A Key to Treehouse Living

by Elliot Reed

  NEBULOUS PLANS

  When someone says that such and such a plan is a nebulous one, that basically means that the person doesn’t have specific expectations for how the plan is going to pan out. The word NEBULOUS comes from NEBULA, which is the name for a mysterious cluster of stars in deep space (see JOURNEY INTO DEEP SPACE). Astronomers have seen several nebulae so far, and they’ve all looked like hazy pictures of crabs, seahorses, and other undersea creatures spelled out in the light from stars and superheated gas clouds. A nebulous plan, then, is something distant and mostly amorphous, a plan with an ultimate goal that has not yet taken shape. Nebulous plans are often made by creatures in distress. The nebulous plan of a squab chased from its perch starts with an escape into the sky and most often ends with a return to the very same perch from which it departed, which is important to understand if you want to be a successful squabbist. The nebulous plan of a mortally betrayed orphan is to build a raft by lashing together 55-gallon plastic barrels, fixing a 10’x10’ plywood platform over them, stealing a 30-foot aluminum pole from the disassembled scaffolding of a nearby construction site, boarding the raft with only a few of the most important things, and launching into the current. The image of my living father standing on the bridge from the photograph with his camera around his neck was a distant nebula until one day, while I was floating on my raft, I passed beneath a bridge that looked identical to the one in the picture. I passed a lot of run-down cabins, too, that could easily have belonged to Jim ‘River’ Swift, but I never thought to stop. I was preoccupied with floating, and with a vision of the ocean.

  NEAR DEATH

  Pull a shoelace too tight trying to secure a found buoy to the side of your raft and the lace could snap, whip you between the eyes, cause you to fall backward off the raft, and you could drown in the water. So you see, it doesn’t matter whether or not you feel as if you’re in danger of being killed as you live your daily life. Everything is a near-death experience.

  NEXUS

  The point where a series of things is held together—whether objects or ideas or life events seen in memory. The nexus of the raft is where the lines come together, the point where the ropes that run around the ten plastic barrels join up in the middle and form a knot the size of my palm, poorly but definitely tied, knots within knots. This was the spot I’d hold as the raft floated downriver on the huge vein of mud running off in the direction of the ocean. If it weren’t for that knot, the barrels would have drifted apart and I’d have been left hanging on to just one. Thanks to that knot, I was able to float on my raft of barrels while seated on a step stool I’d found washed up on a jetty. I sat on my step stool beneath a little canopy of broken-down cardboard boxes, beside a cooler I’d filled with snacks and water and one or two books, along with my pencil and my pages. I’d also tied the cooler to the nexus, and what was within the cooler remained dry even when the muddy river splashed across the top of my raft, soaking my legs and feet, but it was hot enough I didn’t mind. In those days of floating I recall being way out in the middle of the water, both shores far enough away to where they looked static, and the water, floating along with me, appearing also to be unmoving except for the occasional ripples and bubbles that surfaced. I meditated on the nexus—that fat knot of rope that sucked up river water and slowly sweated it out, sometimes even creaking as it tightened. It can be very silent on the river. That knot was alive to me. By day it respired mud water and the sweat from my hands. At night I’d hold on to it when everything was so still and quiet that I thought I’d been stuck in a sinkhole of time. When it feels as if things are getting away from you, I’ve learned, it is best to tie up what you can, hope it’s enough to float on, and hold on to the knot where it all comes together.

  NIGHT RAT

  A blind white rat that crosses the river at night and boards whatever floating object it encounters as it swims. The night rat is a well-mannered rat who keeps himself clean. The night rat does not fear you—his life of navigating big rivers by night (see NAVIGATING BIG RIVERS BY NIGHT) has given him a great deal of courage. You will know the night rat is coming when you hear his nails scraping along the plastic barrels of your raft. No one can say for sure why the night rat swims at night, why he is blind, or where he comes from, but I have seen one come in advance of a storm, the same way horses will run to the cover of cedars or spring peepers will start to sing in the daytime (see OMINOUS). The night rat is not to be feared, though his midnight appearance will come as a surprise. If you’re lonely, you will come to appreciate him. Once the initial shock has passed, after his white fur has dried, you may even wish to stroke his coat, which he will not object to, provided you do it gently. He may show interest in the contents of your cooler. The night rat may even lift the lid of the cooler before your eyes, enter it, and begin to quietly nibble on one of the doughnuts you pulled from a dumpster. Sadly, the night rat has business on the banks and will never float with you for long.

