God's Little Chirrens

October 27, 2008

“Yore gone get yore car stolt you leavin’ them windows open.” The half-wit’s hose dangled at her side, splashing water onto the ground, with drops of spray on the gleaming white Ford she was always hosing down.
I hoisted up my soiled and stained overalls, hopped on one foot, and scratched deep in the seat of the dirty denim.
“If’n the good LORD sees as I shouldn’t have no car, HE will take it from me,” I said, pointing at the sky. “There’s no arguin’ with the big guy—I learnt that first day at Miss Rebecca’s Sunday school when I weren’t no bigger’n that stump-topper.” I indicated a flower pot set atop an old tree stump—the last vestige of a mighty oak that had once stood in the yard.
Her garden hose drooped some in wonderment and confusion, its gurgling output not so proud as once it had been. I stopped my hopping, which had continued throughout our interactions in the driveway.
“Problem as I see it,” I said, “You ain’t got no faith in all his little chirrens what run ‘roun here and ain’t nearly so bad as those who don’t believe says they is.” I pointed to the flower pot again, said, “Over by that stump-topper I seen one an’ I said ‘Boy if’n I were to leave this car wifout so much as a closed window an’ mebbe one night even forgotten to put my keys down there in my pants like I mostly always do, what’n you expect I see nex morning---er, mebbe don’ see?’” And then I told her the boy, with half-trousers and a red bandanna, and one shining gold tooth, jumped three times over the stump-topper, and said sure as he was one of God’s chirrens he would lay awake all the night long and listen for the first birds speaking of the glory of the mornin’ and then only then would he steal away to bed, shore that my old car, which surely ain’t worth more’n three sacks of coffee, was still there.

The hose gurgled and splashed on the ground, and the half-wit drooped with sagging confusion, a heavy load of misunderstanding that weighed on her every movement, making navigation through the most trivial of chores accomplished as if by a dumb beast of burden.
“They’s gone done stolt a wickety-wack what belong to Zach an’ he cried sump’n awful carried on like I don’ know what all.”
I then recited a poem I’d composed on the spot:

“Wickety-Wack
What belonged to Zack
Done stolt
And ain’t comin’ back

The hose gurgled, the most eloquent thing there, and it spoke of unending confusion, universes of highways that ran counter to reason, to the furthering of understanding. I wasn’t helping things much.

“Madame,” I said, hitching up my stained overalls. “I am a poet.” Then paused for emphasis, and said importantly: “I wrote to the daily papers once.”


Later I spied her coming around the house, hailed her in mock indignation, of the kind I’d heard uttered when two idiots are addressing each other, their thoughts and speech colliding in idiotic orbits. Here is what I said:

“Whyn’t you tolt me you had them heavy bags to tote out’n the road?” She had two trash bags she was hauling to the roadside for tomorrow’s pickup. I got the right affectation down, sounded almost convincing: “I woulda toted them bags out’n the road if’n you coulda tolt somebody leastaways ain’t no call fer you be carryin’ them heavy bags an the whole time I was standin’ right over there doin’ nuthin’ more’n pickin’ at that ol’ rag, and couldn’a been more’n three peg-legs right from where you is standin’ right now this very time.” I put my hands on my waist, as if she’d committed the most frightful affront, the most egregious infraction against my honor, my esteem. “I swear some folks be totin’ things an’ all the while they’s help right where they kin plain sees em’ ain’t like they blind.”

“I carries ‘em all the time at work,” she said, “And them’s at work mostly more heavy’n what-all I got right now.” I still sputtered in indignation, her comments only adding to my idiotic ire, which had now veered off into lunacy and the insistence on knowing why they made her tote such heavy bags at work, and couldn’t someone young and vibrant be set to the task?

“Everyone’s gots they own job,” she shrugged.

It is the only way I can make sense of the interactions that must inevitably occur between me and the slow-chewing woman, her jaw working insistently at something always in her mouth. As usual, I view the scene in cinematic terms, recognizing at once the jarring collision of her speech and mine, see no way to reconcile the horrible and grating disconnect, the leaping back and forth between two worlds, two irreconcilable cultures—with all communication turned haywire and upside down and backwards—with a good deal of static thrown in to boot. I simply throw my whole being into it, am immersed in the idea that I will be an idiot for a little while, for it makes some kind of order out of the exchange. To a great extent, it is actually quite liberating; once I’ve made the conscious decision that adhering to any semblance of reason is not an option, it is almost a pleasure to carry on a discourse with her.

October 28, 2008

Up in the north part of the county I stopped at a mall, decided to see what it had to offer. It was a low-lying affair, with one level only, and a Sears at one end. At least they would have the lawn and garden equipment I love to look at.

