Between The Syntax And The Semantics There Is Always Something Mysterious Chapter 4

 

Proteus

 

 

     After graduation from college I had no hopes, just a funny feeling in my legs as if I were standing on the  edge of a roof. It seemed too easy to send out 120 letters to school districts all over the US and hope for a repy. It was. Only two answered, one from The Southern Colorado Ute Reservation and the other from a high school in Winslow, Maine. The Indian Reservation had a certain appeal. Maine too for that matter. Both were far from home and both places seemed to foster a reputation for independence. I thought of the bragging rights that came with living in an out of the way place. They delivered special status, like that given to those that kept exotic pets. On the reservation I could play a modern version of Natti Bumpo. I am still a kid really. My life had been softly hammered in post WWII America, on the sycamore lined streets of the Down Neck section of Newark, New Jersey. Eventually I came to be at odds with it, a place from which to run. I ran leaving Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the Little Theatre behind. A log cabin on a hillside called to me like a Siren. Perhaps my estrangement came with my removal from the neighborhood at a young age. In seventh grade I was shuffled off to Morristown, to be taught by the Benedictine Monks. Morristown, where you could still see people on the square in bib overalls. After my enlistment, Stephanie Crecca, the gum snapper who always stood on the corner, waiting for something, started to look like a stranger. In fact, the entire neighborhood I once knew began to look different. However, the Garden State and its preoccupations were still with me. After all, our leaden past is tied to our tails. One day when asked what the state motto should be, a friend replied, without a second thought, “I deserve this”. I could see it on the license plates. That just seemed to define the Garden State. Finally, four years of in loco parentis at college in the 60’s will reduce anyone's hat size.

          I never wanted to be a cowboy as a child. Better an Indian. No particular tribe, because I didn’t know much about Indians but when we played I let the others be cowboys and pioneers. It felt better to play the victim. That says a lot about me. To be bound and humiliated by buckaroos or ranchers was where it was at, comfortable on the losing, but eminently just side. Better to be going extinct than be a living fossil. The Indian would always be more wise than the true barbarian and honest too. Ranchers were entitled, usually drunken killers. Million Dollar Movie had shaped my idea of the Wild West. The beat of a tom tom fourteen times a week. I saw clouds of dust,  bandits, prairie schooners, victorian whores in bloomers and frilly decollete, a few Chinese sprinkled like jimmies on an ice cream cone, yipping injuns who could shoot a rifle while riding a pinto upside down without a saddle, guys fanning bullets darting about saloons like swarms of angry wasps, wheels flying off stagecoaches,,, stagecoaches flying off cliffs, herds of uncredited black horses, twenty pintos, and three or four white well behaved stallions, and a million barrels a day of highly combustible visual fuel. However, I was attracted to the Ute fantasy about whom I knew nothing. I tendered the apologetic narrative held, by all those who did not own a mining company, the idea that all indigenous peoples were disaffected yet proud and noble.

     It was near the end of the school year when I scuffed across the street from the dormitory to the apartment of Mr. Colgate, my chronically inebriated English teacher who I will always credit for introducing me to Thomas Mann. Mr. Colgate was a barrell chested man always well appointed with thinning blondish hair, originally from Scranton but who sported a hint of an English accent. He never seemed to smile and always took a deep breath puffing up before he spoke in a nasal tone, not unlike Terry Thomas. Colgate seemed a kindly man, dulled over the years by liquor and had long ago given up on unworthy students. Colgate had paid his dues I imagine. He had become resolved to his life splitting his waning years between Beefeaters, a checkered past, and English classes,  and for many of those classes he did not appear. One time he arrived in a deep state of inebriation and began speaking in garbled tones about Rikki Tikki Tavi and merry mince pie. Father Connell miraculously appeared and with the utmost respect escorted him back to his apartment. I don't know why but the priests seemed to respect this aging gentleman. They forgave his sins perhaps because years ago he had enlivened any event with his knowledge and worldly adventures. 

     That day he and I had been slated to discuss a novella on the reading list, Death In Venice. I knocked on the blue gray door. Colgate answered head held high, neatly dressed in a double breasted blue blazer with gold buttons and hard pressed gray pants. The edge of a maroon hanky, like a kangaroo baby,  peeked out from his blazer pocket. He resembled Lord Mounbatten. Colgate did not make eye contact. He never did. It was as if he didn’t know me. I presented him with a brook trout I had caught early that morning near Buttermilk Falls which was graciously accepted. He bid me a place on the sofa and went to the kitchen to guard the fish then seated himself on a high backed brown leather chair studded with tarnished brass tacks. The floor was covered in a reddish oriental rug. Directly behind him were two elepant tusks crossed at the tips framing the ebony mask of a sleek almond headed African woman. Colgate sighed as he sat and crossed his legs looking like an English grandee very out of place in this Pennsylvania town. It was rumored he was gay.

     “So you are an angler”, he queried. “Fly or spinning rod?”

     In my most respectful voice I replied, “Fly fishing Sir, it’s quiet and elegant. The wind and the water are soothing.”

     At the word elegant he perked up a bit. He scrunched up his lips. “Yes as a youth I often angled in the Lackawanna river, but the the trout I remember best were in Wessex. The Piddle at Throop. The water wells up through the calcite, purified holy water from Panagia’s chapel.”

    He lost me after Lackawanna. I dumbly repeated, “Lackawanna.”

    “Yes, in the Lenni Lenape tongue it means stream that forks.”

     I desperately needed to steer this dialogue towards something in which I was familiar or expose my profound ignorance so I asked like a perfect ingenue, “Mr Colgate, May I ask a question that has haunted me for some tme?" 

     "Of course young man."

     "Do you think Indians were noble, more noble than us?”

     “Noble? It comes from the latin nobilitas which means celebrity.”

     I hoped he would search his archives anew and overlook my childish manifestations.

     “Heavens I don’t know about their nobility measured against another civilization.

     He pronounced the word “civilization with his most nasal English accent.

     “The accepted perception was that because they were the preverbial underdogs that has afforded them much consideration,, and rightly so. They went about asking forgiveness from deer and bison after the hunt and this does show reverence, not unlike the Baka Mbotaki hunters of the Congo,, or a hymn to the fallen stag from the Carmina Gadelica.”

     “And reverence is something cultivated”, I added.

     “Yes it is, yes it is." After a short pause he recaptured his previous thought. “And Aristotle ambled about in a toga thinking about dolphins and authority.”

      I had to chime in for the mention of Aristotle provoked a familiar image. “My uncle Toz strutted about in a tyrolean hat with a tiny feather in the brim, blue patent leather shoes, and only speaking of good chorizo.

     He leaned a bit forward in his throne, ignoring my statement, probably thinking it was a might grimey. I felt a little stupid wishing I could retract the line.

     He continued. “More noble? It comes down to the basic question of what really is more noble, a buffalo skin robe, a ghanian schmock, or a mohair suit? Lazy minds do need to project onto some groups certain traits don’t they? There is a “good” feeling that comes from taking the supposed noble side especially when we operate DWI. Driving While Ignorant that is. Accomplishment does not come from the comfort of an easy chair. However, son, ignorance unlike stupidity is a curable disease.”

     I felt this was directed towards me but I settled on the idea that my question had just triggered a flood of memories he harbored. He began again and to my surprise began a long dissertation.

     “Projection of us onto them reeks of artificiality given the heinous transgressions committed by all cultures. Look what the Germans did by juggling the words nobility and degeneracy. These terms became their devices to implement control. The idea that one race is naturally more noble than another can be folly if you really study history. Humans may be noble or despicable or both at the same time.  Human character is a jumbled mystery. Learning what is valuable after sifting is the hard part. It is a fact that indigenous people viewed the world differently than the Europeans. I own this tree verses I am temporarily using this tree. It’s all about the details of ownership. In the hazy distant past when we all ambled in skins everyone considered dirt sacred. How could you not. It was the primordial source material from which spang both corn and bison hides."

     He gathered himself and continued. "Sometime after the last ice age there was a deviation. Western culture redirected the word sacred towards only what pertained to religion and religion was closely associated with a king or a pope. One day, an ambitious William The Better declared himself Lord Of The Rivers, Oaks and Tubers for that matter. In addition, I will protect you against James, Lord Of The Fauna. Euro land ownership started as the noble’s route to great power and a means to personal wealth, possibly a chance to franchise it all and become The True Man For All Seasons. All was all bundled neatly into the alliance of politics, banking, and battle. This land is my land, it’s not your land, get off of my land, this land wasn’t made for you but me. In indigenous culture ownership was viewed as held in common by a tribe. There were chiefs but they didn’t proclaim their second hand tattered divinity. When the first englishmen landed on this northern shore, they couldn’t find a written counterpart to ownership rights, some kind of  bible, or certifiable dogmas in indigenous culture so they deemed it to be uncivilized. If they found something they burned it to bolster their perception of, excuse my language here, the “bare asses” as barbarians."

     I thought, what they did realize however was that they had stumbled upon a vast new realm, readily available resources, and permission to exploit all of it in the name of God and King. Just kick back something to the permission givers.Their eyes as well as their codpieces bulged at the sight of virgin forests, wild turkeys, stags and a horizon without seeming limits. 

     "All were overwhelmed with sacrosanction. “After all our hardship, and if no evil doth befall us, for we have left so much behind, Dear Lord impart unto us the strength to commence anew,,,, now let us pray for a split second,,,, for we, the anxious must begin work, yes to convert this largesse of Indian nothingness into something before it someone else does. Raise thy heads and behold the Lord’s bounty!”  

     Then Colgate seamlessly shifted into an Uncle Tom accent. “Now I gots to say my brethren, now we all gonna make it that wants to and ‘iffin ya don’t ain’t nobody’s fault but yer own. The King had armed them with Christian mission, canons and powder, and they didn’t know it but God had armed them as well with filth and millions of loyal soldiers in the form of disease. They were crawling with microscopic soldiers, and hadn’t changed their garments in months but they did have seeds, a calendar, and their steel axes were sharp. How were the “other”,,, conquistadors,,, the southern catholic servants of God different? They were just as serious justifying their New World monkey trials and inquisitions by decreeing them,,, well them. Who came first? We do. However the catholic counterparts from the far south too were,,,, armed with mediterranean erudition, a less sober lot than the stoic northern sons of Calvin for soon after arrival the good friars planted grapes and the Iberians and their black slaves turned sugar cane into rum, but both were clever enough to make big business with the New World ,,, helping them to ease the burden of paying their rent on time.”

      He offered his hands palms up, as if about to recite the Lord’s Prayer and raised his eyes heavenward. “And upon the endless stars it is written, the story without beginning or end, where the present and the past gather and proceed concurrently, the juggling of composition. The future is merely a lame guess, a quorum of dilettante vapors. It is a world of perfect fantasy, crystal clear, distilled from a precise juxtaposition of pearlescent words that stand out like a comet yet only few raise their heads to see.

     In the winter I often think about the plump furrow faced Inuit who came first to the new world in their skin canoes. My mind often wanders now. Eskimos lived tens of thousands of years in the harsh arctic. They became the penultimate survivalists with a minimum of tools,,, like snakes,,, but their invention became stalled in thick pools of blubber ,, that illuminated those dark desolate winters and of course they spent that bleak time comfy in an igloo or hut, under a pile of furs eating dried seal, procreating in silence so as not to wake the naarlunggiarsuk.”

     Here he stopped for a moment then reignited.

     “I know this image isn’t the pinnacle of human civilization. It is the ignoring of the beautiful convoluted western canon of doubt and contradiction that haunts me.The world took another path towards transubstantiation headlong into celluloid expanse of large mammaries and thirty easy payments. Esquimos had little free time. Their world was harsh, like medieval peasants, their overlord fourty below zero and a Polar Bear. Even if you are born a genius you might only be able to focus your talents inventing a better spear or a new word for some type of ice. The Huichols of Mexico, a prime example of a culture without ambition. They may have become victims of their own potions that overwhelmed the spark of culture in spiritualism. They took peyote, made intricate beaded images, and walked great distances. They made pilgrimages from Wixarika, to the Pacific Ocean in Nayarit. Over 800 kilometers the way the crow flies. Peyote sustained them physically and spiritually. Crazy injuns,,,,,,,, I think not! Could I ever see like they? The Huichols defied the human norm that features ambition as the only thing on the menu. No great cities, no social organization beyond their rituals. On the other hand some tribes stopped walking and marshaled their goals. It may be a paradox but some settled their ranges, organized food production, dug trenches, and erected great cities. Look to the rich gothic cathedrals if you want inspiration. Was it the nature of peyote or something in their character?”

