resistance :: June 20, 2023

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Once upon a time, last spring, a dozen small ducklings sailed in a box on the U.S.S. Postal Service and arrived at my door. The journey was short, but long. They traveled in the dark. Cold air seeped in through the holes in the box, the tiny cup of water ran dry. When I opened the hatch two days later, the ducklings peeped with relief and questions. I tipped them out onto the rug and they ran around in confused circles until I boiled an egg, chopped it into pieces, and floated it in the refilled water cup. The smell reminded them of home and tasted like a place they once knew. Their tiny heads got heavy and they fell asleep on the rug in a pile shaped like a box.

They grew and died, one by one. That same year in the woods a coyote family and a wandering bobcat grew sleek and clever on a diet of hopefully tended duck. When the slugs emerged the following spring to eat the daffodils, I mourned the gap in our small food-chain, but I did not open the emails from the hatchery. When I drove past the feed store, I stubbornly refused to read its announcements until hatchling season had come and gone.

It was not a time for ducklings. Everywhere, suddenly, people went to get a pint of ice cream, or a pair of pants, or a chance at a new life, and died. The people who were left began to run around in confused circles. No one knew what home smelled like anymore. Hardly anyone could sleep, but when they did, they lay alone in the dark, flinching at strange sounds and clicking their thirsty tongues.

My news feed in those days was buzzing with a story about a newly discovered flower somewhere west of the Pacific. It was a color no one had ever seen before (though the indigenous people of its home forest had a name for it so ancient it could no longer be pronounced). It would only bloom when held in the hand of a child still in its innocence. Beauty was in demand, as was innocence, so a black market of seeds sprang up almost instantly, but when the seeds arrived, the gardeners discovered all the children had grown up overnight. The seeds were put in the ground or thrown into the compost and forgotten. During this time, messiahs roamed the country selling sachets or truth serums, or more rarely, bottles of water said to quench every thirst.

One day I was sitting alone in my bedroom thinking of the ducklings. I remembered them sleeping, their bellies full of egg. It was foolish, but I took out my phone and looked at images of them fresh from the box: their downy yellow and black feathers, their dark little feet and beaks. There was a knock at the door; I answered it and found a woman standing there. I could tell immediately she was one of the messiahs. She had a slightly disheveled appearance and there was a twig in her hair. She spoke, but her voice was hoarse and I couldn’t understand her. This embarrassed me, so I looked down at her shoes. They were the kind of shoes you saw sometimes in old movies, little brown oxfords with a sensible heel, slightly scuffed. My thoughts about her softened. The woman rummaged in her bag. I did not want to buy truth serum or sachets, so I shook my head, but she held out her hand anyway. In the center of her palm was a shiny black seed. She put the seed in her mouth and swallowed it. When she opened her hand again, she was holding an egg.

“Come in,” I said immediately. She did. She took off her coat and set the egg on the table. We watched it for a moment to make sure it wouldn’t roll off. The egg was pale blue and incredibly beautiful.

“I would love some cake,” the woman said in her hoarse voice. I was startled. I began to say I had no cake, but the smell of baking had filled the room. On the table beside the egg was suddenly a cake, a pot of coffee.

“Of course,” I said, and we sat down together. The egg lay between us. Sometimes it rocked a little, as if something was inside — a small something, wanting to get out. We watched the egg and ate our cake. The rocking was so slight I sometimes thought I had imagined it.

“No one wants these anymore,” the woman said, hovering her coffee cup just above the egg’s trembling shell. Her voice was smoother now, but a little sad.

“I do,” I said, surprising myself. Between us, the egg was now shell pink. It became very still, almost as if it had never been alive. The woman and I glanced at each other and my cheeks grew hot at how bright my hope had been. She cleared her throat as if she might say something else, but then the egg give a little jolt. A crack appeared near the top. It widened until a small triangle of pink fell off. Beneath it, I could see a tiny, dark unfurling.

“It’s a petal!” the woman whispered.

“It’s a wing!” I shouted at the same moment.

…

At the sight of this small hatching, a word was on my tongue, a word so old I could almost remember how to say it. I whispered it out loud but not even my ears were quick enough to grasp it. The word curled itself into the air and out the window and spread across and across the sky.

