“See here, what’s the big idea fella.” Thomas said using the corny voice of a bad thirties actor. He had finally arrived from Dell City and found Damini on her second glass of red wine in the company of Barry enjoying a glass of ice water. Thomas looked at once relieved and yet harried. He gave Damini a kiss. “The Sheriff had a lot of fun with me tonight.” Sabrina, the thoroughly professional barkeep the Aspen Grove paid handsomely to retain, raised her eyebrows to Thomas. “I’ll have a scotch rocks, please. Whatever’s on the rail is fine.” He positioned a stool back from the bar a bit but between Damini and Barry. “So what’s the topic, gang. How Damini tried giving me the slip in the middle of nowhere?”
She grabbed Thomas’ arm. “Wait. Before you go off on me. I’m sorry. Really sorry. I went nuts. I know, I know.” She let go of his arm. “I just flipped out, Thomas, and it was a bad thing to do.”
“On any number of levels.”
“No question.”
“So what do you think bar man?”
Barry felt instantly out of place. “I think you’re entitled to flip your wig, Dr. Singh. So are you Thomas. Everyone should flip their wig.”
Thomas drink arrived and he took a long pull from it almost finishing it. “I couldn’t agree more, my man. I just wish I had some warning. But,” he shrugged, “then I guess it wouldn’t really be a flipping of the wig situation, right?” He jiggled his glass making the ice dance. “The Troopers up here seem to know a lot about people running into the woods. It didn’t seem to really surprise them that much for some odd reason.”
Barry turned to the bar and pointed to his glass. “Sabrina, can I have another water?” He twisted back to the couple. “Well, you have to be gone a lot longer than an hour or two before anybody gets really bothered.” Sabrina gunned water into his glass and set it back down. “People wander off all the time.”
“So I gather.” Thomas finished his scotch.
Damini put her hand on Thomas’ back and rubbed up and down. “I’m glad to see you taking this with some humor. It must have been quite a shock watching me dash off into the unknown. But I want you to know something. It didn’t have anything to do with you. It was all about me.”
“Well, for some reason, that isn’t a great comfort.” He set his glass on the bar and pointed to it while looking expectantly at Sabrina. “If it was me or us then I could have a part to play in fixing whatever made you lose your wig.”
Barry added quickly, “Flip your wig. Not lose. Very fine distinction.”
“Apparently.”
“I’m not going to take the job.” She more or less blurted this non sequitur much to the surprise of her companions.
Silence surrounded the group as Damini looked between Thomas and Barry and back at Thomas. Sabrina delivered a fresh scotch and Thomas drank the entire contents in two gulps. He placed the glass back on the bar top and sighed. “Thank goodness.” He looked at Barry, then back at Damini. “No offense, but you’d be miserable.”
Barry looked at his water glass and wondered why she should take offense, then realized he meant him. Yet to him, the doctor had wised up and now exhibited sense. Life in this corner of America takes a particular lack of professional desire and creativity, he felt, and someone like Damini lacked neither. “It makes sense to me.”
“Really?” She fiddled with her wine glass. “I don’t know if it does to me. It feels like an entrenchment, a lack of vision on my part, no pun intended.”
Thomas jiggled the ice around in his glass. “I think it’s brave.”
“Brave?” Damini cocked her head. “Why do you say that?”“Because you have decided to stay the course. Stay on the incredible career arc you have going. I think that dropping out of that would have been, I don’t know, predictable? Making a dramatic change would have been a cliché. Like something you read about in some sort of ironic article in Forbes.” Thomas tipped his glass up and let an ice cube go into his mouth.
Barry could not decide if he agreed with Thomas’ assessment. He did think Dr. Singh becoming the Dell County Health Director would have been not only odd, but a downright waste of medical and administrative skill. “I’m a bit more objective in some respects and I have to say, based on just the little I know of your qualifications Dr. Singh, that coming up here and taking this on would be a flat out waste. I hate being so negative about home here, but really, we’d drive you off pretty effectively and then where would you be?”
Damini frowned. “Are you saying I would not be capable of handling the political complexities of the County? Unable to fit nicely into the social fabric?”
Thomas released a huffy chuckle. “Gosh, I can’t see how you couldn’t fit into the fabric.”
“Hey, watch it. I’m from here, I have the authority to be critical.” Barry turned away from the group and addressed Sabrina. “How ‘bout a Leinies?”
Sabrina produced a mug and flipped the tap. “Bix how’d you end up with a night off anyway?”
“It sort of happened. I just left. A friend in need. Y’know?”
“I’m sure Ralphie is an even bigger fan of you now.”
Barry waved at her as she set the mug down. “He’ll be fine. He’s done Hockey Night plenty of times.”
Sabrina left the group to work on a late order from the dining room.
Damini leaned in. “Barry, does everyone know you in this County?”
“Everyone knows everybody. There’s no six degrees of separation here. It’s two degrees of separation.” He took a sip of beer. “I have either gone to school with, played hockey with or served drinks to just about everyone in Dell County.”
Thomas added, “maybe you should be Health Director.”
They all fell silent not knowing what direction to take the moment. Barry looked out the window into the fuzzy darkness. “Damini. Have you ever thought about writing?”
“What do you mean, writing?”
“Like a novel or something. Maybe something about your big family or you know, I mean, you have a lot of something to say.”
Damini briefly looked startled, then genuinely impressed with the suggestion. “What makes you think I could do such a thing?” She asked in an unconvincingly naive tone.
Thomas looked at Barry. “I’ve never thought of that before, but it seems to make some sense.”
Barry shrugged. “You’re an interesting character, Dr. Strommen-Singh. There’s a lot of material simply at arms length or closer.”
Thomas seemed to be calculating as he rubbed his chin, then added, “it’s a story that would do well in the Anglo chick lit segment as well as within the exploding Indian middle class.”
Damini looked at him. “Leave it to you, Thomas, to jump to the commercial implications of such an outlandish idea.”
Barry turned back from the window. “Is it that outlandish?”
Damini looked at him, but did not answer.
Thomas wiggled his glass to make the ice dance around. “Commercial implications aside, you could work out a pretty good story line in about fifteen minutes. Maybe take your experiences visiting your grandfather in India. Take that alone and I bet you could tell a good story.”
Damini regarded Thomas with a look somewhere caught between amusement and affection.
“Listen to you go. So supportive of giving me a new project.”
Thomas looked at her, then at Barry, than back at her. “It’s a great idea. You could do it and I think really enjoy it.”
“When do you propose I accomplish this novel writing?”
“Take a sabbatical. We’ll move to Ujjain and you’ll write.”
“We? And you’ll do what?”
“What I do now. What I planned to do here. Ujjain is fully wired and I am sure Blackberry® friendly.”
“You are talking about complete nonsense, Thomas.”
“Am I? How so?”
Barry took a long drink of his beer while listening to the other two. They bickered about practical, logical considerations, careers and families. As he drank he rolled his eyes at Sabrina who was shoveling crushed ice into a half dozen margarita glasses. She in turn flashed a knowing smile and went about her business. Barry had no idea when he uttered his off-the-cuff idea he would set off such a serious discussion. It obviously struck a particular chord with the two visitors. He turned his head to the Damini and Thomas. “I didn’t realize I would be taken so seriously.”
They stopped and looked at him.
“It’s a helluva idea.” Thomas repeated. “We always take them seriously. You have to. I think Damini is at the right moment in her life to do something like this. At least, explore it a little. Talk to some people.” He looked at her. “Talk to your father about it. He’s written books.”
Damini nodded. “A textbook on literary criticism, yes. Novels, no.”
“He’d be supportive.”
Damini shrugged. “Naturally. He can’t be anything other than supportive.” She rubbed her arms as though suddenly chilled. “It’s such a convenient idea at the moment. A contrivance.”
Barry sighed. “Sorry about being contrived. I’ll have to work on that.”
“The Indian-American doctor doesn’t take the job, quits her old one, moves back to the homeland…” She made quotation marks in the air. “…and writes a best-seller.”
“An Oprah pick.” Thomas added.
“A Pulitzer Prize winner.” Offered Barry.
Damini smiled. “A Pulitzer Prize I could turn down.”
Loon Nest: Chapter Twelve
Barry answered the phone, plugging his other ear to block out the sound of the crowd now gathered to watch the hockey. “Loon Nest.”
“Bix? It’s Danny. Is Stan Cusamano there? I thought I better tell him about this deer over at my Granny’s place. Just took a look and I think it might be CWD. I’m about to shoot the durn thing. Don’t want no hassles with Stan, though.”
Barry was surprised by this orderly approach to rule keeping on the part of a Witsson. He scanned the crowd and spotted Stan, eyes glued on his wife, Sheryl. “Yep, he’s here. I’ll go get him.
“Hey, Bix. The doctor is here at Granny’s. Let me step into the office.” Danny went down the hall and into the bathroom. “Y’know the one you were talking about. Oh. Get this. She came walking out of the woods to the door. No shoes. Says she had an argument with the boyfriend.” Granny wants us to take her over to the Grove.
Barry found this information downright conspiratorial and gave him a nonspecific troublesome feeling. “I’m getting Stan to the phone now, Danny. Hang on there.”
Barry went and retrieved Stan, bringing him over to the end of the bar so he could take the phone without being in the way. He ducked under the cord and the bar and slipped by Ralphie who was washing glasses. There was something disquieting about the fact that Damini had appeared on Edith’s doorstep and would soon be in the transport of Danny and Eddie Witsson. The witless stoner brothers who were sons of his old junior hockey coach. He knew what they were capable of when not in a rare coherent moment. Looking down the bar, he noticed Stan was still talking so he sauntered by Ralphie and back down to the end of the bar.
“No, no, Danny. You can’t do that neither. Oh, you betcha, there’ll be hell to pay. We need to see it. Anytime you think you got a deer with any TSE’s we need to see it. Yup, you betcha. Nope. Don’t shoot it. Yup.” Stan gave Barry a look, then closed his eyes as he continued to listen. “Okay then. Fine. Yup. Okay.” Barry motioned he wanted to speak to Danny after Stan was done trying to reason. “Say there, Danny. Bix wants to talk to you. Yup. Me and the wife. Yup. See you then. Okay. Here he is.” Stan covered the phone’s mouthpiece and thrust it towards Barry. “Damn fool thinks he has a deer with an advanced case of Chronic Wasting Disease and he wanted to know if he could just kill it and bury it.”
Barry took the phone. “Say there, Danny. Sounds like you stumbled on to something with that deer.”
“Fucking Stan won’t let me kill it. Now he’s coming down to look it over. They might have to test it and all. Don’t sound humane to me. I knew I shouldn’t have bothered.”
“You did the right thing by calling. That’s important shit.” Barry noticed Stan and his wife making their way to the exit. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say or do, but he just felt concerned and needed to think. “Listen, I’m going to come over too. I’ll take the doctor back over to the Grove. Her boyfriend must be freaking out.”
“I bet. She wanted to call the troopers, but that kind of makes me, uh, nervous. It’s bad enough now Stan is bringing his self down here.”
“Danny, let me talk with her.”
“Okay. Man, I’m telling you.” Barry could hear him leaving the bathroom and going up the hall. “Why does everything have to be so damn complicated?” Some muffled voices and fumbling could be heard, before Damini came on the line with a cheery, “Hello? Barry?”
“Hey, Dr. Singh. Are you doing okay?”
“I’m really only concerned for Thomas. I sort of, what'’ the best way of saying it, um, lost it?"
“I’ll call the State Police, but just don’t bother saying anything to Stan about that. He’s nervous around them. Also, I’m coming over there to pick you up. I really don’t think Danny and Eddie are, uh, you know, um, capable ambassadors?” He dispensed a hushed laugh and then continued. “I’ll be down there in a few minutes.” He looked at Ralphie who was, as usual, ignoring him.
“That’s really super kind. I mean, these boys seem very nice to me. And Edith couldn’t be any nicer company.”
Barry did not listen to her. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Probably right behind the guy from DNR. Be on the look out for Stan. Big guy. Lots of hair.”
“All right. So you’ll call, the…I mean, okay. I’ll see you.”
Barry hung up and immediately dialed the District Headquarters for the State Police at Thief River Falls. He found out from Trooper Geering (Barry’s old high school line mate) that Dr. Singh’s companion was at the County Sheriff’s office in Dell City. He had been asking for some sort of aerial search for his girlfriend. Barry let him know that Dr. Singh had been found and that she was heading back to the Aspen Grove. Trooper Geering said that they’d let Wally and his boys know.
Barry asked or rather told Ralphie that he had to go run an errand and that he’d be back before the end of the second period. He slipped out the back door, jogged down the sandy road to his car and hopped in. Hoping the old Ford Tempo would awaken he twisted the key in the ignition and it thankfully, mercifully rumbled to a start. Barry ran the windshield wipers to sweep off the pine needles and aspen leaves accumulated from a week of sitting still. As he rolled up the drive and passed the Loon Nest, he began his customary squint in order to bring everything in just enough focus so he could drive with a modest level of safety.
On the way down to Edith Witsson’s house he wondered what he would say to Dr. Singh on the fifteen minute drive over to the Aspen Grove. “Dr. Singh, I admire you and think you will be an excellent Health Director.” He laughed at himself. What was he doing leaving the bar when it was so busy and why did he not want to trust that Danny and Eddie could get Damini home in one piece? He nodded and said out loud, “the last part is obvious, but the first question isn’t.”
Attracted to her, but in an unspecified way, he simply wanted to spend time in the doctor’s company. It felt almost like a student-teacher or maybe brother-sister thing. As he squinted harder to bring a road junction into plainer view, it struck him that he had not asked her any advice as to his own visual impairment. The last word from the U on the subject made it clear nothing could be done about the situation. But now he wondered if ten years on medical advancement had caught up. His last visit to the “eye man” in Dell City culminated in the inevitable strengthening of the prescription and a recommendation that he go down to the cities and try the University again. The “eye man” named a couple of new ways they could map what’s going on with the entire visual apparatus, ultra sophisticated means to determine precisely the reasons and what could be done. Barry worried that this curiosity would over ride any other emotions he had toward Damini.
He turned down the County road leading to Edith’s place and realized his previous thoughts made little sense, because she struck him from the very first time she came into the Loon Nest, before he knew anything about her. Barry continued on for several miles squinting and admonishing his contemplation of asking for medical advice. He decided to call the University himself to find out if they could give him a complete look. The one piece of “Eye Man” advice he decided might be appropriate would be to inquire about Medicaid coverage with this sort of thing. He felt certain his very low income would qualify him for something. It was too late to ask the U for help based on any NCAA guidelines for sports related injuries familiar to him. At the time, through a loop hole, his whack in the head did not meet the catastrophic injury guidelines so once his financial aid was up at the end of that school year, they would not have been compelled to run tests if they existed then. The thought always unsettled him even now some ten years on. He rubbed his chin and wondered about that.
Turning into Edith’s road, the Tempo plunged into the dark forest, a scene straight from a Grimm Brothers story. He kept his eyes glued to the dirt road as it gently wormed back amongst the birch and spindly white pine. When he came out into the clearing, his headlights caught Danny, Eddie and Stan lifting the deer into the back of Stan’s DNR truck, Mrs. Cusamano stood out on the front stoop with Edith and Damini. Barry thought the tableau looked strikingly surreal.
He got out, leaving the car to idle with its characteristic click clack of worn valve lifters. Barry walked over to the three spectators. “Dear me, Edith. What are you feeding your friends these days?”
“Oh, Bix.” She waved at him.
He looked at Damini. “What do you make of all this Dr. Singh? Sure you’re up to living here with such things going on?”
She made a strange face and Barry didn’t know what it meant. “It was sure nice of you to come out and take me back to the resort.” She stepped off the stoop and stood beside him.
“Did you reach Thomas?”
“I spoke to a person who, you know, will be speaking to him.” He laughed at the silly secretive nature of the dialogue. “I think he will get back to the resort, you know, just after you, because of where he is.” They started to walk to the clicking Tempo. Barry looked back at Edith. “Thanks for taking care of the doctor Edith.”
“If he doesn’t get lost.” She turned and waved to Edith before getting into the car. Barry ran around and jumped in. “She is quite amazing, living here at her age.”
“Edith? She’s tough as nails.”
“Her husband knew my father.”
“That’s really odd.” He eased the car into reverse. “Now that is a coincidence.” He backed up and started out into the dark tunnel formed by the woods, heading back to the county road round various lakes and bogs. Barry squinted mightily so as not to make an error in front of the doctor.
“Barry do you want me to drive? It’s okay, you know. Someone with your advanced myopia shouldn’t be driving at night and probably shouldn’t be driving at all.”
“Thanks for not being blunt about how blind I am.”
“Sorry.” She watched his eyes stay glued to the road. In his concentration a depth of spirit seemed to exist, which matched up keenly with his casual intellect. “Has your sight been this way your whole life or is it a recent degeneration?”
“I could always see very well. It helped me become kind of a local star on the hockey team. I could always see the game so well. See the puck no matter what. But I took a nasty shot in practice when I was playing at the U.” He glanced over to her. “A freak thing. We were just screwing around after practice and we weren’t wearing our hats.”
“Hats?”
“Helmets.”
“Ah. But didn’t they run a scan and find a fracture? This sort of thing…”
“It was pretty long ago. Ten years. I had a Cat scan thing and a whole bunch of X-Rays, but the consensus was there wasn’t anything they could do for me.” Barry suddenly felt uncomfortable and nervous about talking about exactly what he had imagined talking about with Dr. Singh.
“But the Eye Man in Dell City told me to go back in for new tests.”
“The Eye Man?”
“Dr. Drummager. We call him the Eye Man. He thinks it’s funny. Anyway, I can’t afford to even think about this sort of thing.”
“Have you looked into Medicaid on this? You may qualify, may be pleasantly surprised at what the Federal and State Governments can do for you if you’re on the lower part of the economic scale. I think you might want to pay particular attention to MHCP guidelines on radiology and screenings.”
“Wow, listen to you. Very bureaucratic, Dr. Singh.”
“It’s what I do, Barry.”
They sat in silence as Barry pulled on to the road and worked the Tempo up to something resembling highway speed. "So I told the Statees up at Thief River to tell your friend that you’re heading back to the resort. He’s in Dell City at Wally’s, um, I, the Sheriff’s office. Guess he was pretty frantic.”
She looked at her hands. “I know exactly how he was.”
“So what happened anyway? How did you really end up at Edith Witssons?”
She looked out the window. “I went a bit mad, I guess is the only way of summing it up. We had hit a deer. Or at least we thought we did. I don’t know after that. I got out. Thomas got out. Or the other way around. Then I was standing out there in the quiet. Just listening to the wind in the trees. Then the proverbial snap in my brain and I was off, running like an Olympic sprinter.” She looked at him and half smiled. “Racing through the woods while my head just went and crashed out. A blue screen. You know, like on a computer.”
“Stress?” Barry offered as a way to give a moment in the midst of her monologue.
“Probably something like that. Nice one Dr. Barry. Yes. But as I ran, I felt for a moment I was running outside myself. I heard my Grandfather speaking. In fact, it was a conversation.”
“Had you just spoken to him? Maybe you were replaying…”
“He passed away my second year of medical school. Almost exactly twenty years ago.”
Barry looked over to her. “I know how this is going to sound, but I have to say it anyway. There is no way you were in your second year of medical school twenty years ago unless you went to a different type of sixth grade than I did.”
“That’s very charming of you to say. Quite silly as well.”
“Very true. I normally don’t say stuff like that, but really. You look very young to be so…”
Barry couldn’t complete the statement. “Anyway, so you were hoofin’ it through the
Witsson’s acreage talking to your dead grandfather…”
“And he said some things to me that made a lot of sense. You know? I mean, they were like obvious statements that apparently I have been too freaked out to even consider or say to myself. So I needed this device, this phantom voice.”
“Impressive. You have your own literary devices to use. Cool.” Barry thought for a moment.
“I sort of think we all do to a certain extent, come to think of it. Like, I use Megan as a, oh, what’s it called, a sounding board? Is that right? Only she doesn’t take any of my shit seriously.”
“You don’t think so? Why do you say that?” “Believe me. I know.”
“Of course. I imagine you’ve known her a long time. Everyone has ways of dealing with such proximity.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, like with me and Thomas. The patterns are set and we know each other’s arguments and ways of dealing with various things. So with this constant level of proximity we genuinely feel we know each other.” She wiped her window slowly with her index finger. “But it’s a pantomime. A facsimile of intimacy. Well, sometimes anyway.”
“What are you saying, then?”
