Home Again (2)

by Rocky Macy

(Part 2 of 5)

Jeremiah was carrying water from the spring when he saw his father approaching the cabin with the doe draped over his sturdy shoulders.  The son set down his buckets and rushed to greet the returning hunter.  “You’re back.  And just look at that fine doe!  Can I help skin her, Pa?”

Ephram carefully laid the dead animal on the flat rock that had served as a butcher’s stone for as long as the Millers had been on Chance Creek.  “I gutted her in the woods, son.  The skinning and carving I’ll leave to you.  But be quick about it. Your mother will want to have some venison for the kettle so that we might wake to a hearty stew.”  Ephram drew his knife from its sheath and handed it to his eldest.  “Quickly now, but with care.”

“Yes, Pa.”  The boy accepted the knife with an almost reverential attitude.  He had often helped in skinning out the game that his father brought back from the hunts, but this was the first time that the entire task of skinning and butchering a large animal had been left to him alone, an honor made even grander by the magnificence of the doe.  Jeremiah fell eagerly into this rite of his approaching manhood.

“Jeremiah, where is the water?”  Comfort emerged from the cabin in search of one wanderer and found another.  “Oh, husband, you have returned!”  She ran into Ephram’s waiting arms, and backed away almost as quickly.  “You’re cold and your clothes are soaked.  Get into the cabin and make ready for your bath.”

“Not so fast, good wife,” Ephram scolded.  “Aren’t you even curious about the hunt?  The Lord has seen fit to share His bounty with us once again.”

“See, Ma”, Jeremiah said.  “Pa has brought home this fine doe, and he asked me to skin her out and carve her up.” He was intently pulling the animal’s skin back from the slash that his father had tendered in order to disembowel the creature. “Isn’t she a beauty!”

“Treat the skin with care, Jeremiah.  It will make a respectable shirt for you or Thomas.”  Comfort’s remark fooled neither father nor son, for both knew that skinning and butchering the doe brought with it the solemn right of being clad in her skin. Thomas could wait for his shirt. As the farm wife turned and started to pick up the buckets of water that Jeremiah had abandoned, Ephram stepped forward and assumed her burden.  “Thank you, husband. I’ll warm this water for your bath.”

Ephram laughed and said softly, for her ears alone, “So that I might be made proper to share the bed of a woman as lovely and pleasing as you?”

“Mister Miller!” Comfort snapped with mock alarm. “I do believe that you have been too long in the woods alone.”

Inside the cabin Ephram silently looked upon his other two children. Young Thomas was in the loft, wrapped in a blanket and asleep on the old straw tick that he and Jeremiah shared as a bed.  Abiah, the baby, was nestled in her cradle near the fire, and though the child was lost in slumber, Ephram could tell by her labored breathing that she was still ill. “Always the same,” he said absently to Comfort who was pouring water into the kettle over the fire. “It doesn’t seem right. Death would be a mercy.”

Comfort took her husband by the arm and led him to the tub that sat at the foot of their bed. “She has died, husband, and it was no mercy.”

The weary hunter fell back into the soft embrace of the bed and stared at the loft where Thomas was beginning to toss about in search of the missing warmth of his older brother. Ephram could feel Comfort’s hands as they struggled to free the boots from his wet and swollen feet. “What is this all about?” he asked softly.  “Why has God chosen to visit this strangeness upon us?”

“No one can know the mind of God, husband.  It is sinful to even try.”  As she gently ran her hand across the damp and dirty cotton shirt that covered her man’s hard chest, Comfort thought of the countless times that they had had this conversation before.

*  *  *  *  *

            Ephram awoke with a start as Comfort was pouring the first kettle of hot water into the tub. Everyone in the Miller family bathed on the eve of the Sabbath, and the father, as the head of the household, was always last. Ephram raised himself onto one elbow and watched his able wife carry the empty kettle back to the fire where she filled it again with creek water and placed it over the fire next to the pot with the stew fixings.  The tub in which he would bathe, Ephram knew, still contained the water from the earlier baths, water that had now been made warm again by the labors of the farm wife.   Next to the tub was another bucket of hot water that the hunter would use to rinse off the residue of his wife’s strong lye soap.

Comfort scooped up Ephram’s shirt and breeches as he stepped into the tub and eased himself down into the soapy, warm, relaxing water. She sat the bundle of dirty clothes by the door and then went to her cedar trunk where she found a nightshirt for her husband to wear when he had finished his bath. After laying the nightshirt and an old pair of woolen socks out onto the bed, Comfort pulled a footstool up to the tub and took the soap from Ephram. “Let’s get your hair wet,” Comfort said as she dipped a small pan into the bath filling it with warm water.  As she started to empty the pan onto his head, Ephram surprised her by sliding playfully beneath the water.  When he arose she began to lather his head without comment.  Sometimes Comfort felt as if she had three sons, each one a rascal.

Ephram awoke, still in the tub, to find his wife hanging his washed breeches and shirt in front of the fire to dry. “It’s too cold to be out at the creek washing clothes,” he protested, obviously too late. “You’ll catch your death.”

“It would appear, dear husband, that we die but once, and I have already crossed that threshold.”    

“As have we all.”

“As have we all, indeed.”

“Wife, do you ever wonder if there is something beyond all of this, some other threshold that awaits our crossing?”

The wife registered mild surprise at his question. Their conversations had settled into familiar paths over the years, and comments that strayed afield of the expected needed to be explored.  “The will of God cannot be known, dear husband. Is something troubling you?”

“Just a skittish feeling. Perhaps some wayward spirit has been walking on my grave.”

Comfort laughed as she walked over to the tub and lifted the oak bucket of rinse water with an ease and grace that belied the decades of hardship that the poor farm wife had endured. “Arise, good sir, and let me rinse you of your worries.”