…

Later, I gave the woman the spare bedroom. When I asked her name, she said, “Many lifetimes, all is coming.”* She was very tired. I politely removed the twig from her hair and left her alone to rest. The house was quiet, all the cake was gone. The egg was where we had left it, sitting in the center of the table, now green as a spring caterpillar, now purple as a bruise. It shed layers of shell, revealing first a glimpse of feathers, then a curl of leaf. It had been that way for hours, for days, for years. I went to the kitchen and got my big porcelain bowl, lined it with a towel and brought it back. As carefully as I could, I lifted the egg and held it for a moment. It was warm, pulsing with its hidden life. As I watched, its shell would crack and split then knit itself back together. Breaking and healing, breaking and healing. I brought it close to my face. It smelled like the damp rot of woods or the sharp saltiness of seahorses or the heat of blackberry leaves in August. I set it down as carefully as I could inside the bowl to wait.


*attributed to Sri K. Pattabhi Jois


Happy Solstice, my friends!

I’ve had that little story in my mind for weeks now. It felt right to get it on the page for this first day of summer. The world is as crooked and splintered as it’s ever been, but I’ve been listening to hope-givers lately. Sitting in the cool early morning sunshine. Weeding the oh-so-neglected garden in five minute bursts. Planting red flowers at every corner of the house. Reading one poem every day. Practicing yoga while it’s still dark. Learning the birds’ voices. Discovering a green heron, a trio of stags, a small ermine. Eating the strawberries as they ripen.

School is finished for the year! It’s been wonderful, exasperating, instructive, and challenging. I love it. But I’ve been looking forward to having the summer so I can get back to my own writing again. Of course, now that the summer is here, so is my internal resistance. I’m continually amazed at my ability to procrastinate about my art. If someone else gives me a task, no matter how inane, I will do it immediately. But I can endlessly put off writing or creating something of my own. Maybe you know the cycle? I plan to write first thing in the morning, but when the morning arrives I have a headache, or I didn’t sleep well, or I decide I really should clean the bathroom first. Or I actually sit down at my desk and write and then I am overwhelmed with fatigue and all I can think of is sleeping. If not fatigue, then a sudden conviction that I am on the wrong path and I was never supposed to write at all. That conviction can send me on an existential spiral for days (in which, of course, no writing gets done). It has taken me many years to recognize this pattern of resistance, but this year, I am more ready for it. I am finally at a place where I can start to ask why it happens. That’s going to be my focus this summer, actually, looking at whatever fear is keeping me from engaging with my own art.

Some things I am doing to conquer resistance and facilitate creativity this summer:

  • Re-reading Christian McEwen’s World Enough & Time very slowly

  • Journaling. So much journaling.

  • Limiting my screen/watching time by taking the browser off my phone (I already got rid of addictive apps) and reducing TV/movie watching to the bare minimum.

  • Walking without music/podcasts/audiobooks

  • Going to nature when I feel fatigue or other physical resistance

  • Setting specific, daily, SMALL, writing goals

  • Affirmations (e.g. My creativity is endless. I have time to write.)

  • Creating space for boredom (“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” ~ Virginia Woolf)

A few weeks ago around my birthday, I walked into town with a backpack of my old journals and sat in the park to read them. The combination of walking in silence and revisiting my old selves (I have many, don’t you?) was a pretty potent experience. At 52, I can see so much of my path now, can see how far I’ve come and how steadily I’ve kept to the same goals even though my experience day by day has not felt that way at all. I’ve been an indifferent journaler most of my life, but still, the words have accumulated. They’ve marked out the edges of my experience and my growth as a woman. I feel so grateful for all the imperfect attempts, all the scraps collected, all the longing and trying recorded there. I’ll keep at it. I have a feeling it’s going to unlock some good things for me this season.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with resistance, or your journaling practice, or whatever comes to mind. I always read your emails and comments and do my very best to respond to each one.

Thanks again for being here.

tonia

Some hope-givers I’ve enjoyed recently:

Reading:

Thinking about:

Year of the Owl :: March, 2022

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This morning I made oat and honey bread, brewed a pot of green tea, gathered my notebooks and laptop and turned on Puccini because I love the sound of opera floating from the windows while I sit on the deck and write. At last it is warm enough to sit on the deck and write.  Ravens are croaking somewhere on the other side of the creek, the neighbor is shouting at his dog, the kid who rides the dirt bike is gunning his engine just at the curve of the road below the house as he always does. When the engine noise fades, I catch the soft hoot of the owl in the woods.

Owls everywhere.