“Maybe Megan does take your shit seriously. I think, from my limited exposure to you both, that she cares a great deal for you.”
“That’s weird.”
“Is it?”
“It’s also a big fat cliché.”
“Maybe so.” They drove on in silence with Barry squinting his way to the Aspen Grove turn off and Damini pondering Thomas and the amusing lecture she would undoubtedly receive as soon as he arrived.
He parked by her door and in a courtly manner befitting a big city limousine driver, Barry jumped out of the Tempo and ran around to open Damini’s door. He escorted her up the walk to the suite. “I hope Thomas goes easy on you, Dr. Singh.”
She stopped short of the door and turned to Barry. “Would you like to have a drink in the bar with me?”
Barry instantly felt tremendous heat. “Well I better, um, you know, I should get back to the Loon Nest. I. Well.”
“I just realized I don’t have my key card so I am going to have to go over to the main lodge and wait.”
“Right. Well, I’d like to keep you company, but I need to head back over. You know?”
“I understand.” She stepped to him, went up on her tip toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You have been extremely kind tonight. Retrieving me from the strange scene at Edith’s, listening to me talk about hearing voices.” She went by him, moving toward the walkway leading to the lodge. “Please check into having a series of scans. You’re going to want to ask for something much better than a CAT scan. Even better than a PET scan.” She moved away down the walk nervously continuing to chatter. “My instinct tells me that your High Level Myopia may be unrelated to the knock you took on the ice.” She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Listen to me will you?” She tossed her hair a little and began to back further down the walk. “Check into something called a Functional MRI paired with a MEG scan of the visual cortex. It’s the best look we can get of you these days. Okay, I’ll stop. Really. Go now, before I start examining you.”
Barry looked at the idling, clicking, ticking, clacking Tempo, then back at Damini who was beneath an overhead light, a halo of moths flitting about her. He found her sudden discomfort, the undeserving and possibly uncharacteristic display of nerves endearing. She was an accomplished professional woman who did not know how to say goodbye and thanks. Perhaps she did not like the lack of control, but judging by the genial expression on her face, the run in the woods had done her a vast amount of good. She seemed more open. Barry leaned in the window of the car and shut it off, then straightened up. “Let me buy you a glass of wine.”
“Ah ha! My theory of sporting injury as red herring caught your attention.”
He walked towards her. “It’s not that. In fact, I don’t want to hear anything else about vision.”
“But...”
“Let’s talk about your grandfather some more.”
“Bix? It’s Danny. Is Stan Cusamano there? I thought I better tell him about this deer over at my Granny’s place. Just took a look and I think it might be CWD. I’m about to shoot the durn thing. Don’t want no hassles with Stan, though.”
Barry was surprised by this orderly approach to rule keeping on the part of a Witsson. He scanned the crowd and spotted Stan, eyes glued on his wife, Sheryl. “Yep, he’s here. I’ll go get him.
“Hey, Bix. The doctor is here at Granny’s. Let me step into the office.” Danny went down the hall and into the bathroom. “Y’know the one you were talking about. Oh. Get this. She came walking out of the woods to the door. No shoes. Says she had an argument with the boyfriend.” Granny wants us to take her over to the Grove.
Barry found this information downright conspiratorial and gave him a nonspecific troublesome feeling. “I’m getting Stan to the phone now, Danny. Hang on there.”
Barry went and retrieved Stan, bringing him over to the end of the bar so he could take the phone without being in the way. He ducked under the cord and the bar and slipped by Ralphie who was washing glasses. There was something disquieting about the fact that Damini had appeared on Edith’s doorstep and would soon be in the transport of Danny and Eddie Witsson. The witless stoner brothers who were sons of his old junior hockey coach. He knew what they were capable of when not in a rare coherent moment. Looking down the bar, he noticed Stan was still talking so he sauntered by Ralphie and back down to the end of the bar.
“No, no, Danny. You can’t do that neither. Oh, you betcha, there’ll be hell to pay. We need to see it. Anytime you think you got a deer with any TSE’s we need to see it. Yup, you betcha. Nope. Don’t shoot it. Yup.” Stan gave Barry a look, then closed his eyes as he continued to listen. “Okay then. Fine. Yup. Okay.” Barry motioned he wanted to speak to Danny after Stan was done trying to reason. “Say there, Danny. Bix wants to talk to you. Yup. Me and the wife. Yup. See you then. Okay. Here he is.” Stan covered the phone’s mouthpiece and thrust it towards Barry. “Damn fool thinks he has a deer with an advanced case of Chronic Wasting Disease and he wanted to know if he could just kill it and bury it.”
Barry took the phone. “Say there, Danny. Sounds like you stumbled on to something with that deer.”
“Fucking Stan won’t let me kill it. Now he’s coming down to look it over. They might have to test it and all. Don’t sound humane to me. I knew I shouldn’t have bothered.”
“You did the right thing by calling. That’s important shit.” Barry noticed Stan and his wife making their way to the exit. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say or do, but he just felt concerned and needed to think. “Listen, I’m going to come over too. I’ll take the doctor back over to the Grove. Her boyfriend must be freaking out.”
“I bet. She wanted to call the troopers, but that kind of makes me, uh, nervous. It’s bad enough now Stan is bringing his self down here.”
“Danny, let me talk with her.”
“Okay. Man, I’m telling you.” Barry could hear him leaving the bathroom and going up the hall. “Why does everything have to be so damn complicated?” Some muffled voices and fumbling could be heard, before Damini came on the line with a cheery, “Hello? Barry?”
“Hey, Dr. Singh. Are you doing okay?”
“I’m really only concerned for Thomas. I sort of, what'’ the best way of saying it, um, lost it?"
“I’ll call the State Police, but just don’t bother saying anything to Stan about that. He’s nervous around them. Also, I’m coming over there to pick you up. I really don’t think Danny and Eddie are, uh, you know, um, capable ambassadors?” He dispensed a hushed laugh and then continued. “I’ll be down there in a few minutes.” He looked at Ralphie who was, as usual, ignoring him.
“That’s really super kind. I mean, these boys seem very nice to me. And Edith couldn’t be any nicer company.”
Barry did not listen to her. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Probably right behind the guy from DNR. Be on the look out for Stan. Big guy. Lots of hair.”
“All right. So you’ll call, the…I mean, okay. I’ll see you.”
Barry hung up and immediately dialed the District Headquarters for the State Police at Thief River Falls. He found out from Trooper Geering (Barry’s old high school line mate) that Dr. Singh’s companion was at the County Sheriff’s office in Dell City. He had been asking for some sort of aerial search for his girlfriend. Barry let him know that Dr. Singh had been found and that she was heading back to the Aspen Grove. Trooper Geering said that they’d let Wally and his boys know.
Barry asked or rather told Ralphie that he had to go run an errand and that he’d be back before the end of the second period. He slipped out the back door, jogged down the sandy road to his car and hopped in. Hoping the old Ford Tempo would awaken he twisted the key in the ignition and it thankfully, mercifully rumbled to a start. Barry ran the windshield wipers to sweep off the pine needles and aspen leaves accumulated from a week of sitting still. As he rolled up the drive and passed the Loon Nest, he began his customary squint in order to bring everything in just enough focus so he could drive with a modest level of safety.
On the way down to Edith Witsson’s house he wondered what he would say to Dr. Singh on the fifteen minute drive over to the Aspen Grove. “Dr. Singh, I admire you and think you will be an excellent Health Director.” He laughed at himself. What was he doing leaving the bar when it was so busy and why did he not want to trust that Danny and Eddie could get Damini home in one piece? He nodded and said out loud, “the last part is obvious, but the first question isn’t.”
Attracted to her, but in an unspecified way, he simply wanted to spend time in the doctor’s company. It felt almost like a student-teacher or maybe brother-sister thing. As he squinted harder to bring a road junction into plainer view, it struck him that he had not asked her any advice as to his own visual impairment. The last word from the U on the subject made it clear nothing could be done about the situation. But now he wondered if ten years on medical advancement had caught up. His last visit to the “eye man” in Dell City culminated in the inevitable strengthening of the prescription and a recommendation that he go down to the cities and try the University again. The “eye man” named a couple of new ways they could map what’s going on with the entire visual apparatus, ultra sophisticated means to determine precisely the reasons and what could be done. Barry worried that this curiosity would over ride any other emotions he had toward Damini.
He turned down the County road leading to Edith’s place and realized his previous thoughts made little sense, because she struck him from the very first time she came into the Loon Nest, before he knew anything about her. Barry continued on for several miles squinting and admonishing his contemplation of asking for medical advice. He decided to call the University himself to find out if they could give him a complete look. The one piece of “Eye Man” advice he decided might be appropriate would be to inquire about Medicaid coverage with this sort of thing. He felt certain his very low income would qualify him for something. It was too late to ask the U for help based on any NCAA guidelines for sports related injuries familiar to him. At the time, through a loop hole, his whack in the head did not meet the catastrophic injury guidelines so once his financial aid was up at the end of that school year, they would not have been compelled to run tests if they existed then. The thought always unsettled him even now some ten years on. He rubbed his chin and wondered about that.
Turning into Edith’s road, the Tempo plunged into the dark forest, a scene straight from a Grimm Brothers story. He kept his eyes glued to the dirt road as it gently wormed back amongst the birch and spindly white pine. When he came out into the clearing, his headlights caught Danny, Eddie and Stan lifting the deer into the back of Stan’s DNR truck, Mrs. Cusamano stood out on the front stoop with Edith and Damini. Barry thought the tableau looked strikingly surreal.
He got out, leaving the car to idle with its characteristic click clack of worn valve lifters. Barry walked over to the three spectators. “Dear me, Edith. What are you feeding your friends these days?”
“Oh, Bix.” She waved at him.
He looked at Damini. “What do you make of all this Dr. Singh? Sure you’re up to living here with such things going on?”
She made a strange face and Barry didn’t know what it meant. “It was sure nice of you to come out and take me back to the resort.” She stepped off the stoop and stood beside him.
“Did you reach Thomas?”
“I spoke to a person who, you know, will be speaking to him.” He laughed at the silly secretive nature of the dialogue. “I think he will get back to the resort, you know, just after you, because of where he is.” They started to walk to the clicking Tempo. Barry looked back at Edith. “Thanks for taking care of the doctor Edith.”
“If he doesn’t get lost.” She turned and waved to Edith before getting into the car. Barry ran around and jumped in. “She is quite amazing, living here at her age.”
“Edith? She’s tough as nails.”
“Her husband knew my father.”
“That’s really odd.” He eased the car into reverse. “Now that is a coincidence.” He backed up and started out into the dark tunnel formed by the woods, heading back to the county road round various lakes and bogs. Barry squinted mightily so as not to make an error in front of the doctor.
“Barry do you want me to drive? It’s okay, you know. Someone with your advanced myopia shouldn’t be driving at night and probably shouldn’t be driving at all.”
“Thanks for not being blunt about how blind I am.”
“Sorry.” She watched his eyes stay glued to the road. In his concentration a depth of spirit seemed to exist, which matched up keenly with his casual intellect. “Has your sight been this way your whole life or is it a recent degeneration?”
“I could always see very well. It helped me become kind of a local star on the hockey team. I could always see the game so well. See the puck no matter what. But I took a nasty shot in practice when I was playing at the U.” He glanced over to her. “A freak thing. We were just screwing around after practice and we weren’t wearing our hats.”
“Hats?”
“Helmets.”
“Ah. But didn’t they run a scan and find a fracture? This sort of thing…”
“It was pretty long ago. Ten years. I had a Cat scan thing and a whole bunch of X-Rays, but the consensus was there wasn’t anything they could do for me.” Barry suddenly felt uncomfortable and nervous about talking about exactly what he had imagined talking about with Dr. Singh.
“But the Eye Man in Dell City told me to go back in for new tests.”
“The Eye Man?”
“Dr. Drummager. We call him the Eye Man. He thinks it’s funny. Anyway, I can’t afford to even think about this sort of thing.”
“Have you looked into Medicaid on this? You may qualify, may be pleasantly surprised at what the Federal and State Governments can do for you if you’re on the lower part of the economic scale. I think you might want to pay particular attention to MHCP guidelines on radiology and screenings.”
“Wow, listen to you. Very bureaucratic, Dr. Singh.”
“It’s what I do, Barry.”
They sat in silence as Barry pulled on to the road and worked the Tempo up to something resembling highway speed. "So I told the Statees up at Thief River to tell your friend that you’re heading back to the resort. He’s in Dell City at Wally’s, um, I, the Sheriff’s office. Guess he was pretty frantic.”
She looked at her hands. “I know exactly how he was.”
“So what happened anyway? How did you really end up at Edith Witssons?”
She looked out the window. “I went a bit mad, I guess is the only way of summing it up. We had hit a deer. Or at least we thought we did. I don’t know after that. I got out. Thomas got out. Or the other way around. Then I was standing out there in the quiet. Just listening to the wind in the trees. Then the proverbial snap in my brain and I was off, running like an Olympic sprinter.” She looked at him and half smiled. “Racing through the woods while my head just went and crashed out. A blue screen. You know, like on a computer.”
“Stress?” Barry offered as a way to give a moment in the midst of her monologue.
“Probably something like that. Nice one Dr. Barry. Yes. But as I ran, I felt for a moment I was running outside myself. I heard my Grandfather speaking. In fact, it was a conversation.”
“Had you just spoken to him? Maybe you were replaying…”
“He passed away my second year of medical school. Almost exactly twenty years ago.”
Barry looked over to her. “I know how this is going to sound, but I have to say it anyway. There is no way you were in your second year of medical school twenty years ago unless you went to a different type of sixth grade than I did.”
“That’s very charming of you to say. Quite silly as well.”
“Very true. I normally don’t say stuff like that, but really. You look very young to be so…”
Barry couldn’t complete the statement. “Anyway, so you were hoofin’ it through the
Witsson’s acreage talking to your dead grandfather…”
“And he said some things to me that made a lot of sense. You know? I mean, they were like obvious statements that apparently I have been too freaked out to even consider or say to myself. So I needed this device, this phantom voice.”
“Impressive. You have your own literary devices to use. Cool.” Barry thought for a moment.
“I sort of think we all do to a certain extent, come to think of it. Like, I use Megan as a, oh, what’s it called, a sounding board? Is that right? Only she doesn’t take any of my shit seriously.”
“You don’t think so? Why do you say that?” “Believe me. I know.”
“Of course. I imagine you’ve known her a long time. Everyone has ways of dealing with such proximity.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, like with me and Thomas. The patterns are set and we know each other’s arguments and ways of dealing with various things. So with this constant level of proximity we genuinely feel we know each other.” She wiped her window slowly with her index finger. “But it’s a pantomime. A facsimile of intimacy. Well, sometimes anyway.”
“What are you saying, then?”
“Maybe Megan does take your shit seriously. I think, from my limited exposure to you both, that she cares a great deal for you.”
“That’s weird.”
“Is it?”
“It’s also a big fat cliché.”
“Maybe so.” They drove on in silence with Barry squinting his way to the Aspen Grove turn off and Damini pondering Thomas and the amusing lecture she would undoubtedly receive as soon as he arrived.
He parked by her door and in a courtly manner befitting a big city limousine driver, Barry jumped out of the Tempo and ran around to open Damini’s door. He escorted her up the walk to the suite. “I hope Thomas goes easy on you, Dr. Singh.”
She stopped short of the door and turned to Barry. “Would you like to have a drink in the bar with me?”
Barry instantly felt tremendous heat. “Well I better, um, you know, I should get back to the Loon Nest. I. Well.”
“I just realized I don’t have my key card so I am going to have to go over to the main lodge and wait.”
“Right. Well, I’d like to keep you company, but I need to head back over. You know?”
“I understand.” She stepped to him, went up on her tip toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You have been extremely kind tonight. Retrieving me from the strange scene at Edith’s, listening to me talk about hearing voices.” She went by him, moving toward the walkway leading to the lodge. “Please check into having a series of scans. You’re going to want to ask for something much better than a CAT scan. Even better than a PET scan.” She moved away down the walk nervously continuing to chatter. “My instinct tells me that your High Level Myopia may be unrelated to the knock you took on the ice.” She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Listen to me will you?” She tossed her hair a little and began to back further down the walk. “Check into something called a Functional MRI paired with a MEG scan of the visual cortex. It’s the best look we can get of you these days. Okay, I’ll stop. Really. Go now, before I start examining you.”
Barry looked at the idling, clicking, ticking, clacking Tempo, then back at Damini who was beneath an overhead light, a halo of moths flitting about her. He found her sudden discomfort, the undeserving and possibly uncharacteristic display of nerves endearing. She was an accomplished professional woman who did not know how to say goodbye and thanks. Perhaps she did not like the lack of control, but judging by the genial expression on her face, the run in the woods had done her a vast amount of good. She seemed more open. Barry leaned in the window of the car and shut it off, then straightened up. “Let me buy you a glass of wine.”
“Ah ha! My theory of sporting injury as red herring caught your attention.”
He walked towards her. “It’s not that. In fact, I don’t want to hear anything else about vision.”
“But...”
“Let’s talk about your grandfather some more.”
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon nest: Chapter Eleven
Damini sat wondering what Thomas must be doing. Her sudden sprint would not only frighten him, but probably put the already rocky future together that much more in jeopardy. Would he have called the local police, whomever that would be? Would he have gone back to the Aspen Grove after mounting a furious effort at locating his, his, what was she? This question, like bad Hollywood writing kept returning as a theme every week or so in various guises. It masked a better question: what did she want to be?
Edith entered the room holding a mug of something in one hand and a rifle by the barrel in the other. She handed Damini the coffee and held up the rifle as if it was a prize Walleye. “My late husband’s firearm.”
Damini kept her eyes on it as she took a drink. She did not know how to react, but felt the need to do something, so she just affected a slight nodding of the head.
“Soren loved to hunt, but I passed on my distaste for the practice to our two daughters.” She looked at the weapon, then looked out the picture window. “The grandkids weren’t old enough to ever go with him.”
“Does everyone here have some sort of gun?” Damini ventured to ask knowing it to be naïve and borderline condescension.
Edith leaned the rifle up against a bookcase. “No, no. It seems like that, I guess. Actually fewer and fewer.” She went to the window. “But we still like to kill our animals up here in the woods.” She turned to Damini. “Where are you from Damini?”
“The Cities.”
“What do you do in life as we know it?”
“I’m an eye doctor.”
“Opthamologist?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do something about my damn cataracts?”
“Of course, but…”
“Oh don’t look like you’re on the spot. I’m only fooling around.” She looked out the window.
“What are you doing way up here?”
“Well, believe it or not, a job interview.”
Edith let out a crowing, short laugh. “A job interview? What, as a fishing guide?”
“No there’s a job with the County I am talking with them about. In the Health Department.”
Edith looked at her and squinted. “We have a health department here?” She touched her chin. “Imagine that. And a health department willing to hire pretty young women all the way from the Cities. We must pay better than I would have thought up in these parts.”
Damini shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “Well, I am not really at liberty to, I mean, well, you see, I’m not interested in the money.”
“Ah. Altruism. Coming to the North Woods to make us all Hawkeyes.” She reached over and touched the barrel of her husband’s rifle. “Safer than joining the MSF. With them you’d get stuck in Darfur or worse…”
“Oh, I support Doctors Without Borders. I mean, um, anyway, no, it’s not altruism. I am looking for a way to get out of the Cities and into the countryside. And this role is…”
“This is a switch. You know, for us. Up in these parts, we usually loose people to the Cities. Not gain them. Especially skilled individuals.”
“I’m glad I can buck a trend someplace then. I am simply looking for a change. A big enough change to let me feel like I am making a difference. But a small enough move so I am not completely lost.”
Edith considered for a minute, then rubbed her chin again. “You don’t sound convincing at all. Think about this, Damini. Be satisfied with the choices you have made in your life. I know everybody likes to say, if you are unhappy, change. But I think, in my lowly opinion as an old woman living in relative isolation, that too many people do not trust their choices in life fully and do not commit properly to them. So they end up always trying to see over the horizon. Before they know it, they’ve fallen into a hole.”
Damini thought about this and how it mirrored the imaginary conversation her oxygen starved brain had with her Grandfather earlier in the evening. She took slight offense to the accuracy of Edith’s assessment. “Oh, I am committed. I would not have achieved success without it. But I am looking…” She was about to add that she was looking for a different kind of success, but realized this would match Edith’s horizon analogy too closely. She fell silent and looked at the books in the bookcase, deciding to quickly change subjects. “I see you have a lot of Sinclair Lewis.”
