The Trouble Way

by James Seloover

  “Well, it’s the kind of guy I am,” Jake said, giving her a squeeze.

  “Yes, it is the kind of guy you are,” she said and put her arm around his waist and hugged him as they strolled along the bobbing walkway.

  When they got to the end of the walkway, they stopped and looked out over the Columbia River and watched as the ships coming in from the Pacific Ocean, making their way up-river to ports such as Longview and Portland. Pilot boats motored out to the ships where they made the exchange of bar pilots to river pilots who then guided the freighter up the narrow channel the fifty miles to Longview and the hundred to Portland.

  “This is so romantic,” Priscilla said. “The river is so beautiful, so much different than the Midwest. Everywhere you look is like a postcard. The Midwest is pretty in its way but this is so dramatically different with the rivers and the mountains and all the trees.”

  “And don’t forget the ocean,” Jake said. “And you have corn fields.”

  “Yes, we have cornfields. And soybean fields. And, oh yes, pigs. Don’t forget the pigs. Lots of them.”

  Jake turned to look at Priscilla. She was looking at him. He put his hand on her cheek and kissed her.

  “I didn’t think you would ever do that,” Priscilla said when they drew apart. “Thank you.”

  They stood at the end of the pier and kissed each other and held on to each other as if they had been lovers forever.

  “Jake, I love you. Ever since you took me on that horseback ride and on the picnic by the creek, I have been in love with you.”

  “I love you too, Priscilla. I have loved you since I was nine. Now what?”

  “I don’t have clue,” Priscilla said. “We’ll just have to play it by ear.”

  “What about all of the Lutherans?” Jake asked. “Not that I care, but they are relatives. I don’t want to make enemies of the entire family. We’re in unmapped cornfields here. Are you up for it?”

  “I am tired of other people telling me how to live my life. First it was the Lutherans then it was the Mormons. From now on, I am doing exactly what my heart tells me. And my heart says that I love you, Jake.”

  “Ditto,” Jake said.

  “You are so funny, Jake.” She leaned in close and gave him another un-cousin kiss.

  “It sounds like the music started back up. Want to go back inside?”

  “I’d love to dance some more. You will never have to worry about me wanting to dance.”

  Hand in hand they turned back toward the Thunderbird and strolled along the floating docks. When they got back to their table, they sat, ordered a couple drinks.

  When the last song was over, “Lance Vance and the Goddamned Liars,” held true to their name and invited everyone in the crowded lounge for breakfast, on them.

  When the lights came up, they rose from the table and began their life together, cousins in love.

  Chapter 17 Old Jake Forest and Bella Papa, I don’t want you to say no. So, we compromised and did what she wanted. Papa, you don’t have beautiful eyes. What are you doing right now?

  Present

  Except for Bella, most of the people I’ve known, those deceptively normal people around us, those who work in stores, like Big Richards, or are friends or relatives, are a bunch of blithering idiots. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but I can’t help notice that their nuts are scattered from hell to breakfast, as my Mom used to say.

  I think the nuttiest people are the ones who have had some sort of trauma in their past, especially in their childhood years. Maybe it could be abuse, either physical or mental. When they get older, they base their decisions as a result of the trauma they lived through in their past.

  Janis, my ex, was abused. She was very aggressive and abusive to me in the ten months I was with her.

  Janis was horrified of being alone; she kept a steak knife in the robe she wore around the house when she was alone. That little habit proved disastrous; she bent over and stabbed herself in the thigh.

  She didn’t trust me to go anywhere without her. Her abuse transferred into her decisions that related to me and thoroughly soured our relationship. Had she not been abused, maybe our marriage would have lasted more than the ten months, maybe eleven … twelve. Abuse was not her only problem. If hadn’t been that, it surely would have been something else. She was naturally unstable so I don’t blame her old man for all her problems.