“Yes, good lady.” Ephram stood in silence savoring the feel of the clean water as it gently removed the last of the soap and filth from his body.  The hunt had been hard, but he was home now, home and clean and warm in the love of his family.  After drying himself and dressing in the cotton nightshirt that Comfort had set out, Ephram began to slide the tub of bath water to the door.

“No, sir.  Leave that be,” Comfort admonished. “Jeremiah will need to wash up when he finishes with the deer. He and I will dump it later.”

Ephram sat on the edge of the bed and watched as his wife busied herself at the hearth. The aromas wafting through their ancient cabin inflamed Ephram’s senses and left him consumed by the hunger that he had forced out of his consciousness while on the hunt. Suddenly he was ravenous.

Comfort rose and brought two plates to the table. “Join me, husband. I have waited so that I might sup with you.”

“Rabbit?” Ephram’s exclamation as he seated himself at the small table was one of pleasant surprise.

“’Tis but the most meager scraps of a rabbit who was himself as poor and hungry as are we.” Comfort offered the unnecessary apology as she spooned a watery brown broth onto Ephram’s biscuits. “The children supped on the best portions.”

“That is as it should be, good wife. Believe me when I say that scraps of a rabbit and your wonderful biscuits are a bounteous wonder to one who has eaten only jerky and hardtack the past week, and blessed little of that. Let us give thanks for what is before us.” The couple bowed their heads in supplication as Ephram asked God’s blessing.

It occurred to Ephram that he did not know the source of the meat that graced his plate.  This entire year game of the first life had been unusually abundant, but game of the second life, the only type that God had seen fit to provide to His children of the second life, was scarce. Indeed, the surest way to find game of the second life was to be on hand when it arose into the hereafter. It was that knowledge that continually led Ephram back to his lookout by the road, a place where life tended to end and begin, and by the grace of God, end again.

“The rabbit was provided by Jeremiah,” Comfort said in response to the unasked question. After nearly a century-and-a-half of marriage, both husband and wife were able to wander through the other’s thoughts as effortlessly as if they were their own. “He was at the creek this afternoon watching the rabbit drink when a hawk swooped down and attacked the poor creature. When the rabbit died and came back, Jeremiah got it with a rock.”

“I know that he hasn’t grown since…in size…but still…” Ephram could seldom speak of the night, that bloody, terrible night when the band of deserters from the Union Army, emboldened by whiskey and spurred on by Satan, had slaughtered the Miller family for their mules and few meager possessions. “Our son is…”

“Yes, husband, I know. He is changing. In many ways our Jeremiah is wiser and more able than he was when we crossed over.” Comfort got up and began clearing the table. “I too wish that we could see him step into manhood, take a wife, give us grandchildren.”

“Wife, I know that it is wrong to question the will of God.”

“It surely is.”

“But in my heart,” Ephram said, “in my heart I can never believe that He meant for our family, our Christian family who lived by His Word, to be butchered for sport by drunken heathen.”

“We died at the same time, Ephram. That is a blessing in itself. We are all together and we are happy.”

“All but Samuel.”

“The Lord spared Samuel.”

“A blessing, I reckon. He was so proud that we trusted him to take the calves to market by himself."

“Samuel was a fine son, dear husband.”

“He was gone at the right time. He lived and we died, though often it seems that it was Samuel who died and we live on. I miss that boy so much sometimes that I find myself angry at him for leaving us.”

“He didn’t leave us. God chose Samuel to take the Miller name beyond the Shedd, and we both know that he made us proud, even if we weren’t alive to admire him as an adult.” Comfort reached across the table with a hand cloth and dabbed some broth from Ephram’s wiry beard. “It was Samuel that came back and dug our graves. Remember that, husband. He was the one who set the hickory saplings over our remains, trees that have grown as tall and proud as the dreams we had for our children. Don’t be angry with our eldest, for anger tarnishes his memory and takes him further from us. Just be happy in knowing that God spared Samuel for a reason.”

“It seems that with each passing year anger comes more easily. I pray that you will indulge my chronic temperament, dear wife, and know that it comes from being away from your side for too many cold and dreary days.”

“God has a plan, Ephram.  We must be patient.”  Comfort removed herself from the table and returned with the last of the rabbit broth that she spooned onto the portion of the biscuit that Ephram had left on his plate.  “Finish your meal, my tired husband. I have much left to do this night, and you must get some sleep.” 

*  *  *  *  *

Ephram stayed up and helped Comfort and Jeremiah prepare the ingredients for the stewpot, but soon afterward he succumbed to the incessant demands of his tired body for sleep and renewal.  He awoke to the wonderful smells of the simmering stew when his wife came to bed. Sometime later, as if in a dream, he heard the baby crying and stirred awake once more as Comfort brought fragile Abiah to their bed. It was later, when the night was at its darkest, that Ephram awoke for the final time.

Home Again (1)

by Rocky Macy

Ephram Miller stood silently among the pines that bordered the lonely stretch of the old highway.  The slow November rains had long since soaked through the horse blanket that served as both his bedroll and hunting cloak, and his cotton shirt and buckskin breeches were sodden as well. Ephram was miserable in his wet clothing, so bone-bitingly wretched and cold that he could no longer feel the hunger that had been clenching his bowels since the last of the jerky and hardtack had disappeared from his poke two days before.  Somewhere, Ephram knew, one of the Lord’s creatures had eaten well that day.

But it was more than just hunger and cold that plagued the hunter. There was a fear seeping though his bones that he could not understand. Nothing changed in his world except the weather, yet Ephram had been stricken all afternoon with a foreboding that change was coming.  He could endure any burden that the Lord saw fit to place upon his haggard back, any save one – change.  

The Miller family had lived in the Shedd Valley for years, too many years to count, and since the night of the great carnage they had been the valley’s only inhabitants.  And, yes, the daily struggle for survival had always been challenging, but basically nothing of consequence ever changed in their lives.    There were no weddings, no funerals, no births – and no deaths. 

