by Jim Krusoe
Then he thinks some more. Maybe it wasn’t the hole whose name he was trying to remember, but the name of whatever once had lived inside, whatever might have crawled out onto his lawn, and from there out into the world.
And Heather? What kind of name is that? Heather is kind of a cute name, true, but a spooky chick, Jeffery concludes. Should he try to get something going with her? He can’t make up his mind.
Like sponges? Sponges?
Oh Heather, Heather thinks, when you first agreed to live in the Burrow, why, why, why didn’t you spend a little more time considering the potential toxic effects of living in conditions of no sunlight plus communal food?
In other words, Heather is beginning to question the wisdom of her move, because, sure, the Burrow is cheap rent, quiet, and free from all those grabby guys in the last five singles complexes where she could afford only the tiniest of apartments, but, at the same time, it’s just so . . . dank . . . and, speaking of time, when was the last time she got out?
But in her defense (and on the other hand), it sure is easy for a person to stay once she’s there. It’s easy to fall into a routine. Morning arrives: you wake; food appears and you eat it because after all it’s coming out of your rent—you paid for it. And even though other people have poured from the milk carton before you (maybe even drunk straight from the carton), and sometimes you wind up getting the bottom part of what’s left in the cereal box—broken flakes and all—and if, say, you left a half plate of lasagna in the fridge, then two nights later you have a craving for a little pasta before bedtime, when you go to look for it, there’s only a fifty-fifty chance it will be there (so in the end, you wind up helping yourself to somebody else’s cold chicken), still, it’s not exactly slave conditions.
But . . . but what? Because even though all this trading food back and forth doesn’t seem right, Heather can’t pinpoint what’s wrong about it, exactly, and what’s very weird is that nobody around here ever complains about the missing chicken or accuses her of taking it, even though she did. So what’s the problem? Well, nothing, though she does have to admit this place makes her nervous. On the other hand, she must be at least a little happy, otherwise why would she still be here? And did she mention that the rent is a bargain? She did. It is. It is a huge bargain. Which makes everything that much more confusing.
Or—possibly it’s worse. Maybe it’s not the Burrow at all, but that her job has left some sort of mark on her, a bum’s mark, meaning: Here walks a loser, a person not worthy of your full respect, a person only to be passed by and despised.
Or—on the other hand (are we on the third or fourth hand by now?), she also has to admit that it feels as if her fellow renters—Jeffery and Viktor (not Raymond, thank goodness), but particularly Madeline—are somehow judging her. Does it have to do with her job? She can’t remember ever mentioning to anyone what it is, but maybe they’ve listened at her door, because no one ever seems to have anything better to do with their time anyway, except Viktor.
A life made mostly of air, Heather thinks.
Viktor remembers that once someone—maybe his mother before he was dropped off at the orphanage, maybe nuns—cut green sticks from a tree, covered them in mud, and then wiped the mud all over his body, from the hair on his head to the soles of his feet. After he was completely covered (except for his eyes), they used the same sticks to smooth the mud out. “Don’t move,” they—whoever did this—had said, and so he hadn’t. He’d waited, watching the boring clouds and boring leaves until the mud had thoroughly dried. Eventually he was left alone, and when he finally moved, a very long time afterward, the mud cracked and fell off and left him dirty.
Why had this been done? To this day, Viktor has no idea. Was this some folk remedy for having been bitten by a swarm of insects? Could he have rolled in a bed of stinging nettles? Was this a treatment for a rash? A punishment? And what happened after? The only thing he can be sure of is that one day there he was, covered in mud and not allowed to move, and then a long time after that he was moving again, as if nothing at all had happened.
Viktor has never spoken about this to anyone. Why would he?
But also—and this is the most secret part—there was something Viktor found deeply satisfying about being covered in mud, about mud in general.
And as for Junior: Is he a psychopath?
Well, it depends on what you mean by psychopath. If by psychopath you mean: a person with a severe personality disorder, especially one that manifests itself through aggressive and antisocial behavior, and then, in addition, you can also come up with a satisfactory definition for that nebulous phrase “personality disorder,” to say nothing of “severe,” you may well be right. But—and speaking only for himself—Junior says he has a hard time when it comes to pinning that “personality disorder” label down. It sounds like a load of crap to him, he says. Just like the word killer, because the very same dictionary that came up with that “personality disorder” definition (the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) defines killer as “one that kills,” meaning that absolutely everyone—men, women, children, vegetarians (if you include plants), animals, even some plants—is included. Plus, even if you narrow the definition down to “one that kills people,” what with wars, and famine, and economic oppression, you still have a group far too large, in any effective way, to eliminate most of the human race. And even then, if you go the extra mile and narrow it further, to “one who takes a human life illegally,” that raises, for Junior, at least, one shitload of red flags: For one thing, under whose laws? And are those laws just or unjust? And what do you mean by takes, exactly?
So really, when we toss around the words killer, or personality disorder, or even psychopath, as people so often casually do, who is it we think we’re excluding?
Hardly anyone, it seems to Junior.