     My mind began to wander. I thought of a sermon I had written  for a literature class two years prior. It was titled, A Brief History of The World: 

     Those who stopped and rooted were not satisfied with only architectural spaces. They kept on inventing things that changed humanity for the better in as many ways as those inventions created more ambiguity. Capitalism emerged from the swamp of ideas, like the Creature From The Black Lagoon, only this time he wins the girl. Mind theives invented organized religion, a direct descendant of magic, to mesmerize the populace with flickering candles, ceremony,, and strange languages,, and the people were easy for they always yearned for the possibility inherent in mystery,, and so education was given to them and they were happy to serve. Electricity was harnessed by a guy in knickers, a good thing, but when combined with car and house payments, and my God,, insurance then everyone forgets how to walk in a dream state being held like hostages. Then inventors came up with the idea of marketing, the right to purchase, and a subtle created stress, designed obsolescence, and of course the need decorate ourselves in forms of neon. They invented George Washington Day sales and finally credit, making "everyman” just a very very very little like Pierre Dupont", until the end of the month anyway, and then came Keynesian economics, the big panacea, where supply and demand revealed themselves as two big dials in a government office somewhere,, and all this before we lost neanderthal man. Something seemed missing in a world where everything was done for them. Their children began to talk back. All this mayhem to fool the restless into thinking that there was order in the chaos,,, and of course "the few" knew it was just another shovelful of ledgerdemain, but by then it was too late for Farenheit 451 was already approaching the library. They had captured us as we treaded water within the sonambulant state of our very own hot tub until we couldn't hold on anymore. Now all the the populace had to do was to work twenty-five jobs to pay for an ever burgeoning system. Well that's the world in a nutshell, maybe not in order. Yet there it hovers still, like a romantic encounter, the choice to downsize, but for the majority it’s too late and all follow The First Church of “gimme two yesterday”. 

     I tuned in once again to Mr. Colgate.

     .“I make no recommendations. It’s futile to return to some more “primitive” state. If one were a dictator, they’d be lynched, by the unified force of the people and the mafia. The mystic perspective requires heavy mental mobilization in another direction. If we all took peyote and wandered about pasting a heavy spirituality over the present world there would be chaos. Humanity is condemned to “step forward” now each day into the breach.

      “Can you imagine hunting the thundering bison herd, the powerful grizzly, the dark Cape Buffalo or the mighty pachyderm? The last one is a name that invokes something bacterial, not majesty and danger. The hunter who faced these was in great peril. Touch The Clouds was such an example,, a great hunter and a great warrior, perhaps even a diplomat,,  however, to think all the indigenous people were noble is a vulgar fantasy.They bickered like the Jesuits and Franciscans. The plains indians set fire to the praire in order to send a grand herd of buffalo to the precipice. They enslaved women and eliminated  competition.Their story is human in every aspect.”

     I don’t remember when Colgate ended his oracion because I was in and out of my own thoughts but what he said prompted me to think of my dilemma of wether to put on a headdress or a watchcap. When you are up to ass in naivete your thinking is unclear. I thought indigenous culture a higher caliber. It was the historical narrative I was taught. I assumed that culture would instill in me a watch dog conscience for combatting moral and environmental injustice.

     I received a solid B+ in his English course. I think it was the trout, not my performance. We never did discuss the odd form of passion expressed in Death In Venice. My quieries about indigenous culture just set him off on on a addled rant that was as interesting as it was discursive. I left knowing I knew little and that I was a work in progress.

      Like gypsy moths and Japanese beetles they arrived,

     On the timbered eastern shore,

     And we reached the great divide,

     In 200 years no more.

    

     Shaped boatmasts and floors, eight by eight four by four.

     But when Ira Grossel played Cochise,

     I reached for my tidy tattered valise,

     In search of the comforting before.    

      Then there was Andy Devine, the wheezy voiced stagecoach man, the guy who, on Saturdays, introduced us to Sabu, underground treasures, ancient ruins, and talking cobras. Years later on a trip to Arizona I visited a short remnant of route 66 in Williams, not too awful far from where Andy and his gang spent their childhood. God almighty. The architecture was frozen in the 50’s, a mix of the old west mission façade with that little architectural action going on atop. There were Giant Plastic Dairy Queen cones, neon cocktail glasses, and a motel with an I-beam exoskeleton, that was a cross between an insect and a dinosaur, and looked as if it might crawl away. I took a stroll down main street almost to the point where 66 met 40. I could see the trucks and cars in the distance on Interstate 40. There was a tourist bureau. Had to go in. A stout blond german lady managed the operation.

     I strolled up to the long curved desk and innocently asked “What’s to do in Williams?”      

     She replied, “Vel u cood go oop Bill Williams Mountin. Der ist un tower der for fire. Goot view from der.”

    I was up for a good view of the lay of ths dessicated landscape still unfamiliar to my moist eastern eyes. “Thanks. Where do I catch the road up?” She brought out a map. The imp in me wanted to say “Thankee Much Missy Hildagarde” but I thought better of that.

     So up it was, the winding road passing the porous red lava patches and burnt toast grasses. Bill Williams mountain topped off at 10,000 feet or so. However at about 9000 feet some trees appeared and the ground seemed tinted reddish orange. I didn’t think much of that but by the time I reached the top the trees were coated red and the ground thickly carpeted in the same color. This was disorienting. My eyes had’t caught up with my brain yet. Everything undulated. I stopped  30 feet from the fire tower and opened the door placing my foot on the ground crunching 200 lady bugs. Their cousins were on me in a flash, under my shirt, biting my stomach. In 5 steps and another 1000 ladybug corpses I was at the fire tower ladder and climbing with alacrity. I glanced back to see my footprints in squashed dead beetles just as I entered the green colored cabin from below. It was windowed on all sides. There was a short dude with a handlebar mustache, a plaid shirt, and suspenders peering through binoculars at another Bill Williams type mountain rising up out of the scrubby dry beige landscape in the distance. Being astonished by what I had just seen, emotion had temporarily sequestered my tongue.

     “Excuse me, hello sir. Good morning. This is incredible. What is going on here with the ladybugs?”

     He didn’t leave his deep concentration, just stared out towards Joe Williams Mountain # 2. Perhaps he was just a prop and had died years before, or he was another one of those western men of few words whose solitary confinement had been rudely interrupted by this excited skidmark with an jersey accent. But no. Wait for it. He puffed up one cheek and leaned forward spitting out a gooey creosote colored tarry bola of tobacco juice, boooooowheet,,, right through the open window showering the sorry ladybugs below. There was a pause between the big brown viscous oyster and the response. His gaze never faltered from the view as he drawled a short, “Dunno:”  Somehow I felt he was not pulling my leg. Change the subject, that’s it, change the subject, I thought. Maybe this guy is really bothered by my presence. “Any fires?” Another longish pause. “Yup over there a flimsy little plume comin off Mingus.  Already called it in though.” All the while he ignored me and never stopped peering through the binoculars except to spit.

     Feeling self conscious I thought it best to leave so I climbed down from the tower and toe stepped to the car trying to minimize the carnage, then descended Bill Williams Mountain. The tires made crunchy noises like chewing dry cereal. I needed to find out what caused all the ladybugs in the entire world to congregate for an old time revival. Did they have a leader? And they bite. I didn’t know that. We always let them amble up our finger like cute little polished buttons. Alone they charmed but in a group they became malignant. Creo que son depredators sin piedad. It would be a quest. I thought of Hildagarde and returned to the tourist bureau. She saw me enter and said, “Vell den how vas it?”

     “Fantastic, one of the best nature surprises I have ever had the opportunity to witness, but I have a question why are there so many billions of ladybugs at the top.”

     She looked puzzled and said, “Vaat?”

     “Lady bugs, you know the little red beetles with black spots. Why are they congregated there?”

     “I am sorry but I do not know sir. I hav nayver eard of dis.”

     I didn’t know what to say. I exited like a child disillusioned by his parents because he caught them stealing ham. I walked towards the praying mantis motel stopping in one store after another asking the same question yet I was met with the same ignorance. No one, it seemed, had ever even heard of this phenomenon. It would be as if all the mosquitoes in New Jersey gathered in Branchbrook Park in spring to receive orders before going forth to unleash their pain and havoc upon us throughout the summer. No! Far more moving than that. Was I the only one who saw this? To all here this was invisible? I began to doubt myself. Did I have a stroke? Just before the motel there was a small shop called The Turquoise Teepee. I entered the foyer trying to hide from the sun The Teepee was run by two hippie types spangled in turquoise and silver. A blond lady in a white halter approached ringed in jewelry, her bangles jingling dully like silver will do. She asked if I needed help. I thought, well, no, asking myself if I should petition one more time and be disappointed.

     I hesitated then blurted, “Look, I’m a little self conscious asking this question,,, again,,, and again,,once again,, but I just came down from Bill Williams mountain and the mountain top was carpeted,,, no encrusted,,, bejeweled, in a thick carpet of bazillions of ladybugs. You wouldn’t happen to know why would you?”

     She smiled. All her jewelry brightened and her turquoise took on a deeper hue. Why be self conscious? Oh they gather once a year on some of the mountaintops to mate.

     I was suddenly sort of relieved. Half an hour earlier this town, frozen in the 1950’s by interstate desertion syndrome, resembled Village Of The Damned where all who dwelled there could only know the space bordered by their own four walls. Anything outside the fence was laced with plutonium. The turquoise silver spangled hippie suddenly became a heroine. She saved the whole town. A billion ladybugs. I felt suddenly lucky. I learned something that day though. If you don’t know your own backyard you probably will never know anything and I imagine will forever be susceptible.  

     I settled on Maine over Colorado. It was a shitload closer. So I packed up the 1960 pale green Renault Dauphine with ruined shock absorbers and traveled alone from Jersey to Maine. This was new ground  and even though Maine was within the USA it might as well seemed like a moon landing. Outside of north central New Jersey everything seemed strange. Christ, Sussex county made me uneasy. How do you talk to them? Tommy you are the real amateur. I knew what Yoknapatawpha county was, the mystical heart of darkness in the good ole’ USA  but it existed in a book,, words on a page so far from my provence.

     It was a long ride to Maine on the new Interstate 95. Every wave or bump sent the Renault to bobbing like a lizard in heat. The Renault’s suspension was like that of an old stagecoach, a compartment suspended on two front and back pillows of jello ping ponging back and forth with every defect in the road. Drove slow so there was plenty of time to think. However, my ass itched from a sit down encounter with poison ivy. To itch and to burn at the same time. Once in a while I moved side to side on my seat trying to sand the conflicting pains away.

     Finally, I crossed into Maine. It was August. There was a slight chill in the air that evoked a mournful tune. The odor was of pine and humid forest floors now thickened with detritus. The bunched red maples in the boggy lowlands were already turning crimson. August was late in the year to hire a teacher. Either no one wanted the job or it was a lean year for teacher manufacture. Maybe both. The district was desperate. 

     Waterville emitted the acrid aroma of sulfur from the paper mills. The devil was near. Fire and brimstone to punish the wicked. Suddenly I was overcome with a strange feeling of aloofness,,, of being on my own far outside the cocoon. What I did from this point on would affect my future. I felt like a wounded bushwacker as I crossed the mighty Kennebec entering Winslow. The police station just over the bridge came into view so I stopped to ask directions. At the desk there was a policeman in a tight blue shirt. I wondered if they all bought tight shirts or they just bulged out into them over time. I noticed a potted marijuana plant growing in the back window. What is this?

