by James Tate
I was becoming obsessed with this quirk of Skip’s. Was it some kind of divine dictation? Or stray cosmic quarks invading his otherwise sane mind? Was he dangerous? He would jump out at me at the oddest moments, contort his face, and say “Beep!” A grown man, an electrical engineer beeping through life randomly. It hurt me, it pained me. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. I was on the verge of being afraid, because the continuity of any conversation could break down at any moment into nonsensical animal noises, which is really not fair to the animal world. Skip’s voice was sand in the gears of life, grating and, ultimately, destroying the machine by which we live—making sense, cause and response irrelevant. His barks and beeps and whinnies were threatening my equilibrium. And, of course, he was completely oblivious to the serious irritation this little habit of his was causing. He thought we were the best of friends by now. And all I was capable of was x-ing off the days on the calendar, days until his departure: whoopie, yikes, zowie, boom!
“You know, Ray, you’ve really made this a fun experience for me. I don’t know how to thank you. I hope you’ll come visit us some time. I’d love for you to meet Gail and the kids. She’s quite the cook.”
But I was thinking of what it would be like to go through life with a beeper. Or does she beep too? And the kids, little beepers, I suppose. It would be like having a house full of hornets, never knowing when they’d strike, I mean, I’ve heard of listening to a different drummer, but this one had no beat, no rhythm at all. Or maybe there was a beat and I just wasn’t tuned in. I aspired to be generous, so let’s just say I’m tone-deaf to Skip’s particular melody. He was hearing a tune, the music of insect-angels, methodically stripping our own narrow sense of order and decorum.
As he pulled out of my driveway for the last time I waited for it, for the blat, the burble, the loud vacuity, and when it didn’t come I felt cheated, as though he hadn’t really said goodbye, he didn’t really care. About thirty seconds later I heard it, “Mutta-mutta-mutta-mutt-mutt!” It must have come from two blocks away. Skip was going home. “Beep,” I said, “Beep-beep.” I was not one whit closer to understanding what any of it meant, but I was going to be keeping a close eye on myself for the next few weeks. I did a little victory dance and bashed my head against the refrigerator a few times. These are dangerous times we live in.
Honk.
MY BURDEN
If I had a boat I’d call it ETERNITY and just sail away. But I don’t have a boat, I don’t have an airplane, I don’t have an automobile (that runs), I don’t have a motorcycle, I don’t have a pony or an elephant or a camel.
With some of the negatives out of the way, here is a list of what I do have: I have a llama (the meanest son-of-a-bitch this side of the Andes mountain range), I have a wagon (needs paint and oil), I have a pocketknife (given to me by my Uncle George when I was six years old). Well, that’s enough for now. Already I am beginning to sound pathetic, and I am determined to rise above that.
I would very much like to sell Carl (the llama) to some unsuspecting soul for a thousand or even two thousand dollars. I don’t know what he’s worth on the open market, as they say. To me he is worth exactly nothing but a pain in the ass. But the only two times I got somebody interested, by taking an ad out in the newspaper, at considerable expense, Carl chased them away with a half-pound spitball fired at a distance of fifteen yards with uncanny accuracy. I can’t get close enough to put a muzzle on him, so I’m stuck with the costly, wretched beast. The only way to shear his wool would be to kill him. And I find it impossible to kill him as long as there is any chance in hell of selling him for a thousand or more dollars. You may well ask me how I came to be in possession of Carl, and that is a story I am not fond of telling, because I come out looking like a fool. And nobody hates looking like a fool more than I do.
About five years ago a man by the name of Delbert Monrovia told me he had to go away on business and that he would pay me five dollars a day if I would take in his llama and let him graze in my back yard, see to it that he had a little water now and then, and take him to the vet should he get sick. Well, that sounded like the easiest money a man could earn, just the kind of quick, easy money I always dreamed of making.