Heather listens from behind the door to her apartment until she’s sure no one is out there. Then, as quiet as a mouse, she opens the door and tiptoes to the shared kitchen of the Burrow to put on a pot of water for tea. This is no way to live, she thinks. If I had a hot plate or even an electric teakettle in my room I wouldn’t have to be doing this. But the rules of the Burrow specifically forbid these appliances because of old wiring or some such. Back when she first arrived she thought about whether she wanted to put up with that rule or not, and at the time it seemed a decent trade-off for the extremely low rent. Now she wonders how anyone would even know. It’s not as if they inspect her room or anything like that, at least not that she is aware of.
Whoever they are.
Tonight in the kitchen there’s a package of arrowroot crackers—her favorite—in a cupboard, and one of the good things about arrowroot crackers is that no one else in the Burrow much eats them because they’re so bland, but that’s exactly what Heather likes: they’re baby food, the kind of thing a mouse would nibble on. They’re forgettable, like her. But was she always forgettable? Wasn’t there a time when her name, Heather, meant the out-of-doors and springtime and a fresh scent? Yes, indeed.
She remembers the first day of kindergarten, when kindly old Mrs. Charles said to all the other kids—because Heather’s mother had forgotten to pack her a lunch until the last minute and as a result Heather was the very last to arrive in class—“Children, I’d like you to meet Heather.” And Mrs. Charles had said it with such happiness in her scratchy old voice that it felt as if the old lady teacher had always known Heather but hadn’t seen her for a long, long time, and now here she was. It felt to Heather as if Mrs. Charles was blowing a fresh breath straight from the outdoors into every corner of that classroom, a little puff of air that was contained inside her own name, Heather, as if she herself were hearing it for the first time. But by the time she got to the sixth grade, her name had worn itself down to Heather-Whatever.
Sometimes Heather dips the arrowroot crackers in tea (she likes Earl Grey) and sometimes she eats them on the side and uses the tea to wash down the crumbs, because, she has to admit, the
y are pretty dry. Tonight she’s dipping them, and the hot tea feels good on her throat, which is sore from talking on the phone to maniacs and psychopaths all day.
If only there was someone else she could talk to. There’s Raymond, of course—he’s strange, true enough, but he also seems kind of sweet in the way that makes a girl feel safe.
To the St. Nils Eagle
Dear Editors,
I was disappointed last week after reading your account of the Southside Archery and Crossbow competition to find that although the scores for various “traditional” bows were reported in some detail, the crossbow results, either through deliberate omission or simple error, were missing.
Unless you step up the standards of your reporting to include all the news, you should know this current subscriber will not remain so indefinitely. Let this be a warning.
Yours Truly,
A Seeker of Truth
And then there is also casi tocándose: almost touching.
IV
Oh five dropouts came to farm one day
To grow some pot and also hay
Because the rest of the world was in an uptight way
Except for Grandpa Stoner
—an excerpt from the theme song to Mellow Valley
As long as the Captain can remember, there has never been a day in which a part of him was not prepared to die right then and there on the spot, wherever that spot might be, but of course, in varying degrees. For example, on an average day, maybe up to thirty or forty percent of him would be just as happy to call the whole thing—what one of his old first mates, Steig, used to call this “hollow charade”—over and done. In other words: Good-bye. So long. That’s it, friends; I’m out of here. On a very good day, the percentage might go down to about five or ten, but on a bad one, it could shoot up to eighty or ninety. Today, just for the record, on his way to the lecture he’s supposed to give, he would peg things at about twenty-three—not too bad. He calls this his “Death Quotient,” and in the past, whenever he found himself in a tough situation, one where daring and sacrifice were called for, a high Death Quotient gave him an edge.
In the first episode of Mellow Valley, Mom, Dad, and Junior, their teenage son, find themselves stopped on the edge of a small midwestern town after their VW bus breaks down on their way to attend a rally in Washington, DC, to protest the Vietnam War. The family is dressed in a variety of seventies outfits: Norm, the dad, wears a fringed jacket and puka shell necklace. The mom, Judy, is in a granny dress and headband. The teenager, Junior, is in bell-bottoms and sports a vest covered with peace buttons. Hearing that the repairs to the bus will take a few hours, the family decides to wait in the local diner, where they are intently ignored by the waitress and the rest of the customers. This enrages the usually peaceful Norm, and Judy, exhausted by the stresses of this trip, begins to weep. “This is all a tragic mistake,” she tells Junior, who is trying to pretend he does not know his parents. “Do you think there is any chance at all that we were right to intervene in Southeast Asia?”
Finally, a grizzled old farmer, a person who believes in giving everyone a fair shake despite their appearances, stands up and, leaving his booth in the corner, where he’s been nursing a cup of coffee, walks to the counter and orders a whole deep-dish apple pie.
“Put it on my tab,” he tells the waitress, Ellie. Then he takes the pie back to his booth, where, pulling out a jackknife with a staghorn handle, he divides it into quarters. Next he opens a leather bag on the seat next to him and extracts a dirty block of cheddar, which he slices into four gigantic chunks. After placing a piece of cheese on each slice of pie, he walks over to the table, where Judy, having used up nearly a whole dispenser’s worth of napkins on her tears, has finally started to settle down.
