by J. J. Murray
I don’t remember my family owning any brand new appliances when I was a child. Our television may have been years out of date but it worked, and someone in the family knew how to fix it if it didn’t. Many companies seem to make new appliances and vehicles that are supposed to fall apart, and instead of getting them fixed, people buy new ones. It is a national shame. Anything broken (except maybe a heart) can be mended. It may not work “as good as new,” but it will work. I prefer using “old school” appliances and driving an “old school” vehicle. Though not as fancy or “modern” as my neighbors are, I know I can fix anything without having to have a PhD. in electronics, quantum physics, and mechanical engineering.
While sipping the sweetest well water you ever tasted, I hear buffalo snorting and stomping the earth in the field next door. I sometimes watch the heifers mark their territories and roll in the dirt to keep the bugs off. Buffalo are some amazing creatures. Baby calves can run only fifteen minutes after they’re born. Heifers “babysit” each other’s calves. And when ranch hands come to collect the new calves for tagging and their first shots, the entire herd chases after the truck.
I see a flash of black fur with white feet outside.
Lovie is chasing a bat.
And thus ends another day in my life.
Tuesday, June 6
Chapter 4
At six a.m., Lovie wakes me with her nose.
She is a reliable alarm clock because her bladder is the size of a thimble.
I rise from my locally handcrafted Amish bed and stretch.
I have grown wings because I am sticking to my bed sheet.
I do not like sticking to my bed sheet. A 1950 Belco box fan in a window is not enough to cool off this donna sensuale.
I peel off the bed sheet, let Lovie escape the cabin to kill or maim something, and brush my teeth at an eighteenth century American Standard cast iron pedestal sink in the bathroom. It is wise to be wide-awake when approaching this massive sink or the claw foot tub next to it. Cast iron is hard on sleepy toes. When the cold water hits my back teeth, I wince. I do not want to visit my dentist anytime soon, even if his name is Dr. Comfort.
After a quick breakfast of toast and raspberry preserves, I clean my bathroom and kitchen using an all-purpose cleaner I make in a two-quart, blue glass Mason jar that still has its zinc lid. The recipe—three parts water, one part vinegar, tablespoon of salt, orange and lemon peels—has been handed down in our family for many years. Mama always had her next “batch” fermenting for weeks. It works, smells good, and even does windows. Water is free, salt is cheap, vinegar is inexpensive, and the peels don’t have to go to the landfill.
Non sprecare, non vogliono—Waste not, want not.
I check the outdoor metal Dr. Pepper thermometer, and it’s already eighty-six degrees. I look at a few purplish clouds scudding across the sky. “Feel free to stop and soak us sometime,” I whisper.
And then I take a soak. I slip into the tranquility of the claw foot tub and enjoy a lukewarm bath because I do not want to sweat after I get out. Piping hot baths are good for my lower back and achy feet, but they leave me dehydrated and give me a headache that sometimes lasts all day. After washing, rinsing, and towel drying my hair, I only comb it out. There’s no use doing anything else to it in this humid weather.
I dress in my usual uniform (jeans, boots, and Ferrari work shirt) and pick up my cell phone. In order to get any kind of signal, I have to walk to the fence separating me from the buffalo field. It is absolutely no fun checking messages when it rains or snows.
Fortunately, I only have one message: “Gio, it’s Dodie. My fridge is on the fritz. Get here as soon as you can.”
Lonely Dodie Loney and her two dozen cats. I could tell her what to check on her Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator/freezer, but I’m not sure if she’ll do it. Dodie is pushing ninety, and though her long-term memory is sharp, her short-term memory is hazy. I had already vacuumed her lower front coils at Thanksgiving because of all the cat hair. The last service call in early January involved popping the front grill to dust the vent and pulling the refrigerator back to look at the back vent, fan, and back coils. The clothes I wore that day never came clean.
Other than what’s under your stove, the nastiest floor in your house is under your refrigerator.
I return Dodie’s call. “It’s Gio from Ferrari Repair.”