Edith regarded the bookcase. “Soren and I loved Red Lewis. Soren met him once. At a dinner in St. Paul. Drunk, of course. He was, I mean. Not Soren.” She shook her head. “What a genius.”
“My father did his dissertation on Lewis. Deconstructing Arrowsmith.”
“Where’d your father get his doctorate?
“Carleton.”
Edith turned around and faced Damini. “What’s his name?”
“Espen Strommen.”
“Espen!?” Edith sat down in her chair with a sudden collapse. “This is downright bizarre. Soren knew Espen. Did he go to Augsburg for his undergraduate work?”
Damini nodded.
“Well I’ll be. Extraordinary coincidence. Soren taught your father at Augsburg. He was always proud of the students who could carry on in Norwegian, arguing over some trivial linguistic nuance of Hans Aanrud or Ibsen or whatever. Very proud these Norwegians.”
Damini did not know what to say. This was, as Edith had said, extraordinary. “I will tell my father when I see him next that I met you.”
“It’s amazing I remember the name. I can almost picture your father. Almost. But not quite. Long time ago, y’know. I remember he wrote a paper on that film, that Jimmy Stewart one…”
“It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“That’s the one. Except your father looked at the film through the lens of Red Lewis’ Main Street. I’ll always remember that. Made quite a bit of noise in certain circles, even though no one really knew that film back then. I mean, it wasn’t popular like it is today. People can really be so uptight about everything. Guess he was working up to that dissertation. What does he do these days?”
“Drives my mother to distraction mostly, when he isn’t teaching at the U. Dreams of retirement in Oslo.”
“World’s most expensive city. He should dream about something else. What does your mother do?”
“She’s a dentist and does not dream of Oslo, I can guarantee.”
“What an amazing family you have. It must have been a remarkable journey, growing up in that household.”
“Remarkable is a good way of putting it.” Damini thought of her sisters and their wonderful, tidy families of gifted children and fantastic pursuits. She thought about how well she had kept up the pace with the rest, how she had succeeded in all but family. The elation she felt from her run tempered with this thought.
Headlights flashed against the wall above Damini and Edith got up to have a look. “Here come those two knuckleheads now. If you don’t want to hear them kill a deer, then maybe you could wait in Danny’s truck.”
“A deer?”
“Yes, a pour old sod that got hit up on the highway and ended up on my back porch. It’s a sad thing.”
“Oh. When. Um, oh.” Damini stood up. “My boyfriend hit a deer this evening. And we couldn’t find it.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s the same animal. This fellow has been here and he came from the other direction from where you were. That is if you came from the County road.”
It’s an epidemic, Damini thought. “I wasn’t driving. I thought maybe we were on the state highway. Does this sort of thing happen a lot? Deer getting hit?”
“More so these days. We’ve hunted all the natural predators away and now they over run everything. The deer, that is. It’s a population in stress, so naturally they over run. The state’s answer seems to be more hunting, even though there are fewer and fewer hunters. Doesn’t make any sense to me. Where were you heading tonight?”
“Dinner. I think the place was called the Sandpiper?”
Edith shrugged. “I think that’s the place that used to be Fred’s Supper Club. You were on the County road, then. That’s a long hike you made, dear.”
Danny and Eddie came in the door, ushering in a breath of cool pine scented air over which Damini thought she detected the unmistakable redolence of marijuana. Danny took off his baseball cap. “Hey Granny. Sorry we’re running late.” He looked at Damini and smiled broadly. “You need the ride?”
Edith handed Danny the rifle. “She would really appreciate a ride back over to the Aspen Grove.”
At this, Eddy laughed and nodded his head slowly. “That Bix. He’s a kidder. Yepper.”
Danny looked at Eddy, clearly getting this inside joke, but choosing to stay focused. “Okay, where’s the dumb son of a bitch that got himself hit.”
“Out back.”
“All right, then.” He looked at Damini. “You sit tight.” He huffed.
Danny went into the kitchen and out the back door, letting the screen door fly shut with a slap that startled Damini. Everyone stood motionless in Edith’s living room not knowing what to say. But then Danny came back inside. “I better call Stan over at DNR. I don’t think anyone hit that deer, Grandma.” He glanced at Damini. “I need to know what to do about this, though. Y’know?”
Edith handed him the phone. “Do you need the phone book? I can’t find it if you do.”
Danny took the phone and nodded. “I know his number.”
Edith entered the room holding a mug of something in one hand and a rifle by the barrel in the other. She handed Damini the coffee and held up the rifle as if it was a prize Walleye. “My late husband’s firearm.”
Damini kept her eyes on it as she took a drink. She did not know how to react, but felt the need to do something, so she just affected a slight nodding of the head.
“Soren loved to hunt, but I passed on my distaste for the practice to our two daughters.” She looked at the weapon, then looked out the picture window. “The grandkids weren’t old enough to ever go with him.”
“Does everyone here have some sort of gun?” Damini ventured to ask knowing it to be naïve and borderline condescension.
Edith leaned the rifle up against a bookcase. “No, no. It seems like that, I guess. Actually fewer and fewer.” She went to the window. “But we still like to kill our animals up here in the woods.” She turned to Damini. “Where are you from Damini?”
“The Cities.”
“What do you do in life as we know it?”
“I’m an eye doctor.”
“Opthamologist?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do something about my damn cataracts?”
“Of course, but…”
“Oh don’t look like you’re on the spot. I’m only fooling around.” She looked out the window.
“What are you doing way up here?”
“Well, believe it or not, a job interview.”
Edith let out a crowing, short laugh. “A job interview? What, as a fishing guide?”
“No there’s a job with the County I am talking with them about. In the Health Department.”
Edith looked at her and squinted. “We have a health department here?” She touched her chin. “Imagine that. And a health department willing to hire pretty young women all the way from the Cities. We must pay better than I would have thought up in these parts.”
Damini shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “Well, I am not really at liberty to, I mean, well, you see, I’m not interested in the money.”
“Ah. Altruism. Coming to the North Woods to make us all Hawkeyes.” She reached over and touched the barrel of her husband’s rifle. “Safer than joining the MSF. With them you’d get stuck in Darfur or worse…”
“Oh, I support Doctors Without Borders. I mean, um, anyway, no, it’s not altruism. I am looking for a way to get out of the Cities and into the countryside. And this role is…”
“This is a switch. You know, for us. Up in these parts, we usually loose people to the Cities. Not gain them. Especially skilled individuals.”
“I’m glad I can buck a trend someplace then. I am simply looking for a change. A big enough change to let me feel like I am making a difference. But a small enough move so I am not completely lost.”
Edith considered for a minute, then rubbed her chin again. “You don’t sound convincing at all. Think about this, Damini. Be satisfied with the choices you have made in your life. I know everybody likes to say, if you are unhappy, change. But I think, in my lowly opinion as an old woman living in relative isolation, that too many people do not trust their choices in life fully and do not commit properly to them. So they end up always trying to see over the horizon. Before they know it, they’ve fallen into a hole.”
Damini thought about this and how it mirrored the imaginary conversation her oxygen starved brain had with her Grandfather earlier in the evening. She took slight offense to the accuracy of Edith’s assessment. “Oh, I am committed. I would not have achieved success without it. But I am looking…” She was about to add that she was looking for a different kind of success, but realized this would match Edith’s horizon analogy too closely. She fell silent and looked at the books in the bookcase, deciding to quickly change subjects. “I see you have a lot of Sinclair Lewis.”
Edith regarded the bookcase. “Soren and I loved Red Lewis. Soren met him once. At a dinner in St. Paul. Drunk, of course. He was, I mean. Not Soren.” She shook her head. “What a genius.”
“My father did his dissertation on Lewis. Deconstructing Arrowsmith.”
“Where’d your father get his doctorate?
“Carleton.”
Edith turned around and faced Damini. “What’s his name?”
“Espen Strommen.”
“Espen!?” Edith sat down in her chair with a sudden collapse. “This is downright bizarre. Soren knew Espen. Did he go to Augsburg for his undergraduate work?”
Damini nodded.
“Well I’ll be. Extraordinary coincidence. Soren taught your father at Augsburg. He was always proud of the students who could carry on in Norwegian, arguing over some trivial linguistic nuance of Hans Aanrud or Ibsen or whatever. Very proud these Norwegians.”
Damini did not know what to say. This was, as Edith had said, extraordinary. “I will tell my father when I see him next that I met you.”
“It’s amazing I remember the name. I can almost picture your father. Almost. But not quite. Long time ago, y’know. I remember he wrote a paper on that film, that Jimmy Stewart one…”
“It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“That’s the one. Except your father looked at the film through the lens of Red Lewis’ Main Street. I’ll always remember that. Made quite a bit of noise in certain circles, even though no one really knew that film back then. I mean, it wasn’t popular like it is today. People can really be so uptight about everything. Guess he was working up to that dissertation. What does he do these days?”
“Drives my mother to distraction mostly, when he isn’t teaching at the U. Dreams of retirement in Oslo.”
“World’s most expensive city. He should dream about something else. What does your mother do?”
“She’s a dentist and does not dream of Oslo, I can guarantee.”
“What an amazing family you have. It must have been a remarkable journey, growing up in that household.”
“Remarkable is a good way of putting it.” Damini thought of her sisters and their wonderful, tidy families of gifted children and fantastic pursuits. She thought about how well she had kept up the pace with the rest, how she had succeeded in all but family. The elation she felt from her run tempered with this thought.
Headlights flashed against the wall above Damini and Edith got up to have a look. “Here come those two knuckleheads now. If you don’t want to hear them kill a deer, then maybe you could wait in Danny’s truck.”
“A deer?”
“Yes, a pour old sod that got hit up on the highway and ended up on my back porch. It’s a sad thing.”
“Oh. When. Um, oh.” Damini stood up. “My boyfriend hit a deer this evening. And we couldn’t find it.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s the same animal. This fellow has been here and he came from the other direction from where you were. That is if you came from the County road.”
It’s an epidemic, Damini thought. “I wasn’t driving. I thought maybe we were on the state highway. Does this sort of thing happen a lot? Deer getting hit?”
“More so these days. We’ve hunted all the natural predators away and now they over run everything. The deer, that is. It’s a population in stress, so naturally they over run. The state’s answer seems to be more hunting, even though there are fewer and fewer hunters. Doesn’t make any sense to me. Where were you heading tonight?”
“Dinner. I think the place was called the Sandpiper?”
Edith shrugged. “I think that’s the place that used to be Fred’s Supper Club. You were on the County road, then. That’s a long hike you made, dear.”
Danny and Eddie came in the door, ushering in a breath of cool pine scented air over which Damini thought she detected the unmistakable redolence of marijuana. Danny took off his baseball cap. “Hey Granny. Sorry we’re running late.” He looked at Damini and smiled broadly. “You need the ride?”
Edith handed Danny the rifle. “She would really appreciate a ride back over to the Aspen Grove.”
At this, Eddy laughed and nodded his head slowly. “That Bix. He’s a kidder. Yepper.”
Danny looked at Eddy, clearly getting this inside joke, but choosing to stay focused. “Okay, where’s the dumb son of a bitch that got himself hit.”
“Out back.”
“All right, then.” He looked at Damini. “You sit tight.” He huffed.
Danny went into the kitchen and out the back door, letting the screen door fly shut with a slap that startled Damini. Everyone stood motionless in Edith’s living room not knowing what to say. But then Danny came back inside. “I better call Stan over at DNR. I don’t think anyone hit that deer, Grandma.” He glanced at Damini. “I need to know what to do about this, though. Y’know?”
Edith handed him the phone. “Do you need the phone book? I can’t find it if you do.”
Danny took the phone and nodded. “I know his number.”
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Ten
In the middle of a good night, Barry and his bar mate for the evening, Ralph Flynn, worked efficiently together. Unlike the other few employees the Loon Nest had, Barry never really was able to develop any sort of rapport with Ralphie, even after he celebrated his third year of part timing behind the bar (by cleaning the reach in coolers). Ralphie, friend of Barry’s father and principal fishing guide for the Cormorant Inn, did not have an over abundance of things to say – to anyone. But he was always on time, enjoyed working just two nights a week and cleaned with a fervent gusto that sometimes worried Barry’s mother.
So Barry always ended up being the MC for the occasion, working up and down and all around the Loon Nest bar, while Ralphie closed up the gaps and made it all work efficiently. This night, Barry immediately registered the fact Cora Gill’s sister Selma sat at the bar with her husband, Lars. “So Selma. You have a minor celebrity staying there at the Grove.”
She turned from Lars, apparently thrilled with the interruption. “How’s that, Barry?”
“That new Health Director they’re bringing in from the Cities.” He put his hands on the edge of the bar and leaned towards the Danversens. “I think she’s staying with you guys with her significant other.”
Selma laughed nervously, a habit Barry always found a bit distracting. “Yes, yes. I think they’re here until Sunday. I haven’t seen her at all. But that boyfriend of hers. Today he was wandering around. Somehow he learned that we had high speed internet in the office and talked Jason into letting him use it.” Lars chuckled this time, then took a drink. “He was in there for a couple hours, I think.”
Barry stood up and nodded. “What did Jason think about all that, then?”
Selma laughed again and shrugged. “I think the guy paid him for the use. Some kinda arrangement.” She made quotation marks in the air, then laughed.
“They were in last night and that guy was working his PalmPilot or whatever it was furiously.”
Barry punched up imaginary numbers in the palm of his hand. “I’m not sure who told him he’d get a signal here.” The Danversens laughed knowingly.
Lars opened his eyes wide, “Well, you know, some folks there, they gotta stay, you know, connected and such. Won’t be long, we’ll have service.”
Selma agreed, “You betcha. Maybe he has a business.”
Barry folded his arms. “His girlfriend, the woman who’s up for the Health job with the County. She’s really, I don’t know, seems over qualified. But hell I don’t know. She’s been in and I’ve talked to her and you get the sense that she should be like, I don’t know, surgeon-general or something. Running for Senate.” Barry suddenly made a connection between his feelings for his sister and with Dr. Singh – a strange brew of admiration, envy and brotherly affection.
Selma coughed and took a drink. “Well, now. Bix, this county needs good people. What with that Meth stuff and all the trouble on the reservation with the drinking.”
Lars looked at her. “Drinking on the reservation? Selma listen to yourself. This is Minnesota.”
He looked around the Loon Nest. “There’s drinking everywhere you look.”
They laughed and Barry left the Danversens and went down to see how the two particularly quiet Witsson brothers were making out with their bottles of Schmidt. “Say Danny, how you doing? Can I get you guys ready for another round?”
Danny looked up. “No thanks. We gotta get going over to my Granny’s house. Gotta kill a buck that came down the road all hurt ‘n shit.”
Eddie Witsson finished his bottle. “Some asshole hit the thing and left it running off. Should’ve just called Wally.”
Danny huffed. “Those guys wouldn’t bother. Just hope she don’t call the Trooper Snoopers. Meantime, ol’ Granny can’t find the shells for Papa’s Winchester.”
Eddie turned his bottle on its side and spun it. “Thank God for that, eh? I can just picture that old 30-30 sending her flyin’ backwards into the fire pit.”
Barry put up with a lot of nonsensical conversation in his shifts as barkeep, but the Witssons tested his patience – a lot. The brothers remained close to their Grandmother for the sole purpose of growing weed on her property. They used a clearing deep in the strip of land she owned between Buttermilk and Fleming Lakes and had been cultivating there for years, going back to high school when their grandfather fell through late season ice down on Mille Lacs. The death of their stern and oppressive “Papa” opened the door for planting to begin. Barry took off his glasses and pinched his nose, thinking about how banal their story had become within the County’s fabric. How truly typical of many of the people with whom he went to high school. Either you joined the army to get sent off to fight for rich guys and their stock portfolios; you stayed and worked in the lumber operations or over on the range, again for rich guys and the stock portfolios. You could help direct rich guys to where they could shoot things or catch things or where they could get native by having a can of beer (sort of his plan). You could get wildly lucky and break out of the cycle (his sister’s plan) or you ran just south of the law, drinking and smoking yourself into some version of oblivion (the Witsson plan).
Danny looked at Barry. “What’s wrong there, Bix? You got a headache there?”
As he returned his glasses to his narrow ski jump of a nose, he heard the rear door open and his father come behind the bar. This was a rare visit from the man as he typically did not like being there, especially during peak hours. He stood next to Barry and leaned into him, cupping a hand around Barry’s ear. “They just called from Bemidji. She’s taken a turn for the worse. I’m going to take mother back down.”
Barry closed his eyes and could imagine his poor mindless auntie wandering the streets of Bemidji looking for a dress for Prom or a new snow blower for Uncle Nelson. “Wow, you guys just got back.”
His father shrugged and held out his hands. “What can you do.” He patted Barry on the shoulder and made his exit.
The light on the phone next to the register started to wink at Barry. He stuck his finger in one ear and answered the phone with the other. “Loon Nest, this is Barry.”
“Bix? It’s Edith. Say is Danny still there? Please say he’s already left.”
“Hi, Mrs. Witsson. No, no. Danny and Eddie are here.”
“I need to talk to Danny. I’ve got a visitor and I don’t mean the damn deer they promised to deal with.”
“Okay. I’ll put him on.” Barry held the phone to his belly and walked down the bar to Danny, the long, squiggly cord shivering behind him with time-honored animation. “Hey, Danny. You’re Granny is after you.” He handed the receiver to him.
Danny looked at Eddie, then took the phone never changing the expression on his unshaven face. “Hey there Granny. In a hurry over that deer, eh?”
Edith sighed into the phone. “Well no it isn’t that, Dan. It’s that I have a visitor. A young lady who got sort of turned around or lost or something. She needs a ride back to the Aspen Grove. When are you going to be by? Hopefully before the end of the year?”
“Ha ha. Eddie and I are just finishing up on a couple beers now. Then we’ll come over. What she look like, Granny? Is she a hottie?”
“For Christ’s sake Danny.” She paused as she determined it would speed the process along if Danny were to believe he was to be the damsel’s knight. “Well, to answer your question. Yes. Would you like to ask her on a date? I’ll put her on. She’s right here.”
“Ha ha. Again. I was only asking.”
“I expect to see you shortly.”
“Yupper. Sure thing Granny.” He handed the phone back to Barry and turned to Eddie. “Get this. Some lady wandered up to Granny’s door lost.”
Eddie snorted. “Geez, she’s a mile off the road. What, was she, like orienteering.”
Barry looked at them both, deciding to move them along in the process. “Maybe she’s really from the DEA?”
The Witssons looked at each other, then slid off their barstools and shrugged on their tartan jackets. Barry hung the phone up and waved at them. “We’ll be seeing you boys. A good attorney may get you off on a Class D Felony.”
Danny smirked. “You’re almost as funny as Granny.”
“Almost.”
So Barry always ended up being the MC for the occasion, working up and down and all around the Loon Nest bar, while Ralphie closed up the gaps and made it all work efficiently. This night, Barry immediately registered the fact Cora Gill’s sister Selma sat at the bar with her husband, Lars. “So Selma. You have a minor celebrity staying there at the Grove.”
She turned from Lars, apparently thrilled with the interruption. “How’s that, Barry?”
“That new Health Director they’re bringing in from the Cities.” He put his hands on the edge of the bar and leaned towards the Danversens. “I think she’s staying with you guys with her significant other.”
Selma laughed nervously, a habit Barry always found a bit distracting. “Yes, yes. I think they’re here until Sunday. I haven’t seen her at all. But that boyfriend of hers. Today he was wandering around. Somehow he learned that we had high speed internet in the office and talked Jason into letting him use it.” Lars chuckled this time, then took a drink. “He was in there for a couple hours, I think.”
Barry stood up and nodded. “What did Jason think about all that, then?”
Selma laughed again and shrugged. “I think the guy paid him for the use. Some kinda arrangement.” She made quotation marks in the air, then laughed.
“They were in last night and that guy was working his PalmPilot or whatever it was furiously.”
Barry punched up imaginary numbers in the palm of his hand. “I’m not sure who told him he’d get a signal here.” The Danversens laughed knowingly.
Lars opened his eyes wide, “Well, you know, some folks there, they gotta stay, you know, connected and such. Won’t be long, we’ll have service.”
Selma agreed, “You betcha. Maybe he has a business.”
Barry folded his arms. “His girlfriend, the woman who’s up for the Health job with the County. She’s really, I don’t know, seems over qualified. But hell I don’t know. She’s been in and I’ve talked to her and you get the sense that she should be like, I don’t know, surgeon-general or something. Running for Senate.” Barry suddenly made a connection between his feelings for his sister and with Dr. Singh – a strange brew of admiration, envy and brotherly affection.