Ephram needed to return home, to nestle with his hardy wife, to feast upon her warmth and draw upon her strength.  She would allay this nagging fear of something different creeping into their quiet lives.

It had been almost a week since Ephram left the little cabin on the banks of the Chance, a cold, spring-fed creek that emerged from the ground on one end of the valley and submerged at the other.   The old-timers had said that the small creek graced the floor of their valley solely by “chance,” but Ephram knew that nothing created by the Lord happened by chance.   Yet the name persisted. 

On Monday morning, long before the sunlight spilled into Shedd Valley, Ephram had crept from Comfort’s warm bed and climbed the piney crags up to the ridge that bounded the valley. The ridge ran more than thirty miles, completely encompassing the Shedd and forever holding the Miller’s in its flinty grasp.

He had headed south that morning, walking slowly, eyes ever watchful for signs of game.  Ephram had traipsed the Shedd so many times that he knew every burrow, nest, and watering hole from rim to rim, across the width and breadth of the valley.  The terrain was as familiar to him as the eternal worry lines that were etched across the brow of his gentle wife.

Sometimes game was so plentiful that Ephram could shoot and snare an abundance in just a day or two.  This time he had not been so fortunate. After six days of slowly circling the Shedd, Ephram was nearing home with nothing to show for the hunt but his wet clothing and missing vittles.

The hunt would end tonight for good or ill.  Tomorrow was the Sabbath, a day on which Ephram must be at home to minister to his family and join with them in worshipping the Lord.  Comfort would have the children scrubbed up, and she would set a sparse but respectable table from the provisions that remained in the cave at the back of their cabin. Their stocks were low, that was a fact, but God would provide.  He always did.

The road before Ephram was a mystery. At one time there had been a world beyond the Shedd. People crossed into the valley along ancient trails that clung to menacing ravines, an unsparing ruggedness that shaped their lives and steeled their faith. They raised their families, lived their lives, and said their good-byes as grown children and neighbors moved beyond the valley’s ridge and out into the expanding young nation.   Tinkers and pilgrims passed through bringing news from the outside that flowed among the homesteads as freely as the rippling waters of the Chance.

But that was before the soldiers came.  In the brief interlude of one awful night the Shedd Valley had become a world unto itself, devoid of the stream of humanity that had once been its lifeblood, leaving the Miller family isolated within the valley’s impenetrable strangeness.

The only crack in the invisible wall that shielded the last family of the valley from the world beyond was the road, a hardened pathway that had been torn through the underbrush and wilderness many years after the night of the soldiers by men riding strange machines and blaspheming like true minions of Satan. The road touched the rim of the valley for only a few feet, a feeble portal to what lay beyond, an unyielding temptation to those of waning faith.

Ephram had stepped out onto the hard road only a few times, feats of daring that he would never mention to Comfort.  The road was certainly the work of Satan, built to hasten the journey of godless souls as they rushed willfully into the flames of damnation.  Yet Ephram was curious. There were days when Satan’s powers of temptation were so strong and convincing that even a good man like him could be lulled into imaging that maybe there was more to life than his family and their little cabin on the banks of the Chance. The wicked road that meandered up against their world like the serpent approaching the Garden had pulled Ephram to the rim of the valley more than once, but the love of his family always led him back home.

Ephram’s lack of courage regarding the hard road was not shared by all of God’s creatures. It was this knowledge that had brought the backwoodsman to this spot in the pines, the place he often sought out when the hunt was bad.  Satan’s road had occasionally provided meat for the table, and Comfort did not have to know the source of every morsel that went into her stew pot.

Even through the dismal wet grayness Ephram could tell that dusk was starting to creep in on his lonesome lookout. This night he would not have to burrow beneath some rocky overhang like a frightened animal.  He would stand his post until the day’s last light had faded beyond the misty hills and taken with it his hopes for a successful hunt, and then the weary hunter would wend his way homeward, burdened only with his old rifle and an empty poke.  Ephram could hunt again after the Sabbath.

It was a gentle movement in the brush on the far side of the road that pulled Ephram from thoughts of home.  There, carefully stepping from the shadows, was a young doe, beautiful and solid, a creature of the first life. Ephram slipped his rifle from beneath the soaked horse blanket, leveled it across a small pine bough, and took aim.  As the deer obligingly stepped forward onto the road and into Ephram’s sights, the hunter brought his finger to the trigger and silently said a prayer for help from above.

The whine of the sports car careening along the rim of the valley was all but lost to the cold winds as they carried their sorrowful hymn of the coming winter through the pines, but Ephram could hear and he knew that the Lord had answered his prayer. The deer also sensed the intrusion and turned to run. However, no sooner had she started to bolt away than a large limb tore itself from the forest ceiling and plummeted to the ground in front of the startled animal.  The doe instinctively turned again and leaped out onto the highway directly into the path of the shiny little car.

The crash was a wonderment to Ephram.  He watched as the doe, frozen in panic, was swept up and over the car in a frenzy of tearing metal, breaking glass, and terrified screaming. The regal animal landed on the valley side of the road, neck broken, and with her soft dead eyes staring up toward Ephram’s rifle barrel and through his everlasting soul. The car skidded across the road and rolled down into the gully.  In the quiet, Ephram waited, his eyes intent upon the carnage below. He knew hunting as well as he knew the Lord.  Patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait, blessed are the meek…reassurances for the righteous.  God would provide.

There it was - a stirring, cautious at first, tentative, disbelieving.  Ever so slowly one who had been dead arose through the cold mists of redemption and stood before the hunter.  Ephram smiled.  “Praise God, “ he whispered.  “Praise God Almighty!”  And then he fired.

Comfort would set a fine table this Sabbath.