     Winslow high was just around the corner. I parked and exited the Renault giving it a healthy push on the hood as if to say keep up the work good girl. The Renault lightly bobbed up and down in affirmation like a lizard. On the side of the school was the football field from which emanated sounds of preparation for the rapidly approaching first game. I paused and thought of my own brief football career.

     New Jersey is much hotter in August. In Maine there is an impending cold. The football field was at the bottom of a hill sculpted to act like a stadium. I remembered that time we were doing drills, running up that cursed steep hill over and over again. Making men,,, getting in shape,,,creating consensus. Lost 10 pounds that day. The drills finally ceased and the sweaty team all took a knee, one hand on their helmets. It was an unspoken rule that one could not sit. The coach, a short fellow with a military buzzcut, sporting football pants without pads, who like so many trainers was also tapped to teach civics and drivers ed, gave us one of his memorized cliched lectures without any eye contact at the same time unconsciously pulling out a portion of his molar bridge with his tongue and reinserting it. Like Sha Na Na and the lit cigarette trick. When he finally finished, he said ok get some water. I heard the word water and was rising to my feet when we, the thirsty few who salute you, heard the star fullback scream “We don’t want water!” Everyone fell back shamed into obedience for demonstrating thirst. We returned to the hill. An hour later Carl, the kinky haired State Trooper’s son, the kid who played cowboys and Indians with live ammunition, passed out from heat exhaustion. His blue eyes thrust up towards his forehead and he crumpled to the ground. He was out having sacrificed himself to the greater good. He quit the next day.

     Football taught me that human value was equivalent to its capacity to produce obedience to a group of superiors by cultivating one’s willingness to bend to the will of an irrational group. It’s a form of preparation in order to be better controlled throughout life. Of course if you make it into the club with no formal name and happen to excell as an atheletic star every guy with a beer belly and a business will want to shake your hand.

     But is that all I learned? Let’s be fair. By allowing an authority figure dominion over a group goals were accomplished. Certainly I was in shape from football,, best in my life,, then,, during swimming season it continued, that feeling of well being and confidence and belonging. The goal of body excellence combined with a team translated into success and personal recognition, however brief. What a great attitude we adopted, like marines fresh out of bootcamp, open to any suggestion of challenge, ready to leave the checks and balances behind.

     I entered the now empty high school. The long hallway was lined with newly painted gray lockers. There was the glass case that enshrined the past valor of football, basketball, and hockey. The scarred champion’s puck glared at me through the glass. The office door followed immediately where I presented myself. They were expecting me. I was rapidly buzzed into the inner sanctum by the secretary in a polkadot dress and a wide frilly collar. There, in the office I would meet my destiny, the iconic principal of Winslow High, Mr. Boyd Giggey. He had an adolescent look. Attention was drawn to his mouth, the left corner held a slight frown and the right a faint smile. He had a boyish crop of hair neatly combed over. Giggey wore a light gray-blue suit, a starched white shirt, and a dark blue tie printed with little brown pine cones. His large nose protruded from between his light metal frame glasses.

     His nose looks like mine, I thought. Proust said it is the organ of intelligence. For the Spanish las butanescas are equated with importance. They were both wrong. This was pure unappealing organ justification. What the fuck does a nose signify anyway. Certainly not a character trait. My nose is long and my nostrils are small hence the lack of oxygen to my brain throughout life.

     I sensed a vibe from this fellow. Giggey was an authority figure, but his power was derived from his seat not from his character. Later I found out how much he was disliked by students and teachers alike. He was motivated by ambition and a short stint as a failed teacher. Giggey catered to the football and basketball coaches like a groupie. That was all that was required. He had wrangled a seat no one else wanted and it paid much better. I soon found out that no one regarded this man’s opinion or directives with any respect.

    

     There was a man from the north named Giggey,

     Clean shaven yet a bit squiggly,

     All day he passed, in his office alone,

     Emitting trivial communiques via microphone,

     Never beloved, socially snub-bed,

     Slippery he was and so damn priggy.

    

     Really it wasn’t much of an interview. It only lasted 10 minutes. Strangely, I felt hired the minute I walked through the door. One could sense the school’s desperation to fill a void. Where’s the competition? It seemed the outgoing art teacher was pregnant and chose at the last minute to tend her increase instead of a classroom. I must make a point to talk with her. I was certain I had the job the moment Mr.Giggey requested that I shave my beard. After all it was 1966 and beards were associated with demonstrations and pot smoking. Then Giggey stated that art was imporDant to the school and ushered me to a classroom where the proof of art’s eminence was a small metal cabinet containing one shelf with a few crayons, some blunt kiddy scissors and two reams of orange and black construction paper. Most people equate distressing old furniture as art.

     The salary was $4500 per year, not a royal sum at all yet in some strange way as I walked out to my pet Renault I felt like I had won something, not definititivly but like the hangover from a hazy early morning cotton head dream. In the dream there was a room in which all the people with whom you would never want to group up were gossiping about you and then  you hiding in a closet. They gathered about the door and began to point and laugh. When you awakened you learned that you had pissed the bed. There in the parking lot of a highschool, pondering incoming students students only four years my junior I breathed in the acrid odor of sulfur. I was on my own.

     I returned to Newark and within a week, barely enough time to think about what was to happen, I returned to Maine and moved into an 250 year old farm house owned by Ezra and Phoebe Harkin in the small town of Liberty. They kept some beef cattle there. I had just a week to prepare for classes as school started in early September. Maine was becoming chilly. People burned wood for heat. Unfamiliar plumes of sweet smelling wood smoke spiraled up from the chimneys. The houses here reminded me of The Wick House in Morristown. Nothing seemed real. A teacher a teacher, never imagined I would begin my professional life as a teacher.

     One evening in early September, I waxed pensive as I stood outside the farm house listening to the cows bellow and plop, as the sun inflamed the clouds drawing them towards a point on the horizon. I walked over to the barbed wire fence and unzipped my fly. Can’t do this in Newark I thought. Out came a stream of urine. Peeing is better than sex sometimes I thought just as the leading edge of the stream contacted the wire ricocheting a jolt of electricity back through my glans.The damn fence was charged. I stepped back looking about to see if anyone saw me gripping my crotch. Thankfully there was no one about to witness what I had just done. I quickly zipped up as one of the steers lowered his head and mockingly mooed. 

     I had a job but as ever I was filled with doubts. Could never quite place myself anywhere specifically in the world. However one employment fantasy that had repeated itself was life as an engineer on the Canadian Pacific, alone, with plenty of time to think, captain of an iron beast 125 cars trailing behind,,,, gliding through the wilderness sounding the horn to clear grizzlies, moose, or maybe an errant retarded Indian with his ear to the tracks. I would know everything about the ponderous machine. I would be able to divine its mechanical vigor from sounds emitted from the grinding steel bowels and barreling steam, my ears and my experience, my stethoscope. In my spare time I could explore the northern forests writing about adventures and close calls.

     I relished those that did something with their hands besides masturbate. All those career tests in school stated I should be a forester or an artist but Mom squashed that early on.

     “Be a doctor that’s where the prestige and money is.” When she often said this, the family doctor, who I loathed materialized, a well tailored fiend sporting an oversized pinky ring and a Cadillac. What prestige? No one wants to be friends with them and they in turn with nobody. They are the loneliest wealthy drug dealers without a gang on the planet. In fact the family doctor almost killed me. One summer I abruptly began wasting away as my joints began to weep than after a few days groaned in pain. I walked like a candidate for the March of Dimes Telethon.The Doctor checked in twice telling my mother, “He’s just lazy Rosa” Make him walk”. My father and uncle were ordered to make me walk up and down the street which by this time was excruciating. Look at Tom he’s walking, look at Tom he’s balking. After ten days of this proscribed treatment I was sent to the hospital only to discover I had contracted Rheumatic Fever. I spent the rest of the summer in there.

     You know maybe I believe in nothing. Doubt helps in the pursuit of truth but too much and the cake doesn’t rise. It may keep you fresh through detachment, but an overload of doubt may paralyse. Once you have committed to a popular path, though, you begin to relinquish your detective skills. Commitment dulls doubt. Vince Lombardi said “Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work”. That of course says nothing about how that society operates. In fact the core characteristic of almost all quotes about commitment is capitulation,,, relinquishing self and that is dangerous to thinking let alone speaking freely. Rarely, after we have made our vows, does someone become enlightened enough to question group goals. So we go along. It’s a trick to walk the fence between black and blue without turning into a cliché. I remember the Vietnam Vets in college. They came to class prepared. I derived comfort from their outside status and their studious discipline.

     My mother used to say “Do something, be governor”. She admired power no matter how it revealed itself. As a matter of fact growing up in New Jersey your stability was shattered each morning. You might go to sleep with a certain image of your town only to wake up to a wrecking ball making room for some unecessary elsewhere all greased by skewed tax codes. I do not wish to admonish the faithful. After all they might beat me up, however, at times I ambled along without passion, only doubt. Or perhaps at that early time in my life it was just too soon to tell,,,, yet I don’t believe people fundamentally change after third grade.

     At Winslow High I taught sophomore and senior English as well as freshman through senior art. In my sophomore English class, which consisted of 6 students,  I had the brilliant idea that these future loggers should put on a play so I chose Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Humor, mystery, love. It had to be a hit. It was to be a mini production just for the class and it didn’t matter that no one knew who Shakespeare was. Anyway the class might have fun making the costumes. An ass’s head for the red headed malnourished out of place Justin, who played Nick Bottom, tights and a leafy crown for Edward, who played Puck. There were just enough players although due to the fact that there were no girls in the class some boys took female roles. However two refused to go drag so they just stood and delivered teir lines. Their resistance to be in costume helped make the whole project lame at best but a few got into it and that’s the story of 20th century education. A few got into it,,,,, and what follows shortly afterwards is,, then they all forgot. That little generator attached to your bike tire rim only makes juice if you keep pedaling.

     It was fate, that the day of the play Mr. Giggey came into class,, most likely alerted by gossip from one who may have thought that I was turning young boys into fags. I suspected the reluctant male who played Hermia. It was the first sign of concern by the principal who by then, near Christmas, had already prepared my dismissal. Me! What a schmuck. I never suspected I was fostering animosities among peers, or parents. The witch hunt had begun behind my back when I arrived. Another event that followed the ill fated play was the sinful art exhibit hung in the library, the only place with enough clear wall space that saw quiet controlled traffic. I thought the students needed to show some respect for their work and not just attach it to the refrigerator for a few days before it was tossed away.

     The day after I hung the show, Mr. Giggey called me into his office and in a hushed voice said, “Do you know there is a picture of an exposed breast in your art exhibit?” I wracked my brain but just couldn’t remember any nudes. Some psychedelic images, a sign of the times, that may have been projected to be something risqué by a cock-eyed lunatic all wound up like a whalebone corset. Speaking up trying to be diplomatic and mildly sarcastic, something I knew Giggey would not perceive, I said, “Mr. Giggey with all due respect to you and the watchful eyes of the community, I don’t remember any image in which anyone could take offense.”  “Would you excuse me a moment while I revise the content of the exhibition.”  

      I wondered if that little dunce in senior english may have sabotaged me. I rushed to the library and scrutinized the 40 or so works of art. Nothing there, just a modest charcoal sketch of a woman’s shoulder blade mostly draped in cloth done by Melissa Pleau, just about the purest angel in the class. I took her drawing down and returned to the office.

      “Is this the offending painting” I asked?

      “Yes Mr. Giggey replied.”

      “Excuse me sir but that is a woman swathed in a robe whose shoulder blade is exposed. It isn’t a breast.”

     He didn’t seem to hear the words.

     “We cannot have that in this school.”

     I was puzzled. And they thought I was on drugs. Giggey must have flunked biology.The guy couldn’t tell the difference between a mammary and a scapula. He didn’t see it, he cannot see it. Wonder who told him. Perhaps that overbearing librarian Mrs.Cockburn? She is always gruff. She acts like Giggey’s bloodhound. The penny finally dropped. I was a threat to the natural order. But how? I pondered how I appeared to people. I suppose like a macroscopic foreign organism. To know know know yourself is to to love love love yourself and I do, yes I do, but oh that was fading fast.