Selma coughed and took a drink. “Well, now. Bix, this county needs good people. What with that Meth stuff and all the trouble on the reservation with the drinking.”
Lars looked at her. “Drinking on the reservation? Selma listen to yourself. This is Minnesota.”
He looked around the Loon Nest. “There’s drinking everywhere you look.”
They laughed and Barry left the Danversens and went down to see how the two particularly quiet Witsson brothers were making out with their bottles of Schmidt. “Say Danny, how you doing? Can I get you guys ready for another round?”
Danny looked up. “No thanks. We gotta get going over to my Granny’s house. Gotta kill a buck that came down the road all hurt ‘n shit.”
Eddie Witsson finished his bottle. “Some asshole hit the thing and left it running off. Should’ve just called Wally.”
Danny huffed. “Those guys wouldn’t bother. Just hope she don’t call the Trooper Snoopers. Meantime, ol’ Granny can’t find the shells for Papa’s Winchester.”
Eddie turned his bottle on its side and spun it. “Thank God for that, eh? I can just picture that old 30-30 sending her flyin’ backwards into the fire pit.”
Barry put up with a lot of nonsensical conversation in his shifts as barkeep, but the Witssons tested his patience – a lot. The brothers remained close to their Grandmother for the sole purpose of growing weed on her property. They used a clearing deep in the strip of land she owned between Buttermilk and Fleming Lakes and had been cultivating there for years, going back to high school when their grandfather fell through late season ice down on Mille Lacs. The death of their stern and oppressive “Papa” opened the door for planting to begin. Barry took off his glasses and pinched his nose, thinking about how banal their story had become within the County’s fabric. How truly typical of many of the people with whom he went to high school. Either you joined the army to get sent off to fight for rich guys and their stock portfolios; you stayed and worked in the lumber operations or over on the range, again for rich guys and the stock portfolios. You could help direct rich guys to where they could shoot things or catch things or where they could get native by having a can of beer (sort of his plan). You could get wildly lucky and break out of the cycle (his sister’s plan) or you ran just south of the law, drinking and smoking yourself into some version of oblivion (the Witsson plan).
Danny looked at Barry. “What’s wrong there, Bix? You got a headache there?”
As he returned his glasses to his narrow ski jump of a nose, he heard the rear door open and his father come behind the bar. This was a rare visit from the man as he typically did not like being there, especially during peak hours. He stood next to Barry and leaned into him, cupping a hand around Barry’s ear. “They just called from Bemidji. She’s taken a turn for the worse. I’m going to take mother back down.”
Barry closed his eyes and could imagine his poor mindless auntie wandering the streets of Bemidji looking for a dress for Prom or a new snow blower for Uncle Nelson. “Wow, you guys just got back.”
His father shrugged and held out his hands. “What can you do.” He patted Barry on the shoulder and made his exit.
The light on the phone next to the register started to wink at Barry. He stuck his finger in one ear and answered the phone with the other. “Loon Nest, this is Barry.”
“Bix? It’s Edith. Say is Danny still there? Please say he’s already left.”
“Hi, Mrs. Witsson. No, no. Danny and Eddie are here.”
“I need to talk to Danny. I’ve got a visitor and I don’t mean the damn deer they promised to deal with.”
“Okay. I’ll put him on.” Barry held the phone to his belly and walked down the bar to Danny, the long, squiggly cord shivering behind him with time-honored animation. “Hey, Danny. You’re Granny is after you.” He handed the receiver to him.
Danny looked at Eddie, then took the phone never changing the expression on his unshaven face. “Hey there Granny. In a hurry over that deer, eh?”
Edith sighed into the phone. “Well no it isn’t that, Dan. It’s that I have a visitor. A young lady who got sort of turned around or lost or something. She needs a ride back to the Aspen Grove. When are you going to be by? Hopefully before the end of the year?”
“Ha ha. Eddie and I are just finishing up on a couple beers now. Then we’ll come over. What she look like, Granny? Is she a hottie?”
“For Christ’s sake Danny.” She paused as she determined it would speed the process along if Danny were to believe he was to be the damsel’s knight. “Well, to answer your question. Yes. Would you like to ask her on a date? I’ll put her on. She’s right here.”
“Ha ha. Again. I was only asking.”
“I expect to see you shortly.”
“Yupper. Sure thing Granny.” He handed the phone back to Barry and turned to Eddie. “Get this. Some lady wandered up to Granny’s door lost.”
Eddie snorted. “Geez, she’s a mile off the road. What, was she, like orienteering.”
Barry looked at them both, deciding to move them along in the process. “Maybe she’s really from the DEA?”
The Witssons looked at each other, then slid off their barstools and shrugged on their tartan jackets. Barry hung the phone up and waved at them. “We’ll be seeing you boys. A good attorney may get you off on a Class D Felony.”
Danny smirked. “You’re almost as funny as Granny.”
“Almost.”
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Nine
Thomas pulled the car out from its nest between the giant white pines, got out and ran around to the other side, opening the door for Damini. “Will it be fish or salad, ma’am?”
She glided passed him and swung herself into the passenger’s seat. “You decide.”
He ran around and got back in. “I think, then, fish.”
“Well, it should be pretty difficult coming up with a good choice, then.” She smiled as Thomas put the car in gear and eased out onto the paved drive that snaked its way through the thick woods serving the various clusters of high-end suites.
He glanced at her. “I happen to know just the spot. This old lady I met earlier told me to take you there. I met her on my walk. She was painting in a clearing over there.” Seeming very proud of this, Thomas pointed through the trees and across an inlet where a conservation area covered a large peninsula in Ipsen Lake.
“Watercolors?”
“No. Oil. And not at all bad. Rustic, but in possession of a refined color sense.”
Damini nodded. “Listen to you.”
He chuckled. “Oh my. Today was a regular renaissance moment in time, my dear. Without all the noise I’m used to my head just cleared so completely, when I was sitting at this picnic table out by the lake. After talking a little with that old lady and seeing her painting away. After seeing you drive off to the interview. And watching a few boats float on the lake. I don’t know.” Thomas shook his head, looked both ways on the highway and pulled slowly away from the entrance of the Aspen Grove Resort. “Then there’s the air up here. My lungs don’t know what to do with all the oxygen.”
Damini kept her eyes on the road in front listening for some sort of resolution to the monologue.
“Long story short. I’d like to make the move with you Damini. I’m impressed with myself for seeing the light in time.” He chortled. “My usual mode of operation would have been to let us break up, sink into a depression and let my work suffer to the point of nuisance to the firm.”
“You’re impressed with yourself?” Damini smiled, finally looking at him. “Now there’s some news.”
“Ha ha. I was trying to be self-effacing.” They fell into an awkward silence that lasted a good mile. Thomas sighed. “So you wanted to be rid of me then?”
Damini did not know what to say, because for a month she had been resigned to the notion the relationship was ending. She no longer wanted to battle the constant demands of her fast paced city existence and willingly made up her mind that if Thomas or her family could not understand that, then they would be left behind in the Cities regardless. She, having raced by the age of 40 without bearing children, without getting married or without understanding her personal priorities, made ready to change in a dramatic way. But as she sat in the car for that mile stretch of two-lane county road, she thought maybe she had gotten it all wrong. The moment someone she loved agreed with her about the advantages of a wholesale change, doubts rushed in. “That isn’t it.” She rubbed her forehead, then wiggled her hand to free bracelets from a sleeve. “For a month now after I told you I wanted to do this, you’ve been giving me only the most rudimentary, or superficial support. It kind of, you know, it hardened me. I mean it just made me feel I was making the right decision.” She looked out her window at a cluster of old frame cabins as they rolled to a stop at a rare intersection.
“Ah. So the moment I say I’m okay with this change, the exotic nature of it, for lack of a better term, drains away.” He leaned forward and squinted to read the road sign. “I think we go this way.” He turned left.
“No, no. I don’t think that’s it at all.” She paused and thought about her feelings. “I believe you have, by saying you are okay with this and wanting to move with me has given me a good reason to actually stay in the Cities.”
“Oh, I see. So by resolving to move with you, keep this thing going, I’ve shown you a level of commitment.”
“Exactly.”
“My fiendish plan has worked!” He chuckled. “So what are you saying?”
“I have no idea.”
“Damini, are you going to take the job or not?”
She honestly did not know what to think about the job. Her mind was on Thomas and how she felt about him having such a dramatic change of heart in the space of a few hours wondering around a conservation area. “Look, I’ve got the weekend to decide on the position and package. Let’s go and eat fish and have a nice evening.”
“Of course, of course.” He slowed down. “Look at these guys!” He pointed to the shoulder on her side about 100 yards ahead of them. Three deer were eating, then raised their heads toward the headlights. The middle one inexplicably bolted across in front of the car, Thomas swerved radically as the animal took flight, its hoof clattering against the corner of the windshield, its head and body crashing against the driver’s side before spinning away.
Thomas stopped in the middle of the road his hands frozen to the steering wheel. “Fucking hell.” He looked over at Damini who had slipped down in her belt nearly submarined beneath the dashboard. “Are you all right?”
She wiggled her way up through her safety belts. “I’m okay.” Straightening, she regarded Thomas. “No airbag. How do you like that?” She then looked around. “What happened to the deer?”
Thomas looked carefully out his window, then turned off the engine and opened the door. “I don’t see anything.” He got out and walked around the car, then got back in. “Didn’t we just hit a deer?”
Damini continued to look all around as though Thomas’ inspection was not sufficient. “Yes. Of course.”
Thomas got out again. “Okay, this is really weird.” He put his hands on the door frame and leaned down. “Isn’t that sort of thing supposed to happen in slow motion? You know, like a Sam Peckinpah movie?”
Damini didn’t know what he was talking about and stopped staring at the road in front of them. “Is there any blood on the car?”
Thomas looked up and down the side of the vehicle. “There’s a scratch here.” He pointed to his door. “And a dent or really more like a large depression here.” He pointed to the rear door. “But no blood, no fur, no body.” He crossed the road and looked into the woods, then returned to the car. “Okay, now that is one of the strangest things that I’ve ever had happen while driving.”
Damini got out of the car and walked behind it for about fifty yards. She could feel cool air blowing from the narrow strip of woodlands separating her side of the road from a small lake. Wind caused a hushed rumble in the treetops surrounding them. She turned back to the car fearing the injured deer would make a noise, a plea or some resignation and she did not want to hear it. But she paused and stood straight, looking into the sky. Why didn’t she want to hear the animal? Exhaling she looked into the woods on the other side of the road, then back at the car and Thomas. She did not want to have to help it, she thought. She would not know what to do for such an injured animal and the thought of not having the answer seemed like a tipping point in a day of not having answers. Could she help an injured deer? Why was animal suffering so terribly fraught with anguish? She felt guilty and residual pain from putting her cat to sleep twenty years ago when its illnesses were too inconvenient, too expensive for her to deal with during a critical point in her schooling. Yet she had been present as a resident in a number of trauma room cases where the person did not make it out alive. She could not remember a single name of any of those poor people.
Damini turned away from the car and looked into the dark woods again. She felt a snap and heard a ping in the center of her head. She saw eyes peering out, waiting to see what she would do and they brought too much weight upon her shoulders. She instantly filled with torment to the point of making her dizzy.
The first strides across the pavement were heavy, but then as she ran across the grassy fringe between the road’s shoulder and the thick stand of aspen everything seemed lighter and easier. The crunch and snap of each foot plant was all she heard until the heartbeats took over. The rhythm of her circulation fell in with her strides. There was no way she could hear or even be aware of Thomas screaming for her to come back.
She came upon a small dirt track that wove through the tall swaying trunks, but she crossed over it and continued to run aimlessly. With lungs starting to wheeze and burn, the heart pulsing blood around her ears created the sensation of some dance song. The stringy swish of a synthesizer wash and the robotic thump of bass provided a soundtrack for her bolt into nowhere. Racing past a black bear stripping the bark off a tree, it was such a strange, fast encounter the animal barely stopped to register the blur.
Damini crossed a threshold she knew meant her muscles had used up their stored energy and were now operating without oxygen, creating a state of opiated drift and physical analgesia. This awareness drew her mind away from its primal state of navigation to an abrupt debate about endogenous cannabinoids as opposed to endorphins. This sudden plunge into the detail became overwhelmed by the voice of her Grandfather coming to her from deep inside. Her grandfather, in conversation with a neighbor, discussed his daughter’s achievements with a tone that crossed pride with humility. Damini recognized this tone as one she always attempted to strike when discussing her family. She could clearly see him turning to her.
“Damini. Why do you feel it is necessary to compete with your mother? It is so very tiresome.”
The thought stopped her cold. She looked up into the tree branches. “I am not competing with my mother. Your daughter. I am only competing with myself. And I am not doing that. Anymore anyway. I am quitting and moving North. To help out. To simplify my life.
‘But you are not simplifying your life by running away like you are doing. You are afraid of the choices you have made in life.’
We’ve been through all this already.
‘We have?’ Grandpa looked comically surprised and considered his hands for a minute. ‘I’ve been dead for twenty odd years. Look, Damini, it is quite obvious you are afraid that being a good administrator and a highly successful doctor is all there is. Well, what if this is so? You have helped innumerable people regain sight. Sight! You have managed well. You are respected. Why does there need to be anything more than this?’
Because there has to be. I am certain there has to be something beyond. Possibly this is spiritual, yet I am in no place to decide. You are standing there asking important questions.
‘What do your mother and father say about this?’
They don’t say anything. You know how they are. They have not had a useful opinion about me since I was in residency. They are a rubber stamp. In that way they are very cold. On the other hand, perhaps it is a blessing. My sisters and their husbands will be a challenge.
‘Why are you so dissatisfied with your life that you want to make such radical change?’
I am tired of that sort of achievement. I am weary, Grandpa. I am tired of striving. And the city has worn me out.
‘This is nonsense, Damini. What do you know about the health of a distant, rural county in Northern Minnesota? Why do you think you will be better off there than back home? You are not in one of your father’s stories that he reads. This is not a novel.’ And at this point he stopped and looked around at the trees in his garden. I see him there in the garden, in the shade of his trees and I hear water trickling into a basin along one of the garden’s mustard-colored walls. His theatrics and reference to fiction make me want to write the scene down. I see it so clearly and want to describe it as accurately as is possible, to keep it forever as vivid as I can. I can smell the garden and all the plants at once. Then I hear him again. He is looking at me bounding through these woods. ‘Are you running from yourself, from Thomas? From what do you run my Apple?’
Remembering her nickname stopped the voice and the illusion disappeared. She’d found herself out. Doubled over she focused on a small stick resting across an exposed tree root. There would be no running away, no escape so easily rendered. Her lungs burned as she grimaced, sucking the cool woodland air in short bursts.
She straightened up, put her hands on her hips and thanked herself for keeping up with her morning workouts. On the one hand, her fitness had allowed her to dash into the unknown with relative comfort. On the other hand she covered a tremendous distance in a short amount of time and now found herself without any sort of a reference point. Her shoes had come off – probably within the first fifteen feet. An overwhelming sense of relief and satisfaction welled within as though she had proven something to herself, though she could not be certain what that would be.
Damini began to walk, picking her way in the gloaming by a sense of where the sun had just set. She had started this trip yesterday thinking of Sinclair Lewis, but now, she thought about Earnest Hemingway, specifically his Nick Adams stories, maybe “Ten Indians.” She then smiled, deciding her mind would be better served thinking about Conrad Richter’s “The Light in the Forest.”
After regaining a normal breathing pattern, the air felt perfect to her. She could walk for miles, despite darkness and wanted to in the worst way, but finally when she saw the rectangular yellow glow of a cabin window, she capitulated to reason, to her persistent, practical side. Afterall, she needed to be sensible -- a hungry, shoeless, middle aged woman in the midst of an ever cooling woodland. As she picked her way toward the light Damini worked on her explanation.
“Sorry to bother you. I seem to have become lost. I had an argument with my boyfriend and ran into the woods and bit off a little more than I could chew. Remember to smile Damini and look as contrite and meek as possible. No, not meek. Just contrite.” She really wanted to tell the unvarnished truth, but couldn’t figure out what that would be.
“You see, my boyfriend hit a deer and we got out to see it, but then it wasn’t there and then I felt something snap inside my head, most assuredly something incorporeal, just a mental sensation. But still, seemingly centered on a cluster of misfiring Neurons, maybe some recalcitrant Dendrites in the caudate nucleus. This created the necessary conditions for me to start running like hell. Ridiculous, Damini. Avoid the logical and at all costs the medical. Use the first version.”
Finally reaching the clearing where the cabin stood, she stopped to regard it’s inelegant arrangement. Squat and humorless, the structure resembled millions of post war ranch boxes constructed in the nations rambling suburbs. This is the one that got away, she thought. The building could have been PhotoShopped into a Tarzana streetscape and no one would have been the wiser. Next to it, beneath a well-dented and overgrown aluminum carport, the hulking carcass of a conversion van listed toward a giant stack of moldering firewood. But out the picture window a placard of yellowish light hinted at civilization and that’s what she needed at this instance.
At the front door, she gathered herself as much as possible, smoothing through her thick mane of black hair and pulling a few burrs off her blouse. Just as she lifted her hand to give the door a sharp rap, it opened in such a startling fashion Damini could feel herself jump back slightly as though she were in a cartoon adaptation of a Hans Christian Anderson story. In the outflow, the scent of burnt toast, blue cheese and motor oil caused her brain to go blank for a second. Before her a short, rail thin woman in a floral housecoat squinted question marks. The woman’s collarbones appeared to be a sort of clothes hanger; a great, wild nest of white hair blew out from all angles of her skull. “I thought you were my grandsons coming to get the deer out of the back yard.”
Damini tried to smile or indeed affect some expression of grace. “Um? Ah, no.”
The woman leaned out from the door just a bit and looked around. “Where in God’s name did you come from, dear?”
“The highway.” She turned towards where she thought it would be off to her left.
“Good Lord. Not that highway. You must mean County M back there.” She pointed beyond Damini’s back. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t have shoes, you know.”
“I lost them. I was running and they fell off.”
The woman squinted again, this time projecting wariness. “Running from what?”
Damini cursed herself for mentioning the fact she had run out of her shoes, not wanting to be in the habit of alarming strangers at remote cabin doors. “I thought I saw a bear.”
“A bear!?” She grinned. “That’s Dennis. Probably. He lives over in the meadow. You probably scarred the hell out of him coming along like you did.”
“Dennis did seem pretty confused. He was tearing bark off a tree.”
“He does that.”
“Well, anyway. I would very much like to use your phone.”
“Car trouble?” She looked down at her feet. “No, you wouldn’t march all the way back here with car trouble.” She looked at Damini up and down. “No, I am guessing man trouble.”
Damini felt relieved she didn’t have to make up a story -- one being neatly provided by this spry senior. “I’d like to try to call the Aspen Grove Resort.”
The woman stood motionless for what felt to Damini like an uncomfortable amount of time. “I’ll bring you the phone. How’s that. I’m not supposed to let strangers in the house. Not that I have any strangers to let in, but you know. My grandsons make up funny rules for me.” She left the door open while she went to the table next to a recliner and picked up her phone. So used to the micro-designs of modern phone technology, it appeared to Damini that she would be hailing resort transportation via an early cordless model the same size as a World War II field radio.
Taking the phone from the woman, she realized she did not have the number to the resort. “Do you happen to have a phone book?”
The woman grimaced. “Good heavens, I have no idea. But let me see.” When she disappeared, Damini looked around the front room, noticing a wall clock that if right told her she’d been wandering a lot longer than she would have ever guessed. Next to the clock what must have been thirty framed family-type photographs surrounded diplomas hanging above a dark and dusty television set that looked as though it had last been viewed to find out who shot J.R.
Be it known on this 12th of May, 1947 that Edith Franks graduated from Bard College with distinction. Damini made a face and nodded approval. The other diploma, for Soren Witsson, made it known Soren had graduated from Harvard College in the year of our Lord 1940. Used to these sorts of credentials, Damini still thought it impressive, due to the surroundings. The retired Admiral Caldwell had told her earlier in the day while they were in the rapport phase of her interview, “you never know whom you’ll run across up here amongst the brambles and aspen, Dr. Singh.” Sure enough, the admiral’s words couldn’t have been more appropriate. From Stephen Crane reading barkeepers to Bard Laureates, Dell County appeared to be replete with all manner of cloaked intellectual talent.
Edith reentered the room. “Well, to hell with it. I don’t know where one is. What do you want with the resort? A ride? A reservation? A sauna?” She chuckled.
