I’m on the floor of a living room, (I think it is at my sister’s house. It’s hard to tell. It could have been a barn.) cramped into a small space between the furniture and boxes, trying to work on my new computer. The old computer is on a bookshelf. It is a pain to try to work because Karen is sitting on the couch listening to the TV which she has turned up to “deaf.”
Dogs and cats wander around the living room, their toenails clicking on the linoleum. A Pekinese with a bone in his mouth is behind a stuffed chair, furiously scratching the floor. He’s digging a hole to bury the bone. When he figures the hole is deep enough, he places the bone in the hole and covers it over with imaginary dirt. Satisfied the bone is safely buried, he walks away. The bone is sitting in plain view on the linoleum to everyone to see except for the Pekinese. The dog fits right in.
What is most bothersome, is not the noise from the TV, or even the dirt on the floor, or the clutter, the toenails clicking on the floor, or being cramped in an area where I have to lay, it is the chicken sitting in a messy straw nest on the shelf where the old computer is. It keeps clucking and scratching, scattering straw everywhere.
If that isn’t enough, Karen is giving me hell. I don’t even remember everything, but she was really giving me what for. It was something political. She’s and her husband are Republicans and that’s about as crazy as it gets. That right there proves she is no angel.
I mentioned it before about their situation and by all that is reasonable, they ought to be Democrats.
The gist of the chewing out was something about the U.S. involvement in the Middle East. As if she knew shit about the Middle East. She’s one of the relatives that call the Midwest, “Back East.” Some atrocities that occurred against American diplomats in Libya, Benghazi I think it was. Anyway, it was in the news during the presidential campaign. We had some heated words about me thinking she should vote Democrat because they are the ones that take care of people in her situation. She gets food stamps or something.
She said, “What the hell do I care about taxes when all this shit is going down in Benghazi.” Something to that affect. When she gets excited, she cusses a lot. I don’t think she could put a finger on a map and show me where Libya is if it were the only country on the map colored red, if you want the truth.
But, even more than Karen’s absurd take on the Middle East, it’s the mother hen clucking right in my line of sight. The hen has five or six chicks that are in yet another straw nest right next to the keyboard of my new computer. They keep peeping and jumping around on the computer, jamming keys with straw, causing errors and distracting me.
I got so frustrated with the clucking and peeping and the TV, I decide to take the chicken and her nest, the chicks and their straw nest, and put them outside in the woodshed.
So, with my hands full with the two nests, the hen, and the chicks, with no help from Karen, I get up and start walking through the kitchen.
The straw is falling all over the living room and kitchen floor from the disintegrating nests. I try my best to hold the mess together and get out the door in one piece.
“They will be back in here as soon as you leave,” Karen says.
“They darn well better not be,” I say.
She said, “When all this shit is over with in Benghazi, you’re going to have to pay for the chick’s ballet lessons when they grow up.”
“I don’t see how it’s my responsibility for the chicken’s damn ballet lessons,” I said. “I’m retired, I can’t afford that.”
You’d think that would have given me a clue that I was dead, but no, I had to argue with her.
How about that for Hell? My sister worrying about who’s going to be responsible for giving the chicken ballet lessons instead of the Republicans raising her taxes and cutting her welfare. It was too much like talking to her when I was alive. When I think about the past conversations with my sister, maybe I’ve been dead a lot longer than the two or three days I thought.
Now I have to worry about what happened in Benghazi and am going to have to pay for ballet lessons for a bunch of stupid chickens.
Sometimes I would lay there and I’d see Bella. Only we weren’t in the hosta-piddle. I knew deep down that I was but I went along with it anyway.
One time we were walking down the street in the East Village in Des Moines. I’d carry her everywhere. I didn’t mind at all. I loved the way she would put her hands under the lapels of my jacket to keep warm. She leaned close to my ear and said, “I love you.”
Another time, we were lying on the couch and she was telling me about the animated movie we were watching.
“This is the ‘not happy’ part.”
I can relate to that right about now.
Sometimes she would rattle on about nothing in particular and would switch topics willy-nilly.
“When I get older and have a baby, I’m going to bring him over for you to take care of Grandpa.”
I would like nothing better than to take care of a child Bella had. I will look forward to that if I can ever figure out my current situation.
She once explained to me how babies were born. She stuffed Lonesome, the stuffed puppy, under her shirt and said, “Ow, ow, ow, then he is born.” With the final “ow,” she pulled the stuffed dog from under her shirt.
I came from a long line of mean-teasers. I never appreciated being on the receiving end of that sort of humor so I try not to do that with Bella, but I do kid her a little. Sometimes she toots and I ask her if she has a duck in her pants because I just heard a toot. There she is, sitting at the kitchen counter and she said.
“There’s not really a duck in my pants. The duck is just poop.”
“I was just teasing you sweetie.”
“I know what you were up to Papa, You were up to teasing. I very knew you were teasing me.”