     The third strike was allowing the senior English students to read and discuss A Catcher In The Rye like I had done in prep school. Giggey’s carpet of castigation beckoned once more. I lamely told him, “But it is in your library.”

     “Not any more it is, replied Giggey”.

     I knew he had never read the book nor could he. Strange, I thought, how Catcher In The Rye and Lord Of the Flies were prohibited, but Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth were sanctioned. I wondered if time had rendered them sacred or simply a confusing array of double entendres delivered in a strange but respected “higher tongue” became the latter’s condom. Really few here understood what themes these two works explored.  

     The fourth strike came with overseeing of the school newpaper,,, because no one else wanted the job. They knew. By this time I was aware that this teacher ruse had run its course. I seemed not to care anymore. My final error, made in half depression, was allowing a student to publish a rambling dialogue in the school paper more discursive than Bob Dylan’s Tarantula. Stupid career move but predictable given my deteroriating mental state. I had failed at my first job after college. Winslow, Maine was already fading from view.

     The fifth blow was more insidious. I looked like a Jew. Jersey accent, swarthy, curly haired, likes literature and art, from away,, well hey he must be a Jew. Some dying to confirm their own prejudices would sheepishly ask, “I’ll bet you speak Hebrew”. With a nice jewish name like Tommy Rossi, I’d been exposed.  Hey friend the cat is finally out of the bag. I’m a Godamned Jew. Pull up a chair, big fella, pull down yer pants, and we’ll compare prepuces, and then I’ll divulge the secrets of kosher wealth.

     Don was the music teacher in the elementary school next door who employed the Orf Shulwork method of music instruction. Short and bald, he looked like Mr.Mxyzptlk, one of Superman’s enemies. No vowel man. His real name probably was Gregor Szczyz, changed into Mxyzptlk by an arrogant official on Liberty Island who couldn’t pronounce Szczyz.  The real or unreal Mxyzptlk had the power to warp reality entangling Superman in his bizarre creations. We don’t often think of Superman as confused. Perhaps he was susceptible to ledgerdemain, or the wow factor in magic tricks. Forget kryptonite, perhaps his superpowers could have been negated by a game of three card monte. Maybe Superman could have been hypnotized and turned into a clucking chicken on some stage somewhere. The music teacher, Don, somehow wrangled money to buy wooden xylophones and percussion instruments. On the other hand, I was always scavenging the countryside on Saturdays for art materials. The Brooks leather pile, scrap wood, old linoleum, paper, old paint, and anything that might be used in art class.

     Orf Shulwork uses different musical scales, and encorporating a child’s imagination into music,,, a little like jazz exploring improvisation as a means to achieveing melody. It’s not super sophisticated. It’s an infant’s introduction to musical composition. The children weave percussion rythmns, pulses, pauses, rhymes, poems, and movement to create a work. In spring the elementary school Orff orchestra presented their concert to the public. The sounds softly and silkily rang out accompanied by bumps and boomps of percussion. They kids spoke and they moved. They moved me.

     I thought of Don’s antithesis, the high school talent show I attended in may, held in the gymnasium. Since the floor was flat and I was positioned in the center all I could see were backs of the heads of parents straining to see their little Sally’s turn at stardom. Her act was memorable. To the song “Crying” by Roy Orbison little Sally, decked out like a circus zebra did a cartwheel. I could see her legs rise into the air. The words sang out, “Cry, ayai, yai, yaing”. Her sequined pink slippers appeared over the heads of the parents straining to see and just as Sally balanced at full apogee, all her sequins dazzling in the spotlights, hanging there upside down for just a second, her legs askew, when Orbison crooned “Over You” she failed and haphazardly went limp like a sack of slabwood dropped off a truck clattering onto the floor. “Over You-mph-aaaa-da-ba”. The music continued. Not too long after Don’s concert a group of parents accused him of bewitching their little boys and girls. I could be in Alabama, and Don was gone at the end of the year. I never knew if it was voluntary or forced. The threat to society in education is teaching kids to think. If they think, they might learn how to evaluate all on their own, and good consumers shouldn’t be allowed to tell the difference between a fancy dress and a sandal.  

     I lasted one year and was politely not renewed. Giggey didn’t say you’re fired. I was cut loose without any formality. Maybe I could have behaved and begged continuing as a teacher, but my future would have most likely been perpetually mired in the toxic politics that pervaded the scholastic hen house and of course after a while out came the cement shoes, anchored in place with a mortgage, car loans and threat of losing retirement,,,, tossed into the deep blue sea driftng down accompanied by all my accumulations towards the slimey bottom and then “the oozey weeds about me would twist”.

     The last day of school took place in the cafeteria empty of students, only a gaggle of teachers chomping at the bit for a must needed vacation.The awning windows were open allowing a chorus of spring thrushes to usher in conclusion exercises. I felt so alone. Everyone had looked the other way, teachers, the union. Easy to eliminate a person from away who lacks that teacher’s ilk and of course formal certification. Papers s’il vous plait. What is your destination? Follow me please this way,, no don’t look back. I had forgotten why I boarded this train in the first place. I felt failure and relief simultaneously and couldn’t muster the will to fight this battle. It most likely would be another struggle to conserve something ultimately tasteless. Was education nothing more than a gang of “Go-alongs”. Sounds like an path in the australian desert. Go-alongs have shaped the face of education. Go-along or be cancelled. You must not question that Columbus discovered America or that Lyndon Johnson was a caring man, and that the USA is a democracy. Never forget that.Teachers can only order what’s on the approved kiddie menu. In fact, after a short while there is no need for Mr. Giggey for they will oversee themselves. Outside the cafeteria window thrushes warbled and I thought of a pithy seminal moment. This moment defined my love of solitude.  After all I wasn’t always like this. I adopted a syndrome,, like everyone else.

     I was once a happy boy of ten who liked to draw. One summer evening I asked my mother, mama, mumsy. Ma is supposed to be our first word. Lips together and exhale lightly, almost like a prayer “Ma can I have some paper?” She directed me to the cabinet under the sink where there were several reams stored by the great accumulator. I got royally reamed that evening. I opened the thickly painted cabinet door peering in at the abundance of stock and taking two sheets. I didn’t pay much attention to the heading printed on top marked Columbus Hospital in Newark. I lay down on the floor completely comfortable protected from the summer heat by the linoleum floor’s coolness,,, doodling. The cocoon was abruptly shattered with a hard crack on my back. I was shocked to my feet stunned by a series of facial slaps and wild screaming.

     “That is Columbus Hospital Staionary for my bandage rolling”, screeched mi ma!   

    The war had only ended eight years before and its austerity still haunted the air but this was more than that. The beating and berating didn’t stop. I sprinted out the back door into the rainy night crying and confused, crossed the hedge into the neighbors yard and onto Tremont Court. There on the edge of the circle was my friend Michael’s house. The rain was hard and loud. There, where the driveway widened a bit was one of those children’s cabins popular at the time made of cedar slabs. There, I sought refuge. My chest was heaving and I could see the warm yellow light of Michael’s kitchen through the window of the cabin which leaked like a colander in long drizzles that zzzzed and hit the muddy floor. After a half hour I walked the dog’s leg asphalt fairway of Tremont Court to the place where it met Tremont Avenue and slowly climbed up the hill towards my house wanting to return but still terrified. The rain had eased and voices could be heard calling Thomaaas,, Thomaaaas. I hid behind a bush still frightened but they saw, my father and his friend Mr. Rochford. Dad scooped up my writhing body and held me tight to his chest forming a cross.

     No wonder Huckleberry Finn was my favorite book in 7th grade. Run Tommy run and leave the pain behind. Someoneor some place will save you. Then there was that silly plan in 8th grade, solid as a quaking bog. While studying the Caribbean in geography class in which climates were explored it seemed a good idea to stowaway on a ship to sunny Bermuda. The Encyclopedia Britannica claimed that at the time one didn’t need a passport. Perfect. Just hide in the bathroom or down below behind a tangle of pipes. Upon arrival I could make a living renting motoscooters. Perfect cushy mushy plan that most likely would have been interrupted by some deck hand before the ship departed. I never followed through with the early run-a-way plans always reeling myself back into the arms of the suburban cocoon. The mentality of a chicken shit. I ran away from running away until later. Maine was that place, a nowhere somewhere.

    

    

 

 

Between The Syntax And The Semantics There Is Always Something Mysterious Chapter 5

Calypso

    They said the Goldmine Road was paved in dirt and deer blood. A lot of poachers resided there. There was a heavily wooded ridge to the west that went for miles and a half bog on the east side sodden and heavy, supporting a tangled array of scrawny alders. The entire area was forbidden fruit with a villainous reputation longer than a rosary by Aunt Lucinda. It was outside of any time I was used to, hovering somewhere between a wolf and a dog, more towards the wolf. It was early spring and I was near the end of my tenure as a school teacher, kind of near the end of my rope. I was giving Amalie, a smiley faced girl, from the high school a ride home. She was always all apples and cherries. Two of her front teeth crossed, like clumsy dancers. She lived on the Goldmine Road. That afternoon Amalie introduced me to her mother, Yeshro, who, two years before had divorced and moved to Maine from the Washington D.C. area. Yeshro was a teacher in another nearby district. Her full name was Yeshro Mattson but everyone called her Gertie.

     Yeshro had purchased 30 acres on the high side of the road which came with an old cape. There was lots of hard maple which was good for heating. Because she didn’t like what skidders did to the land every spring she hired David Hodges, a neighbor, who entered with his team of horses to cull out six cords. Yeshro had taken on a sort of homesteader’s life with her brood. There was a flock of chickens, ducks, a mule named Pantuflas, a small herd of goats, and a basement chock full of canned goods. Home made everything. Ready for the coming Armageddon we all assumed would never come but that we secretly wished would rouse us from our increasing slumber.  

      When I arrived with Amalie, Yeshro had just finished washing her curly salt and pepper hair. It looked all matted and tightly curled like a random wad of 8mm film. She was trying with great difficulty to run her fingers through the thick springy mass as she stood near the wooden rain barrel on the corner of the house. There were small yellow white flowers and petals still stuck in the frizzies. Yeshro was banjo faced handsome, her round chin cradled by her red Macintosh Apple cheeks. She was plump, a buxom body mounded atop two reedy legs, like a stack of warm shiny buns supported by toothpicks, yet it all worked somehow in unison. She seemed jolly chubby, the kind of woman that could hide three apples in her belly smile, and just as relaxed as her loose jeans and baggy sleeveless shirt. She didn’t wear a bra and the round sides of her breasts swelled out below her armpit. The sacred satchels. Her brownish green eyes blushed just a bit, as she stood upright and approached.

     “Mom this is Mr. Rossi, Thomas. He’s the teacher I told you about.”

     I approached and extended my hand. “Good afternoon, Yeshro, A pleasure to meet you.”     

     “Good afternoon, what’s your name again, Thomas?” She turned to Amalie and said, “Tend to the goats, Am, milk ‘em and feed them some of the tender timothy, and oh a ration of grain. Pardon me if I don’t shake your hand, Thomas.”

     “That’s ok and yes, my name is Thomas. Thomas Rossi. What are those little flowers in your hair. Isn’t that water cold?”

     “It’s cold alright. Colder than a witch’s tit.”

     Tits again. Images of tits and nipples filled my head. I felt like a contented pervert.

      “She continued, “In a sec though I’ll go into the house with some of that same rain water only this time heated for a delicious rinse. The flowers are chamomile. I make my own shampoo from suet and lye, and a variety of herbs, like lavender parsley, rosemary, sage. I use this mix added to rainwater, at least in the warmer months. It minimizes the frizz for which I am the poster girl. She swirled and bended a chubby knee and coquettishly placed one finger under her chin. The rain water doesn’t contain those nasty minerals.”

     “Suet and lye? Opposing forces of the universe. I don’t know anybody who makes their own soap. We never drank tea in my house, only milk and water. My grandmother had two cherry trees and besides that, bless her heart, she would pick chives when they came up in the the back yard. That was the closest I came to gardening or foraging. My parents had two apple trees that put on a lot of fruit in the fall but we never ate them. They were considered a nuisance. We developed a fall ritual, bury the apples and burn the leaves. I always thought it strange but never questioned it. It just seemed retarded. I guess that’s life in the modern city.”