“I need a ride back to my room.”
“Oh well, I can get one of my grandsons to do that. That is if they ever show up.” She put her hands on her hips and looked out at the night. “Here, come in.” She stepped back and waved at Damini. “And give me the phone. I’ll try to find out when those boys will be by.”
Damini stepped into the warmth and glow of Edith’s front room. “I appreciate this.”
Edith dialed the phone, taking care as to not poke anybody in the eye with its significant antennae.
She glided passed him and swung herself into the passenger’s seat. “You decide.”
He ran around and got back in. “I think, then, fish.”
“Well, it should be pretty difficult coming up with a good choice, then.” She smiled as Thomas put the car in gear and eased out onto the paved drive that snaked its way through the thick woods serving the various clusters of high-end suites.
He glanced at her. “I happen to know just the spot. This old lady I met earlier told me to take you there. I met her on my walk. She was painting in a clearing over there.” Seeming very proud of this, Thomas pointed through the trees and across an inlet where a conservation area covered a large peninsula in Ipsen Lake.
“Watercolors?”
“No. Oil. And not at all bad. Rustic, but in possession of a refined color sense.”
Damini nodded. “Listen to you.”
He chuckled. “Oh my. Today was a regular renaissance moment in time, my dear. Without all the noise I’m used to my head just cleared so completely, when I was sitting at this picnic table out by the lake. After talking a little with that old lady and seeing her painting away. After seeing you drive off to the interview. And watching a few boats float on the lake. I don’t know.” Thomas shook his head, looked both ways on the highway and pulled slowly away from the entrance of the Aspen Grove Resort. “Then there’s the air up here. My lungs don’t know what to do with all the oxygen.”
Damini kept her eyes on the road in front listening for some sort of resolution to the monologue.
“Long story short. I’d like to make the move with you Damini. I’m impressed with myself for seeing the light in time.” He chortled. “My usual mode of operation would have been to let us break up, sink into a depression and let my work suffer to the point of nuisance to the firm.”
“You’re impressed with yourself?” Damini smiled, finally looking at him. “Now there’s some news.”
“Ha ha. I was trying to be self-effacing.” They fell into an awkward silence that lasted a good mile. Thomas sighed. “So you wanted to be rid of me then?”
Damini did not know what to say, because for a month she had been resigned to the notion the relationship was ending. She no longer wanted to battle the constant demands of her fast paced city existence and willingly made up her mind that if Thomas or her family could not understand that, then they would be left behind in the Cities regardless. She, having raced by the age of 40 without bearing children, without getting married or without understanding her personal priorities, made ready to change in a dramatic way. But as she sat in the car for that mile stretch of two-lane county road, she thought maybe she had gotten it all wrong. The moment someone she loved agreed with her about the advantages of a wholesale change, doubts rushed in. “That isn’t it.” She rubbed her forehead, then wiggled her hand to free bracelets from a sleeve. “For a month now after I told you I wanted to do this, you’ve been giving me only the most rudimentary, or superficial support. It kind of, you know, it hardened me. I mean it just made me feel I was making the right decision.” She looked out her window at a cluster of old frame cabins as they rolled to a stop at a rare intersection.
“Ah. So the moment I say I’m okay with this change, the exotic nature of it, for lack of a better term, drains away.” He leaned forward and squinted to read the road sign. “I think we go this way.” He turned left.
“No, no. I don’t think that’s it at all.” She paused and thought about her feelings. “I believe you have, by saying you are okay with this and wanting to move with me has given me a good reason to actually stay in the Cities.”
“Oh, I see. So by resolving to move with you, keep this thing going, I’ve shown you a level of commitment.”
“Exactly.”
“My fiendish plan has worked!” He chuckled. “So what are you saying?”
“I have no idea.”
“Damini, are you going to take the job or not?”
She honestly did not know what to think about the job. Her mind was on Thomas and how she felt about him having such a dramatic change of heart in the space of a few hours wondering around a conservation area. “Look, I’ve got the weekend to decide on the position and package. Let’s go and eat fish and have a nice evening.”
“Of course, of course.” He slowed down. “Look at these guys!” He pointed to the shoulder on her side about 100 yards ahead of them. Three deer were eating, then raised their heads toward the headlights. The middle one inexplicably bolted across in front of the car, Thomas swerved radically as the animal took flight, its hoof clattering against the corner of the windshield, its head and body crashing against the driver’s side before spinning away.
Thomas stopped in the middle of the road his hands frozen to the steering wheel. “Fucking hell.” He looked over at Damini who had slipped down in her belt nearly submarined beneath the dashboard. “Are you all right?”
She wiggled her way up through her safety belts. “I’m okay.” Straightening, she regarded Thomas. “No airbag. How do you like that?” She then looked around. “What happened to the deer?”
Thomas looked carefully out his window, then turned off the engine and opened the door. “I don’t see anything.” He got out and walked around the car, then got back in. “Didn’t we just hit a deer?”
Damini continued to look all around as though Thomas’ inspection was not sufficient. “Yes. Of course.”
Thomas got out again. “Okay, this is really weird.” He put his hands on the door frame and leaned down. “Isn’t that sort of thing supposed to happen in slow motion? You know, like a Sam Peckinpah movie?”
Damini didn’t know what he was talking about and stopped staring at the road in front of them. “Is there any blood on the car?”
Thomas looked up and down the side of the vehicle. “There’s a scratch here.” He pointed to his door. “And a dent or really more like a large depression here.” He pointed to the rear door. “But no blood, no fur, no body.” He crossed the road and looked into the woods, then returned to the car. “Okay, now that is one of the strangest things that I’ve ever had happen while driving.”
Damini got out of the car and walked behind it for about fifty yards. She could feel cool air blowing from the narrow strip of woodlands separating her side of the road from a small lake. Wind caused a hushed rumble in the treetops surrounding them. She turned back to the car fearing the injured deer would make a noise, a plea or some resignation and she did not want to hear it. But she paused and stood straight, looking into the sky. Why didn’t she want to hear the animal? Exhaling she looked into the woods on the other side of the road, then back at the car and Thomas. She did not want to have to help it, she thought. She would not know what to do for such an injured animal and the thought of not having the answer seemed like a tipping point in a day of not having answers. Could she help an injured deer? Why was animal suffering so terribly fraught with anguish? She felt guilty and residual pain from putting her cat to sleep twenty years ago when its illnesses were too inconvenient, too expensive for her to deal with during a critical point in her schooling. Yet she had been present as a resident in a number of trauma room cases where the person did not make it out alive. She could not remember a single name of any of those poor people.
Damini turned away from the car and looked into the dark woods again. She felt a snap and heard a ping in the center of her head. She saw eyes peering out, waiting to see what she would do and they brought too much weight upon her shoulders. She instantly filled with torment to the point of making her dizzy.
The first strides across the pavement were heavy, but then as she ran across the grassy fringe between the road’s shoulder and the thick stand of aspen everything seemed lighter and easier. The crunch and snap of each foot plant was all she heard until the heartbeats took over. The rhythm of her circulation fell in with her strides. There was no way she could hear or even be aware of Thomas screaming for her to come back.
She came upon a small dirt track that wove through the tall swaying trunks, but she crossed over it and continued to run aimlessly. With lungs starting to wheeze and burn, the heart pulsing blood around her ears created the sensation of some dance song. The stringy swish of a synthesizer wash and the robotic thump of bass provided a soundtrack for her bolt into nowhere. Racing past a black bear stripping the bark off a tree, it was such a strange, fast encounter the animal barely stopped to register the blur.
Damini crossed a threshold she knew meant her muscles had used up their stored energy and were now operating without oxygen, creating a state of opiated drift and physical analgesia. This awareness drew her mind away from its primal state of navigation to an abrupt debate about endogenous cannabinoids as opposed to endorphins. This sudden plunge into the detail became overwhelmed by the voice of her Grandfather coming to her from deep inside. Her grandfather, in conversation with a neighbor, discussed his daughter’s achievements with a tone that crossed pride with humility. Damini recognized this tone as one she always attempted to strike when discussing her family. She could clearly see him turning to her.
“Damini. Why do you feel it is necessary to compete with your mother? It is so very tiresome.”
The thought stopped her cold. She looked up into the tree branches. “I am not competing with my mother. Your daughter. I am only competing with myself. And I am not doing that. Anymore anyway. I am quitting and moving North. To help out. To simplify my life.
‘But you are not simplifying your life by running away like you are doing. You are afraid of the choices you have made in life.’
We’ve been through all this already.
‘We have?’ Grandpa looked comically surprised and considered his hands for a minute. ‘I’ve been dead for twenty odd years. Look, Damini, it is quite obvious you are afraid that being a good administrator and a highly successful doctor is all there is. Well, what if this is so? You have helped innumerable people regain sight. Sight! You have managed well. You are respected. Why does there need to be anything more than this?’
Because there has to be. I am certain there has to be something beyond. Possibly this is spiritual, yet I am in no place to decide. You are standing there asking important questions.
‘What do your mother and father say about this?’
They don’t say anything. You know how they are. They have not had a useful opinion about me since I was in residency. They are a rubber stamp. In that way they are very cold. On the other hand, perhaps it is a blessing. My sisters and their husbands will be a challenge.
‘Why are you so dissatisfied with your life that you want to make such radical change?’
I am tired of that sort of achievement. I am weary, Grandpa. I am tired of striving. And the city has worn me out.
‘This is nonsense, Damini. What do you know about the health of a distant, rural county in Northern Minnesota? Why do you think you will be better off there than back home? You are not in one of your father’s stories that he reads. This is not a novel.’ And at this point he stopped and looked around at the trees in his garden. I see him there in the garden, in the shade of his trees and I hear water trickling into a basin along one of the garden’s mustard-colored walls. His theatrics and reference to fiction make me want to write the scene down. I see it so clearly and want to describe it as accurately as is possible, to keep it forever as vivid as I can. I can smell the garden and all the plants at once. Then I hear him again. He is looking at me bounding through these woods. ‘Are you running from yourself, from Thomas? From what do you run my Apple?’
Remembering her nickname stopped the voice and the illusion disappeared. She’d found herself out. Doubled over she focused on a small stick resting across an exposed tree root. There would be no running away, no escape so easily rendered. Her lungs burned as she grimaced, sucking the cool woodland air in short bursts.
She straightened up, put her hands on her hips and thanked herself for keeping up with her morning workouts. On the one hand, her fitness had allowed her to dash into the unknown with relative comfort. On the other hand she covered a tremendous distance in a short amount of time and now found herself without any sort of a reference point. Her shoes had come off – probably within the first fifteen feet. An overwhelming sense of relief and satisfaction welled within as though she had proven something to herself, though she could not be certain what that would be.
Damini began to walk, picking her way in the gloaming by a sense of where the sun had just set. She had started this trip yesterday thinking of Sinclair Lewis, but now, she thought about Earnest Hemingway, specifically his Nick Adams stories, maybe “Ten Indians.” She then smiled, deciding her mind would be better served thinking about Conrad Richter’s “The Light in the Forest.”
After regaining a normal breathing pattern, the air felt perfect to her. She could walk for miles, despite darkness and wanted to in the worst way, but finally when she saw the rectangular yellow glow of a cabin window, she capitulated to reason, to her persistent, practical side. Afterall, she needed to be sensible -- a hungry, shoeless, middle aged woman in the midst of an ever cooling woodland. As she picked her way toward the light Damini worked on her explanation.
“Sorry to bother you. I seem to have become lost. I had an argument with my boyfriend and ran into the woods and bit off a little more than I could chew. Remember to smile Damini and look as contrite and meek as possible. No, not meek. Just contrite.” She really wanted to tell the unvarnished truth, but couldn’t figure out what that would be.
“You see, my boyfriend hit a deer and we got out to see it, but then it wasn’t there and then I felt something snap inside my head, most assuredly something incorporeal, just a mental sensation. But still, seemingly centered on a cluster of misfiring Neurons, maybe some recalcitrant Dendrites in the caudate nucleus. This created the necessary conditions for me to start running like hell. Ridiculous, Damini. Avoid the logical and at all costs the medical. Use the first version.”
Finally reaching the clearing where the cabin stood, she stopped to regard it’s inelegant arrangement. Squat and humorless, the structure resembled millions of post war ranch boxes constructed in the nations rambling suburbs. This is the one that got away, she thought. The building could have been PhotoShopped into a Tarzana streetscape and no one would have been the wiser. Next to it, beneath a well-dented and overgrown aluminum carport, the hulking carcass of a conversion van listed toward a giant stack of moldering firewood. But out the picture window a placard of yellowish light hinted at civilization and that’s what she needed at this instance.
At the front door, she gathered herself as much as possible, smoothing through her thick mane of black hair and pulling a few burrs off her blouse. Just as she lifted her hand to give the door a sharp rap, it opened in such a startling fashion Damini could feel herself jump back slightly as though she were in a cartoon adaptation of a Hans Christian Anderson story. In the outflow, the scent of burnt toast, blue cheese and motor oil caused her brain to go blank for a second. Before her a short, rail thin woman in a floral housecoat squinted question marks. The woman’s collarbones appeared to be a sort of clothes hanger; a great, wild nest of white hair blew out from all angles of her skull. “I thought you were my grandsons coming to get the deer out of the back yard.”
Damini tried to smile or indeed affect some expression of grace. “Um? Ah, no.”
The woman leaned out from the door just a bit and looked around. “Where in God’s name did you come from, dear?”
“The highway.” She turned towards where she thought it would be off to her left.
“Good Lord. Not that highway. You must mean County M back there.” She pointed beyond Damini’s back. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t have shoes, you know.”
“I lost them. I was running and they fell off.”
The woman squinted again, this time projecting wariness. “Running from what?”
Damini cursed herself for mentioning the fact she had run out of her shoes, not wanting to be in the habit of alarming strangers at remote cabin doors. “I thought I saw a bear.”
“A bear!?” She grinned. “That’s Dennis. Probably. He lives over in the meadow. You probably scarred the hell out of him coming along like you did.”
“Dennis did seem pretty confused. He was tearing bark off a tree.”
“He does that.”
“Well, anyway. I would very much like to use your phone.”
“Car trouble?” She looked down at her feet. “No, you wouldn’t march all the way back here with car trouble.” She looked at Damini up and down. “No, I am guessing man trouble.”
Damini felt relieved she didn’t have to make up a story -- one being neatly provided by this spry senior. “I’d like to try to call the Aspen Grove Resort.”
The woman stood motionless for what felt to Damini like an uncomfortable amount of time. “I’ll bring you the phone. How’s that. I’m not supposed to let strangers in the house. Not that I have any strangers to let in, but you know. My grandsons make up funny rules for me.” She left the door open while she went to the table next to a recliner and picked up her phone. So used to the micro-designs of modern phone technology, it appeared to Damini that she would be hailing resort transportation via an early cordless model the same size as a World War II field radio.
Taking the phone from the woman, she realized she did not have the number to the resort. “Do you happen to have a phone book?”
The woman grimaced. “Good heavens, I have no idea. But let me see.” When she disappeared, Damini looked around the front room, noticing a wall clock that if right told her she’d been wandering a lot longer than she would have ever guessed. Next to the clock what must have been thirty framed family-type photographs surrounded diplomas hanging above a dark and dusty television set that looked as though it had last been viewed to find out who shot J.R.
Be it known on this 12th of May, 1947 that Edith Franks graduated from Bard College with distinction. Damini made a face and nodded approval. The other diploma, for Soren Witsson, made it known Soren had graduated from Harvard College in the year of our Lord 1940. Used to these sorts of credentials, Damini still thought it impressive, due to the surroundings. The retired Admiral Caldwell had told her earlier in the day while they were in the rapport phase of her interview, “you never know whom you’ll run across up here amongst the brambles and aspen, Dr. Singh.” Sure enough, the admiral’s words couldn’t have been more appropriate. From Stephen Crane reading barkeepers to Bard Laureates, Dell County appeared to be replete with all manner of cloaked intellectual talent.
Edith reentered the room. “Well, to hell with it. I don’t know where one is. What do you want with the resort? A ride? A reservation? A sauna?” She chuckled.
“I need a ride back to my room.”
“Oh well, I can get one of my grandsons to do that. That is if they ever show up.” She put her hands on her hips and looked out at the night. “Here, come in.” She stepped back and waved at Damini. “And give me the phone. I’ll try to find out when those boys will be by.”
Damini stepped into the warmth and glow of Edith’s front room. “I appreciate this.”
Edith dialed the phone, taking care as to not poke anybody in the eye with its significant antennae.
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Eight
Barry sat reading with his feet on the beer case they used as a coffee table in the living room. He expected his Mom and Dad back from Bemidji before having to relieve Megan and handle the night trade. The time had arrived for him to put his shoes on and walk up the gravel driveway to the Loon Nest’s back door. Barry marked his spot in The Red Badge of Courage, tied his shoes and put his watch on. Just as he went to the door his mother came in. “You’re late.”
“It’s nice to see you too, son.” She went by him carrying several grocery bags, letting the storm door snap shut with a wheeze and slap. She moved her round, Northern European frame towards the kitchen in more or less a waddle.
His father came in next carrying another couple of grocery bags. “Say there, Bixster.”
“Hi, Dadster.” He turned to his mother. “That road isn’t the best and you know it. You can’t blame me for being just a little worried.”
“I may be getting old, Barry, but I’ve got better eye sight than you.”
His father smiled broadly and added, “and better reflexes don’t forget.”
Barry smiled watching them put the bags down on the kitchen counter. His mother came back into the family room, but his father disappeared toward the back bathroom.
“I hope you haven’t forgotten who taught you your slap shot.” She took her jacket off and threw it into their recliner. “The drive was fine. You’re not an orphan yet, eh?”
“How was Aunt Lydia?”
“She had a good, lucid five minutes this morning when she asked how Nelson was doing.”
Barry looked out the door and up the lane towards the Nest. “Well, at least she got her son’s name right. That’s good.”
She flopped on to the couch and exhaled a breathy “uffda.” Digging the TV remote out from beneath the middle cushion, Barry’s mom fell on to her side. “Now she just has to remember he’s been dead for ten years.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, then moving to the door he turned to his mother. “Did you pay the satellite company?”
She pointed the remote at the TV and zapped it awake, then looked up at Barry. “I know, I know. It’s the start of hockey season. Look, I sent the check so just tell the Waynes that the old check is in the mail.”
“Great. Thanks.” Barry grinned and went out the door. As he started up the driveway, buttoning the sleeves of his flannel shirt, he heard the wind in the pine grove separating the house from the bar and wondered if the seasonal weather would blow in a different Friday night crowd. He hoped for any small miracle to brighten expectations and now that mid October weather finally decided to sway into the region, tourists and the job seeker alike could change the customer profile. “Hopefully they’ll drink more than just seltzer.”
He shuffled up the sandy path to the Loon Nest’s back door, illuminated by a single yellow light bulb hanging precariously from the center support of a rusting metal awning. Before pushing through the door, he could hear the bass impelling from over-worked stereo speakers. Megan liked to play her Zeppelin at the end of a shift.
Barry considered his own musical tastes, which were so random, he felt proud that he could defy categories and demographics. His fascination with Carly Simon was not quite the same as Megan’s Zeppelin devotion. The interest in Simon came definitively from within the family. His father’s copy of Simon’s “No Secrets” made a lasting impression on him. Well, the cover picture did anyway. Then, when he saw the cover for “Playing Possum,” it was as if he had suddenly been propelled into puberty. Even in the late eighties, overtly sexual images in the north woods of Minnesota were so far and few between (before the arrival of their first satellite dish), that his father’s small album collection of singer songwriters generated great interest. Certainly more than it would have in more urbane corners of the universe, such as Grand Forks. Indeed, the Herb Alpert cover with that naked woman covered in whipped cream along with Carly Simon’s nipples provided the catalyst for many a dream for young Barry.
“Not a moment too soon, Bix,” Megan said without moving a single muscle. She stood in a cloud of cigarette smoke, leaning against the bar next to Carl, staring across the room at the broken jukebox.
“I can see you’re slammed by this rush.” Barry flipped the counter up at the end bar and went to the register. “Why didn’t you call?”
“Hey there, Bix.” Carl offered.
Barry twisted around just long enough to say, “Hey.”
“We were just debating whether your Mom’s business strategy of letting the place go to shit was working or not.” Megan kept still and facing the jukebox as if locked in a tractor beam by the Regatta’s winking lights.
As he checked beneath the till, then began counting ones, Barry smiled wryly. “It’s worked since before I was born.”
They all laughed.