  Up until Bella was five, she had not had any real trauma as far as I am aware. She has her nuts all lined up like maids, in a row. I worry about her, though, because her mother, Polly, was abused by both her mother and her father and again by her stepfather. Surely Polly’s decisions concerning Bella are going to be influenced greatly by her abuse. I see evidence of it with the impatience Polly shows toward Bella and her anger sometimes manifests itself in a physical way.

  Polly’s relationships with men have been a mess. So far, none of her relationships has lasted more than a few months, some no longer than a week -- she is thirty.

  I hope her mom’s trauma has a minimal effect on Bella. If I weren’t an Atheist, I’d hope and pray for that. I guess I am left with just hoping. But, on the up side, I am a devout hoper. But I’m scared Polly has developed a rip in her bag and the nuts are dribbling out, scattering across hells half acres.

  Sometimes I see the results of that tear, just a hint now and again that gives me a glimpse of her changing personality. I got one such gander one afternoon when I had been watching Bella for nearly half a day. We were having such a nice time together; Bella did not want to leave when her mom arrived to pick her up.

  “Leave,” Bella said as she looked squarely into Polly’s eyes.

  “What did you say, young lady?” Polly said. Polly averted her eyes from me.

  “Leave ............ please,” Bella said knowing she had corrected her poor manners. Regardless of Bella’s obvious slips, Polly snatched Bella by the arm and hustled her out the door without so much as a kiss my ass. Bella obviously thought she was doing good when she said “please,” and couldn’t hold back her tears as she looked back at me as I threw her a kiss and waved from the window in my office.

  Bella describes her position in life by the “year-old” room that she is in at pre-school. She has a unique way of describing age. One time -- I think she was still three, maybe four -- she said, “You are two, then three, then four, then five, then all the other numbers and then you are grown up.

  On one of Bella’s visits, we were listening to a children’s book on a CD, and the character in the story, Joanie, didn’t get invited to a party. Well, when she finally did get invited, she tried to manipulate her Mom into letting her keep a birthday present her mom bought for the girl who didn’t invite Joanie. Bella caught it right off the get-go.

  She said, “Papa, you know what?”

  I waited for her to tell me “what.” but she didn’t. After a moment of silence, she said, “When I say ‘You know what,’ you say ‘what’.”

  “What.”

  “That Joanie … she lied ... she just lied,” Bella said.

  That’s what I mean, Bella is honest, and she knows when other people are not. And she is just shy over four. It surprised the bejesus out of me that she got the concept of dishonesty.

  I hate to think about what’s inevitable. I know she’ll pick up some of that adult stuff later, after she’s been exposed to some of those people, older people, scattered nut people. Even now, I can detect that influence in a few things Bella says.

  Once she told me: “Papa, I don’t want you to say no.” She would pinch my cheeks in both of her hands and get nose to nose and talk softly to me when I told her she couldn’t do something. That comes from experience, of being around other, older, slightly controlling people. She is learning a touch of that manipulation.

  I think that women learn very early that they can manipulate men. I didn’t realize just how early it was when they caught on to such things.

  I was trying my best to get Bella to take a nap o
ne day. When she gets tired, she starts to get hyper just before going to sleep. I try to get her sleepy and rock her and she starts flailing her arms around and I end up getting bopped in the face. I know it is nap-time, but, her idea of nap-time is a bit different from mine. She started to cry when I took her to the bathroom to go potty before her nap. I did pretty darn good ignoring that little trick until she put both hands on my cheeks and turned my face to her to get my full attention and said, “Papa, look at my face.” She point to a single tear on her cheek. Well, I can tell you straight, that got me, but for the exception of a single tear of my own, I refused to reveal my hand. But, Christ, who can deal with a crying three-year-old who forces you to look at her tear? She was as serious as Meryl Streep, and refused to break character for a second. I am no pushover when it comes to women and tears, I’ve been around the shed a few times, and I told her so. So, we compromised and did what she wanted, but only until she fell asleep.