The scene changed and she was at the piano and turned to me and said, “I have a new song, it’s called, ‘Dava Goes to Papa’s House’.”
It was when she was performing that sweet song that she made up as she went along that I woke up. My face wet with tears. I was still in that cold hosta-piddle bed.
I remember all the things Bella said to me in that dream. All were true; I was just having flashes of her conversations in my mind while I was dead.
Here’s a conversation I had with Karen on another spooky visit while I was waiting to find out what queue I should be standing in, the one for Heaven or Hell. I think it was maybe after I’d been dead for four days. She phoned me.
“Hello,” I said.
“Would you do a favor for me?” Karen’s voice came from the receiver.
“Sure, what is it?” I said.
“Don’t start firing shit at me,” she said.
“Well, then, when do you want the favor?”
“I can’t stand it when you keep flipping me shit. I need you to do something right now. Do you want to do the favor or not?” she said.
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Christ, can’t you ever make up your mind? Stop being wishy-washy, you’re always so wishy-washy. You’re starting to sound like Annie,” she said.
“Well, it would be nice to know what the favor is. (I have no clue who Annie is.)
“You couldn’t even put the windows away right. I had to carry the little one for you,” she said.
“But, I already put away ten big ones,” I said. (It was another favor I did for her, putting windows she bought at a garage sale into her shed.)
“It doesn’t make any difference; it was the last little one that counts. You ruined everything. I don’t know if I will ever be asking you to do any favors for me. I have plans and you always try to change them,” she said.
“What plans do you have?” I never could read her mind.
“None of your business. They were plans and now you’ve screwed everything up,” she said.
“But I don’t know what you want me to do for you.”
“Are you going to build that fence before
you leave?” she said.
“Where do you want it?” I was about to move to the Midwest, or maybe it was to Libya, to be with Priscilla.
“Around,” she said.
“Around what?” It was like sweeping fleas (I think Lincoln said that), talking to her. You never knew if you were making any progress.
“Do I have to spell everything out for you? I’m getting sick of this.”
“Do you have a general idea of where you want the fence?”
“Yes!”
“And …?” I said.
“I want it built so the horse doesn’t get out,” she said.
“Anywhere specifically?”
“Of course, I’m not an idiot.”
“Do you have fence posts?” I thought a different tact might help.
“You are flipping shit again and I am getting pissed. Forget it, I’ll ask Annie to ask her husband to do it for me. He only wants me to feed three dogs, forty chickens, one goat, sixteen horses, and two cats for three weeks and put walls on one barn in return.”
“What is it that you want in return?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“I don’t believe you. You’re always lying. I can tell when you are lying. Your face gets red.”
“I think that is high blood pressure caused by these conversations. Besides, we’re on the phone … you can’t see my face,” I said.
“You’re making me sick. Do you want me to throw a brick at your head?” she said.
“I could do the favor on Saturday, how’s that?” Sometimes it was good to ignore some of the things she says.
“I just have a lot to do and I appreciate favors but not after being treated like a dunce.”
“No, I really want to do the favor for you,” I said.
“Forget it … no hard feelings.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Aren’t you even going to say goodbye?” she said.
“Bye.”
Tell me … I’m already in the right cue, aren’t I?
My Dad, who died years ago, stopped by for a few minutes in the room when I was dead but he didn’t have much to say. It’s been fifty years or so since I last talked to him.
One vivid conversation I remember is when I was nine or ten and I asked him if he had ever killed anybody. It seemed like a logical question to ask a guy who had been in WWII and the Korean War. World War II and the rationing that went along with those hard times were topics often brought up when I was little. The big war in Europe ended three days before I was born but the Korean War was started when I was five and ended three years later. Those two huge events were still fresh in the minds of the grownups. I was just trying to keep up my end of the conversation. What the hell did I know? I think he thought I meant did he ever just go around town killing people. That conversation did not end well.
I’d dreamt about him on quite a few occasions over the years. Mostly nightmares. He was always leaving me. I guess dying and leaving are pretty-much synonymous in a young kid’s mind; both forms of abandonment. Those traumatic things stick with a person for years and sometimes haunt your dreams forever.
On his visit he had a bit of advice for me. He said, “You’d better shave the hair on your calves or people are going to think you’re gay.”
Caught me completely unprepared with that little quip, dead or not. He was serious as hell. When your old man tells you something after fifty years, you tend to pay attention. I was scared as hell and seriously considered getting the lather out but stopped when I thought about what he said. It didn’t seem quite right. I don’t think “gay” was the word bandied about a half century ago, at least not in my little Lutheran community. I don’t know what they talk about in the Lutheran Church; I wasn’t invited to be confirmed. I doubt I’d have gone anyway, so it’s just as well I wasn’t invited.
Chapter 23 Old Jake Forest and Priscilla James It’s just like that street in Kingman, Arizona named after Andy Devine. You love me so you let me do what I say.