 Yesterday, a woman I’d just met told me she was out walking in the park and saw two baby Barred Owls perched on a branch. The mother was nearby; when the woman stopped to watch the babies, the mother flew over the woman’s shoulder, gliding through the notch between her shoulder and her ear. A warning. Once, at a raptor rescue center, the woman said, she had put on a thick leather arm glove and an owl had perched on her arm.

“It was so much heavier than I thought it would be,” she told me.

All at once, people I care about are very sick. Maybe they will not live to see the old age I am always planning on. When the woman was telling me her story, I found myself wishing I could hold that owl on my arm and test its weight ahead of time.  You can be so sure of yourself and then it can all change. Suddenly, I could not listen to the owl story anymore. I interrupted, told another story about myself and coyotes. The woman looked at me, disappointed. Maybe I had not at first seemed like someone who was self-absorbed and bad at listening. Maybe I had seemed like someone who would understand about the babies and the owl flying so close she could feel the air bend to meet its wings.

I am someone who understands about the owl, but it was still hard to sleep last night. By 3 am I was tangled in a long skein of dreams about the ways I disappoint people - storytellers, family members, everyone. I have noticed that the onset of grief and bewilderment seem to have one of two effects on people: they either fall back or push forward. I do not want to fall back into the woman who is held captive by the mild disappointment of strangers, who believes that the right thing to do is always whatever makes other people relax. I have to shake off the urge to return to old ways of being and push on, accepting that I have my own weight, my own demands on the world.

This week I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s strangely wonderful memoir, Year of the Monkey. I confess I had never listened to Patti Smith’s music until recently, I only knew her from the internet and a couple random quotes, but I’m totally hooked by her roving, creative spirit and her comfort in her own skin. I don’t think she’d give a damn that some stranger somewhere once misunderstood her, but I know for sure she’d attend to the message of owls when they arrived.

“You don’t see things like that. You feel them…”

Sometime in the near future, sickness will take someone I love. I will hear the owl again and again. It will watch me from its invisible perch, it will show itself to me, to strangers who will tell me the story whether I am ready to hear it or not. It will all be so much heavier than I think it will be, but I am confident that I will push on anyway, all the way to the edges of my life, growing, changing, disconcerting, disappointing, becoming, until it is my own time to push on into whatever comes next.

 Don’t worry, there are lots of good things going on here as well!  We are having a long-delayed wedding in a couple months and I will be meeting my French son-in-law in a few weeks. (Thank you for the visa at last, State Department!) I am taking a very light class load this spring and summer so we can celebrate and get to know each other, then I’ll be back at my books full time in the fall.

I’m also happy to tell you I have a story in the upcoming issue of Dark Mountain, which launches April 21st. It’s written around the theme of “confluence” and involves the deep connection between women and the earth, shape-shifters, and the boundaries between human and animal worlds. It’s a story I really love. If you are interested in reading it, you can subscribe to Dark Mountain’s biannual publications here, or buy individual books here.

I hope you are all enjoying the change of seasons, whether you are heading into spring or fall. If you feel up to it, let me know what you are reading and listening to right now. My list is below. 

Reading lately:

Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy

– I came to this memoir through Ditlevsen’s poem Self-Portrait 1.  She was telling the truth!

Richard Powers’ Bewilderment

              -I didn’t love this as much as The Overstory, but this wrangling with the grief around climate catastrophe and loss has really stuck with me.  I’ll be hearing Powers speak in April and I’m really looking forward to it.

Sylvia Warner Townsend’s The Corner That Held Them

              -By recommendation of Melissa Wiley. A deep, slow dive into the life of a medieval nunnery without the soft gaze and the sheen of piety. Nothing very much happens and I loved it.

Molly Gloss’ Wild Life

  – A 19th century-style novel set in the early days of the old growth logging in the PNW. Sasquatch, wild forests, and a fierce female protagonist.

 

Listening to lately:

Kiese Laymon read his book Heavy: An American Memoir

              -Unbelievably good. Half the experience is listening to Laymon read in his own voice.

Sabine Devieilhe & Marianne Crebassa singing Duo des fleurs from Léo Delibes’ Lakmé Opera.

Duolingo French Podcasts

That’s it for now!