  I think most people start out honest but they are driven from it by the others around them. Those employees at Big Richards wouldn’t have wreaked so much havoc on the place if they had been treated fairly. But they weren’t so they took matters into their own hands and stole the place blind.

  I’ve read in the news recently that the retail industry loses billions of dollars to shoplifting. The vast majority of that loss is internal, employee theft. They haven’t learned that the problem of waste control is not more cameras and security officers, it’s treating employees with respect. From the robber barons on, management never got the concept. People will get what they consider a fair wage, one way or another, be assured.

  I have to admit, I was a bit dishonest until I met Bella. I don’t think it was intentional, at least most of the time. For example, I overlooked one or two incidences where a few of the girls I’d slept with were stiffing The Man out of a few coins left on to of a register, nothing much more serious than that. I think it happens because of the greed of other people force it upon you. They steal the goodness from people around them, like those upper-management fellows at Big Richards. At first I didn’t think they did it on purpose. But toward the end of my nearly thirty years there, I became convinced it had been in their business plan all along.

  “I don’t yike your jacket, Papa.” (She had a little trouble with pronouncing her L’s) Bella told me that when she was two and a half years old. It is my favorite, most comfortable jacket. It is a plaid, wool, green and black with a bit of rust color, Levi jacket. Very warm for the weather in Iowa. Doesn’t matter to Bella one tiny bit. She didn’t even tell me what it was about the jacket that she didn’t like. It doesn’t really matter, I guess. She didn’t like it. After all, she was two and a half. What does she know about warmth and comfort in men’s jackets?

  “Well,” I said, “Do you have another jacket you like better that you would like me to wear?” I led her to my closet and opened the folding doors.

  I have to tell you, I think until I was sixty, I only had one jacket for winter and one for summer. It always bothered me that I didn’t have more jackets. Something about poverty, I imagine, dating back to when I was twelve. I never owned more than two pair of shoes either, one pair of athletic shoes, and one pair of good shoes. That changed when I was about sixty also. There is probably four pair under my bed now. I have a butt-load of jackets now too. I kind of went wonky over jackets for a while, but I’m over that.

  Anyway, Bella inspected at my jackets and pointed to the exact one she liked better. It took her a total of about three seconds to select one more to her taste, a khaki, corduroy, Levi jacket. I took the plaid one off and put on the khaki one. How the hell can a sixty-five year old man argue with a gorgeous, curly hair, little two and a half year old girl? Exactly. At sixty-five, a man can survive a little less warmth from a jacket to please a two and a half year old. Besides, she kept me warm because she insisted I carry her and she put her arms under my jacket and we both stayed toasty.

  Bella she tells you precisely what’s on her mind. If a fifty-five year old woman had said exactly the same thing, I would have to say, the outcome would not have been the same and I don’t think anybody would disagree. I think there would have been a bit less happiness all around and I believe that I’d have still been wearing the green wool Levi and there would have been less conversation for a time after that, as warm and comfy as it is. We think we want honesty in others, but to be truthful, that’s a bunch of bullshit. We only want honesty in cute little two and a half year old girls. I don’t know, because I have never been as close to a little boy, but I doubt the same outcome would have occurred if it had been a little boy. Maybe not. Probably not.

  Bella is different with Priscilla. She probably wouldn’t tell her that she didn’t like her jacket. When Priscilla bought new curtains for the living room, Bella waited until Priscilla had left for an errand. She was sitting in my lap and looked up at the curtains and said, “Papa, I don’t yike the curtains.” I guess maybe that women can’t be entirely honest with other women, even if they are three years old. That says something about women if they catch on that early in life.

  You would think that after a bunch of years that people would know something. But, just go ask someone in a store for assistance. Nobody knows a damn thing and I’m not just saying that.

  I went into a hardware store a few years ago. It was seven. That just goes to show you what an impression the ignorance of the jerk made on me. This wasn’t any hardware store, it’s the one that advertises how informed and helpful their clerks are, that they are professional plumbers and carpenters and such. You can probably guess the national chain it is.