Well, in those five years I’ve had exactly three postcards from this Delbert Monrovia—if that is his real name—and not one cent. And according to my calculations he owes me somewhere in the neighborhood of $9000. Enough money for me to get the hell out of here, which is my sorest ambition. I don’t know how long I am expected to wait, but I am losing faith in the good word of this Delbert Monrovia. If that is indeed his real name, then where are his people, I ask you? I have never met or heard of any Monrovias, not that that is conclusive evidence.
I am anxious to join up with my cousin in South Dakota. He is thinking of opening an auto body shop and has more than once insinuated that I could be his partner, if I had something to put into the shop. I think that is a reasonable stipulation. I would not deserve to be called a true partner if I just showed up with nothing but my own two hands, as full of skill as they might be. That is, assuming that my cousin Muscles—that is his true name, Muscles Mulkern—is bringing something to this shop more than his own two hands. Surely he has some considerable savings or why else would he be writing to me about his dream of an auto body shop?
Muscles has been living in a place called Mound City for some years now, and I have every reason to believe that he has established himself there in a manner of comfort and possibly even style. When I knew him as a young boy in Tennessee he had a taste for the finer things in life, in much the way that I now hunger for them. I have no reason to believe we would not be ideal partners in that auto body shop in Mound City, South Dakota, and would quickly be moving in the finer circles. Soon the fine young lads of Mound City would all be working for us, and we would not so much as need to wash our hands at the end of the day before escorting the polite and attractive young ladies of town to the most refined social and cultural events available.
I can see this happening before my eyes if only certain parties would own up to their rightful debts, and I am speaking of you, Mr. Delbert Monrovia, or whoever you really are, gallivanting about, sending me three postcards in over five years. Some people do not deserve the trust and hard work of their servants, for that is what I have been for five long years now, a servant to the ungrateful and spiteful llama, Carl, a beast who is no more mine than the lion in the zoo or the dolphin or giant turtle at the aquarium. I have never wanted a llama, I have no use for a llama, and I have no affection for this particular llama.
So you see it is impossible for me to go away at this time. I have a severe cash-flow problem, thanks to Mr. Delbert Monrovia. While he is enjoying the peripatetic life of the occasional postcard writer, I am tied and bound to this odiferous beast. And Muscles is no doubt at this very moment sketching designs for the name plaque to be hung above the garage outside. He does not even know whether or not to include my name on it, and this is a source of great sadness to me because I have never before had my name on a sign, and just the thought of it makes my heart beat faster, how proud my pappy would be, were he alive to see, that I had finally achieved entrepreneurial status, as he had always dreamed I would. And my dear mama too, she’d be dancing at heaven’s gate looking down on her son’s name on a sign like that.
Nine-thousand dollars is all I ask of you, Mr. Delbert Monrovia. Carl is as healthy as the day you left. He has never wanted for anything, save perhaps the company of a female llama, which was not within the realm of my responsibility as I saw it. And besides, I do not know of any female llamas in these parts. Whatever your original purpose in acquiring this beast, definitely un-native to this country, I urge you to renew your commitment to that vision, and to relieve me of my watch, with all fair debts settled squarely. Opportunity is truly knocking at my door, and, as my pappy always said, he who hesitates is lost. Mr. Monrovia, I took you for a man of honor. It was your business as to why you chose
to own an unnative beast. I did not pry and ask questions that were no business of my own. I simply did what I said I would do. It is high time you do the same. Your honor and your good name—if that is your true name—are hanging in the balance as I survey my future prospects with higher hope and greater determination than heretofore imaginable. Please do not stifle my ambition with your own selfish wanderlust. And if this may help to persuade you to return to your rightful responsibilities, I believe Carl, for all his disagreeableness to others, pines for your special, understanding company, as it was yourself and yourself alone, insofar as I know, who wrenched him from his native climate and, indeed, from his entire extended family kinship, not to mention casual friends, and the very people who have thousands of years of experience with his species, etc., etc., and could anticipate his every wish and need. For these past five years he has had only myself, who never claimed even the most rudimentary knowledge or interest in llamas, and have no inclination to improve my appreciation. I apologize if I repeat myself, but my caring for Carl must cease at the soonest date if my future career prospects are to be kept alive. Great happenings are on the horizon, and time is of the essence. I do hope that your travels have brought you fame and fortune and satisfaction in every regard. If you do not have at least $9000 of it left, then I will certainly be in a pickle in a big way. I only pray that your own mother or father taught you the great virtue of thrift when you were a little boy. My future career, as you know, is riding on this prayer.