      “You poor boy”, she said confidently. I was born and raised on the prairie, in Minnesota. We grew tobacco for money and everything else for to eat. Meeker County, the pampas of the Midwest, where we salted the earth with tobacco powder that turned into prairie gold. Olaf Stillson, my great grandfather, was one of the first to bring the cash crop to Minnesota. And then there was the Carnegie Library, oh how I miss that place.”

       What could I say, I felt a little out of place in Yeshro’s world. Tobacco, and farming? I thought of standing in front of the rose window in The Cathedral of The Sacred heart bathed in healing light. The canalized Second River, Branchbrook Park, Stick ball on asphalt, shopping at S. Klein, and the Kresge Rocket Express. Libraries? There weren’t any books in our house, only Good Housekeeping magazines my mother stole from doctor’s offices. My grandmother and aunt, who lived next door, had one golden book, The Little Engine That Could, which I read at least 100 times. I think I can, I think I can, I even thought I could.

     “Amalie told me about you. You are a teacher at Winslow.”

     “Yes ma’am, art and English”.

     I glanced over at the rock wall marking her boundary and basking in afternoon sun, and atop there were randomly placed #10 tin cans. Some hung from a few skinny apple trees. Poking out of them were red geraniums and herbs. It reminded me of some photos I had seen of Mexico. “You like geraniums don’t ya. My mother told me that her grandmother liked red geraniums as well.”

     “Red geraniums symbolize that there is good in everybody. It’s a triumphant jaunty flower. They signal resilience”, she said making a fist.

     “They certainly have an unusual aroma”, I replied.

      “And it is indescribable. Herby, medicinal, lemony. There isn’t a word or a group of words for that matter that can accurately describe the aroma.”

     “Perhaps they speak a foreign language. You know somethings don’t translate.”

     “Yeshro smiled. She continued her attempt to comb out her tangles as she spoke.

     “So, you make art now, do ya?”

     “I doodle a bit.”

     “Amalie tells me you are a good teacher. How did you end up here?”

     “It wasn’t on purpose. I think I’m too wet behind the ears yet to have purpose. I kind of fell into this job. I wasn’t looking for it. I’m not an artist really but I do react well to painting.”

     “How do you mean.?”

     “I enjoy looking at paintings, kind of a fetish maybe, to dismantle techniques. At least I do that upon first viewing. It doesn’t matter, the content. You know, like standing in an old empty Maine barn and pondering the creation of that space, once, long ago, all sawing, pounding, lifting, noise that has long since disappeared into space. I get the same urge to dismember when seeing a machine, a machine whose parts are exposed, you know, that wears its heart on its sleeve.” I became a little self-conscious and my voice lowered. “After the virtual dismantling I consider the intention. I do the same with literature.”

     “I think I understand”, she said. “You adhere to deconstructivism.” She pronounced the word heavily accenting the T’s.

     I ignored what I thought might be a jibe and went on. “I guess when I was bored with sermons attending all those obligatory masses as a child, I steered my interest towards how that church in which I sat may have been constructed. How Rachel was painted way up there in the cupola, tears in her eyes, even how the cupola was accomplished. It’s perhaps a sense of wonder to deconstruct the construction. It’s the same with painting. I want to know how it was done. What does that make me? Certainly not an artist. There is more to a painting than just brush manipulation and undertones. One must learn to manipulate techniques. With literature I want to know the intention before I get into the grammar or whatever tools were used to create the work” I thought, Yeshro seemed a little deconstructed herself. “Do you enjoy art, Yeshro?”   

     “Call me Gertie. I like folk art”, she said firmly. “It seems pure, extracted from the soul of the land and the bottom of the heart. Modern art, leaves me cold and, frankly a little angry.”

     “Why angry?”

     “It seems artifice. The hoax overshadows passion.”

     She didn’t really answer my question but I let it drop. I was waiting for more. All art embodied artifice, I thought. However I remained attentive supporting my chin with my hand, my fingers curled in front of my mouth.

     “The themes in modern art rub me the wrong way. They don’t depict nature, they seem to create their own new version of nature, something unattached, unjustified.”

     “Like a blind leap into a dark pool”, I said, ironically in my best non ironic tone. One can learn a lot by listening to another’s table talk.   

     Gertie began again, “There is something about the hills and dales of Appalachia out of which have come some unique artifacts, pottery, carvings, and especially songs. People, attached to survival in a beautifully simple yet sometimes hostile environment respond to that in artistic ways. People always have a need to express themselves. Even caves sport 40,000-year-old art. People in Appalachia, or in any frontier were no different. They reacted artistically to what they knew.”

     She began to sing in a timid unsure voice, or at least I heard it that way.

 

'Tis a gift to be simple 'tis a gift to be free

'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be

And when we get to the place that’s right

We’ll be in the valley of love and delight

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed

To turn, turn will be our delight

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

 

     “That’s a Shaker tune”, she said.

     “It’s from Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland. At least I remember that from seventh grade.”

     “So, you know it then? It’s older than that.”

     “Than me or Aaron Copeland?”

     “Than Aaron Copeland silly face. The lyrics exalt humility”

      Perhaps a little too much, I thought. Gertie spoke in an exclusionary way. Focus a light in just one place and leave the rest of the world in the dark. Perfectly undemocratic. Couldn’t tell the difference between a pot for beans and a subtle metaphor I bet. But did she have a point? Was I the one missing something? She sure was purty, swarthy and smooth skinned and that’s half the battle. WHowever was there ever a painting that came out of Appalachia that shook me? Folk art was too child-like, too infantile, like mud pies for sale. Then, of course, there was Henri Rousseau. A tax collector. He created a world of jungle imagination, something rich out of his narrow realm of experience. Life in a zoo. Grandma Moses was kind of flat in comparison. Should get out of this mire of paints. It’s shaky ground. Appalachia? Talk music. That is something from the ‘holler easier to digest. Music is littered with foot stompers and plenty of pain and humor. Rural sophistication. Yes! Find what you have in common. Then I added my two cents in order to uncover some comradery.

     “From the hollers and hills of the Appalachians have come a lot of musical culture, some borrowed, some new. Piedmont blues, which I do so enjoy, was nurtured in Appalachia. A melancholy that embraces ya’ll with great fingerpicking. I especially like death songs too, like Naomi Wise, Pretty Polly, oh and especially Black Jack Davey. Minor chord merciless and sanguine funeral dirges.”

     Gertie listened, perhaps surprised noticing I was purposedly trying to change the subject.

     “Lot of death in those days”, she added, matter of factly. I like blues as well. Draws you in.”

     “And even though it’s blue, it doesn’t let you down. And don’t forget the dark humor. It must be a bedbug cause a chinch can’t bite that hard.”

     Gertie shook her head in affirmation and said, “Bricks in my pillow is a great image too.”

     Here, in this homestead, an easter egg diorama, it is better to talk Etta Baker than Charlie Bird.

     “No, you couldn’t take it for granted, Lord Death. Perhaps it’s the Mexican part of me to see death as a person not a fearful termination. The Appalachian valleys were flooded for electricity, their mountain tops stripped of coal, but before that violation there was death, murder, and sad stories.”                                              

     Gertie put on her teacher cap. “Some forms of which immigrated from the Irish and Scots who brought their own sadness to the hollow. Terrifying songs, at the time, must have had the same effect as tragic news programs. You feel better about your own condition but are more cautious when you leave the house the next day. It reinforces the mystical nature of everything as well.”

     “That’s true. Good point. Mom kisses the kids goodbye saying she will return by dark and then of course the weather suddenly turns and mom is sucked under the rising waters of Fifteen Mile Stream. Those songs to me thicken the past like water does to flour. There is realism in that “before-time” when death is about you like a hungry banshee. The poems of Emily Dickinson, half of which concern death. She fairly caresses death. “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” Or “I could not stop for death but he kindly stopped for me.”  Death seemed closer then than now.”

t was spring. The Sun was down there hanging out near the horizon, just waiting for the change. By 6:00 in Maine it warned the birds to hurry up now and find a roost. The light flickered through the oblique openings between the branches of the tree tops, just beginning to ooze tender leaflets. Evening was coming fast. There was a large vase shaped elm on the front lawn of Gertie’s house just before it sloped down towards the road. From a high branch was suspended a tire, like a swin     I was on a roll thinking I had uncovered a vein of gold.

     “In Troy in the very back of the cemetery, the oldest part, there are groups of mossy marble stones that date from the 1600’s. Whole families died in the same week. I don’t think we could know how difficult life was back then. I feel spoiled.”  

     “Stay here on this road for a bit and you’ll see that some of that life it still exists. Well Thomas, on that heavy note, would you like to come inside for a cup of tea, chamomile of course. I grow it here?”

     “So, it’s a shampoo and a tea. Sure, I like double dipping. That’s convenient.”

     Ig. It must have been thrilling to grab the tire near the house where you were close to the ground and swing out as the earth below sloped away. I thought of the canoe trip on the Delaware River I organized with some friends in high school right after we read Huckleberry Finn. It was magical. From above Hancock New York to the Delaware Gap. I still can’t believe our parents allowed us to go. In Hancock the river was deep and dark. There was a bridge that spanned the entire river. Some local souls had hung a tire from a girder with a steel cable. One could stand on a ledge where the bridge was anchored and pull the tire to them by means of a rope. Hold on tight and swing out over the river then let go plummeting into the tannin saturated waters. We blew half the day without a care in the world swinging and dropping.

     Gertie’s house was clad in oil-stained clapboards. We entered the side door into the kitchen. Dark green and blue wallpaper obscured the space. The wooden floor creaked. The kitchen was dominated by a large black cast iron wood cookstove, a steam engine of sorts, with an appetite for lignin. Gertie placed a pot filled with rain water on the cookstove. On the left-hand side of the sink was a dark blue pitcher pump. Where am I? No, she has no electricity. After a few clanky strokes water began to pour from the spout. She filled a heavy cast iron teapot with water and put a few pieces of wood into the cookstove.

     “Do you mind if I rinse”, she asked.

     “Not at all. Want me to go outside?”

     “No, no, that won’t be necessary. Just sit there while the water boils for tea. But you can look away for a minute.”

     I didn’t know what she meant. She brought the pot of rainwater from the stove to the sink then turned away from me lifting and removing her shirt. I stared at her bare back and those iconic female dimples for a second then turned towards the wall. That’s a bold move. I heard her ladling warm rain water from the pot to rinse her hair. I sat there in fascination supporting my head with my hand staring at an old photo of a darkly bearded man on the wall. There was a strange name on the photo, Tequirassy. I listened to the sound of dribbling water and held the image of pearly droplets on her swarthy skin, when the man with the beard stared me down. The aroma of chamomile filled the room as the water in the teapot began to boil. A poem I had written years before came to mind.  

 

     Their nobility forever ordained,

     In the golden light of Elysian Fields.

     Love, melancholy, courage and devotion,

     They whisper in honorable innuendo.

     Their taste is impeccable,

     While dressed in lowly hawl,

     Sovereign’s minion heroes,

     They bolster with no need of thorn.

 

     Gertie finished and spoke.

     “You can turn around now.”

     I turned to see her clothed, but in a different light. “Sorry I didn’t move quickly but you didn’t warn me.”

     “You look like you needed a jolt. Besides I have never been shy. A girl has to feed her self-esteem.”

     “On that note, of what is the sink made, Gertie? It looks like the one my grandmother had in her basement.”

     “Soapstone. Must be 100 years old. Got it at the Burnham Auction. A real find. Too dark for modern kitchens but it has proven its worth. Some woodstoves are made of soapstone as well. It takes heat very well.”

     “A hundred years old? It’s in good shape. Ample and deep, a two holer.” I paused. “What the hell lasts one hundred years these days? Things are usually broken by the time you arrive home.”

     “Come over here and touch it. It’s strange to the touch.”

