If you look up at the stars, it’s easy to see life down here don’t matter over much. We ain’t stardust. We ain’t golden. More like dust in the wind. And what’s up there can’t be trusted. The starlight no better than a firefly wink. The dark deep and snarly. Reminds me of the Cuyahoga River at night, lights on poles reflected from off a walkway, water black and cold in which I was tossed as a youth by some prospect Iron Horsemen. That’s a Cincinnati motorcycle club that desired purchase here in Cleveland. She pulled me out. She was a herb-eating tree hugger scooting down the bike path in yellow reflector gear. She thought to of saved me. I was more shamed than thankful.
Many years later, she comes to the workshop office in my home. Didn’t remember her but for the voice. Raspy for a girl. Rising in volume while poking me with questions. Not to say she didn’t have some good ones. Wondered why her husband left her. Wondered why I live alone out here in the woods. Told her it was so I could shoot deer off the front porch. Well, I do like guns. She didn’t laugh. Don’t think she heard me. Was too far inside her own self, too sorrowful. Had to sell her house, the house she loved, part of the divorce settlement, which didn’t settle much, although he thought so. He manages a mortgage company. Made a killing in adjustable rates real estate on low-income homebuyers is what she said. Said it was criminal greed. Especially with the rise in unemployment and all the bankruptcies. I think it was smarts. Although it did leave empty houses the banks took back so prices fell and pretty near put me out of business. I build homes. Anyway, they divorced soon after the market crash. She wondered how much house I can build on a budget that leaves money for travel and clothes.
When she saw my hair, she knew my name is Natty, my nickname, which is because of my neat ways, but which many think is because of my tight curls. A college kid summer hire of mine called me Bumppo. Said it was a book he got that from. No book I know. And, yes, there’s two p’s, though I don’t understand that neither. But that hair is likely the reason those Iron Horsemen wannabes tossed me in the Cuyahoga. Like I was a Black boy Buckeye Shaker resident. Not that the Kinsmith neighborhood is a whole lot better. And Pa was a sometimes evangelical that preached of a Sunday when the parson had to sleep one off. Pa had the same hair as me. So, yeah, maybe back a generation or two someone made a mother of a dark skin house keeper romanced in a closet. I don’t know. Don’t matter.
I specialize in log homes. Not in Cleveland. I moved with my dog Scarborough that I named after a song but which was too long to say so he became Scar. Went further down river, near Brandywine Falls, deep in the woods for privacy and quiet. Bought thirty acres of forest and built this house. Selected the trees myself. I like the ones with burls and knots, rough outsides that twist deep inside to mark the board lumber. I logged them and trimmed them to make an octagonal two story, unique, porches all around. Keep it clean and neat inside and out to greet home buyers looking for log construction. When she showed up, must of thought I would be desperate for work. Which I was. But mostly I was low on ambition because sorrowful. My dog died. I couldn’t part with his toys and water dish and bed near the wood stove. Yeah, Scar. It’s the right name. And that house empty as a promise.
Even the high forest off the back deck that sways in the wind couldn’t ease me into balance. I was most shaky with nerves. And she was all loud talk and assertive, walking round the house inside and out. Asking did I know trees help each other? Did I know a stump lives so long because nearby trees send nutrients through tangled roots? Yeah, putting down roots. That’s what she wanted. Then she asked about the house. How I did this, how I did that. Me taking all this interest as compliment. Then, finally, recognizing the voice. Getting red in the face. And because I’m always sweating, and we’re talking near the wood stove, I’m getting really warm. I take off the baseball cap. Cleveland Indians of course. That’s when she knew me. As I squeegeed sweat with my hand, as my hair coiled up like compression springs, she laughed. Said she could see me coming out from the Cuyahoga all those years back, and only just somewhat smaller than now because I’ve always stretched my clothes, and me back then shivery with the wet dripping down and that hair of mine. Damn! I didn’t want to be thought of that way. But I welcomed her back to another of my worst days.
I asked if she biked anymore. She said not so much. The knees were gone. It was late October. Leaves turning, but felt like spring. The juices flowing. So I said why not take a ride with me on my 1950 Indian, which is old but clean and shiny if loud and jolty, uncomfortable for one, worse on the back seat because my fat ass has malformed the foam. She laughed, said, “Why not?” So straight off we scurry along the back roads that make a web of the national park until we come to the Shade Tree Motel that’s not much shade anymore because of the ash bore beetle, dutch elm blight, root rot, and whatnot. Trees still standing but skeletal. Even the sign half gone, faded, rotted, falling over, but the place lights up at night, which is when it comes alive. I would sometimes go there after Scar died to get outside myself, rent a room, the over-loud TVs spewing commercials tangled in whoops and hollers, swearing, laughing, rutting. All the good stuff. Sometimes I’d sit outside with legs dangling the busted pool, some of the baby-blue paint still there but losing ground to the black mold. Swigging cheap booze in a paper sack. Pondering the foot-and-a-half of black water down there from rainfall that hadn’t drained because of the debris tossed in: condoms, socks, cigarette butts, beer cans, a bra I think, McDonald’s food wrappers. It was like staring into stomach trauma. And that motel, a single-story, surrounding the pool like the twisted legs of malformity. We locals have taken to calling the place Shady Deal. I brought her there because I was looking for a motel romance. She wasn’t.