THE STOVE
One day there appeared a stove on the lawn of a certain house on our block. A piece of paper was taped to the front of it with the word FREE drawn on it. I walked up the street to examine it more closely. It was a piece of junk about forty years old. I knocked on the screened door. A tiny little woman about ninety-five years of age eventually peeked at me from behind the curtain. Assuming she was deaf, I shouted at her, “Open the door!”
She shouted back, “I’m not deaf!”
“Just take it,” she said. “I don’t want nothing. Not so much as a cup of coffee.” She had a trace of pink lipstick on, but no teeth of any kind.
“It’ll cost you ten bucks for me to haul that piece of junk to the dump.”
“I don’t have ten bucks and if I did you’d be the last numbskull on earth I’d give it to.” She started to slam shut the crack she had opened to talk to me.
“Wait a darn minute. Nobody’s going to take that thing. It’s useless and besides it’s an eyesore.”
“I want it,” a voice behind me said. I nearly fell off the porch with fright. I turned around and there was this stone blind old man, must have been seventy-five if he was a day. He held a white cane and wore wraparound sunglasses and a baseball cap.
“If it’s free I’ll take it and I can fix it if it’s broken.”
“What do you need that stove for? Haven’t you got your own stove by now?”
“Sure, I’ve got my own stove. But if it’s free I’ll find something to do with it. I’ll fix it and then sell it, or give it to some young person just starting out.”
“You can have it, blind man,” the old lady said, happy to be done with it.
“How in the world do you think you’re going to get that thing to your place?” I asked, thinking I had stumped the fool, and that I’d finally get my ten bucks for helping the old lady dispose of the junk in her yard.
“I’ll carry it on my back.”
The old lady opened the door wider. She was about dead but she still had enough curiosity left in her to want to see what a seventy-five year-old blind man looked like who thought he could carry a stove on his back and not see where he was going.
“Take it,” she said. “Just take it and I hope you can sell it for a hundred dollars.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s yours. And I hope you don’t walk off a cliff with it.” I paused, for meanness’ sake, and because I could hardly think of what to say. “I hope you don’t step on a skate or something.” I’d never spoken to a blind man before, as well as I could remember. “I hope a rabid dog doesn’t chase you down the street.” I had exhausted my point.
I said good-bye and good luck to both of them, and as I made my way to go, I heard the old lady say to the blind man, “Blind man, I can’t offer you a cup of coffee because I don’t have a stove anymore, but if you’d care to step in for a minute I can fix you some lemonade.”
I went by two days later to tell her I’d remove the thing for a dollar, but it was gone.
Later, I told my brother-in-law about this. I asked him, “Have you ever heard of a seventy-five year old blind man walking around with a stove on his back?” I was still troubled by this. And my brother-in-law is a pretty smart man because he spent twenty years in prison just thinking.
“It seems obvious to me what happened.”
“There’s not one thing obvious to me,” I said.
“Well, sure it’s obvious, you dope. They drank their lemonade. Maybe she had some cookies left over from the last batch she baked before the stove went out on her. Then the blind man offered to fix the stove for her. She guided him as he brought it back in the house. And she thought he was just the greatest guy she’d ever met and told him that he could stay with her, that it would be easier for both of them that way.”
“Jesus,” I said, “I would have never thought of that. But now that you’ve pointed this out to me, it makes perfect sense.” My brother-in-law truly is a genius of the human heart.