  NAVIGATING BIG RIVERS BY NIGHT

  At the first sign of dusk—the squeaking of a bat, the disappearance of swifts beneath bridges—paddle out to the middle of the river. If you’re in the middle of the river you’re safer than you are on the shore as long as you keep an eye out for barges. You’ll see the lights from people doing whatever they do at night on the banks of the river, and sometimes you’ll even hear them, and when you do you’ll be glad you’re out there on the water alone.

  OCEANS

  Judging by its surface, the ocean looks like everything a mating pond is not, and on the surface it’s true, but just below the ocean’s surface things are mating in great numbers. On the surface the ocean looks open and infinite but it can’t be infinite because it has a center point—a point that is farthest from land and closest to the moon. Here, in the middle of the ocean, nothing is going anywhere and everything is spinning in place, the wind, the waves, the wandering thunderclouds (see BOOMS), the stars, everything is spinning up the next hurricane. Here’s a trick El Hondero taught me—a way he taught me to use the ocean as a tool even when you’re very far from it: if ever you can’t sleep, or you’re anxious, or you’re alone somewhere with no idea what you should do next, close your eyes and picture yourself floating on your back in the middle of the ocean. You’re looking up and the stars are slowly spinning in the night sky—or you are the one spinning on the surface of the water. Feel the cool water below you. Taste the salt that laps up the side of your face. Then allow yourself to sink beneath the water, straight down, but don’t stop looking up. Look up at the rippling surface of the sea as waves journey across it. Feel the void beneath you but don’t look down—always up at the shining surface—and before you know it you’ll be asleep.

  ORDINARY NECESSITIES OF RIVER-GOING RAFTERS

  You will need to use your pole to push off whatever rock or muddy shoal you get lodged upon. You will need to paddle away from large barges that are heading toward you on a collision course. You will need to maintain a low profile. You maintain a low profile while rafting down a river by traveling at night, in the fog, or, if the stretch of river is remote enough, simply by keeping a lookout for anyone going up or down the river who might try to ruin your plan (see DADDIES). You will need to find food. This need you will address with whatever fishing gear you have aboard. If it comes down to it, you can beach your raft and head out on foot. Edible mushrooms and the fine, potato-like tuber called Jerusalem Artichoke grow on the banks of rivers. Beyond the banks of rivers are roads, and along roads you can find places to buy or steal a snack. People say you can’t drink the river water but you can, actually, drink it if it’s fresh and you give it a minute to separate in a jar. Don’t drink the mud at the bottom. If you need to sleep, it’s best to pull several blankets over your head so that you completely shut out the outside world. It’s hard to sleep if you’re hearing the bubbles that come from unknown things in the deep murk below your raft. It’s hard to sleep if you’re scanning the bank for signs of Daddies with flashlights who might also be yelling
at you some things you don’t want to hear. While it is true that shutting out the world while floating upon a river can be dangerous, telling yourself you’re on a raft made so simply it’s basically unsinkable will help put you at ease. The worst-case scenario is your getting sucked beneath a barge traveling upstream with a thousand tons of coal. Your raft might pop back up somewhere downstream, but you won’t be on it.

  OARMAN

  A man who rows his boat with oars. Pirates, when coming ashore, do so in rowboats full of muscled oarmen. Pirates don’t paddle and they don’t pole rafts down rivers—they row. Another famous oarman is the one whose name I’ve forgotten, the one who paddled dead Greeks across the river Styx. Solitary oarmen rowing boats across rivers at night strike fear in the heart of a lone traveler, especially when the oarman, who paddles his boat facing away from where he’s heading, is heading toward you. If the night is dead quiet and you’re floating slowly downriver on a raft by yourself, there’s a rolling fog on the water and a yellow full moon is coming up through the silhouettes of trees, and the oarman is coming toward you with his oil lamp burning grease, you have no choice, you must find the courage to call out to him in a voice that is low but firm. Say WHO GOES THERE, pick up your headstone, and wait to see what he does. You may hear the wooden thump of him knocking the oars, and the gentle drops of water dripping from their ends, and he may turn to you, removing his oil lamp, and from the light of it you will see his face.