  I asked one of the clerks if they carried pulleys. How in the hell does a person get past the fifth grade, maybe even the third grade, without knowing what a pulley is, you might ask.

  “What’s a pulley?” the guy says. “Is it something for a closet?”

  I say, “It is in that same category of tools like a wheel and a lever. You know, a pulley, like on a ship or in a barn or in a tree house … a pulley. You put rope through it and pull something up in the air, like the sails on a ship. If you run a rope through a couple of them, it makes things lighter.”

  “I’m pretty sure we don’t carry them,” he said.

  If he didn’t know what they are, how in the hell does he know they don’t carry them.

  “I’m certain we don’t carry pulleys,” he said. He had convinced himself.

  I knew that was what he was going to say. It’s the standard response of idiots over their heads in hardware stores. I think it is in their informal training. He probably heard another lazy, unmotivated clerk tell a customer that. It’s the easy out. I caught clerks saying it to customers when I worked at Big Richards; all of which were written up and eventually let go. People like that don’t change but you have to go through the process to get rid of them

  The other one is, “Let me check the stockroom.” (The clerk disappears for a reasonable amount of time. He stands behind the stockroom door for a few minutes before returning with a frown.) “I’m sorry, Sir, we’re out of stock. It’s on back-order.” Not bloody likely, I’m a retail expert. Maybe those big-box hardware stores should hire a few farm boys.

  I guarantee that Bella will know what’s what by the time she gets as old as that jerk who has the IQ of a pulley. I don’t like to say that someone is stupid but the guy didn’t have sense enough to ask somebody for help in the matter. Just said they didn’t carry it. Actually, I don’t mind calling Pulley-boy stupid.

  Bella was already smarter than Pulley-boy.

  Priscilla said to her once, “You’re my little doll.”

  Bella said, “I’m not a doll, I’m a little girl.”

  Priscilla said, “It’s like saying you’re my little sweetie-pie.”

  Bella said, “How ‘bout you’re my little mashed potato? Then she turned to me and said, “Papa, you’re my little green bean.”

  I was amazed that she picked up the concept of metapho
rs or whatever they’re called. Maybe I should ask someone. She could probably be hired at that hardware store and take Pulley-boy’s position, and she is a year shy of being into the middle single digits in age.

  One time, Bella and I were lying on the couch watching cartoons. She was right next to me. Out of the blue, she looked up at me, nearly nose-close to my face, looking directly into my eyes and said, “Papa, you don’t have beautiful eyes.”

  Well, I never really thought I had beautiful eyes, at least not for quite a few years. A few women have said I had pretty blue eyes way back when. But I have to admit, I was just a little bit hurt when my little Bella said that. Actually, more like crushed.

  I said, “I don’t?” I have to say that I might have been fishing for a little sympathy in my voice but it didn’t have any effect on her.

  She said, “No .............................. You have handsome eyes.”

  I’ll tell you that was one long, painful pause, but she made up for it about a brazillian times when she said that last part. I think that might have a lasting effect on whether I try to make her take a nap too early or not. I wonder if she knows what she is doing, you know, laying plans.

  “I wish you were my daddy,” she said, “you take care of me.” She’s the best granddaughter in the whole wide world. And the smartest. Actually, I stole that line from her. She said, “Papa, you are the best grandfather in the whole wide world.”

  It was during the holidays and Bella and I were sitting at the kitchen counter. I drew a picture of Rudolph and we were coloring it together. I began coloring Rudolph’s nose blue. When she saw the color I was using she said, “This isn’t the right way, this is the Trouble Way.” I’ve been living my entire life doing things the “Trouble Way,” and here she was, three, and she already knew there was such a thing as the Trouble Way. I wish she’d been there to advise me on my disastrous first marriage, talk about a path down the Trouble Way.