“Hurry, Gio. It’s gonna be another hot one and my milk is starting to turn.”
“I’ll be right there, Dodie.”
On the way to the Jeep, I call for Lovie.
She slinks around the corner of the cabin with a rabbit clenched in her jaws.
Another “gift” from my dog.
“Drop it.”
Lovie lays it at my feet. Trust me—a complete rabbit at your feet is much better than half a rabbit at your feet.
“Lovie, why can’t you play nice?”
She wags her body.
If I bury the rabbit, she’ll dig it up. If I throw it in the creek, she’ll retrieve it and expect me to throw it again. If I scoop it up with a shovel and pitch it to the other side of the creek, it will stink to high heaven by the time I get home.
After donning some thick welder’s gloves I keep in the Jeep, I pick up the rabbit.
Lovie sits, her tail still.
“We are not playing fetch.”
Lovie wags her tail.
“I’m serious.”
I carry the scrawny rabbit to a sixty-four-gallon BEARicuda Stealth II bear-proof trash bin. I could have skimped and bought the BEARicuda Varmint Vault, but that only keeps raccoons, squirrels, and Lovie from messing with my trash. This Stealth II is a beast, weighing in at fifty-five pounds empty because it is solid steel wrapped with virtually indestructible, rotationally molded plastic. And it opens with a pull and locks watertight with a push.
Now I don’t have to re-collect my trash after being away from the cabin all day. I used to have an ordinary metal trashcan, but bears used it as a punching bag or played soccer with it. I often found my trashcan in the creek without the lid. Retrieving one’s female hygiene products from a creek in darkness at the end of a long day is no fun at all.
I open the bin, drop the rabbit, and lock the bin.
Lovie stands on her hind legs and rests her paws on the lid.
I hold her head in my hands. “Please don’t mess with the buffalo, okay? Be good.”
After rolling down all of the Jeep’s windows to air it out, I go in to Kingstown to Pop’s Gas and fill up the tank. It takes so long that I get sunburn.
After I pay, Millie says, “It’s another record, Gio.”
She says that every time.
I drive out of town, take a right on Route 113, and start up Mott’s Mountain. Dodie’s cottage rests in the third S-curve, and I see her out in her yard pulling weeds by hand along her gray, warped picket fence. Dodie wears green polyester shorts, a yellow and orange flowered top, black rubber boots to her knees, a red bandana, and green gardening gloves. Daisies and flowering cacti provide a bright bottom border to her otherwise dingy, gray cottage that is badly in need of paint, gutters, a new roof, and window screens. I installed her digital antenna years ago so she could watch her soap operas, crime shows, and Wheel of Fortune, but a few windstorms have bent it in all directions. I probably ought to climb up there and straighten it out.
I creep up her steep driveway and park behind her white 1972 Olds Delta 88. That bad boy has a 455-cubic-inch Rocket V-8 with 340 gross horsepower, and Dodie never pushes it past thirty-five miles an hour. I know she putts along because I’ve been stuck behind her on the way to church. What a waste of an engine! It’s been sitting under her carport so long that moss is growing on her tires, and dried bird droppings have striped her black roof like a skunk. She’s down to two hubcaps now, and her tires are black balloons ready to blow out. What I could do with that car …
Since I doubt I’ll need any tools to “fix” her refrigerator, I get out, shutting the d
oor gently behind me because I don’t want to wake any of Dodie’s cats. “Good morning, Dodie.”
Dodie removes her gloves. “Have to do my yard work early in the morning because of this heat.” She pulls out the front of her blouse and uses it to fan her chest. “Might hit a hundred today. Can you believe it?”
Unkempt but full white hair spilling out of her bandana, one gold chain around her neck, silver loop earrings, no rings on her fingers—Dodie Loney is how I might end up one day if I don’t find a man. If Preston’s Chapel, the United Methodist church Nonno and I attend, ever had a single adult Sunday School class, only Louise Hill, Nonno, Dodie Loney, and I would be in it.