     I stood up awkwardly, walked over and stood next to her. She gave off the aroma of flowers. Then Gertie took my hand like a child and ran it over the scarred edge of the deep two bay sink. It feels soft somehow. How is that?”

     “It’s made of talc and minerals.”

     I tapped it with my nails as was my custom to test materials. I’m always tapping the columns in malls that are made to look substantial but are really veneers. “It’s dead, like a zinc penny.”

     “Same sound as soap.”

     Gertie lit the wall hung gas lamps that emitted a yellowish white light all the while hissing like a permanently startled cat. I thought I had passed through a time portal. She used gas lamps for lighting. Each lamp was backed by a sort of corrugated metal pie plate meant to disperse the illumination. Still the light in the house was not crisp, a bit fuzzy. It seemed a little thick like chowder as if one could see individual photons yellow white as they bounced about in the air The light obscured  edges of everything. We’re all chamfered, we’re all defective yet  beautiful. Gertie checked the tea the aroma which pervaded the room and added a few sticks to the stove. The kitchen smelled of wood and potpourri.

     “Honey?”

     “Pardon me, what?”

     “Honey, would you like some honey? It’s goldenrod, from last year.”

     “Yes please. You keep bees as well?”

     “Eighty-thousand head. One hive only but it’s more than enough. Then she recited, The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom." 

     “Who said that?”

     “Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

     “How much does your hive produce? After all the season must be short here.”

     “The season is long enough to produce from 80 to 100 pounds.”

     “Bet you get stung a lot. I’m not an aficionado of bee stings. Stepped on a yellow jacket hive once while at summer camp. It’s still a vivid memory.”

     “Once in a while I get stung but I’m all suited up with my smoker a’smoking?”

     “What does the smoke do?”

     “It makes them suck honey and become docile.”

     “Like turning a crocodile upside down and rubbing its belly?”

     “I don’t know about that”. She giggled a little. She had a problem with pronouncing her L’s. Lallation I think it’s called.

     “Would you like to try some suet pudding with your tea?”

     “Look, I feel a little embarrassed. I don’t know what suet pudding is but I’m easy. Bring it on.”

     “Suet is the fine fat surrounding the kidneys. Add some flour, raisins, or dried fruit and bake it in a can, in this case an old coffee can. Suet is good for making soap too.” She seemed to delight in serving a dummy. That pedagogic thing that kicks in when the ground is uneven.

     Gertie, who seemed suddenly and oddly motherly stood with her butt against the stove. As her hair dried it lost its watery weight. She lit a cigarette. The stove lids and oven door clanked when they were opened and closed as she cooked and baked and heated hot water. I was a little inebriated by the gauzy half-light. Then my mother’s voice intruded on the scene. “Filthy Bohemians.” She still guarded all that I saw, the devil in a blue pom pom fringed dress coquettishly twisting to Chubby Checker asking how do you like these legs honey? And look where you installed yourself in that stark pigsty of a Maine with all the farmers in overalls, named Wormwood, and Flagstone, and Flickett. Money, you can’t do anything without Money. The three M’s, Money, mind, and what’s the other. She hesitated a moment, as her small pupils like mini pool balls ricocheted in their sockets in a psychotic break, and then spurted out, “and sex.” She quickly added, “FINE feathers make FINE friends.”

      My parents were devoted chevy people, my mother dedicated to the erection of three tier colorful Jello molds, and organizing afternoon bridge games with drinks, Platters of curled speckled cold cuts that resembled cheesy-meat hubcaps adorned the serving table as the women present bantered about all that didn’t count. We were lucky to get some left overs. It seemed like she had carefully counted out the slices of prosciutto and Swiss cheese so almost nothing remained. Cerri’s antiqued lifestyle was something that repelled and attracted. I was tired of the empty competition. The simplicity appealed. I resisted. I tendered an urban doubt to putting on bib overalls and organizing a hootenanny. It nagged me, yet there was a charm to it all, especially since I was vulnerable, ignorant, and had only recently come off of what seemed a failure. The chamomile tea was smooth with a sensation that it made it seem more viscous than just water. The flavor hinted of vanilla.

     “Thomas Rossi, is that Spanish?”

     “Sort of an agave with a deep Italian taproot, ma’am. My father’s grandfather, with his wife emigrated to Mexico from Italy in the late nineteenth century and landed first in Vera Cruz. He ended up somehow in a small Italian community in a town called Tlaltizapan then finally settled in Chiapas, a state in the southern part of Mexico, twenty-five hundred light years from New Jersey but most likely a little closer to Maine. I can’t imagine who lead him there. There was no established immigrant trail.”

     “What village? When did your family arrive, or how did they arrive,” she asked?

     “I don’t know when or how, just that Italy’s unification was still fresh so immigration was common, although not so common to Mexico and less common to the State of Chiapas. The town in which they ended up in Chiapas was called El Zapote. The story goes that my grandfather, Alfonso, left El Zapote at the age of 13 after his parents had died. His father, my great grandfather, was killed in a dispute with a neighbor and his wife died two years later from typhoid. In 1895 more or less he made his way first to a city near his village where he found work as a butcher’s helper. He stayed for three years then he took off for the States. It’s the family story that he walked and worked his way to the border. Supposedly he carried a letter from an uncle who lived in Newark, New Jersey with a promise of work. I don’t know much about his journey but I bet that is a story in itself. I just know a few facts. He married my grandmother, Canaria, who was also of Italian heritage when she was just 15. Her parents were grocers. They stayed married until his death in the late 1950’s. When he arrived in Newark in 1901 it was trolleys and horse drawn wagons and a vague promise. The few cars that existed in that epoch didn’t look like jelly beans. They had distinguishable fenders. In fact, Papa owned a horse and a cart. Imagine that. Probably you can. One family story says once his horse and cart were hit in the Ironbound section of Newark by a trolley. He escaped but the horse did not. He never learned to speak English very well,,,,,, he spoke Italian and Spanish. Opened his own butcher shop and store on Bloomfield Avenue in Newark selling meats, cheeses, and canned goods to the Italians in the neighborhood. Did quite well for himself. Never owned a car and took the bus to work. Arose in the dark and returned late every day. I saw him Sundays for family dinners. That is what I know.”  

    Gertie sat there for a moment I think dissecting this sketchy immigration story then said, “Have you been to Mexico”; she asked?

     “No, not yet, but someday I want to find this El Zapote.”

     “Do you speak Spanish?”

     “Yes, I get by. It’s amazing, you know, because my parents spoke only English to me. They spoke Italian between themselves. It was their private coded communication. When a language isn’t directed at you it is unintelligible and has the tone of background noise. Not noise really, but a melody without lyrics. I learned Spanish in school, a little from my grandfather, and from a Puerto-Rican who had a small miscellaneous store on the corner. He ran the numbers. I helped him sometimes in turn for cherry cokes and Spanish lessons.”

     She chuckled, then added, “Hardly anyone learns a foreign language in school.”

     I snickered a bit remembering Spanish class. “My experience was just that, being captive in a league of lotus eaters, but I persisted somehow. I wanted to learn something.”

     “You sound resentful of your parents. Are they still alive?”

     “Hey don’t jump to conclusions. This story is more complicated.” I paused then began, “Like all stories including, I imagine your own. My father died a few years ago. I think he loved me in his own way but a difficult marriage steered him away from his true self. It seemed to erode his inner character. Let’s call it praying mantis seduction syndrome, the spiney insect with a black dot in the center of its large emerald eyes that orbit in its little triangular head. The female will devour its mate and possibly its children as well. That is just the facts ma’am. This guy, my dad, was the football star, all state quarterback, a war hero sort of, a man with a statewide reputation for being tough but in marriage he was mystically drained and became passive, ambivalent. Away from my mother, even for a few hours, and he regained his street sense, but upon return he immediately regressed as if controlled by an unseen hand. It’s difficult not to hold his uncertainty partially responsible for the toxic atmosphere in our home. However, if it wasn’t for many moments of sanity from him, and my grandparents I would be irreparably damaged. My mother however was a more complicated issue.”

     “So, you are saying your father was kind of wimpy.”

     “I don’t think so. Why do you say that? It’s a word that evokes weakness. Possibly I have portrayed him wrongly. He was honorable and definitely street tough. My mother had a machine gun mouth and could confuse anyone closeby with her fusillade of illogic. She shot out word volleys that could change direction so rapidly that a sensible person would think he was being attacked by an entire platoon. One time, I remember, when we were speaking on the phone, she was particularly heated and delivering a rapid-fire oration on a few different subjects. She rarely stopped long enough to listen or wait for a response. I grabbed an envelope and began writing down what she said.  

     I never saw anyone live like you do. You don’t have a TV in the house. To have a TV in the house is knowledge. 

     “I think here she asked me if I was attending mass and I made some remark about Catholicism.”

     Nothing wrong with the catholic religion, after all He came from a catholic country.

     “The Newark riots were recent so it was fresh in her mind.”

     And those blacks. We ought to blast them off the earth. I don’t know what God had in mind when he created them. They’re ugly. It’s sad, it’s sad, I don’t know anything.

     “How’s Dad, I asked in order to change the subject?”

      Your father?  That guy. He would have made a good professional pall bearer.

You’d have to be Audey Murphy to address a fusillade of discursive statements coming at ya from different directions, like arguing with a barking dog. I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t your father just leave. Well, there were his three sons. My father was too honorable to leave. Maybe he just gave up. For as much as memories count as fact, I remember an incident when I was eight years old. The family belonged to the Colony Swim Club, a summer retreat for suburbanites that sported a pool, shuffleboard and activities for children. It also had an open pavilion with chairs for the Jews who played mahjong and the Italians who played gin or bridge. There was this guy named, "Russ". He was in charge of the pump room out back near the cheaper lockers. He always wore a guinea tee shirt. I do not know for sure that he was a drunk but he spent a lot of time inside the pump room sitting on a chair. We, myself and some other children, were playing one day and running back and forth between a picket fence and a little strip of grass. There wasn’t much grass at all at the Colony. We had made several passes in front of the pump room and once when I alone passed the door Russ was sitting there surrounded by blue painted pipes and humming pumps. He made a guttural raspy sound with his throat. I looked up because the sound was so unusual, then he took a swig from a soda bottle, I think filled with water, and spit it all over me. The water was a shock and I was scared because he looked so aggressive and I wasn’t sure if he was a little drunk. I suppose drunk is something at which I am grasping to explain his behavior. I was insulted and confused. I went to the pavilion where my father was playing gin with some friends and I told him what had happened and that's when he took off running. An "encounter" took place. I was safely yet excitedly ensconced behind my father when he asked Russ if he had spit water on me. Russ rose up and cursed him in a raspy voice his mouth curled in disgust, the inside all red like a venomous lizard. My father enraged picked up a hammer and held it aloft. Russ hissed but backed down. I was frightened for I saw a raw rage in my father that was new to me. I thought he could have killed Russ at that moment but it all ended as fast as it began when friends intervened. It's ironic because later in the summer I remember that "Russ" would make huge kites out of newspaper, glue, and a few slats of wood then fly them off into the distant sky until they seemed like small dots above the horizon. The kids loved this. I was a participant still wary of approaching him but he didn’t seem to remember the incident with my father.

     “He must have been drunk then”, Gertie said.     

     “Probably. You know, I always felt more secure with my father after that incident. I knew he would protect me when push came to shove, or even less than a shove. I was never sure my mother might protect me. I always thought she might turn me in. My father, given the right circumstance, would have thrown a hammer at the head of anyone in the protection of me, friend, foe, or even a priest, but not my mother.

     Gertie said, I didn’t mean to imply your dad wasn’t worthy”,  when I cut her off. I needed to keep going, as if I were defending dad in court.