Present
It wasn’t long before I realized that Priscilla was just an older version of my little honey, Bella. They both knew those “women tricks” that allow them to get their way. Before I knew Bella, I wasn’t aware of how early on they perfected their packet of tricks. They are able to refine simple manipulation into an art form at a tender age.
Bella couldn’t do much wrong as far as I could see. Of course, I wasn’t looking all that hard. In any event, she was a smooth motor scooter when it came to getting her way. If I thought she was doing something wrong, she had a way of convincing me why what she was doing wasn’t, in fact, wrong at all.
When her Mom told her that she couldn’t have another muffin because she already ate the “last” one, she said, pointing to the next muffin on the plate, and said, “How about we say this one is the last one.” Made perfect sense to her that all she had to do to make everything right was to re-label which was the last muffin. Of course she is not much more than a baby. She’s been hanging around, as she puts it, since she was zero and I have been her near constant companion and caretaker not long after zero.
I’ve known Priscilla since I was nine but for the vast majority of her years we were not together. Each of us had our diversions; mine were with two wives and her with the marriage to David. Two of those marriages, the second of mine and the one of hers, ended unglamorously because of infidelities of one of the spouses. One of mine, the first, ended quite spectacularly as the result of a serrated steak knife to the goolies.
After I had reconnected with Priscilla, we had a relatively short romance and shortly after that, we decided to move in together. My sister Karen was not all that pleased at my decision to move to the Midwest to be with Priscilla. There was always an undercurrent of minor hostility between the Western Forests and the Eastern relatives.
My Dad hopped on a motorcycle in the late 1930’s and rode west till the Pacific Ocean forced him to stop. I have never heard a satisfactory explanation as to why he felt the compunction to escape his family. From that point onward, it must have been ingrained in the Western family to stay clear of the Eastern relatives. So my decision to move east was not taken gracefully, especially by my sister, who considered my move akin treason. It was directly against my dad’s supposed reasons for escaping those many years ago, whatever those reasons were.
My family referred to anything east of Wyoming as Back East. There was no breaking that misconception, no matter how many times I had reminded them that they were ignoring a major portion of the United States, the Midwest.
During the Civil War, Ohio was considered the West. But my family has never been big on history. That meant Iowa was Back East, period. It was either West or East. There was no Midwest, never heard of it. It wasn’t in any Roy Roger or John Wayne movies. They were nearly traumatized to find out John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa. I was pretty smug when I filled them in on that bit of trivia. About as Midwest as any town is in the country. There is a street named after him in Winterset, John Wayne Drive. I would have thought he’d rather it was a trail or something dustier, rather than a Drive. It’s just like that thoroughfare in Kingman, Arizona named after Andy Devine, the Jingles P. Jones character as the sidekick of Wild Bill Hickok in the 1950s TV series. No trail there either, just a monster truck plaza for those modern day cowboys, the semi drivers.
Priscilla and I finally got legal after about seven years of living together. No particular reason it took so long other than we are cousins and there were some geographic difficulties. That had an influence on the decision since it’s illegal in a lot of states for first cousins to get married, including the state where we live. We’d committed to each other before I ever left the West Coast and migrated to the land of corn and soybean fields.
There were times I wasn’t sure if Priscilla thought I was committed. Nothing specific, just a feeling. Well, she does ask me quite a bit whether I love her. “Do you love me,” she asks after I’ve nearly fallen asleep after watch
ing Letterman and the monologue of Craig Ferguson and then she asks again because my drowsy mumble in response is incomprehensible except in my mind. The repeat accomplishes two things, her reassurance of my love and my return to full wakefulness. I’ve never been all that proficient at communication, especially about matters of love.
I’d always thought I was not good at change. It was inevitable, an old girlfriend who lived in New Orleans had said once and it was how you deal with change that matters. As a matter of record, all things considered, I was not really all that bad at change either. That didn’t mean I had to like it. I’d moved nearly twenty times, if you include my transfers with the military and the time with Big Richards, over my career. So, change was a common occurrence in my life, just not all were pleasant ones. I like being in Iowa with Priscilla. If it weren’t for her, I might like to be closer to an ocean than to cornfields. If not for Priscilla, I’d stay to be close to Bella.
Bella could get her way by saying certain things. Like when she say’s “It isn’t nighttime,” to put off having to go to bed.
One time I suggested something and she had an alternate suggestion and had a valid reason why her idea was superior and she said, “No, no, no … you love me so you let me do what I say.” It was never something entirely out of the question so I let her have her way. What the hell.
Like Bella, Priscilla has her own little way of getting what she wants. She thought she was being clever, manipulating me, but I’m onto her.
“I saw someone getting a ticket here yesterday,” Priscilla said, pointing to the exact spot where a vehicle had been pulled over by the cop. I was driving about ten miles over the speed limit on the way home from our weekly Saturday evening drives.
The Trouble Way Page 35