Holy Parasites

A couple of weeks ago I waxed bitter about Catholicism for several paragraphs, and now I am inspired to give the same attention to the Protestant arm of Christianity. Both groups appear to be fueled by the same inspiration, greed, but while Catholicism takes from the poor and needy to gild its cathedrals and stack gold in the Church’s vaults, Protestant thievery is often more personal. A few cases in point:

A televangelist in Georgia, Creflo Dollar, made the news last week by refusing to turn over financial documents from his World Changers Church to the US Senate Finance Committee. That committee is investigating several megachurches to see if they are violating their tax-exempt status by purchasing luxury items for their clergy. The Reverend Dollar lives in a 2.5 million dollar mansion in Georgia, has the use of an expensive Manhattan apartment, and drives a Rolls Royce that is owned by his church. It’s a small wonder that he doesn’t want the Feds nosing around in the accounts of his church.

A few weeks ago Oral Roberts University, an educational arm of Oral Roberts Ministries, was back in the news with allegations of university funds being misspent by ORU President Richard Roberts (Oral’s son) and his family. The allegations ranged from family members accepting expensive gifts from ministry members, to misusing their power to have university and ministry employees come to their home to do their daughter’s homework on a fairly regular basis. Roberts’ wife spent nearly forty thousand dollars at one store in a year on her personal wardrobe, and the family spent almost thirty thousand dollars to fly their daughter and some of her friends to the Bahamas for a senior trip. That trip was billed to the university as an “evangelistic function of the president.” Richard’s wife, a member of the University’s Board of Regents, had a penchant for texting male students late at night, and reportedly had cell phone bills in excess of $800 per month. (She is guilty, at the very least, of not shopping around for a better phone plan!) There was also an allegation that Mrs. Roberts had a senior maintenance employee fired so that he could be replaced by one of her young male friends. And then there was an allegation that Richard and the Missus had their home remodeled eleven times in fourteen years. Are you getting the picture?

Twenty years ago, Oral Roberts, the founder of ORU who has conversations with God, holed up in his Prayer Tower at ORU to extort cash from his followers. Roberts said that God told him to raise eight million dollars for ORU or he, God, would take Oral home, presumably to Heaven. Oral finally got his cash and was able to leave the Tower victorious, but not before Chicago columnist, Mike Royko, filleted and barbecued him almost daily. Royko noted that it was a wonderful opportunity for God to prove his existence by taking Oral. God didn’t pony up, but the suckers did.

Or how about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker? They built Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries into a multi-million dollar operation by religiously begging to the not-so-bright who write checks in the hope of eternal salvation. The Bakkers were in the process of building a religious theme park when Jim got caught with his pants down. In addition to being involved with in an extra-marital affair with a church employee, Jim was also found guilty of twenty-four counts of fraud and conspiracy. My favorite remembrance of this couple was when a reporter asked Tammy Faye why she wore such expensive jewelry, and the heavily painted muse replied, “God wouldn’t want me to wear junk.” No indeed.

But the religious charlatans that I enjoy most of all are the greedhead ministers who are also flamingly hypocritical. Jimmy Swaggart, Assemblies of God minister from backwater Louisiana, had the unbelievable gall to expose Jim Bakker for his sexual indiscretions. Swaggart referred to Bakker as a “cancer in the body of Christ.” Within months of that statement, photos surfaced showing Swaggart in a tryst with a prostitute. A few years later, Swaggart was caught in the company of another prostitute. Instead of confessing to his flock, he told them in flat terms that God had told him it was none of their business. His salary at the time was in the neighborhood of $350,000 per annum.

Another favorite of mine is Ted Haggard, a married father of five, who was head of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals. Haggard, who had been a strong proponent of anti-gay legislation, was exposed as a meth user who regularly purchased the services of a male prostitute.

What’s it’s all about? Are they in it for the money, or the sex, or the power? Does anyone believe these con men speak for God? Are they the way and the light, or just road hazards on the path to salvation?

God doesn’t want your cash. He and/or She wants your commitment to your family, your neighbors, and your planet. It makes far more sense to kneel by a tree to pray than to dress to the teeth and worship in a megachurch. The tree, after all, is a work of God.

"There are few things in this life more evil than a 'good' Christian." --Pa Rock

Boone

Boone is my older grandson. He is eight-years-old and in the third grade. He is a bright lad who can talk on almost any subject, and he is a spelling machine! He has become a regular at the county spelling bee.

Boone lives in West Plains, Missouri, where he has four adults who love and guide him: his mother and father (who are divorced but keep their difficulties off of him), and his maternal grandparents. All four are dedicated to making certain that he grows up healthy and happy.

Boone’s dad (my son, Nick) is a wonderful parent. He always has time for his son and truly enjoys being with him. They fish, camp, and rollick in the outdoors. Nick and Boone are the best of friends.

Boone calls his other grandfather “Pa,” so I became “Pa Rock,” a moniker that I wear with a great deal of pride. I wish that I lived closer to Boone so that I could be a bigger part of his life, and maybe someday that will happen. But for now I am very happy to know that he has so many good adults close by who are dedicated to helping him grow into a fine adult.

Hey Boone, if you are reading this, here are a couple of words for you to learn to spell. I will check you out on them over Christmas: Albuquerque (where we got off of the train and had the Cold Stone ice cream) and Chihuahua (a state in Mexico and the name of a small dog breed that comes from there). Big words, big guy! Much love – Pa Rock

Sebastian

My youngest grandson turned five months old this week. He is just leaving the infant stage and beginning to observe and grapple with the world around him. Soon he will be walking, and pulling things out of the cabinets, and mastering his universe. He is smart. All grandchildren are smart and beautiful. And he knows that I am somebody who plays a role in his life. There’s that twinkle of recognition in his eyes whenever I suddenly appear in his field of vision.