“Why don’t you all come on over and join me? It seems as if some folks in this here town have done forgot their manners,” he says, looking around.
The family is happy to have the pie—the cheese, too. In the course of eating, Norm confides to the man, whose name is Grandpa Stoner, that instead of driving from one futile peace rally to the next, he would much rather find a plot of land and get back to the primal vibrations of the earth. He asks Grandpa Stoner if he knows of any farms in the area that might be available to rent. Grandpa Stoner takes his time thinking about it, finishes off his piece of pie and cheese, and calls for more coffee, which Ellie, shamed by the old man’s actions, brings to Norm, Judy, and Junior “on the house.”
It’s possible, Grandpa Stoner says, if they are serious and they can pass a credit check, that he personally might be willing to rent out his own farm to them. “I’m getting a little too old for sowing and harvesting,” he says, “but if you folks care to try it out, I could hang around for a while to show you the ropes. After that, well, we’ll just see what happens.”
Everyone agrees this is a good idea. The VW bus is fixed and, as they follow Grandpa Stoner’s dusty pickup out to his place, Norm spots a pair of hitchhikers trying to get a ride. He pulls off the road and introduces himself. They are a young girl named Heather and a former member of the Special Forces, Sergeant Moody, who is struggling to forget the horrible things he did to various villagers he came into contact with in South Vietnam. The Sergeant asks if, by any chance, they might have room on their farm for an old soldier.
Judy looks at him. “You’re not that old,” she tells him, “certainly not compared to Grandpa Stoner, and your hair is a lot better than Norm’s.” She goes on to say that although they haven’t seen the farm as yet, it sounds as if they’ll have a lot of room, so he’s welcome. Heather, who is returning from an unsuccessful audition as an underwear model, asks if there’s room for her, too. She explains that she’s sick of the shallow values of today’s society, and longs for something more spiritual and meaningful than the mindless displays of her breasts and buttocks she’s experienced in the past. To the delight of Junior, Norm says yes.
Then follow several comic scenes: Junior attempts to coax a stubborn donkey to go into its stall, Heather tries to milk a cow, and Sergeant Moody, suffering, as it turns out, from PTSD after being shot at by several members of his own platoon, dives under the chicken coop the first time Grandpa Stoner rings the dinner bell, only to emerge covered with white feathers.
And why did Grandpa Stoner think renting out his whole farm to an expanding bunch of strangers was a good idea? He asks this very question in an amusing monologue conducted in the farm’s outhouse, where he has gone to rethink his offer, debating the pluses and minuses of the situation while turning the pages of a Whole Earth Catalog he found in the back of the VW bus. In the end, just as he’s about to tell everyone he’s made a huge mistake, Judy walks out of the kitchen with a batch of her famous hash brownies. Later, a hilarious discussion ensues on how to achieve world peace, with suggestions ranging from Sergeant Moody’s “to kill anyone who isn’t peaceful” to Heather’s heartfelt speech that “if we all just love one another, things will work out the way they are meant to.”
In the end they decide that while achieving peace for the entire world is a near impossibility, if a person, or a group of people, for that matter, can find peace in his or her own life, that might well serve as a model for the rest of mankind. They decide to call their place (unsurprisingly, because it is the name of the show) “Mellow Valley.” Finally Grandpa Stoner declares, “If you five can make it, then maybe anyone can.”
Mud baths! Yes! Once he was grown Viktor made it a point to visit his local spa at least once a month, sometimes more, for a good mud bath, where, lying enclosed in a garment of sulfur-smelling clay, with only his eyes and lips uncoated, he could imagine that he was invisible, that nobody could see him, and nobody could hurt him, and nobody could make fun of his hands because they were now hidden in mud, pressed against his thighs like the swellings on the trunk of some kind of a tree or another.
Except that—wait!—come to think of it, since he arrived at the Burrow he hasn’t had even one mud bath, probably becaus
e he’s been busy making money hand over fist. Big hand over big fist.
In Heather’s dream, she’s a bird of some sort, but also—you know—Heather, and flying across the country with a big flock of other birds, looking for a place to land, to get a little snack, and rest. Hour after hour they fly, and her arms are getting sore, but because she’s at the very back of the flock there’s no one she can tell this to, nor does she have any idea where she’s headed. A follower, she thinks, that’s all I’ll ever be. But whoa! Now everyone ahead of her is dropping down to a place that looks pretty nice. There is water and duckweed and she can see other ducks already there, but just as the leaders are about to land, something goes wrong. The leaders start falling out of the sky! Pull up, Heather! she tells herself, and she does, just in time, but her arms are aching even more, and who knows when she’ll ever find a place to land?
For Madeline, the oddest thing about the Burrow is all the mirrors. Whoever decorated the place—if you could call it decoration—must have thought that in a building without windows, mirrors would make up for the complete lack of any view, or sources of external light, whatsoever. The result being that mirrors are everywhere, not only in the places you’d expect—like the bathrooms, at the ends of halls, and in living rooms, and the one above her bed, of course—but also on the backs of doors and in the kitchen, where there’s a big one behind the burners of the stove. It’s a special pain to keep clean because of all the grease that splatters on it.