“Let’s hope we have a storm to cool us off,” I say. “How’s your TV reception these days?”
“Good, good,” Dodie says. “Law and Order, Monk, and Bones come in clear as day.”
And this will save me from climbing onto her roof and turning into a puddle of goo. “Your yard always looks so nice, Dodie, especially your daisies.”
Dodie smiles. “I water them every day.”
“When are you going to let me work on your car?”
“It’s running fine enough for me, dear.” She turns and waddles to the front door.
“Um, Dodie, the cats.”
Her cats own the living room, and the last time I was here, three of them jumped me from behind. And none of them has been declawed.
Dodie lays her gardening gloves on a metal watering can on the concrete stoop. “Oh, they won’t bother you today.”
“I’d rather not take that chance.”
Dodie opens the front door. “They won’t bother you, dear. Come on.”
I enter the cottage and look side to side. Where are the cats? There’s usually a dozen flipping, fluffy tails on her couch. “Are they outside?”
“Come into the kitchen, Gio.”
I walk past several of Dodie’s spoon collections hanging on wall racks and enter her tidy country kitchen, her refrigerator’s compressor struggling mightily. I look for Berta, the tabby who often sprang from the top of a spinning spice rack sitting on the orange and white counter. Berta was a master of camouflage.
“Where’s Berta?”
“Gone,” Dodie says. “They’re all gone.”
“Where?”
Dodie laughs. “I guess they got tired of my company.”
They’re really gone. “Did you leave a door open?”
“I leave all my windows and doors open when it’s this hot, sweetie,” Dodie says. “You know I don’t have air-conditioning.”
“That’s not very safe, Dodie,” I say.
“I always keep my Winchester loaded.” She sits on one of four yellow chairs around a square oak table, a Lazy Susan burdened with coasters, napkin holders, and empty vases in the center, a plate of cookies in front of her.
“Don’t you miss your cats?”
“Nope. Would like you like some cinnamon chocolate chip cookies?”
No. “Um, sure.”
“Just baked them yesterday.”
Dodie Loney is the worst cook in Gray County. She claims to make the best beef gravy and the best chocolate pudding in the world, but it is truly hard to tell the difference between the two of them. A kitty litter box and her blueberry crumble look suspiciously alike. Her steaks might actually be shoe leather. I try to eat one of whatever she has “whipped up in a jiffy,” but I usually regret it later.
I choose a cookie from the plate and take a bite. Way too much cinnamon. Who would ruin a chocolate chip cookie with cinnamon?
“You like it?”
I try not to cough. “It’s good.” For killing ants, mice, wasps, and any appetite.
“My secret is using cinnamon oil instead of regular cinnamon powder.”
Didn’t I read something about kids doing a challenge with a teaspoon of cinnamon and having to go to the emergency room? Cinnamon oil has to be worse. Oh, my lungs are burning.
“I’ll get you some milk, sweetie,” she says, rising from the table. “It’s fresh. Bought it yesterday after church. Might be a bit warm because of my fritzy fridge.” Dodie pulls a half-filled plastic gallon of milk from the refrigerator and fills a green glass tumbler.
I chug the milk until I taste it. Ew. It is about to turn. The combination of her cookie and this milk would rival Ipecac. “Thanks.” For giving me instant indigestion. Stay down, toast.
Dodie points at the refrigerator. “Hope you can fix it.”
I stand and open the freezer door, feel the divider between the doors, and pull back my hand because it’s smoking hot. Something is blocking one or more of her interior vents, and her compressor has been working overtime. Though the top freezer vent isn’t blocked, I rearrange a few items on the top shelf, relocating a box of frozen spinach to a compartment in the door. The icemaker looks fine and has made plenty of ice. The lower freezer return vent is unblocked.
I close the freezer and open the refrigerator door. Nothing blocks the top vent but no cold air is moving through it. I squat and see a long plastic bag of kale clogging the return vent. Once I extricate the bag, cold air spills into the top, and the compressor winds down to a relaxing hum.
