me away. They’re being very tough while my gasoline at three dollars a gallon is pouring into the street. It could cause a fire or an explosion.

  They drag me over to one of their gray wagons. I have to struggle out of my canvas just getting through
the door. A 50F canvas is over three feet by four feet. I lean it against the wagon; go up a few steps and inside.

  A very mean-looking creep is sitting behind a little desk in back. The wagon smells of spit and sweaty leather. I have my helmet off and tucked under my arm. The little flic behind the desk points at it.

  “Qu’est-ce qu’il signifie ça, monsieur?”

  What’s that mean? he says. I look down at the helmet.

  “C’est un casque!” says I.

  “Ça, ça!”

  He leans forward and points at my name on the helmet. I look down. I tell him in French that it’s my name, my family name. He looks very cynical; maybe that’s skeptical, maybe it’s both. My name could maybe be a peace slogan in French. He probably thinks I’m advocating love not war or something. I am. I definitely am, but not by walking around with slogans on my motorcycle helmet!

  He asks for my passport. I give it to him. He stares at it several minutes, turning all the pages. He’s pissed because it really is my name. Then he asks why I’m wearing the leather jacket. I tell him I thought it was going to rain. I’m trying my damnedest to be nice. Now he asks my why I’m boucilé. He kind of jumps forward and springs this on me. I don’t quite understand the word in French but figure it out. He means, why am I carrying a shield.

  Things are getting ridiculous and I can’t stop a small smile from sneaking into the corners of my mouth. This is a big mistake; you can laugh at a French cop but never even half smile at the CRS. They’re the French equivalent of the Gestapo: really vicious cats, with the male sickness and too much power.

  I tell him I’m a tourist painter and my “shield” is a canvas I’m taking to paint on. One of the goons in the truck behind me thinks this is funny, snickers. He’s not helping.

  The little guy asks why I’ve come to France just now to paint. I tell him I’m painting the area around where Les Halles used to be. I’m not going to say where I’m really painting. I’ve already done a lovely series on Les Halles before the idiots ripped it down and built the stupid Forum and Pompidou Center. It took me most of a year, thirty giant paintings all done at night or in the early morning. I have them stored in my attic; still trying to sell the whole thing or make one of those video cassettes I was talking about.