  OMINOUS

  If you say, “This doesn’t look good,” odds are it’s because you’ve seen something ominous: an event that you know, through experience or intuition, precedes a second event that’s bad for you. When someone says, “We need to talk,” that’s ominous. You hear a solitary oarman rowing his way toward you in the dead of night when you’re alone and in a place where you’ve told nobody you’re going, that’s ominous. When you look up at the sky on a day in spring, let’s say you’re picking jelly beans from the grass and the sky has turned black, that’s ominous. If you’re someone who believes in signs, mystical visions, curses, destinies, ghosts, myths where people do things that no human should be able to do, then you’re prone to seeing omens—things that are ominous. When Hanging Frog saw a coyote climb a tree he told everyone in the village to build an extra canoe. A few months later, a big flood came. That coyote was an omen because Hanging Frog made it one. Sometimes, an omen will come to you in a dream and should cause you to change how you act when you’re awake.

  OVERBOARD, GOING

  What has gone from being in a boat to being in the water has gone overboard. Maybe the saying comes from when all boats were made of wooden boards and anything thrown from boat into water must first have traveled over a board. For people on boats, unplanned trips overboard are almost always undesirable. To say GOING OVERBOARD can also mean to do too much of something. My uncle went overboard with his gambling. El Hondero went overboard with his drinking on the day he lost those weather balloons. I may have gone overboard the time I put a snapping turtle in Ernesto’s bunk. To say, “You’ve gone overboard with your lists, your catalogs, and your keys. A little handbook would suffice,” is to say that some authority has put a limit to the amount of time a person should spend thinking about the language of his life.

  OVERCOME BY EMOTION

  Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, home team down by three, full count. Little Ned steps into the box to take another pitch, gets his bat up. The hopes and dreams of twelve boys depend on him. Three watch from the bases, sweat stinging their eyes beneath plastic helmets, eight more lean their heads out of the dugout, hocking the sweet spit of chewing gum, some praying aloud, some silently, some boys muttering beneath their breath and wringing their hands. When Ned brings his bat up the other boys take a breath and hold it. The coaches, who have taught Ned to hold his bat this way, who’ve shown him how to run through first base and how to spot a hole in the outfield, are even more on edge than the players. The coaches are superstitious. They see omens and have many little rituals that they use to keep their composure under stress. The coaches’ own boys are on this team and each coach would rather it be his own boy at that plate right now, but it is what it is and Ned’s the one to swing and it’s clear to the coaches that he doesn’t stand a chance. Ned’s late in the lineup. He swings at everything. When he runs, if he runs, he runs like he’s hurting. He’s at this game because the team brought him here, not the other way around. He plays in deep right when they’re fielding and has on numerous occasions been caught sitting Indian-style, picking grass. He strolls toward fly balls. He gets called a lot of names, and has vowed to himself that this will be his last baseball season forever. Ned tightens his grip on the bat. The pitcher winds up. Moments of truth of this caliber come just three times in a person’s life, five times if you’re lucky. Ned knows he has to try this time. He needs to regain the feeling he had at the beginning of the season, back when the Cardinals hat his father gave him was clean and stiff, before the other boys stole it and ground it into the infield dirt, before the ball took a bad hop and knocked his braces out of whack and he sat down in the grass and cried, back, before all that, when he still had faith in the game. This time he needs to try if not just for the simple fact that his mother is in the stands, there beside his father, clapping and saying his name. She doesn’t know how bad a player he is, and if she did she wouldn’t care. The pitcher throws. The ball seems to move slowly through the crepuscular light. Past the outfield fence a boy is straddling his bike. Ned notices this boy as the pitcher releases the ball and is half looking at the ball and half looking at the lone boy past the outfield when he finds himself swinging, and this time it’s a firm, natural cut he takes, a cut that starts at his back foot, and then a hit that sends a shock through the bat and into his hands, a sharp whack that lands on the ears of the runners who run, wide-eyed in amazement, as the coaches drop their jaws, as cans slip from the hands of spectators and tumble down the metal bleachers. Ned watches his ball rise and keep rising, rising past the left fielder, and the boy on his bike strains his head upward and shoots up his fist. Ned starts his trot toward first. The only thing he hears is his heart beating in his ears against the sides of his helmet, then up, like hiccups, come his hysterical giggles. If he could hear, he would hear the thirty onlookers in the bleachers cheering for him, and his father, hat cast off and jumping up and down, screaming his name as Ned rounds third, his father shaking with sobs of joy by the time Ned touches home. Ned’s mom has her hand on his father’s shoulder. She is blushing. This man, crying in the Little League bleachers, is what you would call OVERCOME BY EMOTION. This same kind of emotion can overcome you in the depths of night when you’re alone and thinking of your best friend who you haven’t seen since the fire because you’re afraid that’s where Patty would know to come looking for you. It can come as a dream. It can be fallacious. On the ninth night of my float down the river the oarman paddled out to me, raised his light, and I saw that it was El Hondero. I took the rope he threw to me and pulled us together. He’d come for me. He’d been planning this all along. He had something to tell me, and I tried to hear him, but I couldn’t make out his words. He pointed downriver and I looked, saw the tar-like water shining in the moonlight, saw the swells of low hills silhouetted by distant lights far beyond the banks, but nothing new, everything was the same as it had been. When I looked back he was gone. No lamp, no rowboat, no oarman. If you’re overcome by emotion and you’re alone, here’s what you do—don’t try to do anything but this: lie down, curl up, and let it wash over you.