“The satellite will be on again soon enough and that jukebox you’re starring at is getting towed out of here by some guy from the Cities who bought it.” He closed the register after seeding the till with a variety of bills he produced from his pockets. Barry moved to the stereo and pointed at it. “And this thing. Well its time has come.” He turned Houses of the Holy down and looked toward Megan. “Sorry, I need to think straight before Ralph and the massive crowds arrive.”
Megan turned around and jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray in front of Carl. “Ho ho, the boy wonder has Ralphie coming in to help.” She blew a powerful jet of smoke out the side of her mouth. “Anyway what’s with all the reinvestment. What are you guys, Weyerhaeuser?”
Barry gunned a Coke into a SuperAmerica cup. “Paying the satellite bill and buying a decent stereo isn’t exactly a major stock buy back, Megs. It’s about working conditions, you know? And the space where the old Regatta Jukebox is we’re gonna put that old table in the back there. A couple of chairs from Menard’s and we’ve got additional seats for Hockey nights.”
Carl drummed the bar top. “Now how’s that for business strategy, Megan?”
“Shut up. You drunk.”
Carl took exception. “I’ve had half a bottle of Schmidt. Catch up with me in a couple of hours, eh.”
Megan playfully patted him on the shoulder. “Well, gentlemen. I would love to discuss growth in small cap stocks, but I’ve got toe nails to paint and boyfriends to avoid.” She pulled her backpack off the bar and strolled out without another word.
Barry watched her sway out of focus, always appreciating the sight of her departing. He then went to the stereo and turned it off.
“Thank Christ.” Carl said as he put a cigarette in his mouth. “If I hear No Quarter one more time I’ll fuckin’ slit my wrists.”
“Why don’t you just tell her not to put it on?”
Carl laughed. “I do, I do. Every time I’m in here.”
“So that makes two of us.” Barry shrugged and grabbed the TV remote.
“Which may,” Carl stopped to light his cigarette, “be why she keeps playing it.”
Barry tapped his temple with the TV remote. “Very true, oh great one. You’re turning into a regular bar room sage.” He turned the TV on and was met by a black screen with incomprehensible green alphanumeric characters running across the bottom. “Hey, the dish is working again.” Barry changed the channel to 3 and was greeted by the site of four very serious poker players. “This is about your speed, Carl.”
“Don’t knock it. Poker’s cool.”
Barry leveled his eyes on him and nodded slowly all the while holding the remote and buzzing through channel options until he came across a Calgary Flames pre-game show on CBC.
“It’s nice to see you too, son.” She went by him carrying several grocery bags, letting the storm door snap shut with a wheeze and slap. She moved her round, Northern European frame towards the kitchen in more or less a waddle.
His father came in next carrying another couple of grocery bags. “Say there, Bixster.”
“Hi, Dadster.” He turned to his mother. “That road isn’t the best and you know it. You can’t blame me for being just a little worried.”
“I may be getting old, Barry, but I’ve got better eye sight than you.”
His father smiled broadly and added, “and better reflexes don’t forget.”
Barry smiled watching them put the bags down on the kitchen counter. His mother came back into the family room, but his father disappeared toward the back bathroom.
“I hope you haven’t forgotten who taught you your slap shot.” She took her jacket off and threw it into their recliner. “The drive was fine. You’re not an orphan yet, eh?”
“How was Aunt Lydia?”
“She had a good, lucid five minutes this morning when she asked how Nelson was doing.”
Barry looked out the door and up the lane towards the Nest. “Well, at least she got her son’s name right. That’s good.”
She flopped on to the couch and exhaled a breathy “uffda.” Digging the TV remote out from beneath the middle cushion, Barry’s mom fell on to her side. “Now she just has to remember he’s been dead for ten years.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, then moving to the door he turned to his mother. “Did you pay the satellite company?”
She pointed the remote at the TV and zapped it awake, then looked up at Barry. “I know, I know. It’s the start of hockey season. Look, I sent the check so just tell the Waynes that the old check is in the mail.”
“Great. Thanks.” Barry grinned and went out the door. As he started up the driveway, buttoning the sleeves of his flannel shirt, he heard the wind in the pine grove separating the house from the bar and wondered if the seasonal weather would blow in a different Friday night crowd. He hoped for any small miracle to brighten expectations and now that mid October weather finally decided to sway into the region, tourists and the job seeker alike could change the customer profile. “Hopefully they’ll drink more than just seltzer.”
He shuffled up the sandy path to the Loon Nest’s back door, illuminated by a single yellow light bulb hanging precariously from the center support of a rusting metal awning. Before pushing through the door, he could hear the bass impelling from over-worked stereo speakers. Megan liked to play her Zeppelin at the end of a shift.
Barry considered his own musical tastes, which were so random, he felt proud that he could defy categories and demographics. His fascination with Carly Simon was not quite the same as Megan’s Zeppelin devotion. The interest in Simon came definitively from within the family. His father’s copy of Simon’s “No Secrets” made a lasting impression on him. Well, the cover picture did anyway. Then, when he saw the cover for “Playing Possum,” it was as if he had suddenly been propelled into puberty. Even in the late eighties, overtly sexual images in the north woods of Minnesota were so far and few between (before the arrival of their first satellite dish), that his father’s small album collection of singer songwriters generated great interest. Certainly more than it would have in more urbane corners of the universe, such as Grand Forks. Indeed, the Herb Alpert cover with that naked woman covered in whipped cream along with Carly Simon’s nipples provided the catalyst for many a dream for young Barry.
“Not a moment too soon, Bix,” Megan said without moving a single muscle. She stood in a cloud of cigarette smoke, leaning against the bar next to Carl, staring across the room at the broken jukebox.
“I can see you’re slammed by this rush.” Barry flipped the counter up at the end bar and went to the register. “Why didn’t you call?”
“Hey there, Bix.” Carl offered.
Barry twisted around just long enough to say, “Hey.”
“We were just debating whether your Mom’s business strategy of letting the place go to shit was working or not.” Megan kept still and facing the jukebox as if locked in a tractor beam by the Regatta’s winking lights.
As he checked beneath the till, then began counting ones, Barry smiled wryly. “It’s worked since before I was born.”
They all laughed.
“The satellite will be on again soon enough and that jukebox you’re starring at is getting towed out of here by some guy from the Cities who bought it.” He closed the register after seeding the till with a variety of bills he produced from his pockets. Barry moved to the stereo and pointed at it. “And this thing. Well its time has come.” He turned Houses of the Holy down and looked toward Megan. “Sorry, I need to think straight before Ralph and the massive crowds arrive.”
Megan turned around and jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray in front of Carl. “Ho ho, the boy wonder has Ralphie coming in to help.” She blew a powerful jet of smoke out the side of her mouth. “Anyway what’s with all the reinvestment. What are you guys, Weyerhaeuser?”
Barry gunned a Coke into a SuperAmerica cup. “Paying the satellite bill and buying a decent stereo isn’t exactly a major stock buy back, Megs. It’s about working conditions, you know? And the space where the old Regatta Jukebox is we’re gonna put that old table in the back there. A couple of chairs from Menard’s and we’ve got additional seats for Hockey nights.”
Carl drummed the bar top. “Now how’s that for business strategy, Megan?”
“Shut up. You drunk.”
Carl took exception. “I’ve had half a bottle of Schmidt. Catch up with me in a couple of hours, eh.”
Megan playfully patted him on the shoulder. “Well, gentlemen. I would love to discuss growth in small cap stocks, but I’ve got toe nails to paint and boyfriends to avoid.” She pulled her backpack off the bar and strolled out without another word.
Barry watched her sway out of focus, always appreciating the sight of her departing. He then went to the stereo and turned it off.
“Thank Christ.” Carl said as he put a cigarette in his mouth. “If I hear No Quarter one more time I’ll fuckin’ slit my wrists.”
“Why don’t you just tell her not to put it on?”
Carl laughed. “I do, I do. Every time I’m in here.”
“So that makes two of us.” Barry shrugged and grabbed the TV remote.
“Which may,” Carl stopped to light his cigarette, “be why she keeps playing it.”
Barry tapped his temple with the TV remote. “Very true, oh great one. You’re turning into a regular bar room sage.” He turned the TV on and was met by a black screen with incomprehensible green alphanumeric characters running across the bottom. “Hey, the dish is working again.” Barry changed the channel to 3 and was greeted by the site of four very serious poker players. “This is about your speed, Carl.”
“Don’t knock it. Poker’s cool.”
Barry leveled his eyes on him and nodded slowly all the while holding the remote and buzzing through channel options until he came across a Calgary Flames pre-game show on CBC.
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Seven
“How much more Seltzer can a girl have?”
After an hour of chortling banter with Barry and Megan it became apparent the time had officially arrived for her to go back to the Aspen Grove. As she drove away from the Loon Nest she compared the experience with the tea bar near her grandfather’s home. Locals there also accepted strangers, despite encountering few off the dusty highway into Ujjain. She laughed at the poor comparison. Ujjain – one of the seven sacred cities for Hindus – was no Dell City. “However,” she mockingly said to herself, “Dell City is sacred to those who worship the Walleye.”
This thought moved Damini into a quick search for a connection between her desire to move away from current circumstance and the enthralling lessons learned as a child from her grandfather. Being able to clearly explain this would be essential in rendering a decision, for answering her family’s questions.
Her mother, Kavita, would be encouraging while her father, Espen, would be his usual Scandanavian self – circumspect and cool. Her little sisters, Mohini, Kriti and Tusti, would want to commit her to a mental health ward. They had been thoroughly seduced by all things modern and urban. Mohini, the dashing advertising executive, with her VW Bug and New Order on the iPod; Kriti a demanding personality and budding attorney; Tusti a well regarded and deadly serious cellist with the symphony. Damini had been convinced for years that their thoroughly cosmopolitan attitudes had happened because only Tusti had the privilege of making the journey to Malwi and remembered nothing of the trip. Too young to recall her stately grandfather or the elegant, sweeping grandness of the Province in which he lived, Tusti relied on Damini to describe and attempt some sort of temperance.
Thomas also allowed himself to be meticulously cast in the here and now, modern technological achievement never ceasing to amaze and amuse him. Not that she was opposed to modern convenience being a gifted physician, it just happened to come up each time she approached the subject of moving North. A general perception of rustic charm always seemed to emerge, despite her best efforts to dash these quaint notions of what life in the North Woods would really be like. For his part, Thomas had been open enough to the idea that he accompanied Damini on the two trips she made in pursuit of the Directorship. But to him the whole idea appeared more or less as a theoretical possibility. She knew he did not believe she would truly accept the position and move. In his opinion, which he made abundantly clear any number of times, the implications were far too complicated.
She eased her car into a parking spot nestled between a knot of Aspen and the large trunk of an impressive white pine. In front of her, the sandy path led up to the door of their suite. After turning the car off she stared out the window and she considered the simplicity of her visit to the Loon Nest, the ease with which the patrons, Barry and Megan conducted their day slightly secure in letting minute by minute drift by. She did not envy this, but rather appreciated that these were people who apparently could achieve some level of satisfaction.
She could not enjoy her success as it had been always defined.
After what must have been several minutes, a squirrel thumped down on the hood and snapped her out of the trance. As she got out of the car the sense that the restless feeling wouldn’t go away began to invade and the outer edges of panic thumped into her nervous system. What if she gave up everything down in the Cities -- job, house, Thomas, friends -- hoping for a more quiet, soul enriching (or was it indemnifying?) experience only to realize the dream was an illusion. A great human conundrum. As she reached the door to her suite and produced her key card she found it difficult to breathe.
The door snapped open and the surprise knocked breath into her lungs. “Damini!” Thomas exclaimed. “I looked out and saw you coming up the path.” He smiled and to Damini looked welcoming, handsome and focused on her.
“Thomas, you scared me opening the door that way.” She smiled and stepped in, dropped her purse and gave him a hug as he let the door swing shut. “I’m glad to be back.” She lifted her head off his shoulder and found his lips. They kissed longer than they had in months. Her feet began to hurt as she was up on her toes in order to reach Thomas’ lips so they broke apart.
Thomas squeezed her torso slightly. “I have had a remarkable time today roaming around in these woods around here. I want to tell you about that. But who cares about my back to nature experiences.” He looked into her eyes. “Tell me everything about the meeting. Did it go well?”
She could tell he was being genuine and this excitement made her forget about all the introspection of the last fifteen minutes since leaving the Loon Nest. Her fatalistic thoughts about their relationship encouraged by pre-meeting nerves were nowhere to be seen. “They’ve offered it to me and I have a couple of days before telling them yes or no.” She walked further into their suite and tossed her purse on the bed, then shook out of her coat. “That’s the bottom line. I didn’t want to bury the lead with a lot of other detail.” She sniffed the air, bent down, picked her coat up and sniffed it. “I smell like an ash tray.” She dropped the coat again and turned toward the bed. “I stopped at the bar on the way back, the Loon Nest, and had a seltzer water. I wanted to slow my brain down a little. But now my nice coat smells like a…”
Thomas took hold of her from behind and kissed her neck. “You smell fine.”
She turned to him and they kissed again. He carefully removed her blazer as she pulled the blouse free from her trousers. “Nevertheless.” She kissed him again. “I want to take another shower.”
He placed her blazer on a chair, then sat down on the bed. “Interview by committee is grueling sport. Shower, dress and we will go find a spot for you to decompress.”
The next thing Thomas knew he had trousers draped over his left shoulder and a blouse and bra on his right as he watched Dimini swish her stylish hips heading into the bathroom. A moment later one of her black leather slingbacks came sailing out the door followed closely by the other. He picked them up and looked at them as though they were debris from space. “Dolce Gabbana? A bit excessive for Dell County, wouldn’t you say?”
Her panties came flying out at him. “Tell me if these are excessive or not, then…” The shower came on and drowned her final few words.
After an hour of chortling banter with Barry and Megan it became apparent the time had officially arrived for her to go back to the Aspen Grove. As she drove away from the Loon Nest she compared the experience with the tea bar near her grandfather’s home. Locals there also accepted strangers, despite encountering few off the dusty highway into Ujjain. She laughed at the poor comparison. Ujjain – one of the seven sacred cities for Hindus – was no Dell City. “However,” she mockingly said to herself, “Dell City is sacred to those who worship the Walleye.”
This thought moved Damini into a quick search for a connection between her desire to move away from current circumstance and the enthralling lessons learned as a child from her grandfather. Being able to clearly explain this would be essential in rendering a decision, for answering her family’s questions.
Her mother, Kavita, would be encouraging while her father, Espen, would be his usual Scandanavian self – circumspect and cool. Her little sisters, Mohini, Kriti and Tusti, would want to commit her to a mental health ward. They had been thoroughly seduced by all things modern and urban. Mohini, the dashing advertising executive, with her VW Bug and New Order on the iPod; Kriti a demanding personality and budding attorney; Tusti a well regarded and deadly serious cellist with the symphony. Damini had been convinced for years that their thoroughly cosmopolitan attitudes had happened because only Tusti had the privilege of making the journey to Malwi and remembered nothing of the trip. Too young to recall her stately grandfather or the elegant, sweeping grandness of the Province in which he lived, Tusti relied on Damini to describe and attempt some sort of temperance.
Thomas also allowed himself to be meticulously cast in the here and now, modern technological achievement never ceasing to amaze and amuse him. Not that she was opposed to modern convenience being a gifted physician, it just happened to come up each time she approached the subject of moving North. A general perception of rustic charm always seemed to emerge, despite her best efforts to dash these quaint notions of what life in the North Woods would really be like. For his part, Thomas had been open enough to the idea that he accompanied Damini on the two trips she made in pursuit of the Directorship. But to him the whole idea appeared more or less as a theoretical possibility. She knew he did not believe she would truly accept the position and move. In his opinion, which he made abundantly clear any number of times, the implications were far too complicated.
She eased her car into a parking spot nestled between a knot of Aspen and the large trunk of an impressive white pine. In front of her, the sandy path led up to the door of their suite. After turning the car off she stared out the window and she considered the simplicity of her visit to the Loon Nest, the ease with which the patrons, Barry and Megan conducted their day slightly secure in letting minute by minute drift by. She did not envy this, but rather appreciated that these were people who apparently could achieve some level of satisfaction.
She could not enjoy her success as it had been always defined.
After what must have been several minutes, a squirrel thumped down on the hood and snapped her out of the trance. As she got out of the car the sense that the restless feeling wouldn’t go away began to invade and the outer edges of panic thumped into her nervous system. What if she gave up everything down in the Cities -- job, house, Thomas, friends -- hoping for a more quiet, soul enriching (or was it indemnifying?) experience only to realize the dream was an illusion. A great human conundrum. As she reached the door to her suite and produced her key card she found it difficult to breathe.
The door snapped open and the surprise knocked breath into her lungs. “Damini!” Thomas exclaimed. “I looked out and saw you coming up the path.” He smiled and to Damini looked welcoming, handsome and focused on her.
“Thomas, you scared me opening the door that way.” She smiled and stepped in, dropped her purse and gave him a hug as he let the door swing shut. “I’m glad to be back.” She lifted her head off his shoulder and found his lips. They kissed longer than they had in months. Her feet began to hurt as she was up on her toes in order to reach Thomas’ lips so they broke apart.
Thomas squeezed her torso slightly. “I have had a remarkable time today roaming around in these woods around here. I want to tell you about that. But who cares about my back to nature experiences.” He looked into her eyes. “Tell me everything about the meeting. Did it go well?”
She could tell he was being genuine and this excitement made her forget about all the introspection of the last fifteen minutes since leaving the Loon Nest. Her fatalistic thoughts about their relationship encouraged by pre-meeting nerves were nowhere to be seen. “They’ve offered it to me and I have a couple of days before telling them yes or no.” She walked further into their suite and tossed her purse on the bed, then shook out of her coat. “That’s the bottom line. I didn’t want to bury the lead with a lot of other detail.” She sniffed the air, bent down, picked her coat up and sniffed it. “I smell like an ash tray.” She dropped the coat again and turned toward the bed. “I stopped at the bar on the way back, the Loon Nest, and had a seltzer water. I wanted to slow my brain down a little. But now my nice coat smells like a…”
Thomas took hold of her from behind and kissed her neck. “You smell fine.”
She turned to him and they kissed again. He carefully removed her blazer as she pulled the blouse free from her trousers. “Nevertheless.” She kissed him again. “I want to take another shower.”
He placed her blazer on a chair, then sat down on the bed. “Interview by committee is grueling sport. Shower, dress and we will go find a spot for you to decompress.”
The next thing Thomas knew he had trousers draped over his left shoulder and a blouse and bra on his right as he watched Dimini swish her stylish hips heading into the bathroom. A moment later one of her black leather slingbacks came sailing out the door followed closely by the other. He picked them up and looked at them as though they were debris from space. “Dolce Gabbana? A bit excessive for Dell County, wouldn’t you say?”
Her panties came flying out at him. “Tell me if these are excessive or not, then…” The shower came on and drowned her final few words.
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Six
She knew it went well and yet felt overwhelmed by ambivalence. Damini did not know that she could be overwhelmed by such a dullness. Watching the smooth road slip beneath her cream colored Volvo 850, the highway stripe added to the mesmerizing effects of her drive back to the resort. Her final interview now complete and an offer sheet tucked into her brief case she planned on spending the rest of the afternoon considering all the possibilities.
Just South of Tellema, she saw the sign for The Loon Nest, a flat roofed red brick structure with a large gravel parking area and tall stands of aspen forming a back-drop. She slowed and pulled in, parking between a bucket truck from the Highway Department and a huge, black pick-up. Damini stared out the windshield and tried to understand why she had stopped at the bar in the middle of a perfectly good afternoon. She rarely drank alcohol.
Sitting in the comfort of her leather appointed automobile, she considered the seven-member board attempting to hire her. A county government committee featuring a range of characters, had just put Damini through a two hour interview that started with a clear tone of skepticism on the part of what she guessed were the more conservative members of the Dell County Board of Health. But as the process went on the atmosphere relaxed. She had been to this place before. In fact, almost every time she succeeded in securing a major position it was in the face of incredulous questions of intent. This time, her desire to come North – way North – and do something radical with her life resonated with those who sat in judgement. Several had done the same thing over the years. From the retired Rear Admiral who now sat as County Commissioner to the Managing Director of the Tribal Affairs office, they expressed something just short of raging enthusiasm for getting away from all “the hustle and bustle of Big City Life.” There take on “Main Street” boosterism was most becoming.