Tonight I was his babysitter for a few hours. He did his obligatory crying thing in an attempt to guilt his parents for not including him in their outing. After they were out of the door and out of earshot, however, he settled down for an evening of intermittent napping and listening to his Grandpa sing silly songs. When Mom and Dad came home a couple of hours later they found their little man asleep on the old man’s shoulder. We were bonding in slumber.

The little man is called Sebastian, and I am a very lucky Grandpa for getting to live so close to him.

The News Marketplace

A friend of mine recently suggested in response to one of my blog entries that my political views were developed from watching the three major networks. I readily admit to being an avid news consumer, but hardly any of the news that I take in comes from ABC, NBC, or CBS.

My primary source of news is NPR – National Public Radio. The radios in my apartment, car, and office are all tuned to the Phoenix NPR Affiliate, KJZZ. I like public radio because their newscasts cover a wide variety of topics that are given an in-depth analysis by the correspondents. The big three networks spend a very limited time on any news story, and those stories are filtered through the interests and prerogatives of corporate America. National Public Radio gives a much clearer perspective on what is happening in the world around us. And I am a good consumer of Public Radio – I donate.

When I do turn to the television for news, I have a strong preference for the newscasts on BBC America. BBC News is also carried on some National Public Radio Stations. Comparing same day news on BBC America with the news of a major American network is somewhat surreal. BBC will do in-depth journalism on stories with a worldwide impact (droughts, famines, and genocide) while their American cousins focus on crime, politics, and human interest pabulum.

My third choice for news is the Internet. No matter what a person’s preferences are in the news marketplace, the Internet has a site for everyone. I like Google News, Yahoo News, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times. And if I want to check out the action back in Missouri where my Dad lives, their newspapers are on-line also. News on the Internet is immediate, and it is easy to track a story from a variety of sources.

While my presidential choice, Barack Obama, may appear to be a bit mainstream to my friend, I didn’t arrive at that selection through listening to the corporate bullhorns of ABC, NBC, and CBS. The big boys in the corporate newsrooms don’t have the captive audiences that they once had. America is moving toward being able to truly choose among candidates, because we can now truly choose how we learn about them. The news monopoly is quickly going the way of the dinosaur and eight-track tapes.

The Transfer

by Pa Rock
Storyteller

              The shiny little BMW was weaving its way across the warehouse district like a mouse scuttling through a maze, unmindful of danger and hopeful that the cheese was only a few turns away.  The driver, angry and overbearing even in the dark silence, slowed at each cross street to read the signs.  The evening mist, Eleanor realized, was quickly swallowing the few landmarks that she had been able to commit to memory during her trial run the weekend before.  She was not one to frequent the seamier edges of the city, particularly at night.  Tonight however, Eleanor was on a mission, and she would not be deterred by fog, the felonious nature of the neighborhood, or the hostile indifference of her chain-smoking passenger.

            The boy, a belligerent youth of fifteen, focused on seeing how much smoke he could generate inside of the small car and how oblivious he could be toward his downshifting parent.  It was one of many humorless games they played with what seemed to be an ever-increasing frequency and intensity.   Eleanor finally conceded this contest of wills and rolled her window down a few inches to ventilate their close quarters.  Ethan, satisfied with the minor victory, rolled down his window and flipped the glowing cigarette butt at a couple of vagrants sitting on the curb nursing a bottle of rotgut.

            “That’s class – sharing with the unwashed masses.”

            “Shut up, Eleanor.”

            “You are such a thoughtless bastard.”

             “A tribute to truly bad breeding.”

            “Or truly bad timing.”  Eleanor allowed herself the briefest of smiles for that little zinger.    Somewhere out of the great cosmic playing field of life, she had just scored a point.

“Kiss my pretty white ass, Eleanor.”

            “Apparently that’s why we’re paying Consuela, your hooker in training.”  Another point.   Now she was smiling openly.

            “Paying crap wages to an undocumented domestic doesn’t exactly make you Mother Theresa.”  Ethan turned to face his mother before lobbing the shot that would even the score.  “Lucky for her Bax is a great tipper.”

            “Bastard.”

“Him or me?”

Eleanor reverted back to her comfort zone of ignoring Ethan.  It was a skill she had developed and polished through years and years of practice.

            “But I’m still her favorite.”  The boy added that personal insight with a smirk that his mother could feel, if not actually see, across the car’s darkened interior.

            Eleanor Windham decided to put their game on hold while she settled back into her search for Oriental Avenue.  While jumping the Beemer from block to block she ruminated on how her son had constantly endeavored to ruin her.  A lifetime ago she had been a bright and vivacious college coed with dreams of conquering the social register with her witty intellect and striking beauty.  She planned on living a life of unrestrained privilege amid sumptuous luxury. 

After college Eleanor had married wealth and power in the personage of Baxter Windham, heir to a national furniture chain and twenty years her senior.   The life of a trophy wife suited her well, but after several years of expensive pampering, she had finally relented to Bax’s incessant whining to produce an heir.  That momentary lapse in judgment resulted in nine months of nausea and vomiting, twenty-five hours of unforgiveable physical torture, and fifteen years of hell.  Well, perhaps not hell exactly.  Eleanor felt that parenting Ethan was more comparable to being hopelessly mired in the putrid sewage pit that boils just beneath the diseased and perpetually defecating bowels of hell!

Bax had lost interest in the boy years ago, and Eleanor had given it her best, more or less, for a while longer.  Her resolve to be an effective parent, while never being her primary focus in life, was eventually eroded completely away by endless streams of governesses and tutors fleeing the house in fear for their lives (or sanity), and the decreasing availability of private schools that were willing to put up with Ethan in order to pick the pockets of his emotionally detached parents.  