  ON THE ISLAND

  When traveling downriver, after a night in which you may or may not have encountered a ghost, you will want to stop on an island. Find a sandbar, beach your raft, and take a break from the float. Sometimes it can be hard to find an island because islands like to disguise themselves as riverbank. If you stay in the main channel it may seem like the river has no islands when in fact there are islands all around. Some are barely more than mud h
ills with moats, others are full-blown lands of hills and forests, caves and ponds, and all kinds of plants and animals. To find an island you must paddle or pole along one of the banks, staying clear of rock jetties and low-hanging branches while keeping an eye on the river horizon. Look for where the river splits. When you see the split, that’s the tip of an island. The best part about deciding to stop on an island is that what’s on it is always a surprise. You may find a deep oak forest with soft, leafy ground and plenty of shade. You may climb up the muddy shelf and find not a forest but a vast field of corn planted neatly in rows and a low, green hill way out there like an island in the corn. The hill, you’ll think, is actually an Indian mound that escaped the plow. There are some ancient cedar trees at its foot, and a fallen-down barbed-wire fence that weaves its way among and through them. From the top of the mound you can see the whole island.

  ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME THING

  You probably won’t have a chance to do it again. This is the only time this thing is going to happen to you. You’re sitting alone on your raft in the middle of a day and a macaw comes and lands on your raft. A fluorescent bird, a thousand miles from its natural habitat, lands on your raft, looks at you, squawks, and flaps off. Then there was the time I watched a family of river otters transfixed by a cloud of pale-yellow butterflies. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is what El Hondero said the mica hunt in Ohio was, and of course he was lying, because in the end I didn’t even get the one single chance. If you only have one chance to do it, at least think hard about whether or not you should. Another once-in-a-lifetime experience was the time I pulled up on the bank of the river just downstream from a huge factory. The factory was complete with skyscraping smokestacks with bright flashing lights on their tips so that airplanes wouldn’t hit them in the night. When I arrived it was twilight, just beyond the crepuscular. I needed a break. I was tired, bored, didn’t think much about the risks, and figured the factory was as good a place to stop as any. People don’t like to hang around near smokestacks, toxic runoff, and heavy-duty electrical equipment, and so there was not much chance I’d get caught. Chances of running into somebody right there on the bank where I’d docked, just upstream of a big culvert puking greenish water into the river? Slim to none. Which is why I froze, stunned, when I came upon a little campfire where two fat ladies from Texas were grilling chicken thighs on spears. There was the huge factory looming over us, its high metal walkways and machine sounds deafening, belching smoke that smelled of rotten eggs, and then there was the smell of grilling chicken and the two big women from Texas who were having a little cookout. They invited me over and told me they were on a road trip and asked if I was looking for a good time. They grilled me some chicken and I ate it by the fire, thanked them, said I had to pee, and slipped off in my raft. I could see their shadows projected by the light of their campfire on one of the big metal walls of the factory. They were enormous.