I hold up the offending bag of kale. “This was blocking the return vent.”
“Oh, my word. I forgot that kale was in there. Is it any good?”
There’s pale green kale juice in this bag. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh well. You can toss it.”
I drop it into a yellow plastic trashcan and don’t see a single ant crawling into it. Even ants know to avoid Dodie Loney’s kitchen.
“Sit down, sit down,” she says.
I sit and nudge the glass tumbler away from me. Is the milk yellow?
“Heard you’re fixing Freddy’s tractors.”
“Who?”
Dodie laughs and it sounds worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. “Frederick Simmons. I called him Freddy.”
“How’d you hear I was working on his tractor?”
“A little birdie told me.” She removes her bandana and shakes it out, several flecks of grass landing in my milk. “How is Freddy?” She folds the bandana and puts her hand on her chest.
“Are you all right, Dodie?” I ask.
“I’m fine, dear. Why do you ask?”
“You’re holding your chest.”
“I am?” She smiles and looks down. “Oh. I am.” She rests her hand on the table. “I’m not going to die anytime soon, dear. So, how’s Freddy?”
Big, angry, bigoted, sexist. “Okay, I guess.”
“Isn’t he losing weight?”
How? “I don’t know. I only met him for the first time yesterday.”
“I think he’s lost a hundred pounds in the last few months.”
Mr. Simmons used to weigh five hundred pounds? “Do you visit him?”
“Oh no,” she says. “I watch him from Spectacle Road.”
She would have an unobstructed view of The Simmons Farm from Spectacle Road, but that’s creepy. “Why do you do that?”
She sighs. “Just to check up on him. Make sure he’s still in the land of the living. He has really let that farm go. Only one heifer and the rest of those cows are no better than pets. Why, I remember when The Simmons Farm supplied milk to four counties. He’d be lucky to get a gallon a week from that ugly heifer.”
“How long have you been …” Spying? “How long have you been watching him?”
“Oh, for a little while. Not every day, mind you. I have my yard and daisies to tend. I watch him putting out the feed, going into the barn to milk the heifer, walking his land, checking on his only calf. It must be so lonely not to have other calves to play with.”
The calf can play with Jack. “Why are you so interested in Mr. Simmons?”
“We used to date.”
“You did? I didn’t know that.”
Dodie’s face becomes a prune. “We dated until Freddy dumped me for Blanche Zengler. She would have been a hundred this year.�
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“But aren’t you a lot younger than Mr. Simmons?”
“I was seventeen and he was twenty-seven when we dated. That was perfectly acceptable back then, and my mama was all for it. Freddy had a farm. He was going places. We used to go up to Motts Mountain in his truck.”
“A forty-one Chevy?”
“Yes. It was military green. A lot of cars and trucks were that color during the war.” She reaches out and grasps my hands with her ice-cold hands. “Those are some magic memories. We didn’t use the heater that much, if you know what I mean.”
I wish I did. “Sounds like you two were hot and heavy.” Is blood running through the veins in her hands? She could have flash-frozen the milk with one of her fingers.
She withdraws her hands. “No. We were hot, but he wasn’t heavy. Then. He was a regular beanpole. If I could have cooked then like I can cook now, he would have married me.”
It would have been a brief marriage.
“Blanche Zengler, now she could cook. She won her first ribbon at the Gray County fair for her orange cream chiffon cake.” Dodie points to a framed recipe hanging on the wall next to a rectangular yellow rotary dial phone. “I follow Blanche’s recipe to a T, but my cake never turns out spongy enough. I’ll bet she didn’t reveal all her ingredients to the Current. She was always keeping cooking secrets like that, but she was a better cook than I’ll ever be.”
Delmer is probably a better cook than Dodie ever will be. “I can’t believe that, Dodie. Your cookies are so good.” For composting. No, they might spoil the groundwater, and cows and buffalo will sprout fifth legs and second heads.