Much love to you, friends. Thanks for being here!

tonia

August, First week :: 2021

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Seems like every afternoon lately, Laika and I have been up on the pasture for a few hours.  I write, or read, she stares at the blackberry hedge waiting patiently for the ground squirrels to make a dash for the compost bins or scuttle back to the safety of their dens.  A band of coyotes has moved onto one of the empty lots around us and we can hear them witch-howling on and off throughout the day.  It’s an eerie soundtrack to write by (perhaps that’s what has inspired my latest short story about a woman whose monthly cycle is…transformative.  It’s been a hell of a lot of fun to write and imagine.) 

I’ve made some peace with this, my least favorite month.  As you might have learned if you followed the PNW heat dome news, most of us don’t have things like air conditioners here.  August is a month to be endured before we get back to our lovely temperate weather.  Or that’s how we used to handle it, anyway.  Summers are hotter now overall, of course, and I despair a little at the thought that this is only the beginning of increased heat, but there is little to be gained by fretting about it.  Best to just lean in and enjoy what is here now.  Long afternoons in the shade writing under my beloved Grandmother Maple, the wild sweet peas climbing the hill, blackberries scenting the air, apples slipping from their branches and landing with a soft thud in the grass, the local osprey calling to her mate over the treetops.

I’ve been guarding my time diligently lately.  I’ve discovered a secret about my creativity – it’s thirsty for silence.  I’m cushioning my days with the quiet, leaving my phone untouched until late in the morning, eschewing tv and movies or youtube videos in the evenings.  Books are what I crave, poetry and mystery and beautiful language.  And nature, long draughts of sky and grass and cool darkening evenings.  That’s where the stories live, whispering to me, calling like the late-summer crickets, a song that lives just under the noise of the busy, busy world.

 . . .

Last week I was going through some boxes in the attic and found one I’d saved from high school.  I was a sentimental girl, I kept papers from all my classes, every note I’d ever received, a packet of my first attempts at poetry.  I only got through about a quarter of the box before I had to walk away.  That deeply earnest girl, desperate to find approval in a dangerously religious school and church made my heart break.  I’d like to set her free from the stifled years ahead, the agonizing grind of trying to fit into a space she was never made for.  I wish I could whisper to her that she would be happy one day, that it was okay to trust herself.  I put the box back in the attic, but I have plans to get it out again around Samhain (Halloween). Last year we began a tradition of burning the year’s ghosts and regrets in a bonfire and I will put much of that box into the fire and release it.

I remember a time when it was hard to imagine letting go even of the things that brought me pain. I thought I might need to hold onto those reminders so I could see who I was and how I got there, but I’ve reached a place now where I’m comfortable with just being who and where I am without needing to retrace the journey over and over. What a relief.

I hope wherever you are this August is not too hot (or too cold, for you Southern Hemisphere folks!) and you are finding your own rest and inspiration and freedom. I’d love to hear about it if you are. Your notes and comments help me feel like I’m not writing into the dark, so thank you for the times when you have those moments and inspiration to chat. I appreciate you!

Peace keep you, friends.

Gathered:

:: This excerpt from L.M. Sacasas’ amazing newsletter, The Convivial Society.

 [Ivan}Illich understood what I think most of us are unwilling to accept. Endless wanting will wreck us and also the world that is our home. By contrast, our economic order and the ostensible health of our society is premised on the generation of insatiable desires, chiefly for consumer goods and services. Your contentment and mine would wreak havoc on the existing order of things. “That’s enough, thanks,” is arguably a radical sentiment. Only by the perpetual creation of novel needs and desires can economic growth be sustained given how things presently operate.1 So just about every aspect of our culture is designed to make us think that happiness, or something like it, always lies on the other side of more.

:: Last week I was talking with a young guy at the coffee shop who told me that he found it ridiculous that he was expected to have opinions on so many things when he hadn’t experienced enough yet to build an opinion. I wanted him to repeat that louder for the rest of us. What a refreshing idea: “I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion!” In the same vein I’ve been thinking about how so many of us keep our emotional equilibrium by avoiding the news. I need to do that, though it creates its own cycles of guilt and angst. I want to stay informed and I really want to know how to respond to the needs of the moment. Lately I’ve been taking a page from Ryan Holiday and leaning back into history instead of forward into the constant doom-reports. I can learn just about everything I need to know about race or gender, the pandemic response, and why political parties can make such agonizingly self-absorbed decisions just by going to the past. And I can skip the hysteria of the local newscasters or twitter feeds telling me what to think. That’s a win.

I just finished Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War, which has the fascinating premise that Civil War ideologies about white male power and property were transferred to the West after Reconstruction and emerged in the mythology of the Cowboy. Ayup, I can see that. Let me know if you have any favorite history authors or sources. I’m not a huge fan of biographies, but I love to read the evolution of ideas and events. If we get a good response, I can post a list of resources here!