     “He could be tender too. I remember the last time that I saw him when he was dying in the hospital. I had been in New Jersey for two weeks and needed to return to Maine just for a few days. I visited the hospital early in the morning before my departure. My father was in the room with that Haitian nurse whose blank expression unnerved me. He was pretty drugged up, hazy, and swaying like a junkie sitting in the chair. For a just a brief moment he emerged from his morphinated cobwebby trance, a moment very important to me. He perked. “Thomas", he said, looking up to me from his chair as if I had been away at sea for three years. My name was emitted with a grand sigh of relief,,,,and a loving tone that I will never forget. He must have been scared. He extended his arm and cradled my head with his hand bringing it forward. He kissed me there on the top of my head so gently and sweetly, and then, he let go returning to his sepulchral wait,,,,,immersed in haze, but I knew that he knew that this was the end. Two days later, back in Maine the phone rang early in the morning. My brother spoke two words without any preface saying, "It's over". I knew from the moment the telephone rang what information would come over the line. It was truly "over".

Gertie spoke.“Do you think you came out of this harboring women issues?”

    “Did I give you that impression? Hell no. I love women yet it may be too soon to tell how I’m affected but I think I’m no more wounded than anyone else, perhaps much less.” 

     “And your mother?”

     “Thanks be to God she was a clown. You can’t take a clown seriously. That’s important. She didn’t know it, but her oafish theatrics protected me from psychological harm. It’s the serious Mom that kills. During the performance you are not laughing inside but being sliced. My mother”, I said my mind drifting away. Feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable, that I had already revealed too damn much I said, “I don’t want to be rude but I should go. I thank you for your hospitality,” then I excused myself but not before asking if I could come back sometime.

     “Of course, Thomas”, she said with a Cheshire cat kind of smile, something I didn’t know how to take.

     The snow had melted and the still frozen earth at first turned a cold shoulder but soon it softened and gave heart to the reawakening of mud and flowers. I saw Gertie several times after our first meeting. She taught me a lot about her lifestyle.  I learned about bees, goats, gardening, and preserves from Gertie. One april evening we sat outside her kitchen listening to the peepers in the marsh across the road as they bullied the air. A loud hypnotic glee club. They filled your head with their shrill urgency. When the chill became too much Gertie invited me inside for a tea. While the water boiled and I sat at the kitchen table she went to a nook under the stairway where there was a kind of futon with quilted pillows that held the heavy aroma of wood smoke. When the tea was ready she poured two cups and led me to the alcove and told me to sit. It was like an order.  She lit some candles. The light was thick and deep yellow.We sat down side by side.

     “Nice spot. Cozy,” I said.

     “It’s my reading room.”

     There was a pause as we sipped the tea.

      “Well are we going to read then”, I asked?

     I saw something in Gertie’s face. It was the way she nodded as the curls on her head bounced loosely. She was a thick one.

 

A jowely jolly hertie gertie,

  pudding and deep dish pie.

  Corn fed roly-poly.

  A bit ‘o’ the goddess, I will not lie.

  

Mi mug I plunged into ‘er breadbasket,

And when I yanked and tried to pry,

There came an epic suction,

And I nearly left behind mi left eye.

 

     The edges of her rosy cheeks were translucent like like a warm light bleeding through a thin slab of onyx, and her laugh so pure and child-like.

      I was feeling lucky and optimistic. An inconspicuous  pool of drool began to form at the corner of my mouth, when she reached down under the futon. The candles wavered at her movement. Then she breached with a raggedy ass copy of The Farmer’s Almanac in her hand.

     “Jesus, now that’s a surprise.”

     “What did you expect", she said coquetishly?”

“Not that for sure. What’s the date on that volume”, I asked?

     “They’re from various years. I found them in the walls upstairs. Some were really deteriorated so I made one big volume out of the scraps. From the 1800’s to 1941 I think. Let’s take turns reading.”

Gertie began with a poem above the month of April.  

“The virgin heard, and thus replied : " If my consent to be your bride, Will make you happy, then be blest, But grant me first one small request ; A sacrifice I must demand, And in return will give my hand. A sacrifice ! O speak its name, For you I'd forfeit wealth and fame ; Take my whole fortune — every cent — ' something more than wealth I meant. 

“April, it’s the month of plentiful virgins.”

“Now you choose and read”, she said.

I thumbed through the worn pages a little and settled on the title, How to Destroy Cockroaches. “This might find use applied to politicians and bad neighbors”, I quipped.

A correspondent of the Montreal Witness says: “ Several weeks ago my house had become so overrun with cockroaches — that I seriously intended leaving it for two or three nights,’ to give these pests the benefit of a good dose. I happened, however, to read in the Witness that powdered borax’ was a cure for them. It was tried and proved efficacious. Now and again a stray cockroach is seen, but certainly not one where there were hundreds before. Those that make their appearance have a sickly, attenuated look. Their air is so dispirited that the simile ‘lively as a.roach’ could never apply to them. The borax is used by sprinkling upon. shelves and wherever the enemy ‘ most do congregate.’ It is a safe remedy and one that deserves to be known. I thought for a second then added, “the vocabulary and syntax are interesting. Very few speak like that now. Who the hell now uses “attenuated” to describe the look of a cockroach?”

 “Here’s one, Gertie said excitedly.”  A school word exercise was soon after the revolution, given to one of the students a Westminster school in London. The word was Saratoga. On which he immediately wrote an epigramatic couplet in Latin, Burgoyne, heu! fatis futuris ignarus, per silvas viam secare potuit, sed non per Gates, of which- the following is a translation. Burgoyne, alas! unknowing future fates, Could cut his way thro'' Woods, but not thro" Gates.

“Written in Latin first? Wow! What does that say about our school system? This fellow summed up the Battle of Saratoga in a rhyme,,, in Latin no less. We have seen the best of our times.”

Gertie moved closer to me. She felt warm as her love handles easily touched mine. Then she said gently, “You’re turn Tommy.”

“I scanned some pages then something caught my eye. This might be good.”

By the year two thousand it is probable that manual labor will have utterly ceased under the sun, and the occupation of the adjective ‘“ hard-fisted” will have gone forever. ‘They have now in New Hampshire a, potato-digging machine, which,,drawn by horses down the rows, digs the potatoes, separates them from the dirt, and loads them up into the cart, while the farmer walks alongside, whistling ‘“ Hail Columbia’ with his hands in his pockets.

“ Is he bragging or complaining”, I added.  “I’m not sure.”

“It’s a complaint cloaked in dry humor, I think”, said Gertie. “I believe an old farmer, being shown the future of potato harvesting by a salesman would have been immediately skeptical as was his nature. After the machine had done its work, that farmer would not have reached for his wallet but have reached for his potato rake and gone down the row uncovering  spuds the machine had overlooked. That’s the deal with those machines. They sell ease and speed. The old guy might then have leaned on his rake and said,,, now sir,,, that darned contraption left a half bushel in the furrow that any good farmer would never have passed over. That’s ten cents per furrow.”

I was feeling impish, not wanting to defend progress, but needing to stir the pot, as was my custom. It was a feeling comes from not yet knowing what to say.  

 “Of course 5 years later the bottom dropped out of the potato market and the independent old farmer would have gone bankrupt. His forward looking neighbor, however, who had bought the cursed machine squeaked by because the machine had allowed him to plant more acreage and in addition he didn’t need to hire help during harvest.”

Then Gertie said, “What potato market? The old fellow would not have been locked in on just potatoes. Strawberries, pumpkins, and firewood would have rounded him out.  He always lived modestly and could have sold his harvest locally. And he didn’t have to pay his children to help bring in the crop. The new modern farmer became locked into the “time is money” mechanization scheme, every few years upgrading until finally he and all his believers went to the poor house. I’d bet on the old farmer with a potato rake. He’d persist.”

“But they never persist. Those guys are all in the cemetery and their headstones are wearing away, so much so, that you can’t read their names. This system is not conducive to small change people.”

“Perhaps.But the modern farmer will eventually fall. He stayed in the race, made some money, all the while acquiring a more and more debt. He was able, at first to send his kids to university. There, among a flock of other farmer’s sons and daughters they changed. There they were sold another bill of goods. Afterwards all found  “good jobs”, running fast as they could in the opposite direction of the family farm. One easy move, desperately avoiding the shovel, the plow, and the sweet smell of cow manure.”

“Yeah, that sounds right, Gertie, Even the modern farmer will eventually become obsolete. He’ll  be left behind crippled with arthritis, debt, unsure markets,  and his John Deere 6 bottom plow. There he withered with the fatal knowledge that there was no one else to carry on. How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve found split level paradise in Quincy. Then one day some dude with swagger and a wad of cash shows up and the tired old guy is convinced to sell the farm. The dude subdivides the land into lots that the dude mortgages because he has an “in” at the bank and another piece of history is buried under asphalt and vinyl siding. Every cloud has a lead lining. I know I’m right. I know it because it’s the Jersey in me. I always expect to be screwed by the march of time. What is the solution? Everyone has a victory garden? California tomatoes that double as car bumpers are now the accepted norm for most.”

I began to take Gertie’s side. A perfect reversal. My impish behavior, I thought, had paid off. Gertie took up the mantle.I felt relieved.

 “It isn’t easy to revive these corpses now that they have been entombed under layers of soil. There aren’t too many left that remember the way it was. Like a one room school house. They were better because they taught responsibility. The older students were employed, figuratively, as teacher’s aids to help tend the younger flock. Students were charged with cleaning up, hence no janitors, and one student was selected each week to start a fire in the wood stove in the early morn. You have spoken to the older residents who live in this area. They came from that system, and they all could find Sweden on a map. It worked. Now we need a building for kinder and primary, another for middle school, and a huge high school, now a regional center 15 miles away with 1500 students which requires busing. And don’t get me started on sports. That’s one way you lose community or at least give it a bad face lift.”

“And the old man with the potato rake has become a folk song.”

           Well yes, I thought, but the Amish get it done,, have been getting it done for a couple of centuries. They are a strict religious enclave of resistance, an oddity. The old potato rake guy didn’t come from that format. He was just an old Yankee with yankee ways. Even the authoritative puritans eventually got diluted. I really don’t know how the Amish have pulled it off for so long.  And yet they are expanding. They lose a just a small percentage to the devil.

          We continued reading and talking, poems, ads, recipes. Gertie read a recipe for steamed cherry pudding  then took my hand in hers. The back side felt silky and the palm calloused.

     

      STEAMED CHERRY PUDDING 1/4 cup butter 1 1/2 cup milk

 1/2 cup sugar 1% teaspoons baking powder

 

2 egg yolks, beaten 2 egg whites, beaten

 

1 1/2 cups cake flour , 1 pound of ripe cherries, drained

 

     My finger began to draw circles on her palm.

 

METHOD: Cream butter and sugar, add beaten egg yolks; sift together baking powder and flour, and add alternately with milk. Fold in beaten egg whites. Cover a deep dish with pie cherries, drained; pour batter over and steam one hour. Serve with sauce made with the cherry juice:

 

Cherry Sauce

 

1 tablespoon cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

 

2 cups cherry juice

 

METHOD : Mix together dry ingredients, add cherry juice and cook until thick and clear.

 

     The cherry recipe did it. We were silent for some moments. I felt myself disassembling. Outside the peepers called frantically. I turned to kiss her. She grabbed my neck and kissed back hard. The kiss lasted what seemed like forever. We pressed against one another in a surge of touching. Severely focused. Our movements disturbed the air. The candle flames rippled and danced. Like shadow puppets our figures were cast upon the walls and the bottom of the upside down inclined plane of the stairway. I always liked geometry.The shadows flirted and overlapped. I could barely hear a log in the wood stove that shrilly whined like a desperate tea pot. Didn’t need heat now anyway. Didn’t need anything. This energy was carrying the evening. We fumbled with buttons, stubborn now, resisting growing  determination.  Seeking  lips and necks not wanting to bow to interruption as if we might break the spell, at the same time trying to be quiet. Yet all the while removing layers in order to feel the contact of flesh. Two souls falling out of character on a narrow futon behind a stairway, searching for that unconscious moment of joy and release.                           

A week later Gertie visited my art class. She sat in the front observing and at one point during the session she came up to me and asked, “How can you restrain yourself from not talking more in class?”

     “You mean stand up there and give a general lecture?”

     “Yes, I think so. Don’t you let them work on their own far too much?”