Eleanor had suffered tattooed and pierced strangers strolling casually through her home in varying states of sobriety and undress, throngs of therapists, police-a-plenty, and the occasional odd reporter.  Last month she had returned from Barbados and found that Ethan and one of his delinquent friends were repairing a motorcycle in his bedroom - and the month before that it had been sex stains on her lambskin leather sofa!  Life’s greatest truth, according to the martyr behind the wheel, was this:  motherhood sucks.  Eleanor had decided long ago to have those words engraved on her tombstone. 

Ethan, of course, was equally certain that life had crapped on him from the get-go.  He had entered the game by being expelled from the womb of a self-absorbed hyena, and was greeted with less motherly love than she would have shown to an eight-pound kidney stone.  Ethan had spent his whole life feeling alone and betrayed, as if some understood contract at the time of his birth had been discarded or sold to a management firm.  Every time that he needed a parent, some underpaid flunky was trotted out to deal with him and clean up the mess.  Living in a state of lavish abandonment had made it necessary and fairly easy for Ethan to establish life on his own terms.

Two things had happened when Ethan was twelve that clarified and hardened how he felt toward his mother.  Grandfather Windham, the only adult relative to ever openly seek Ethan’s approval and love, died unexpectedly at Thanksgiving – an event that seemed to make the greedy, self-serving Eleanor unusually thankful.  Ethan suffered through his loss in silence – for he would never give his heartless mother the satisfaction of seeing his pain.   

The loss of his grandfather was soon followed by a personal affront perpetrated by Eleanor, one that Ethan would never forgive.     Walter, the family collie and Ethan’s most dependable friend, consumed a glass of eggnog that someone inadvertently set on the floor at the Windham’s annual Christmas Eve party.  The eggnog had played hell with Walter’s bowels and he wound up relieving himself in a dark corner of the living room.  When Ethan woke up on Christmas Day, Walter was gone.  That had been the last time that Ethan cried, and he vowed that he would never cry again.

Eleanor won the day that Christmas, but in the years that followed Ethan always found an opportunity to leave her a gift “from Walter” at some socially inappropriate moment during the holidays - a smelly gag that resulted in him being sent to the analyst’s couch on multiple occasions.

Ethan and his mother were both proud and tended to give as good as they got.   Each treated Bax benignly, and he was content to stay out of their way.    The verbal exchanges between Ethan and Eleanor, however, were becoming less guarded and meaner.    They fed each other with escalating rhetoric and growing hostility, and both had a sense that the battleground was becoming infinitely more risky.

Eleanor had driven to Figueroa Brothers Warehouse the previous Sunday afternoon just to be sure that she could find it when the time came to bring Ethan.  But the sun had been out on Sunday.  Sunday it had all been clear – the sky, the problem, the solution, everything.  Tonight, with the fog rolling in off of the bay and mixing with the yellow haze of the depression-era street lamps, everything was swimming in distortion and creating an illusory world of misty peril.

“Shit!”   Eleanor cursed as she hit the brakes and swung the car into a sudden ninety-degree turn onto Oriental Avenue.  “You could be helping, you know!”

“Yeah.    And I could be laid back in the sauna smoking some fine ganja.”  Ethan pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit another one.  “Thanks for making this evening so special.”

“Five hundred dollars should be enough to keep you brain dead for a week.  Not a bad wage for a couple of hours work.”

“Stuff it, Eleanor.  You need me; you pay me – plain and simple.  And when the job is some cloak-and-dagger shit in an old warehouse after dark, you pay me well.”

Eleanor let the subject drop and refocused her attention on finding Figueroa Brothers Warehouse.  Arguing with Ethan was as pointless as cooking.  Hunger and disrespectful children were among many things that could be taken care of with a phone call and the right amount of cash.  Of course with Ethan the amount always seemed to be escalating. 

“A beer would be good.”  Ethan said as they passed a rundown tavern called the Ancient Mariner.  The front door was open, allowing the raucous noise and cigarette smoke to spill out onto the parking lot where a pair of large, roughneck patrons were busy hosing off a truck tire with their recycled beer. 

She ignored Ethan and the roadside attraction.   It was familiar territory now.  A bar, an abandoned garage without a front door, a dumpster displaying a colorful array of gang graffiti, a rusted car on blocks sitting in a patch of weeds, and then…the cheese!

            “Here we are,” Eleanor said, whipping the Beemer into an alley that bordered the north side of Figueroa Brothers.  As she shut off the car engine, Eleanor turned to her hostile son.  “You’re going to be unloading some very expensive antiques off of one truck onto another.  They have been purchased legally and are headed to our stores in Canada for resale.  There is nothing shady or dishonest going on, so you can just leave your attitude in the car and get the hell in there and do what I’m paying you to do!”

“Whatever,” the gangly youth said as he climbed out of the car.

“And if you have any pot, leave it in the car.  The Port Authority will be coming through with dogs.”

“Bloody hell!”  Ethan pulled a fat number out of his cigarette pack and tossed it onto the passenger seat.  “That better be here when I get back.”

Eleanor Windham stood beneath the bare bulb that lit the area around the side door to Figueroa Brothers.  She checked her face in a compact mirror and ran a hand through her hair.

“Expecting to meet up with one of your old johns?”  Ethan asked as he stepped past her and knocked loudly on the old metal door.

“Presentation is everything,” she replied smugly.  As Eleanor prepared to try her hand at knocking, the rusty door swung open.  A tall, silver-haired man dressed for a day at the office rather than a night at the warehouse stepped out to greet them.

“Mrs. Windham, you’re right on time.”

“Promptness is everything,” Ethan interjected before his mother could reply.

“Good evening, Mr. Hendershot.  This is my son, Ethan.  He is here for the transfer.”

Hendershot extended his hand to Ethan, but the boy stepped by him and into the dark warehouse.  “Get the lights.  I can’t see dick in here.”  Ethan flicked open his lighter and struck up a flame.  Directly in front of him stood a massive trailer with the words, “Hendershot Collections” painted on the side.  “Jesus, you could fit the mall in that thing.  We’re going to have to renegotiate my pay.”