SWEETHAVEN
We had just moved into our rented island beach cottage. Its best feature was the screened-in porch. Boats and yachts of all descriptions sailed right past us. On our part of the island the summer houses are stacked pretty close. It didn’t matter; in fact, it was fun to watch the habits of the other vacationers. I’ve always tried to not judge people, but this guy to our left was making me crazy, fussing all day with his new propane barbecue oven.
It was a real beauty, and he just couldn’t take his mind or his hands off it. In the morning, he moved to the back of his cottage. In the afternoon he called to his wife and she helped him lift it up onto their porch. A little later he struggled to pull it down the front steps and set it up on the side of the house. Toward evening he hauled it around in front. Shortly thereafter he pushed it around to the side again. Then he was down on his back playing with the fuel line. I had made up my mind: that big beautiful barbecue oven had my name written all over it.
Toward evening, when he and his wife were enjoying a glass of wine on their porch, I was crawling around under my porch in search of the rusted little hibachi that came with our hut.
I was exhausted by the time he finally fired up his big Cadillac of a barbecue oven. He was far too dainty about the whole process, probably just singeing a little veal. He could have been removing a little girl’s appendix when he reached inside to turn over their little morsels. A proper evening of barbecuing, I always thought, should involve large swills of gin or beer, sauce lathered liberally—and therefore messily, a certain amount of cursing and shouting across the yard. But this guy was as clean and quiet as a surgeon, and as smug.
We were renters and they were long-time owners, and therein lies the source of our conflict. They had it all down to a science and we were just groping our way in the dark.
We eventually managed to cook our steaks on our filthy, rusted hibachi. After a beautiful sunset and a couple more glasses of gin, and after the neighbors had turned in for the night—no doubt, with visions of squeaky clean little calves dancing in their heads, I simply strolled over to their yard and lugged their oven over to mine and called Maureen to come help lift the bastard up onto our porch. It was a bold move—and I am no thief—but I simply thought we deserved it as much as anyone. We were paying a fortune for this dingy little cottage.
All Maureen had to say on the subject was, “You’re crazy.”
“No I’m not,” I retorted with absolute confidence.
I think the reason I married Maureen is th
at she likes crazy. As I said and I repeat, I am not crazy, but if I were, she would not just stick around; I firmly believe that she would love me more.
Let’s call this neighbor Morgan. I think that’s his name. On the day following the night of the relocation of Morgan’s Cadillac barbecue, he has his Cadillac riding mower out, with equal vigor and ineptitude he is tinkering with every little mechanism. It starts and dies, starts and dies, all morning, all afternoon. His grass doesn’t even need mowing, and indeed he never mows a single blade. It’s just his habitual holiday routine, perhaps designed—without a thought in his head—to stay out of Mrs. Morgan’s hair. Morgan is once again on his back looking up at some faulty mechanism entirely beyond his comprehension, and indeed, this seems to be what he lives for.
All day I’m thinking about what I would really like to have for dinner. After all, we’re on vacation. Finally, after many consultations with Maureen, I trot up to the store in town and buy a big slab of pork ribs. Cholesterol be damned, this is a special occasion.
Maureen is making up a load of macaroni salad. Around 7 o’clock the sunset is just kicking-in, and I pour my first tumbler of gin. Morgan, I notice, is about to give up on his riding mower, gazing in wonder into its innards one last time. Another perfect vacation day.
“Hey, Maureen,” I yell into the kitchen. “Come help me move the barbecue into the yard.”
“But Morgan’s still out there, you idiot.”
“Never you mind. I’ve thought this thing through. No problem.”
We set it up in front of the porch steps. Right away I fire it up. I bring the ribs out. I’ve put on one of those macho men’s aprons that say DAD’S ALWAYS RIGHT or some crap. I’ve got the barbecue sauce, the brush, the poker, everything a genuine barbecue artist must have to create his masterpiece. I even go back in to refill the gin. I’m feeling no pain when I first notice Morgan staring at me from his porch. I even let out a little involuntary “Yippee!”