She talked the whole time. Mostly of the life she used to have. Tried to have kids but couldn’t. He blamed her. He started drinking, crashed his car and blamed her. Blamed her for everything. I might as well not have been there. She was talking to herself. Cried some. Hugged her own self sitting at the edge of the bed, half dressed, unlikely to fool around. So I lit a cigarette, listened with a kind of sympathy I didn’t know I had. Found myself gone so far outside myself that I hardly took a drag. Watched the butt end burn down to my fingers, listened some more then flicked it on the carpet, grabbed her and her clothes and tossed them all on the back of the Indian. Decided to bring her home.
One of our shared problems was we was both desperate for a connection. In that way, we was the same. And that’s a positive joined to a positive, or better put a negative to a negative. It don’t connect. She stayed over that first night and never wanted to leave. Felt like I had a wood-boring insect living with me. Debris everywhere she went. And she schooled my grammar. But she’s the one made no sense. Called me salt of the Earth. Then called me salt in the wound when I complained she was taking over.
Started with the kitchen. Made tasty vegetable meals but a little too easy to chew. I prefer working through the gristle. And she never put anything away proper. What’s uneaten went in the frig on the dish with no wrapping and some with spices that could only make a Buddha smile. Pots and pans with pasta and butter-soaked veggies stuffed in there. No room for beers. At least the pots had covers. She’d buy a truck load of groceries just to have around. It spilled out from the cupboards, took all the counter space.
And then the bedroom. At first, a single suitcase on the floor, open, vomiting contents colorful as a gutted deer. Then two suitcases with cast offs thrown across a chair and over the bed and that never made up. Shoes all over that made a puzzle for me to walk around. And the bathroom. Apothecary nightmare. I couldn’t shave without knocking over creams and powders, bottles of pills. So many of them to counter the mood swings that would accost her in a day that seemed to her overlong for hours. She went to bed early. Wouldn’t raise up until almost noon. And when she slept, arms flapping all over, body rolling here and there, talking her dreams, sometimes crying. And me just trying to keep out of the way. Laying on my side, bending my knees and curled up like a mollusk.
The only place she hadn’t yet taken over was my office. Which is where I keep my vintage Playboys. All from the 50s. Of which Burt Reynolds would approve. Oh, and there’s him framed on the wall, cover of a 1972 Cosmopolitan, sideways naked on a bear skin rug, smoking a cig. My kind of guy. No Playboy bunny got more moxie than him. And there’s a filing cabinet with customer histories, and pictures of vintage motorcycles on the walls to keep Burt company, and a big gunmetal desk that’s cluttered in a organized way. Nothing out of place until I found her there sitting in a stuffed chair she dragged over beside the window, a book in her lap, listening to jazz on the radio, what I call noise, but her thoughts were on the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak that recently happened that she heard about on the radio. Over a hundred twisters that touched down on primary voting day. Wizard of Oz stuff. Messing up the primary elections. Asking what I thought. Was it a sign? Maybe so. This country is going to hell. This country does nothing for the people by the people, whatever. And now throwing at us a White House prospect muslim darky not even born here that if elected is sure to outlaw Christmas. And about that tornado, my house is built strong. It ain’t going nowhere, but she is. I couldn’t have that talk with her yet. She wouldn’t listen to anyone but her own self anyways.
I had to get out of there. She heard the Indian start up in the garage and came tumbling out from the house in pajamas. Same look of abandonment I saw at the Shady Deal when she first told me of her husband that had skedaddled. Okay, whatever. I didn’t throw her the spare helmet this time but she mounted the back anyway. It was early morning. Not too warm. I could see nipples through the flannel. She was blowing snot onto the road. Pretty nasty, but we were doing okay. I was getting cozy feelings when she pressed close for warmth, her arms around me. Then that mouth again. The nattering. The rising voice in question. Questioning everything! Until I just said, raised my visor and said, look this ain’t going to work. You and me. It ain’t going to work. That’s when she let go of me, punched my back with her fists, yelling insult questions. I was afraid she was going to fall off. I grabbed her with a spare arm to keep her safe. She punched it off. We skidded as the front wheel jiggled then collapsed with the shift of weight. Hit a guard rail. I bounced along the side of the road. She went over the guard rail and into a brook. When I came out from the effects of displacement shock and arose unsteady on a busted knee to locate where she had tumbled, the quiet was overwhelming, even welcoming, and I could see her face down in the water. I limped over to the edge to see if there was movement. And there was, some. And I did think of going into the water to pull her out. But I couldn’t. I mean, I was wearing the wrong shoes.
L.E. Smith is a retired English teacher (prep school and college). Educated in Vermont, Scotland and England. Three novels and a book of short stories published so far. Currently working on a collection of historical short stories that use biography, mythology, and anthropology. While doing research, one of his favorite finds is early 1600s England as Queen Elizabeth and the church do their best to suppress the theatre that is flourishing with works of Robert Greene, Chrstopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. You know who won.