Hendershot came up behind Ethan.  “Don’t worry.  It won’t take long.”  He blew out the light.  “No open flames allowed in this building.  Put your hand on my shoulder and follow me.”  Hendershot led the youth to the back of the trailer.  He lifted a heavy latch and opened the right panel.  The blackness within the trailer was total, leaving Ethan with the sense of staring into the mouth of a cave on a moonless night.  “Pull yourself up in there.   You’ll find a light bar two feet down on the left.”

Ethan turned toward the warehouse side door where he could still see his mother’s silhouette in the light.  Was she smiling, or was the dim light screwing with his brain?  “This bullshit is going to cost you plenty, Eleanor.”   That was a smile all right, one that she would pay for later.  Ethan placed the palms of his hands on the trailer bed and gracefully boosted himself into the dark chamber.  “Left wall?” he asked.

“Two feet back on the left, up high,” Hendershot replied.  As Ethan stepped into the trailer, Hendershot swiftly closed the door and dropped the latch back into place.  His evening’s work was done.

Twenty minutes later as Eleanor Windham left the warehouse district and slid the little Beemer onto the expressway, she fired up the torpedo that Ethan had so generously left behind.  The herb was exquisite, the smoke lacing through the petals of her flowering mind and out into the warm sea breeze that would carry it off to a better place, a lovely land where adults could congregate peacefully on lazy evenings and exchange clever pleasantries over cocktails and croquet, an idyllic world beyond the ferocity and stench of untamed youth.  Eleanor took another freedom toke and unleashed a mighty howl, a primal proclamation to the world that life, once again, belonged to her!

A Tale of Two Movies

Two notable movies were being shown at the same time in Springfield, MO, in the fall of 1966. Mike Nichols’ directorial debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was playing at the Gillioz Theatre, while the Swedish art film, Dear John, was being featured at the Tower Theatre. Both of these movies raised eyebrows due to their explicit content, yet one created a community firestorm and the other played out its engagement with hardly any public comment at all.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? portrayed an older couple (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) who were hosting a younger couple (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) for drinks and conversation. The drinks were plentiful, and the conversation, especially between Burton and Taylor, contained some of the strongest and most obscene language ever presented on an American movie screen up until that time. (Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis went on to win Oscars for their roles in the movie.)

Dear John was about a sailor and his brief affair with a local girl. Most of the film occurred in bed, and the nudity was gratuitous and ubiquitous. There was, however, no bad language in the movie.

So, given the choice between raunchy language or complete, rollicking nudity, which raised the hackles of conservative Springfieldians?

Surprisingly, at least to me, the community railed against Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and said nary a thing about Dear John. Springfield is home to several religiously oriented colleges, including one that graduated Jerry Falwell and another that was headed by John Ashcroft’s father for many years. Those schools and some local churches managed to get a picket line going outside of the Gillioz Theatre that stayed active the entire time that the film was playing. The picket line had a real impact on the theatre, drawing free attention to the film that brought the crowds scurrying in to buy tickets and see what all of the hullabaloo was about.

When that was happening I had just started working at the Tower. My boss, “Mac” MacDonald was furious at all of the attention that the protesters were garnering for the Gillioz, and he angrily claimed that their manager had struck a deal with some of the local religious leaders. But regardless of how much he fumed and flared, Mac was not able to get anyone fired up about Dear John. “It just wasn’t fair.” I remember him lamenting, “It just wasn’t fair at all.”

(For those who have ever pondered the question of when American cinema came of age, I heartily recommend the first two films that Mike Nichols directed: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Their power, clarity, and relevance haven’t faded in the ensuing forty years.)

The Ozark Theatre

My first “regular” job was as the projectionist the Ozark Theatre in my hometown of Noel, Missouri. The job consisted of five shows each weekend (Friday night, Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday afternoon and night), and if I remember correctly I made two dollars and fifty cents for each showing. I started doing that about the time I began high school and managed to hang onto that job until I left town to attend college.

The Ozark Theatre was a great place to work. I helped out at the concession stand before the show started and got to see who all of the couples were for that week. There was an outside balcony on the projection booth that allowed for monitoring everyone who was cruising Main Street. One of my predecessors had been thrown off of that balcony by an irate customer, but the reason for that ejection now escapes me.

One plus to working at the theatre was that I got to see all of the movies. A negative was that I got to see them all five times, whether I really wanted to or not! One time that the multiple showings had a serious impact on me was when we ran a movie on the life of Hank Williams, Sr, called Your Cheating Heart. When the movie started, I had no love at all for country music, but by the end of the fifth showing I had developed a real appreciation for Hank Williams unique songs and style. (Years later when I was introduced to Sheldon Williams – Hank III – at a political picnic in which his maternal grandfather was running for county office and working the crowd, I told the 11-year-old how much I liked his paternal grandfather’s music. That picnic was was on the banks of the Elk River in Noel.)

The projection booth was always too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. The summer heat could be alleviated somewhat by keeping the door to the balcony open, and even stepping out onto the balcony from time to time. My boss, Mildred “Ma” Cash always made sure that I had a soda and a box of popcorn at the ready during every show.

Friday evening I would haul the film cases upstairs to the projection booth. Each case contained three or four reels of 35 mm film. A normal movie would run around six reels, but some weeks we might be running a double feature which could mean lugging four heavy cases upstairs. Most weekends the presentation would also include a one-reel cartoon – a good one like those made by Walt Disney and Walter Lantz. If previews were included, I would have to splice them onto the cartoon or first reel of the film, and then remove them after the last showing on Sunday night. I would drag the film cases back downstairs after the Sunday night show, and sometime during the week a freight company would pick up the old movie and replace it with the new one.