     She posed it as a question which made it less aggressive but before I could answer, the bell suddenly rang.  I asked Gertie if she was up for a cup of coffee. We picked up Amalie, and went into Waterville for a café and talked more. I explained that it wasn’t my style to lecture. I take them off the leash and give them a project all the while offering them individual nudging. I found I could do my thing as they worked at their desk, like a counselor. Each got what they needed on a personal basis. You see 75% of the students in my class chose art over social studies thinking this would be an easier grade. The other 25% harbored a need for a  creative outlet. Well then, really, we all have creative outlet issues much of them suppressed. Many don’t realize how important it is to have the opportunity to express themselves. The standard model of education teaches obedience, which frankly is just not my thing. They all got right into it. The hands-on approach worked. Everyone seemed to come away with less disrespect for the forced march.”

     “Didn’t you run into resistance with the majority?”

     “Yeah, that was difficult at first. The more difficult job was to alter the minds of those that sought easy credits and show them art was not just a place where they could briefly float atop the water in a heated pool. Then, the difficult part, to convert their established prejudices about art into some form of respect for expression. I try to discover a student’s predilections then work with them in a personal way. Each gets to choose a project using a palette of materials we have collected but with one requirement, we must take that project seriously. I will visit their desk one at a time to make suggestions. For instance, the other day I could see Melissa was struggling with the portrait of a woman and was mired in creating skin color so I sat by her side and gave her tips on technique. Skin tone isn’t achieved by employing just a flesh-colored pencil. It is made up of many colors of different color values, shading, and highlights. I showed her how other artists had handled this problem. In a similar way I counseled Bobby about his colorful free form flighty psychedelic doodles in attempt to coax him back to earth. I introduced him to more mathematically organized Arabic calligraphy and architectural design. The more complex designs seem like mantras, which appealed. I presented him the paintings of Fernand Leger. His paintings use numbers and geometric shapes to create cubist images.

       A cloud came over Gertie’s face and she reacted sharply. “That is exactly the kind of art work I find indigestible”, she shot back.

     “Perhaps the technique is just unfamiliar.”

     “Maybe. Artists must work to develop their craft. It’s not all presto chango take me seriously, this is art.”

     She was rejecting before considering. I thought she could be talking about vocational school, yet, because now we had a history I felt a need to consider her statement. It seemed in the past most artists passed through an apprenticeship, a guild, or an art school. There was a carefully guarded stairway to becoming a master. Conceptual art could only have emerged in the modern era. Yet a conceptual artist might have come from an academic environment, like Duchamp, or from a non-academic one, like Klein. My guts told me neither would be acceptable to Gertie because she considered their methods and content invalid. Besides she seemed irritated today for some reason. This is a provincial mind at work I thought. One must learn the hard way, draw from nature and never venture too far out of the corral. Imagination should never cross over into unknown pastures.  Sweat  is the cost of  success and she may be right. Francis Bacon would make her puke. Why is it they can admire the mystery in spalted wood but not glorify intentional defects in a portrait. Only time and a single hair brush is able to shape acceptable art. There are no shortcuts to creation. First you must know how to grind your colors. No, that’s not enough. First you must mine the lapis lazuli. It’s good an artist knows where the materials come from but you don’t necessarily need to build a guitar in order to play music.     

Then she woke me up from my thoughts saying, “Art loses itself in obscure statements. It’s not its place to give over all its energy to clobbering the viewer with an esoteric idea or combining things that don’t belong together in the natural world. The image must bow to the beauty of the composition.”

     I didn’t know quite how to respond probably because I automatically accepted most modern art as having legitimate intent. What is this preoccupation to meld nature and expression. Art supersedes nature. It touches something outside the natural world, something unchanging. This lady appears as rigid as a plaster cast. Now I just wanted to find a safe path so I could enjoy my coffee.

     “When shock seems to be the end it can be disturbing”, I said. “Maybe there are some artistic means that flirt with what is intolerable, done only to garnish attention.

     She retorted, “It is a fact that the art of which you speak is now acceptable and panders to a society that knows not reverence.”

     I continued, “You know what was shocking 60 years ago can now be considered pleasing, because the shock has worn off and we can finally see the concept. Reverence? My God, let’s not lose our reverence for thinking. Art of the renaissance is filled with clues that lead to intent even if cloaked in painterly beauty.  Hieronymus Bosch now is an accepted icon. He certainly wasn’t in his time. His paintings depict a psychologically surreal seemingly debauched landscape, bizarre in many ways, things not in their proper place, but he was really a devout Christian and these images are symbols for his personal experience. His paintings served  as scathing critiques of the excesses of the era. Or take Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe by Edouard Manet for instance. I don’t know if we have become inured to a well painted naked lady, sitting with a few guys dressed in suits at a bucolic picnic. Perhaps nudity was as common as potato chips in that epoch. Controversial images that are unexpectedly juxta´posed have become more commonplace. Tits and asses can readily be purchased at the corner store. Provocation creates a stir,,, a reaction, at least for a while until we become accustomed.“

     “My problem is that the custom becomes too comfortable only to await the next dare. Do you truly like these Leger paintings? What’s he saying anyway? It’s like a collision. He’s no more than a bully forcing this form of art upon us.”     

     “I do find his art worthy of consideration. He comes from the industrial age, hence his images reflect an industrial system.     

“Sounds like Justification 1 for amateurs.”

     I realized that her lifestyle, so beguiling to me, had cast her into a past in which she was obliged to assume all its traits. Some people just become crusaders, I thought.  

     “Yes the glory of modern art resides in the concept, the intellect,”

I said in a woeful way.

     “Too many loose threads”, she said. “Can’t make a cloth out of that.”

     “On the contrary, conceptual art separates the traditional craft form from its history, employing another route to creation. In fact I might go as far to say it’s poetic, for poetry is all constructed from loose ends. Look Gertie, you seem irritated today. Why? What’s eating you?”

      “Later. Perhaps the heart sees better than the mind. I see shit where you see silver. “I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what you’re getting at but I just suspect you are defending something decadent and that means we are all in decline.”

      “Perhaps,, or just evolving. You see I make this stuff up as I go along so my opinions are probably full of holes”, but I was really  thinking something else. “I see another form of expression. Right or wrong it offers us a bone of contention that might make me think more about my own opinions.”

     Gertie smiled a little, then she repeated in a serious tone, “still don’t like these modern mental cases.”

     “All art is sleight of hand but that does not make it any less magical. It takes advantage of the eye’s ability to distinguish even what the brain cannot process on a microscopic level. Sounds like a contradiction doesn’t it. Beauty in art is often contained in something unregistered and something unseen.”

     She paused at that remark tasting it like an unfamiliar but intriguing flavor. “What do you mean by that?”

     “The moment you are motivated to place a line down on paper that’s when artifice begins. The lie is contained in the process and the skill is in the juxta’position of the images. Either way it’s a carefully constructed lie. If a line or brushstroke are laid down deftly a thousand small visual mistakes are contained in that agile movement,,,, not dull and even but made up of a galaxy of smears and gaps,,,, and points. The brain registers this. Drag a brush over a surface fluently, using uneven pressure or laden a certain way with paints, follow that with a dry brush, like a soft broom to blend and enhance the edges dispersing the color. The eye is beguiled into believing but the mind is able to see this microscopic fraud. Not every end in art is achieved with a one hair brush. Technique reigns supreme. As for deliberate proximity Las Meninas by Velazquez intentionally places people and objects together to tell a story. I want them to learn that,,,, how to see a painting. It doesn’t necessarily have to be people. It could be well placed spaces. I remember this painting I saw in the Philadelphia Museum of Art I think, of a Civil War sniper. I don’t remember who was the artist because I became more fascinated by his belt buckle. The artist had squirted worms of purple paint out of a small tube criss-crossing them over one another to create a three dimensional illusion of a brass belt buckle complete with highlights. A brush was never employed. And Canaletto. Have you ever seen one of his paintings? From seven feet out they seem incredibly detailed, but up close they’re a different story. He is a master of microscopic understatement that creates complicated illusions. His figures are achieved by the use of maybe three colors and perhaps a select few brushstrokes, but at seven feet and more you see faces that aren’t there and folds that are pure artifice. He took minimalism to the hilt. I am not passionate about this profession, teaching. It seems I bring out the ire of others by always seeing the defects in everything. What is unseen often is embedded in something the artist achieves, something that reveals the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious mind, that fleeting perception when we are not staring head on but a seeing from the corners of our eyes. An indirect unexplicable understanding so hard to define.”

     “At least I’m glad you still know how to pay homage” Then she asked, “do you think you are a purist”?

     “Hell no. I think you’re projecting.  Purity is for those who don’t have self interest at heart or for those who have developed callouses. I may be a defeatist but that too may not be accurate. I’m not comfortable in a classroom. You know that my contract to teach is not being renewed. I won’t fight it. I have only a provisional teaching certificate so I am at a great disadvantage. Perhaps I just haven’t found anything worth fighting for. Perhaps the defects are in me. I certainly don’t have good manners. If I had played this game with earnest I still would have a salary but in turn I’d be facing Mr. Giggey each day. In retrospect that compliance sounds like a prison sentence.”   

     “Or sour grapes.” Gertie lit a Salem and took a deep drag blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “You can make a difference though in someone’s life.”

     “Maybe,, could have, but I have my doubts about having too much altruism in this field. I fear the barracuda will soon come, catching a whiff of broken order, and take chunks out of me until all that is left is the frustration of what could have been and then you end up at best perpetually meloncholy, and after 1000 students have passed through your room you please yourself by taking credit for one or two who seem to have benefited.” I spoke loudly, “I could’a been a contenda.” Some others in the café looked over at us.

     “Where’s that from?”

     “On the Waterfront. The movie with Marlon Brando.”

     “Sometimes Thomas you sound cynical and other times like you may just know might something. I can never figure out which.”

     “I try hard.”

     I occasionally visited the The Gold Mine Road. It was like a wrong turn that yielded surprises and a welcome relief from what was happening at school. My compass was strangely drawn to this place and had it not been for my failure and a chance meeting with a lady as rigid as her cast iron pots my compass needle might have always pointed in one direction,,,, horizontal,,, well probably not. I am so full of maybes. We should take what happens by chance as good fortune. Goats, a mule, gardens, no electricity, pumping water by hand. This was little house on the prairie dwelling in the present even if it may have been born of fantasy.

     Gertie lived in a world in which I bet my grandparents might have known. Even my father could have appreciated it given his childhood if he could have been separated from mom long enough. The allure of a level of independence countered the “the only way to go” crowd who espoused one and only one route to happiness,,  a Texas style steak and a 400 amp entrance. Gertie’s wood stove always hissed and whispered saying I am still here. Day lilies decorated the front of the house like a happy orange collar. I learned yogurt was like a family heirloom. Some Mainers had the same yogurt bacteria in their family for a century. The practical had always appealed but I never had witnessed it applied. However nothing is truly bulletproof, not even my mother who came damn close. How soon we learn to sift with vigor.

 “A month passed and one day Gertie cleared up the irritation she had that day in the cafe. She said, “Thomas I have decided to sell everything and return to Minnesota. I couldn’t speak. But you seemed so comfortable in your lifestyle. I reached out and hugged her tightly. It happened quickly. She had cold determination in her voice that said you cannot follow me. I knew instinctively she wouldn’t have wanted that. Gertie left that summer. We occasionally kept in contact via the mails. Three years later Amalie told me she had passed away quietly one night from leukemia.

We all have a melody don’t we, a song to remember, and at that very moment I read the news Gertie’s melody at once grew loud and clear like churchbells. It faded over time yet it never ceased and every so often it revived, with the rustle of the leaves or a when I paused to watch a honeybee lite upon a chamomile flower I found myself humming that tune. Gertie’s sound persisted with me for years, eventually becoming one of those songs that we tailor to our own needs. There is that haunting proverbial question, what would you take if you were to be stranded on a desert isle,, a fork or a spoon, a book or a song. To be honest  I think a book or a song I had learned well. One can fashion a fork or a spoon. One book or one song is enough. Gertie takes me down to her place by the hardwood ridge and feeds me birch bark tea and suet pudding cooked in an old Maxwell House can,,, and she showed me where to look among the ferns and fallen apples,  and she sank beneath my frail wisdom like a stone.