:: This time of year I try to sleep out on the deck at least one night. Call it a micro micro adventure. There’s no shame in wanting to be out in nature while also being close to comfort. ;) This year we slept under the full moon and woke with the sun, did some yoga in the cool air, then climbed back in bed to read and drink coffee until it got too hot. That was a pretty good day. I hope to fit in another night out or two.

 :: Lastly, this quote from James Baldwin, whose birthday was yesterday. It’s giving me life right now as I constantly grapple with the fine line between appealing to readers and being true to myself.

 “A writer is by definition a disturber of the peace. He has to be. He has to make you ask yourself, make you realize that you are always asking yourself, questions that you don't know how to face.”

 

July, Second Week :: 2021

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Red dragonfly, misty morning.

That’s my alternative title for this post based off an ancient Japanese calendar I read about recently. In this way of time-keeping, the year was divided into 24 seasons, and each of these was further divided 3 times into a total of 72 seasons, each lasting 4-5 days. These miniature seasons were given lovely, poetic names based on what was happening in nature. (e.g.“Warm winds blow”, “Hawks learn to fly” )

There are so many reasons I love this way of season-keeping, mostly because it requires attendance to the subtle shifts and nuances of change as we move through the year, but also for the invitation to grace the passing days with poetry.

Right now we are in a bit of an upheaval at Fernwood. Outside, the house is being painted and the decks repaired. Inside we are preparing to downsize and shift our living quarters so a soon-to-be married daughter and son-in-law can share our home for awhile. All my curated corners for sitting and thinking are upended, there is always a contractor (agreeable and helpful as they are) just where I want to be, and there’s no end to the amount of decluttering and reorganizing waiting for me. How necessary then to have a place where poetry can enter and soothe.

Red dragonfly on wild sweet pea.

Misty morning, thirsty ground.

House waits with folded hands.

…

Yesterday I carted one of the plastic adirondack chairs out to the center of the yard, out of the path of the contractors, just on the edge of the walnut tree shade so I could write. I remember Sylvia V. Linsteadt saying in an old blog post that she tried to spend one day every week out on the land “tracing the songlines of that beloved wild place, so that my work remains infused with its many voices.” I’m determined to put myself in connection with the land and all that it speaks to me every day, even if that happens in fragments and requires listening for the squabble of bluejays over the “sounds of the 80’s and 90’s” coming from a contractor’s radio. In my classes this last spring, I realized I don’t really need more formulas and instruction on basic writing. What I need instead is to loosen something inside and explore outside my domesticated self. Practices like writing outside by hand not only help me listen to the wild places, but also help me access parts of myself that have been shuttered so I can create freely (something that didn’t feel possible until I left religion behind, but that’s a post for another day.)

After I finished writing yesterday, I spent an hour re-watching a talk by Ray Bradbury and making plans to write a short story every week as he suggested. He assured that you can’t write 52 terrible stories, so I hope I’ll be able to share some of those in the Story Room throughout the year. And, of course, I’m still working on the novel as well! In fact, I’m going to wrap this up and get back to work on it.

I hope you will find some peace, poetry, and freedom on your own path this week, no matter what is going on around you.

Gathered:

~ Ryan Holiday’s videos on being an active reader and making time for reading.

(FYI, I’m reading Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America and Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment right now.)

~ This funny, smart essay by Caitlin Flanagan: You Really Need to Quit Twitter

“Surely Joan Didion has confronted her share of aggravations (cucumber slices not adhering to tea sandwiches; Lynn Nesbit calling during NewsHour; latest Celine sunnies too big for tiny, exquisite face). But would she ever take to Twitter to inscribe these frustrations onto the ticker tape of the infinite? Of course not. She would either shape them into imperishable personal essays or allow them to float past her and return to the place from which they came.”

(I just marked two years without social media accounts. I echo everything Flanagan (and her family) has to say.)

~ Bob Dylan:

“A library is an arsenal of liberty.”

A bientot mes amis.

glenlivet

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shadows.jpg

They came while he was away in the hospital tossing in acramped room, sweating for each breath.  Pneumonia,the doctor told him and he blanched at how deep into old age he’d come.  All that was left to do was break a hip, feelhis mind smooth into dementia, then he’d be gone.  Carol brought him home on her lunch break;his arms were bruised from needles, his nose raw from tubes, his back achedfrom lying in bed.   They were alreadythere, watching some history program on his TV, looking up innocently as thedoor opened and Carol maneuvered him in.