The two projectors were World War II vintage. They got their light from a carbon arc reflecting off of a concave mirror. A full reel would last about eighteen minutes and it was necessary to constantly monitor the long carbon rods and the light on the screen, making adjustments as necessary. At the end of each reel cue marks would appear in the upper left corner of the film, alerting me to start the other projector and be ready to make a smooth transition. As soon as the next projector took over, I would have to rush around and drop the shutter on the machine that had just run out of film. The next step was to thread the upcoming reel in the projector that had just been turned off, and to replace its carbon rods if they had burned too low. One machine was always running and the other was always being prepared to run. It was a fairly complicated process that became second nature as the months and years rolled by.

My friend, Tom Anderson, and I acquired a recipe for homemade beer when I was a junior or senior in high school. The recipe called for the concoction to be placed under a heat lamp for several days. The main problem that we had to deal with was where to make this brew. Being bright lads, we hatched a plan to mix it in the projection booth one Sunday night after the show closed, and leave it there underneath a jerry-rigged heat lamp. We would then come in the following Friday before the show and bottle our beverage. What could be simpler than that? When we got there on Friday the boss’s daughter and her best friend were already there, and they were madder than the proverbial wet hens. The entire theatre smelled of our brew, and, although it proved to be essentially undrinkable, we had the smell right! We hauled the beer out, and opened every door trying desperately to air the building out before show time!

In the fall of 1966 I moved to Springfield, Missouri, to go to college, and I left the Ozark projectors in the capable hands of my best friend, James Carroll. Needing a part-time job to support myself in college, the first place that I looked for work was at the local theatres. There were four theatres in Springfield at that time. The Fox, Gillioz, and Landers theatres were downtown close to the square and were all owned by Fox. The Tower Theatre, closer to the edge of the city, was owned by Dickinson Company out of Kansas. Dickinson also owned the Ozark Theatre in Noel, so it wasn’t hard for me to get a job in their concession stand earning sixty-five cents an hour. Later I was promoted to the projection booth and a much healthier salary of ninety cents an hour.

James Carroll joined me as a projectionist at the Tower when he came to Springfield for college a couple of years later. The most significant difference between running projectors in Noel versus running them in Springfield, was the number of showings to which a projectionist might be subjected. In Springfield a movie could be held over indefinitely if it was drawing good crowds. James and I saw some movies way too many times!

James eventually went back to Noel and bought the Ozark Theatre. He and his wife, Patti, ran it for several years until it tragically burned to the ground one afternoon. My son, Nick, had the privilege of working the concession stand at that old theatre on its last night of operation.

There wasn’t much money in the theatre business, but to this day those job memories are some of my best and most satisfying.

To the Swine

To the swine who sat next to me at the theatre yesterday:

When I pay seven dollars to see a film and four dollars and twenty-five cents for an accompanying drink, I expect to be seated in relative comfort and have all of the drama confined to the screen. Imagine my disappointment when you rushed in as the movie was starting and plopped down almost in my lap. There I was, trapped next to you when the theatre was ninety percent empty.

The first thing I noticed was that you are a smoker. Your stink wafted over me from the first frame of the film through the closing credits. Buy a clue! Anytime you feel the urge to visit civilization, take a walk through a full service car wash first – and use the wax cycle! Don’t think that just because you like the odor of stale smoke that everyone else does too.

As I was finally beginning to focus on the movie, the seven-dollar movie, your wife came in with the eats. It was so considerate of her to discuss each and every item on her tray. And then there was all of that scintillating conversation that they two of you engaged in each time the scene changed on the screen. “Yep, that’s a dog all right. Yep, that dog’s dead. He sure is.” I don’t know how the Coen brothers managed to make that film without your insights.

Now for the issue of your wife’s cell phone. True, she came in too late to see the friendly reminder on the screen about being polite and turning off all electronic gizmos, and true, she may be short of common sense because she did, after all, marry you. But did she really have to sit there and answer the damned thing when it rang? Granted, she did get up and walk to the exit to talk, but she never stepped through the exit, and everyone in the theatre was treated to the details of her converstaion. And in the unlikely event that we didn’t hear it all, she came back to her seat and recited the entire call to you!

Do you remember that deranged serial killer in the movie? You might want to keep an eye out for him because we are in negotiations!

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country for Old Men, is a tough, gritty, blood-soaked tale of violent encounters and slow death in the hard land of southwest Texas. The time is 1980 and the old days of individual crimes are being swept aside by corporate, high tech drug dealers and big money flowing across the Mexican border. An aging sheriff gets drawn into this paradigm shift when his deputy is brutally murdered by a psychopath who is pursuing a suitcase of drug money. It is not a happy book, but it is a very, very absorbing read.

I read No Country for Old Men last year and was kicked in the gut by its brutality and power. This afternoon I took a chance and went to see the movie, knowing that its full impact could not be readily translated to film. The movie, after all, is never as good as the book. Well, not usually.

The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, wrote the screenplay and directed the film version of McCarthy’s book. They were true to his story, page for page, with film shots that were so suspenseful one might suspect that they were channeling Hitchcock. The actors, especially Tommy Lee Jones, the sheriff, and Tess Harper, his wife, were as hard and coarse as the land that defined their lives. If there was any make-up used in this movie, it wasn’t applied to them. Javier Barden was a soulless killer who pursued his prey for money or principle, and might decide whether to take a life on the flip of a coin. Josh Brolin found a suitcase full of money at a drug deal gone bad, and had just enough machismo to think that he could get away with keeping it. Woody Harrelson also had a few good scenes in the movie as he tried to neutralize the psychopath and reclaim the drug money. All of these characters inter-played deftly and with a shifting perspective that kept the intensity and punch of the novel and brought it seamlessly to the screen.

Cormac McCarthy’s book is given life by the Coen’s vision. It is not a happy book, and not a happy movie – just an unvarnished view of warm blood oozing into a hard land. No Country for Old Men is worth a visit in either medium.