Also in the mall was a Friendly’s ice cream parlor, and I decided to stop and have a combination of breakfast and lunch. For my meal I chose a cup of the clam chowder, which was actually quite good, and a bacon cheeseburger that came on toasted white bread, which I found appealing. The main course was ok, but as usual it came with too many French fries, which I always feel bad about not finishing. I can only eat so many of the damned things and, besides, the cheeseburger was substantial. However, for dessert I ordered one of their good sundaes, with two scoops of ice cream and caramel syrup that was very good. They had a special deal whereby you could get a few things and finish with a sundae and it would run only ten bucks. I hadn’t thought ahead to take advantage of this offer, but the server told me she could change it to make it work. The only thing that cost extra was the soup.

As I sat and ate, with no newspaper because I’d forgotten to bring one in, and the car was too far away to go get it, I read more of their menu offerings. Under the appetizers section was a thing listed as a “chicken slider.” Thoroughly revolted, I read on. Now there were “cheeseburger sliders” as well. I know there are people who are fluent with this terminology, are conversant with the different appetizers offered by the bland chains of family restaurants that don’t do much more than fill up their customers with doses of fat and carbs, but I found the names disgusting. I imagined myself in an empty cafeteria at an airport in between the busy times, with a lone, aproned worker wiping at the dull stainless steel countertops in a desultory kind of way, and occasionally glancing over at me to see what I was doing there exactly. With food maybe an afterthought, I would ask about anything left to eat in that place.
“All’s we got right now is them chicken sliders,” she would say, not bothering to look up, and we would both know—from the way she said it—that she didn’t invite further discussion of the topic. But I would pursue it.
“Chicken sliders?”
“Huh….?” Not looking up again.
“I guess I’ll have an order of chicken sliders,” I’d say. And we would both know, as she wearily put down her washrag and labored over the simple task of loading up some of whatever this food item might have been, putting the pieces into a little cardboard container, that I’d made possibly the worst decision of my life.

Later this week I’ll have Del and Ryan over to continue working on the project house. This name, “project house,” now applies to both places, since I am in the process of readying my own house for the addition of a new bathroom and completely renovated kitchen—in addition to other extensive projects that I don’t even want to think about. But I mostly refer to the place next door in these writings, and will try to distinguish between the two to eliminate any confusion. This will no doubt be a relief to the masses of people tuning in for regular progress reports. Since I am relatively new to the world of online blogging, I was happy to check my visitor count and learn that it was around five hundred people. Then I checked a random blog—something about a woman and her prize roses, I think—and saw that it had a tally of maybe fifteen thousand and counting. Oh, okay—never mind.

Out back there is a monstrous amount of work to be done, and I plug away at it in a fairly halfhearted way. Usually the cats will come around to see what I’m doing, and then the work stops—as I roll them in the tall grass and watch as they graze the sharp blades which they later spew out onto the floor inside. Then it’s back to work. At the moment I am putting some finishing touches on the low walls surrounding the patio area, which is just under the new deck. The end result will be more or less pleasing, and it makes no difference if no one actually uses it as a patio: The fact that it makes the back of the house more appealing is enough. The place needs all the help it can get.

When Del and Ryan pull up in their big work truck, they quickly get to it, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. This is in direct contrast to my approach, where approximately seventy-five percent of the time is spent wondering how I’m going to do a particular job, and the remainder is spent either doing it or chasing the cats around the yard—or a combination of the two. I need to work on my time management a bit. I told them that I would demolish two more walls—one of the things I’ve become rather adept at—in an effort to open up the area between the kitchen and the small dining room, and the dining room and the back of the house—where there is now a long and rather narrow utility room with a washer and dryer. I plan to move those appliances down into the basement, or perhaps upstairs into the new bathroom area if possible. In any case, the absence of these two walls will give an impression of more space and openness in the layout of the house. When I told Del of my plan, he agreed that it was a good idea. I will also delete a window that is facing my house, which will free up more wall space for counters and cabinets and the like. The main work area in the kitchen will face the back of the house, so that someone doing the dishes or cooking will have a nice view of the backyard, which really is quite pleasant. Before I started tearing the kitchen apart, the sink and only counters and cabinets in the room were mounted against the wall that separates the kitchen from the bathroom. This layout will be much more to my liking.

Down the road is a pile of dirt that I’ve been eyeing. It is advertised free for the taking, and is the result of a large dig-out of a basement in the building nearby. This is the same idea I’ve had for my own house: To dig down an additional foot or so, pour a concrete floor and then finish off the basement as additional living space. It may give me a fighting chance when it comes time to sell the place, since it is a house that the years have passed by, with not much in the way of major improvements. When it is time for me to move, it will have all the things I might have enjoyed while living there—two bathrooms, three full bedrooms, a large, eat-in kitchen, finished basement and possibly some additional landscaping out back. I may have to stick around for just a little while longer to see what it’s actually like to live in a nice house. One of the first steps is to find a structural engineer who can tell me how safe it is to dig down further in the basement, and what precautions I need to take to shore up the walls. I don’t want the whole house to come tumbling down. One nice thing is that I can use all of the dirt from the dig-out to add to the backyard—which is extraordinarily lumpy and irregular. It will help smooth things out.