“Hey, there he is. How you feeling Joe?”  This fromDerrick, who had Carol’s wide set eyes and curly black hair.   He’d started calling him Joe when hegraduated from high school.  Too old for“grandpa” anymore, Carol said. 

“I’m a hell of a lot older than him and I’m not too old forit,” he’d said, but Carol just smiled and patted his hand like he was a crankyinfant.

Derrick’s greasy -haired girlfriend waved from the couch buthe didn’t have the energy to look at her. Jessica, or some such thing. Carol led him to the bedroom, got him settled in his recliner, fetchedhim a glass of water and a blanket. 

“Derrick and Jess will be here.  They’ve got my old room, across thehall.   Jess used to work in a nursing home, dad, soshe knows what she’s doing.  You’ll befine.  Remember I’ll be gone for the nexttwo weeks in Arizona, okay?”  He wavedher away.  He’d seen her more this weekthan he had in the last year.  She leanedover and hugged him.

“It worked out so good, didn’t it?  You needing someone to stay here and Derrickand Jess needing somewhere to stay? Definitely a God-thing.”  Shesmiled broadly, pleased with herself. Pleased she didn’t have to take time out of her life to nurse him, heknew.  He lifted the side of his mouthand she accepted it as a smile. 

“Bye dad!  Loveyou!” 

****

It was his femur, not his hip.  He’d been looking for the bottle of Glenlivethe’d stashed in the garage. Predictable.  High shelf, unevenfloor.  He’d lain on the concrete fortwenty minutes until Derrick heard him over the TV.  Now they had him trussed up in his ownbedroom, immobile.  Jess came in everycouple hours to help him shift positions, go to the bathroom.  She was stocky and square, with glasses thatwere always sliding down her nose and blotchy skin.  She smelled of sweat, but so did he.  Far as he knew, her entire vocabularyconsisted of, “That better?” and “All done now, Joe?”  with an occasional, “Mmmmm, dinner!” When sheleft, she always shut the door, even though he asked her to leave it open.  The air was stale, and he was sick of lookingat his own four walls.   In the house heheard doors opening, things shifting, bumps against the wall.  Derrick said they were just doing housework,keeping things up for him.  Derrick hadgrown fat in the months since he’d come. 

Carol called every Saturday from Arizona.  She’d met some guy on a hike at the GrandCanyon, quit her job over the phone and moved into his house.  It would last a few months, then she’d beasking him for money again.  “Just untilI find a job, dad.”   He’d be lucky tohave any money left.  Derrick was alwaysbringing him receipts for groceries, or gas, asking for a few bucks for this orthat on top of what he was paying them to be there. 

****

When he finally made it out of the bedroom a few weekslater, he thought he’d walked into a stranger’s house.  It was dark, all the blinds down. His couchwas gone, the set of armchairs by the window where he liked to read.  They’d been replaced by a brown sectionalthat took up most of the room.  His TVwas gone too, and the narrow, painted cabinet it was stored in.  In its place was a bigger TV, something blackand flat, perched on a plastic stand, vomiting wires and gadgets into theroom.  Derrick was sitting on the couch,playing one of his video games. 

“Hey Joe!  What do youthink?  We’ve been fixing things up foryou!” 

Jess came from the kitchen carrying a Diet Coke and wearinga grin.   She went and stood by Derrick,set one of her hands on his shoulder.  Hefelt disoriented.  Was he supposed tothank them?

“Where’s my furniture?” he asked.  “Where’s the couch?”  Jess’ grin dimmed a little. 

“We stored it for you, Joe. Mom’s got that unit over off Columbia? We thought…you know…maybe this place could be a little cheerier.  Maybe it would help you get well.”  Ever since he was a kid, Derrick had thetrick of looking innocent.  Now he raisedhis eyebrows, gave a hopeful smile.

“I suppose I paid for all this nonsense?”   

“Joe, we asked you, remember?” Derrick said at last.  “After you broke your leg.  Remember?  We thought we should make it easier for you to get around in here.”  Jess nodded her head earnestly, and her glasses slipped down her nose.  They’d done this before, asking his permission for things when he was on pain medications or half asleep.

His leg was aching. He limped back into his room and slammed the door.