She popped open her door, slipped out and carefully walked between her car and the mud smudged monster truck next to it. Before yanking the Loon Nest door open she pointed her key fob at the Volvo and it winked to sleep with a demur horn tap and headlight flash. Damini waited for her eyes to adjust before proceeding to the bar. As the interior image assembled itself she saw the guy that had helped the night before with careful directions to the Aspen Grove. He sat at the end of the bar reading a paperback. Behind the bar a wiry, tall girl with long hair tied up and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth watched a snowy television as six workmen drank, smoked and chewed on what appeared to be their lunches.
She approached the helpful guy at the end of the bar and as she did, he looked up. “Hello.” She said with a smile.
He put his book down. “Hey there. Come for that free drink?”
Damini put her thin Prada bag up on the bar eliciting a pointed glance from the others before she situated herself on to a teetering stool near Barry. “I was on my way back to the resort from Dell City and thought I’d stop and say thanks for the directions last night.” She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her coat. The others at the bar all gave her a quick look before going back to their bottles.
“No problem. I’m Barry.” He held out his hand.
She took it and gave it a firm yank. “Barry. Good to meet you officially. I’m Damini.”
He straightened his back and folded his arms. “I know who you are. Read all about you in the paper.”
“I was in the paper?”
“Dr. Damini Strommen-Singh.” He grinned. “The eminent opthamologist.”
“So, I made the paper. Made it as eminent.”
The two men nearest to them both laughed. “Beats the usual in the paper. Roadkills, lawnmower fires, snowmobile accidents. Besides, we take our health pretty seriously up in these parts.”
Damini lifted Barry’s pack of Camels off the bar and examined it. “Yes, I see that. Very seriously.”
Barry smiled. “So how about that drink?”
“Oh, well, um.” She looked around as if this would help her think of a cocktail. “I’ll have some seltzer with lime please.”
Barry got up. “Too early for you, then?”
“No, no. I don’t, um, really drink. I mean, you know, alcohol.” She felt more nervous now than she had in front of the County health junta, a strained embarrassment in front of authentic locals. “Maybe an occasional glass of wine or something on a special occasion.”
Barry grabbed the soda gun and a glass. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to sound all apologetic. After all, you gotta be our example of clean living right?”
She felt warm. “Well, no. I really wouldn’t say that.”
“We can’t have a health director in the boozer all afternoon getting blasted and smoking like a chimney.”
Megan finally looked away from the television at Barry. “What, like the last one, eh?”
“Frank wasn’t the health director. He was, like, I don’t know, the inspector or something.” Barry shot Seltzer into the glass then hunted down a lime slice in the mini fridge beneath the register. He went back to Damini. “Here you go.”
“Thank you very much. I’ve just come from an interview and I am extremely thirsty.”
“So did you get the job?”
Damini took a long drink from her glass, catching Barry’s eyes, then shooting hers upwards in an attempt to convey ambiguity. Barry’s eyes were obviously distorted through the thick lenses, which strained to correct severe myopia. She wondered how long he had labored with such vision.
Barry sat back down. “Don’t worry. They have to hire you after dragging you all the way up here.”
She finally stopped drinking, but did not put the glass down. “Time will tell.” Noticing the book resting next to his cigarettes she decided to change the subject if possible. “Red Badge of Courage?”
He looked down at the book. “Yup. Trying to get my high school diploma.”
“Really?”
Megan giggled. “The first one wasn’t legit, eh Bix?”
The construction worker closest to Barry and Damini belched and resituated his large frame on his unsteady stool. “Bixy just skated through. Right on out of the rink and down to the U.”
Barry leaned toward the bar. “Hey I learned stuff George. I learned a lot in High School.”
George huffed. “Like getting away with a cross check on the wing.”
The others chortled with agreement. Barry folded his arms again. “Fair enough.”
Damini finished her seltzer and put the glass down. “So what do you think of the book?”
“I like it a lot. I’m rereading, um or maybe I should just say, reading some of those books they made us read back in high school. Kind of like a self-improvement thing.” He glanced at Megan. “But not really like that. Anyway, I knew they wanted us to read them for a reason.”
“What have you found out so far?”
He picked up the book and thumbed the pages. “That Mr. Crane liked symbolism, in particular colors.”
George turned to him and smiled. “Listen to the professor down here guys.”
Barry pulled a face at him. “Shut up George. Or I’ll run you right out of this place.”
The others snickered and George grinned. “You’re a piece of work, Bixy. Don’t think your Mommy would like that much.”
Damini looked at her glass deliberately staying out of the testoserone flex she sat between.
“Do you identify with Henry Fleming?”
Barry looked up at the ceiling considering this question for a moment. “You know, I think I do. Particularly when I hear some of my buddies who’ve been over in Iraq talk.”
“You should read Crane’s Wounds in the Rain.”
Barry shifted on his stool. “Sounds like a real uplifting story.”
“It’s a collection of stories published the year he died.”
“When was that? I don’t even know that kind of stuff.” He picked up the book and looked at the back cover as though trying to get the answer.
“1900. He was only 28 years old.” Damini knew she had taken this too far, but discussing literature, even at this rudimentary and far-fetched level in a smoky roadside bar, gave her great pleasure. She remembered fondly the nights she and her family would discuss such things around the dinner table, her father holding forth as though giving a seminar. It armed her with the uncanny ability to spew forth at any given moment about such things to the point of bewildering Thomas. But as she looked at Barry studying the back of his little paperback, she saw that it did not bewilder or bore him in the least. This young man appeared to be after something. “Have you Emerson?”
He glanced over to Megan for no particular reason. “No, but maybe someday.”
“How about Sinclair Lewis? You know, Babbitt? Main Street?”
Barry nodded. “More for my list.”
She tossed her head back and forth. “Maybe. You might like Main Street.”
He nodded again and they fell silent.
“So where’s your friend?” He asked suddenly. “I owe him a drink too, you know.”
Damini smiled. “He’s at the resort, probably walking all over the woods looking for a signal so he can get his e-mail. It’s killing him.”
“Everyone around here has high speed so if need to get his mail, all he has to do is ask. The library in Dell City is wired too. Well, I guess the exception is the Aspen Grove. Those guys decided not to do that.” Barry shrugged. “Hell I don’t blame ‘em. The type of people that go there and stay need to get away from all that right?”
“Everyone except my boyfriend.” She did not like the way the word boyfriend sounded weird and forced. Damini held her glass up to Megan. “Can I have another seltzer and lime please?”
Megan did not respond, eyes locked on a game show broadcast. Barry leaned forward, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Earth to Megan. Earth calling Megan. Customer needs more to drink.”
Megan finally looked down. “Oh. Jeez. Sorry. I thought you were taking care of your friend, Bix.” She took the glass and did her thing.
Damini suddenly felt strange for feeling so relaxed at The Loon Nest. The hum and drawl of her motors as she steamed through life had become a well-oiled excuse to fit into patterns. She sat in a harbor, not necessarily avoiding any sort of a storm. She accepted another glass of seltzer and lime as a way to avoid the monotony of ocean passage. Barry got her attention again. “So what sort of name is Damini?”
“It’s Indian.” Barry looked blank. “The place.”
“Oh. Right. I guess I meant what does it mean?”
“Why do some people call you Bix?”
Barry shrugged. “My Dad started calling me that when I was a baby. Anybody who’s known me forever calls me that. It just happens that way.”
“Right. I see.”
He shrugged again. “So your name?”
She took a drink and wiped her lips. “Most speaking Hindi would say it means, oh, something like lightning. But for my family? It was the name of my great grandmother in India.”
“Lightning? I like that. So Damini is Hindu for lightning?”
She did not know how to explain. “It depends on the dialect. The Hindi spoken in my mother’s province is,” Damini did not want to go into this for a third time in one day. “It’s very boring to talk about. Trust me.”
Just South of Tellema, she saw the sign for The Loon Nest, a flat roofed red brick structure with a large gravel parking area and tall stands of aspen forming a back-drop. She slowed and pulled in, parking between a bucket truck from the Highway Department and a huge, black pick-up. Damini stared out the windshield and tried to understand why she had stopped at the bar in the middle of a perfectly good afternoon. She rarely drank alcohol.
Sitting in the comfort of her leather appointed automobile, she considered the seven-member board attempting to hire her. A county government committee featuring a range of characters, had just put Damini through a two hour interview that started with a clear tone of skepticism on the part of what she guessed were the more conservative members of the Dell County Board of Health. But as the process went on the atmosphere relaxed. She had been to this place before. In fact, almost every time she succeeded in securing a major position it was in the face of incredulous questions of intent. This time, her desire to come North – way North – and do something radical with her life resonated with those who sat in judgement. Several had done the same thing over the years. From the retired Rear Admiral who now sat as County Commissioner to the Managing Director of the Tribal Affairs office, they expressed something just short of raging enthusiasm for getting away from all “the hustle and bustle of Big City Life.” There take on “Main Street” boosterism was most becoming.
She popped open her door, slipped out and carefully walked between her car and the mud smudged monster truck next to it. Before yanking the Loon Nest door open she pointed her key fob at the Volvo and it winked to sleep with a demur horn tap and headlight flash. Damini waited for her eyes to adjust before proceeding to the bar. As the interior image assembled itself she saw the guy that had helped the night before with careful directions to the Aspen Grove. He sat at the end of the bar reading a paperback. Behind the bar a wiry, tall girl with long hair tied up and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth watched a snowy television as six workmen drank, smoked and chewed on what appeared to be their lunches.
She approached the helpful guy at the end of the bar and as she did, he looked up. “Hello.” She said with a smile.
He put his book down. “Hey there. Come for that free drink?”
Damini put her thin Prada bag up on the bar eliciting a pointed glance from the others before she situated herself on to a teetering stool near Barry. “I was on my way back to the resort from Dell City and thought I’d stop and say thanks for the directions last night.” She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her coat. The others at the bar all gave her a quick look before going back to their bottles.
“No problem. I’m Barry.” He held out his hand.
She took it and gave it a firm yank. “Barry. Good to meet you officially. I’m Damini.”
He straightened his back and folded his arms. “I know who you are. Read all about you in the paper.”
“I was in the paper?”
“Dr. Damini Strommen-Singh.” He grinned. “The eminent opthamologist.”
“So, I made the paper. Made it as eminent.”
The two men nearest to them both laughed. “Beats the usual in the paper. Roadkills, lawnmower fires, snowmobile accidents. Besides, we take our health pretty seriously up in these parts.”
Damini lifted Barry’s pack of Camels off the bar and examined it. “Yes, I see that. Very seriously.”
Barry smiled. “So how about that drink?”
“Oh, well, um.” She looked around as if this would help her think of a cocktail. “I’ll have some seltzer with lime please.”
Barry got up. “Too early for you, then?”
“No, no. I don’t, um, really drink. I mean, you know, alcohol.” She felt more nervous now than she had in front of the County health junta, a strained embarrassment in front of authentic locals. “Maybe an occasional glass of wine or something on a special occasion.”
Barry grabbed the soda gun and a glass. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to sound all apologetic. After all, you gotta be our example of clean living right?”
She felt warm. “Well, no. I really wouldn’t say that.”
“We can’t have a health director in the boozer all afternoon getting blasted and smoking like a chimney.”
Megan finally looked away from the television at Barry. “What, like the last one, eh?”
“Frank wasn’t the health director. He was, like, I don’t know, the inspector or something.” Barry shot Seltzer into the glass then hunted down a lime slice in the mini fridge beneath the register. He went back to Damini. “Here you go.”
“Thank you very much. I’ve just come from an interview and I am extremely thirsty.”
“So did you get the job?”
Damini took a long drink from her glass, catching Barry’s eyes, then shooting hers upwards in an attempt to convey ambiguity. Barry’s eyes were obviously distorted through the thick lenses, which strained to correct severe myopia. She wondered how long he had labored with such vision.
Barry sat back down. “Don’t worry. They have to hire you after dragging you all the way up here.”
She finally stopped drinking, but did not put the glass down. “Time will tell.” Noticing the book resting next to his cigarettes she decided to change the subject if possible. “Red Badge of Courage?”
He looked down at the book. “Yup. Trying to get my high school diploma.”
“Really?”
Megan giggled. “The first one wasn’t legit, eh Bix?”
The construction worker closest to Barry and Damini belched and resituated his large frame on his unsteady stool. “Bixy just skated through. Right on out of the rink and down to the U.”
Barry leaned toward the bar. “Hey I learned stuff George. I learned a lot in High School.”
George huffed. “Like getting away with a cross check on the wing.”
The others chortled with agreement. Barry folded his arms again. “Fair enough.”
Damini finished her seltzer and put the glass down. “So what do you think of the book?”
“I like it a lot. I’m rereading, um or maybe I should just say, reading some of those books they made us read back in high school. Kind of like a self-improvement thing.” He glanced at Megan. “But not really like that. Anyway, I knew they wanted us to read them for a reason.”
“What have you found out so far?”
He picked up the book and thumbed the pages. “That Mr. Crane liked symbolism, in particular colors.”
George turned to him and smiled. “Listen to the professor down here guys.”
Barry pulled a face at him. “Shut up George. Or I’ll run you right out of this place.”
The others snickered and George grinned. “You’re a piece of work, Bixy. Don’t think your Mommy would like that much.”
Damini looked at her glass deliberately staying out of the testoserone flex she sat between.
“Do you identify with Henry Fleming?”
Barry looked up at the ceiling considering this question for a moment. “You know, I think I do. Particularly when I hear some of my buddies who’ve been over in Iraq talk.”
“You should read Crane’s Wounds in the Rain.”
Barry shifted on his stool. “Sounds like a real uplifting story.”
“It’s a collection of stories published the year he died.”
“When was that? I don’t even know that kind of stuff.” He picked up the book and looked at the back cover as though trying to get the answer.
“1900. He was only 28 years old.” Damini knew she had taken this too far, but discussing literature, even at this rudimentary and far-fetched level in a smoky roadside bar, gave her great pleasure. She remembered fondly the nights she and her family would discuss such things around the dinner table, her father holding forth as though giving a seminar. It armed her with the uncanny ability to spew forth at any given moment about such things to the point of bewildering Thomas. But as she looked at Barry studying the back of his little paperback, she saw that it did not bewilder or bore him in the least. This young man appeared to be after something. “Have you Emerson?”
He glanced over to Megan for no particular reason. “No, but maybe someday.”
“How about Sinclair Lewis? You know, Babbitt? Main Street?”
Barry nodded. “More for my list.”
She tossed her head back and forth. “Maybe. You might like Main Street.”
He nodded again and they fell silent.
“So where’s your friend?” He asked suddenly. “I owe him a drink too, you know.”
Damini smiled. “He’s at the resort, probably walking all over the woods looking for a signal so he can get his e-mail. It’s killing him.”
“Everyone around here has high speed so if need to get his mail, all he has to do is ask. The library in Dell City is wired too. Well, I guess the exception is the Aspen Grove. Those guys decided not to do that.” Barry shrugged. “Hell I don’t blame ‘em. The type of people that go there and stay need to get away from all that right?”
“Everyone except my boyfriend.” She did not like the way the word boyfriend sounded weird and forced. Damini held her glass up to Megan. “Can I have another seltzer and lime please?”
Megan did not respond, eyes locked on a game show broadcast. Barry leaned forward, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Earth to Megan. Earth calling Megan. Customer needs more to drink.”
Megan finally looked down. “Oh. Jeez. Sorry. I thought you were taking care of your friend, Bix.” She took the glass and did her thing.
Damini suddenly felt strange for feeling so relaxed at The Loon Nest. The hum and drawl of her motors as she steamed through life had become a well-oiled excuse to fit into patterns. She sat in a harbor, not necessarily avoiding any sort of a storm. She accepted another glass of seltzer and lime as a way to avoid the monotony of ocean passage. Barry got her attention again. “So what sort of name is Damini?”
“It’s Indian.” Barry looked blank. “The place.”
“Oh. Right. I guess I meant what does it mean?”
“Why do some people call you Bix?”
Barry shrugged. “My Dad started calling me that when I was a baby. Anybody who’s known me forever calls me that. It just happens that way.”
“Right. I see.”
He shrugged again. “So your name?”
She took a drink and wiped her lips. “Most speaking Hindi would say it means, oh, something like lightning. But for my family? It was the name of my great grandmother in India.”
“Lightning? I like that. So Damini is Hindu for lightning?”
She did not know how to explain. “It depends on the dialect. The Hindi spoken in my mother’s province is,” Damini did not want to go into this for a third time in one day. “It’s very boring to talk about. Trust me.”
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Five
At a small, wobbly table beside the bar, Barry read the County Osprey-Ledger, absorbing what little news existed within its disjointed format. Tales of drunk driving, mine lay-offs, big fish caught and local boys back from Iraq worked their brief stories between important issues like the new outdoor rink in Siddlers not being ready for a promised Thanksgiving opening. On page 3 Barry found a piece about the woman who had been in the bar last night.
He learned Dr. Damini Strommen-Singh worked as a consultant in Minneapolis for Lakeland Union Life & Casualty, the largest insurer in the state. She was clinical director of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Opthamology Department. She practiced at CityNet Health’s (the second largest Health Network in the state) Suburban West Eye Center in Minnetonka where she was also Medical Director.
Damini was born in Norway to a visiting professor and his wife – a dentist from Indore, India. She is a graduate of Carleton College and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Her specialty is something called oculoplastics, a term he had actually heard before. Immediately following his injury, the team physician had mentioned it several times.
Barry was impressed the newspaper had been able to produce this much background. Mostly he was captivated by the thought of this important, intellectual stranger showing up in the far North. He felt almost as though he had met a celebrity, like the time Bobby Clarke came by the locker room at the U.
He folded the paper and tossed it up on the bar, nodding amusement. Grabbing his tattered copy of Red Badge of Courage, he went behind the bar, shot Pepsi into a large plastic Holiday cup, then stood drinking it while watching Megan stock the beer cooler. “Do you think you’ll get much at lunch?” He asked.
She straightened up. “It’s hard to say with construction. You know? They’ve been building that new bridge for a long fucking time, eh. It’s like one of these days they’ll run out of shit to do.”
“Then they’ll come drinkin’.” He sighed. “I think you’ll get the boys in from that roofing project down the way.”
“They were in yesterday. Seven of ‘em. Not bad.” Megan stretched her arms, which lifted her short sweater up enough for Barry to catch a glimpse of bare stomach. He quickly averted his eyes to the Pepsi in his cup.
Megan Tanner knew her way around the Loon Nest, having worked for Barry’s parents since before Barry came home from the U. She was a grade ahead of him all through school. There had been a time (when he was a hot hockey prospect and Megan got noticed around the area) that they were considered a sure bet to collide and create a golden Dell County couple. One major injury for him and a drug conviction for her finished off that theory somewhere ten years back. Now both worked within the comfort and reliably mundane, lacking either conviction or confidence to forge meaningful relationships.
Megan leaned against the register and pinched her ear lobe, looking out into middle distance at nothing. “If the casino goes in, I think we’ll do better.”
Barry refilled his cup with soda, not offering anything in response. He thought about Damini again, the casino reference causing him to think about public perceptions of the County, about the opportunity to attract people and business to the area. “I don’t know about that. More competition. Imagine all the bus loads of old people going right by us, heading straight for the reservation.”
“Imagine all the people not on those buses. Folks who want real medicine, instead of the watered variety.”
“Maybe. But I’ve read all about Atlantic City. How that city thought gambling would save it. All they did was build expressways straight to the doors of the casinos so the busloads of suckers could come right in from wherever, not have to deal with any locals. And all the employees of these places live in other places too. It didn’t do at all what they thought it would.”
“So what’s your answer Mr. Chamber of Commerce?”
Barry shrugged. “Small scale. Bring some of the small resorts back. Like the old Torch Light and that place over on Wapott Lake.”
“The Roost?”
“Is that what it was called?”
“Barry, that place could be a set for a horror movie.”
“Friday the 13th.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, the point is, these places draw in a variety of people. Old, young, families, singles, whatever. And those people look for local connection. You know? Like they want to go to a local bar and feel like they’re part of it.”
“You think so, eh?” Megan opened the register and checked under the till. “Thought maybe there’d be some twenties under here you could use to buy the Roost.”
Barry went to the end of the bar. “Ha ha. Probably going to take a little more than that.”
She closed the register. “Probably not. Most people want to feel like they’re home, but like home has moved.” Sticking a cigarette in her mouth she felt her pants for a lighter.
“Here.” Barry tossed his to her, then picked the newspaper back up. He fiddled with it while thinking about The Roost and Torch Light Inn. Both properties had been closed and for sale a long time. He wondered what it would be like to have a little spot, a small time destination catering to the same sets of families year after year.