****

The leg was healing. He could hobble around indoors, sit on the front porch on a sunny day,which was a relief because Derrick insisted the house be shut up and quiet whilehe was recovering.  He was craving sunlight.  He still hadn’t made it down into theyard.  The uneven ground was tootreacherous yet, the doctor said.  Everyweek Derrick came out and made a show of bending over one of the front flowerbeds, pulling up a few green things, moving dirt around as if he knew what hewas doing, but things were starting to look bad.  He couldn’t imagine what the back yard lookedlike.  The rose garden should have beenpruned by now, the grapes.  Janet’stulips must have come and gone already. The doctor said he shouldn’t fret about stuff he couldn’t control, thathis blood pressure was high enough already. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  The doctor ought to live with his family forawhile.  Shit-eating grins while theyslowly took over his house, like they were doing him a favor.  All his old things were gone, stored, they said, always managing tolook hurt that he didn’t like their changes. Jess had started a card-making business to “help bring in some money”and now the dining room looked like a paper factory had exploded in it.  She was too tired after all her card-makingto cook anymore, so it was up to Derrick now. Every night it was some frozen dinner in a plastic tray or a greasy bagfrom McDonald’s.  No wonder his pantswere getting tight.   Last week, they’dcelebrated with Chinese take-out after Jess had sold a card to herhairdresser.  A card.  He wondered if the Glenlivet was still in thegarage or if Derrick had found it yet. On her weekly calls, Carol told him he should be grateful, what if hehad been alone?  He settled back andhappily imagined that for awhile.

****

The doorbell rang.  Hewas in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat that didn’t come out of apackage, but no luck.  He could getaround a little better now.  Derrick andJess had gone to the movies. They claimed they needed a break.  Watching TV and sleeping in was hard work, heguessed.  Oh, and there was thecard-making, of course.  He laughed tohimself, hobbled his way to the front door, opened it.  A middle-aged man stood on the porch, blackhair trimmed neatly around the ears and neck, a flannel shirt. 

“Dan Park,” he said, holding out a hand.  “Sorry to bother you, but we bought the housebehind you last year?  We haven’t metyet.”

He balanced in the door, shook the offered hand. “JoeWebster.  You bought Tom’s oldhouse?  Where’d he go?”

“Alaska, I think.  Tolive with his son or something.  I thinkhe was going to fish.”

He nodded.  “That’s agood house.  I helped Tom put in a furnacea few years back.”   He shifted hisweight, steadied himself against the doorframe. “I’ve been laid up this lastyear.  Pneumonia.  Then I broke my damn leg looking for a bottleof whiskey.”

“That’s terrible.  Didyou find the whiskey?”  Dan laughed.  He decided right there he liked this newneighbor.

“Didn’t even get a swig of it.   I’mhoping it’ll still be there when I get back on my feet.”  He eased himself out the front door, offered Dana seat on a dusty porch chair.

“I came over because we were wanting to replace that oldfence between us,” Dan said.  “I wantedto make sure that was okay with you before we started.”  He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket,showed him the new design.   It was a cedar fence, six feet, with coppercaps on the posts.

“It’ll be an improvement over that chain link.  Must be twenty years since I put that in,” hesaid.

“There’s the maple that will have to be limbed up on yourside, since the new fence will be taller. I could do that for you.”  Danfolded the paper and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

It was nice to sit out in the sunshine and talk to someonecapable for awhile.  It almost made himforget the ache in his leg. 

“Let’s go back there and take a look,” he said suddenly,feeling daring.  “I might have to use youfor support though.”

“Glad to.” Dan stood and offered his arm and they made theirslow way around the side of the house. It hadn’t rained for a couple of weeks, the ground was beginning to firmup.  

“Haven’t been out here since last year,” he said andstopped.

He saw the old television set first, flung on its side inthe grass.  Dan had started talking abouthis new lawnmower, how he could come over and mow the lawn for him, now that heknew he was laid up.  He didn’trespond.  The couch was up against thefence, sagging and torn.  Books werestrewn across the yard, spines broken, pages sodden.  The armchairs were leaning against the old TVcupboard in the center of the rose garden. Roses were snapped off, one wasuprooted.  Bags of garbage piled upagainst the house. The entire back yard was strewn with his belongings. 

“Mr. Webster? Are you okay?”

“How long has it been like this?” he asked hoarsely.  But he already knew.  Since the couch came, since the TV and itsplastic altar.  Carol probably didn’teven have a storage unit.

“No wonder you want a new fence,” he said.  Dan’s cheeks darkened a little and he coughedinto his hand. 

“Take me back inside,” he said, shaking. 

****

The police officer was kind on the phone, but there wasnothing she could do since he’d invited them in, since they’d been there solong.  She took down his complaint and hehung up.  Derrick and Jess came back,chattering about the movie they’d seen. He faked a headache and went to his room.  While the TV droned on in the living room, hemade a few more phone calls.

****

He waited.  From hisbedroom he could hear the sounds of construction going on behind him, Danbeginning the new fence.  He kept quietabout it, waited until they were distracted to peer through the blinds in thedining room, watch the slow progress. They went out more now that he was improving.  Afternoons at the movies, dinners out, theoccasional trip to the mall.  Heencouraged it, became loose with his gratitude. For Derrick’s birthday, he gave them a weekend away.

“A well-deserved break,” he said and they beamed.  They drove off on a Friday morning.  Derrick honked the horn twice as theyleft.  He waved goodbye from the livingroom window.

The locksmith arrived an hour later. That afternoon threeyoung men drove up in a beat-up van, pulling a utility trailer.  He showed them the house and the back yard,told them what to do.   He stood insideand watched them, the young men going back and forth, their quick muscles, theeasy grace of their effort.  When theywere finished he gave them each an extra 20 dollars and told them to have adrink on him.

He walked carefully to the backyard, saw the checkerboard offlattened yellow grass, the neglected roses, and he felt a little hollow, butalso relieved.  Dan’s new fence was partwayconstructed now.  He could see into hisbackyard, the neat flowerbeds, the patio furniture with its greenumbrella.  He went back inside the stillhouse and lay on his bed, satisfied.

Sunday morning he woke early.  It was a beautiful day, blue sky and picturebook clouds.  Outside he could already hearpeople coming and going, a low hum of voices. He made a cup of instant coffee and limped to the window.  

The TV was gone, as well as the brown couch.  People were milling around, looking through thebox of movies and video games.  Herecognized one of his neighbors hauling away a fake potted plant.  She caught his eye and he raised his coffeecup in greeting.  He watched a car driveup, an elderly woman examine the “FREE! Yes, all of it!” sign by the mailbox. By noon everything was gone but the bin of paper goods and a coupleboxes of clothes.  He’d kept those back,along with a box of personal items. No one had ever said he was an unreasonableman.

He called Carol, told her he’d changed the locks, listenedto her startled panic until she was done. Derrick and Jess returned just before dark, knocked on the door and rangthe bell until his head hurt.  He’d lefta note with their things on the porch. Dan thought he’d be better off not talking to them today.  Give them time to cool down, he said.   Thatwas fine with him.  When they’d finallyslunk off for the night he called Dan, invited him over. 

The emptiness of the house cheered him.  Beside his bedroom, the only furniture leftwas the dining room table, which they hadn’t bothered to replace.  When Dan arrived he offered him a seat, tookout two glasses.

“Found that bottle of Glenlivet,” he said.  He’d left the lights off and pulled the blinds open.  When Dan held up his glass to drink, the light from the streetlamp filtered softly through it, turned the liquid inside from amber to gold.  He was exhausted, and his leg was aching, but he hadn’t felt this good in a very long time.

***************

There’s a nice littlehouse down the road, yellow with white trim, a neatly fenced yard that used to containan old black lab.  Something happened onenight.  When we drove by in the morning,the contents of the house had appeared on the lawn.  Bookcases, chairs, boxes, Rubbermaidcontainers, a lamp, a dresser.  We drovepast for a week wondering what the people inside were dealing with:  a plumbing leak?  A hole in the roof?  Another week went by and it began torain.  The contents of the yard took on asodden and abandoned look.  Someone put outa couple of limp tarps, but it was all haphazard: the plastic tubs under thetarp, the rocking chair left unprotected.

That was three years ago.  One summer, someone carved a circle in the center of the detritus and set up some plastic Adirondack chairs, a little retreat, as it were, in the center of the chaos.  I’ve never seen an actual person in the chairs.  I’ve never seen an actual person outside at all.  But if you drive by in the evening, you can see inside the house.  There’s a big tv, the occasional silhouette of a head on a couch, the lights glimmering friendly, as if the rotting world on the lawn doesn’t exist at all.

That was the inspiration for this story, a possible answer to the question: why?!