“You almost done with the book?” Megan interrupted his daydream. He looked at her trying to bring his head around to what she might be asking. She blew a cloud of smoke out of her mouth in a tight stream, then motioned to the book on the counter. “The Red Badge of Courage. You know.” She slid it down to him and he picked it up, starting to thumb the pages.
“Almost.”
“Well? Is it what you remember from Mr. Thorsten’s class?”
Barry recalled how tough it had been to get through back in high school. The language seemed hard and pace so slow. He grinned. “Like the others I’ve reread, you kind of see why they want you to read them in the first place. You know, back in high school. But the problem is, back then, no one has the patience for it. I didn’t have any perspective for it.”
Megan looked at the floor and nodded. “And the ones who do have that sort of patience...”
“Anyway, it is sort of Emerson goes to war. That’s what some reviews say. I don’t know what Emerson is like, but I guess that means the language, you know, like the vocabulary is like that. I don’t know. But now that I can figure out the words, understand something about style and all and carry the plot along, well, it makes a difference.”
“Mr. Thorsten would be proud.”
“Right. Like he gave a shit.”
She pulled one of the floor mats further towards the register. “So what’s next on your reading list, Einstein?”
“Catcher in the Rye.”
She straightened and picked up her cigarette, squinting at him. “Don’t remember that one either.” She took an enormous drag. “So why all the interest? Feel cheated?”
“Huh? Um, no.” He shrugged. “I’m bored, I guess. It’s something to do. I was thinking about high school and then my time at the U. I was supposed to read things and really, I don’t know, um, understand them. Really get them. But I just didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Get it. Get them. Like, these are important books and the way people talk about them, they’re supposed to change your life.”
They were quiet for a minute, while Megan smoked and slowly stroked a few stray strands of her hair. She then put her cigarette out. “So Catcher in the Rye?”
“Another famous book we all had to read even though none of us could figure out why.”
Megan snorted. “Fuck right. All I remember thinking about in High School…”
Barry knew what she was going to say and cut her off. “All I could think about was …”
“Getting in Molly Cannon’s pants.”
He paused awkwardly and smirked. “I was going to say hockey, smart-ass.”
“Whatever. So the sudden interest in gettin’ educated just came to you, eh? A little late for it, wouldn’t you say?”
Barry considered this once again. Megan was not the first to point out the exercise’s futility. His Mother found it quite humorous. “I’m not doing all the reading, because I think it’s going to bring me some sort of better life or whatever. It’s not some well thought out self-improvement project.” Okay, he thought, then what would be the real reason?
“Can’t always find a good hockey game on the TV, I guess.” She took a sip of his soda.
“Well once you start reading, um, you sort of get into a pattern or something. A habit. The brain starts to expect it, anticipate the stuff you’re putting into it.” He saw himself in a Jack Daniel’s Mirror that hung above the elaborate Aquavit totem. “I swear the brain starts demanding knowledge.”
“Smoking, drinking and fucking are habits, Bix.”
He sniggered, “reading is too, Miss Bad Language.”
“You know you love it when girls cuss. All guys do, right? Am I right?”
Barry could feel himself blush, which he thought odd given he’d known Megan since the beginning of time, knew her liberal use of bad language, poor timing and general lack of inhibitions. “I have no idea whether you’re right or wrong. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I just hope you don’t use all the bad words with customers.”
“Oh no sir, boss. I’m all sweet and innocent with our high class customers.”
“I’m not your boss. But I know my Mom isn’t a big fan of the F word. You know that.”
“I do. I do.” She pushed herself up on to the bar top, slumped and cracked her knuckles. “So where’d you start with it?”
“With what?” Barry started to clean his glasses with a bar towel.
“Your reading habit.”
“Well, Dick and Jane isn’t bad.”
Megan huffed and nodded. “Now who’s the smart-ass?”
“I am semi half serious. If you’d like to be a reader, and I’m not saying that I am.” He held his glasses up to the light, then continued to polish. “Just start with something short and easy.” He shrugged and put his glasses on. “John Steinbeck’s The Pearl or Hemingway. Don’t know much about him, but I’ve read a little of his stuff and it’s a good place to start. Old Man and the Sea. You should check that out. Go see Mrs. Scholes at the library up in Dell City.”
“I was thinking about my Granny. She needs to get this habit. Not me. Hell she watches about fifteen hours of TV every day.”
“Take your Dad’s deer rifle and put one in the screen, then hand her a copy of Reader’s Digest.”
They both laughed at this idea. “He pawned the sucker in Bemidji last month.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Pawned it along with his Mauser and that old Browning sniper rifle. Needed cash to cover a bet, y’know? Besides, if I shot the television, what do I use to watch my shows?”
“Well, you could always move in with Carl. He keeps saying he’s going to get a plasma set.”
Megan jumped down off the bar. “Fuck off.”
DECISION SOON ON COUNTY
HEALTH DIRECTOR
HEALTH DIRECTOR
He learned Dr. Damini Strommen-Singh worked as a consultant in Minneapolis for Lakeland Union Life & Casualty, the largest insurer in the state. She was clinical director of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Opthamology Department. She practiced at CityNet Health’s (the second largest Health Network in the state) Suburban West Eye Center in Minnetonka where she was also Medical Director.
Damini was born in Norway to a visiting professor and his wife – a dentist from Indore, India. She is a graduate of Carleton College and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Her specialty is something called oculoplastics, a term he had actually heard before. Immediately following his injury, the team physician had mentioned it several times.
Barry was impressed the newspaper had been able to produce this much background. Mostly he was captivated by the thought of this important, intellectual stranger showing up in the far North. He felt almost as though he had met a celebrity, like the time Bobby Clarke came by the locker room at the U.
He folded the paper and tossed it up on the bar, nodding amusement. Grabbing his tattered copy of Red Badge of Courage, he went behind the bar, shot Pepsi into a large plastic Holiday cup, then stood drinking it while watching Megan stock the beer cooler. “Do you think you’ll get much at lunch?” He asked.
She straightened up. “It’s hard to say with construction. You know? They’ve been building that new bridge for a long fucking time, eh. It’s like one of these days they’ll run out of shit to do.”
“Then they’ll come drinkin’.” He sighed. “I think you’ll get the boys in from that roofing project down the way.”
“They were in yesterday. Seven of ‘em. Not bad.” Megan stretched her arms, which lifted her short sweater up enough for Barry to catch a glimpse of bare stomach. He quickly averted his eyes to the Pepsi in his cup.
Megan Tanner knew her way around the Loon Nest, having worked for Barry’s parents since before Barry came home from the U. She was a grade ahead of him all through school. There had been a time (when he was a hot hockey prospect and Megan got noticed around the area) that they were considered a sure bet to collide and create a golden Dell County couple. One major injury for him and a drug conviction for her finished off that theory somewhere ten years back. Now both worked within the comfort and reliably mundane, lacking either conviction or confidence to forge meaningful relationships.
Megan leaned against the register and pinched her ear lobe, looking out into middle distance at nothing. “If the casino goes in, I think we’ll do better.”
Barry refilled his cup with soda, not offering anything in response. He thought about Damini again, the casino reference causing him to think about public perceptions of the County, about the opportunity to attract people and business to the area. “I don’t know about that. More competition. Imagine all the bus loads of old people going right by us, heading straight for the reservation.”
“Imagine all the people not on those buses. Folks who want real medicine, instead of the watered variety.”
“Maybe. But I’ve read all about Atlantic City. How that city thought gambling would save it. All they did was build expressways straight to the doors of the casinos so the busloads of suckers could come right in from wherever, not have to deal with any locals. And all the employees of these places live in other places too. It didn’t do at all what they thought it would.”
“So what’s your answer Mr. Chamber of Commerce?”
Barry shrugged. “Small scale. Bring some of the small resorts back. Like the old Torch Light and that place over on Wapott Lake.”
“The Roost?”
“Is that what it was called?”
“Barry, that place could be a set for a horror movie.”
“Friday the 13th.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, the point is, these places draw in a variety of people. Old, young, families, singles, whatever. And those people look for local connection. You know? Like they want to go to a local bar and feel like they’re part of it.”
“You think so, eh?” Megan opened the register and checked under the till. “Thought maybe there’d be some twenties under here you could use to buy the Roost.”
Barry went to the end of the bar. “Ha ha. Probably going to take a little more than that.”
She closed the register. “Probably not. Most people want to feel like they’re home, but like home has moved.” Sticking a cigarette in her mouth she felt her pants for a lighter.
“Here.” Barry tossed his to her, then picked the newspaper back up. He fiddled with it while thinking about The Roost and Torch Light Inn. Both properties had been closed and for sale a long time. He wondered what it would be like to have a little spot, a small time destination catering to the same sets of families year after year.
“You almost done with the book?” Megan interrupted his daydream. He looked at her trying to bring his head around to what she might be asking. She blew a cloud of smoke out of her mouth in a tight stream, then motioned to the book on the counter. “The Red Badge of Courage. You know.” She slid it down to him and he picked it up, starting to thumb the pages.
“Almost.”
“Well? Is it what you remember from Mr. Thorsten’s class?”
Barry recalled how tough it had been to get through back in high school. The language seemed hard and pace so slow. He grinned. “Like the others I’ve reread, you kind of see why they want you to read them in the first place. You know, back in high school. But the problem is, back then, no one has the patience for it. I didn’t have any perspective for it.”
Megan looked at the floor and nodded. “And the ones who do have that sort of patience...”
“Anyway, it is sort of Emerson goes to war. That’s what some reviews say. I don’t know what Emerson is like, but I guess that means the language, you know, like the vocabulary is like that. I don’t know. But now that I can figure out the words, understand something about style and all and carry the plot along, well, it makes a difference.”
“Mr. Thorsten would be proud.”
“Right. Like he gave a shit.”
She pulled one of the floor mats further towards the register. “So what’s next on your reading list, Einstein?”
“Catcher in the Rye.”
She straightened and picked up her cigarette, squinting at him. “Don’t remember that one either.” She took an enormous drag. “So why all the interest? Feel cheated?”
“Huh? Um, no.” He shrugged. “I’m bored, I guess. It’s something to do. I was thinking about high school and then my time at the U. I was supposed to read things and really, I don’t know, um, understand them. Really get them. But I just didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Get it. Get them. Like, these are important books and the way people talk about them, they’re supposed to change your life.”
They were quiet for a minute, while Megan smoked and slowly stroked a few stray strands of her hair. She then put her cigarette out. “So Catcher in the Rye?”
“Another famous book we all had to read even though none of us could figure out why.”
Megan snorted. “Fuck right. All I remember thinking about in High School…”
Barry knew what she was going to say and cut her off. “All I could think about was …”
“Getting in Molly Cannon’s pants.”
He paused awkwardly and smirked. “I was going to say hockey, smart-ass.”
“Whatever. So the sudden interest in gettin’ educated just came to you, eh? A little late for it, wouldn’t you say?”
Barry considered this once again. Megan was not the first to point out the exercise’s futility. His Mother found it quite humorous. “I’m not doing all the reading, because I think it’s going to bring me some sort of better life or whatever. It’s not some well thought out self-improvement project.” Okay, he thought, then what would be the real reason?
“Can’t always find a good hockey game on the TV, I guess.” She took a sip of his soda.
“Well once you start reading, um, you sort of get into a pattern or something. A habit. The brain starts to expect it, anticipate the stuff you’re putting into it.” He saw himself in a Jack Daniel’s Mirror that hung above the elaborate Aquavit totem. “I swear the brain starts demanding knowledge.”
“Smoking, drinking and fucking are habits, Bix.”
He sniggered, “reading is too, Miss Bad Language.”
“You know you love it when girls cuss. All guys do, right? Am I right?”
Barry could feel himself blush, which he thought odd given he’d known Megan since the beginning of time, knew her liberal use of bad language, poor timing and general lack of inhibitions. “I have no idea whether you’re right or wrong. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I just hope you don’t use all the bad words with customers.”
“Oh no sir, boss. I’m all sweet and innocent with our high class customers.”
“I’m not your boss. But I know my Mom isn’t a big fan of the F word. You know that.”
“I do. I do.” She pushed herself up on to the bar top, slumped and cracked her knuckles. “So where’d you start with it?”
“With what?” Barry started to clean his glasses with a bar towel.
“Your reading habit.”
“Well, Dick and Jane isn’t bad.”
Megan huffed and nodded. “Now who’s the smart-ass?”
“I am semi half serious. If you’d like to be a reader, and I’m not saying that I am.” He held his glasses up to the light, then continued to polish. “Just start with something short and easy.” He shrugged and put his glasses on. “John Steinbeck’s The Pearl or Hemingway. Don’t know much about him, but I’ve read a little of his stuff and it’s a good place to start. Old Man and the Sea. You should check that out. Go see Mrs. Scholes at the library up in Dell City.”
“I was thinking about my Granny. She needs to get this habit. Not me. Hell she watches about fifteen hours of TV every day.”
“Take your Dad’s deer rifle and put one in the screen, then hand her a copy of Reader’s Digest.”
They both laughed at this idea. “He pawned the sucker in Bemidji last month.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Pawned it along with his Mauser and that old Browning sniper rifle. Needed cash to cover a bet, y’know? Besides, if I shot the television, what do I use to watch my shows?”
“Well, you could always move in with Carl. He keeps saying he’s going to get a plasma set.”
Megan jumped down off the bar. “Fuck off.”
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Four
Damini woke up smelling coffee, over the faint redolence of wood smoke, bacon and wet leaves. To her, it was the perfect start of their visit to the solitude she hoped the North Woods would offer. She sat up and looked out from their large bedroom suite at the Aspen Grove. The view of the shimmering lake, fisherman bobbing in their boats as they drifted in and out of sunny patches, energized her. She bolted up and grabbed her robe, immediately beginning to think about the interview.
In just a few hours she would have her final interview with County officials. A week ago she had finally got over the fact they were interested in hiring her, an ophthalmologist of from Wayzata, as their new County Health Director. The application a whim, borne out of a deep desire to escape traffic, sprawl and rigorous office politics at her huge metropolitan, corporate health institution, it did not ever seem like a serious proposition. Yet there Damini stood.
She had always liked the North Woods, but the reality of moving three and half hours North of certain territory excited and frightened her. It baffled Thomas who remained asleep amongst the piles of 400 count Egyptian cotton. She watched one particular boat amongst the many early risers. It had a red haul and the canopy was up. Occasional puffs of cigar or cigarette smoke would billow out from beneath the canvas or the pole would waggle a bit. Patience at a distance, she thought, before turning away from the window, sweeping her hair back and flipping the collar on the robe down as she went to the dressing room.
She heard Thomas stir and mumble, “you know you don’t have to be up yet.”
She studied her eyes in the mirror. “You do if you feel the way I do,” Damini finally replied.
After a long pause, Thomas asked, “how’s that?”
She did not reply, letting the robe drop to the warm bluestone floor, turning the shower on and testing the water. Stepping in, Damini reveled in the sanctuary provided by pounding, hot water. This morning ritual created a safe, comfortable launch for her demanding days. As she stroked soaking hair, her face to the water jets, a rapid array of items flashed across the mind like a PowerPoint presentation gone mad. Everything from housing decisions to whether Thomas had ever known when she climaxed. His status on the wane as lover and friend, they both knew the move would be a final blow, but nevertheless hung together out of convenience. But the time would come when a rapid succession of decisions would need to be made: take the job or not; buy land and build or not; continue the County’s current policy of ignoring Meth use; break up with Thomas soon or let it continue to slide away. Big issues unlike the normal kind that stumped her, like whether to send her father the new Salman Rushdie book now or give it to him for Diwali. Will the rural life have the right organizing effect? Would she develop, as Sinclair Lewis’ characters did, the Village Virus -- that crippling tether, which kept talented individuals with perspective and aspirations, running in place. Would a dose of this be a good thing?
The water tasted sweeter than in the Cities. Turning away from it, she opened her eyes and looked at the tiled wall behind her, its gorgeous craftsmen pattern creating the illusion of autumn harvests with gold, green and burgundy. Damini could see a new place decorated so – with this more earthy palate.
Through the water, steam and glass partition, she could see Thomas had entered the bathroom, breaking the illusion of solitude. “Looks like a nice day out there,” he called.
“It’s supposed to be beautiful,” she responded from beneath a current. “What are you going to do when I am at the meeting?”
“I’m going to try to find a place where I can get a signal and get some work done.” He studied his face in the mirror. “It seems dumb to have this nice resort and not have any cell service or high speed. How can anyone get anything done or even just stay connected?”
Damini worked shampoo into her hair. “I think that is precisely the point, Thomas.” She rinsed and looked out to see him still studying his face, moving his jaw around with his hand. She decided that she was weary of seeing him naked and tired of having him see her that way. They had arrived at a point where no mystery existed and nothing appeared to beguile. Thomas was kind and respected her intelligence, but just did not provide a big picture.
He straightened and turned to her. “What? You’re looking at me with a really weird expression.”
She turned the shower off. “Why don’t you hike over to the Nature Reserve we read about?”
He handed her a towel. “Oh I get it. The stop and smell the roses thing people talk about.”
“Well, in this case it would be stop and smell the wet leaves, but yes. That’s the general idea of you accompanying me up here in the first place.” She wrapped the towel around her and stepped by him.
Thomas stepped into the shower. “I thought I was here to lend support. To nurture this scheme of yours toward a successful conclusion whatever that may be.” He turned the water on, smiling at her with his eyes closed as he received a big blast right in his face.
Damini went to get dressed, first checking the lake through the large picture window. The red boat with the puffing smoke no longer bobbed about amongst the others. The hour must have grown too late for it. She turned to the large full-length mirror, letting the towel drop. She liked herself like this – wet, no clothes, no make-up, no cover of any kind. This self-confidence radiated from a bright mind, she decided. Putting her hands on her hips she twisted theoretically to loosen her back, but she really just wanted to admire her body a few seconds more before beginning the task of applying layers.
As she dressed, Damini thought about her Grandfather back in Malwa. A country doctor at peace with himself though surrounded by the havoc of a large family. She used to question him about confidence, skill and humility. But that was back in school, when answers to the mysteries of the profession eluded her. Instilled with a work ethic and sense of modern female empowerment, her household was a heady, progressive stew of achievement. And now, if all went well on this day, she would need to explain to her parents the drastic move. Damini wished her grandfather still lived. He would undoubtedly be able to understand her retreat from the urbane and familiar.
She went into the bathroom, now in underwear and a slip. “Do you think the dress I brought to wear is too much? I have this feeling I should wear slacks and a blazer.”
Thomas turned the water off and grabbed a towel. “Do you have a blazer with you?”
“The burgundy one.”
He grunted and shrugged.
She looked at Thomas drying his hair and quickly flashed on putting her knee right into his genitals. This image startled her somewhat and she chalked it up to the nervous energy she had felt since the entire opportunity had come up some weeks ago. “Thomas, I was asking for your opinion on whether or not I should wear a blazer and slacks, instead of the dress I brought. I thought you could render a helpful suggestion.”
He finished drying his legs, looking up with a wry smile. “Where’d you buy the dress?”
Damini left the bathroom growling, quickly peeled her slip off and snapped the slacks out of her suitcase. “Why did I think a dress would work?”
“You could wear a burlap sack and still dazzle the bumpkins.”
“Thomas, please. That’s a bit of a cliché, don’t you think?”
He came out of the bathroom and sat down on the bed. “I know. But the point is still valid. You’re always the smartest person in the room and you look great in anything you wear.”
Damini sat down next to him and he put his arm around her. “You can be an incredibly charming man, Thomas. Thank you.”
“Can be?” He kissed her cheek. “That sounds like a hedge. A qualified vote of approval, but options are being entertained. Am I right?”
She stood and shrugged her blouse on. “Yes. Be warned. More charm required.”
Thomas tugged her toward him and kissed her stomach before she could fasten the buttons. He pulled her down and she fell on top of him. “Thomas. Please.” Damini quickly stood back up and nervously worked to finish the buttoning. “Do you want me to have to iron this? You’ll wrinkle me.”
Thomas stayed where he had fallen. “Come on Damini. It’s still way early. I’ve never seen you this uptight about this job or, well, anything for that matter.”
The many meanings of that statement did not get by her. She knew how she sounded and did not like it. “I’m really keyed up, Thomas. I’m always this way before an interview.” She looked out the window. “I know for sure that afterwards...my head, my nerves, everything will be in a lot better shape."
In just a few hours she would have her final interview with County officials. A week ago she had finally got over the fact they were interested in hiring her, an ophthalmologist of from Wayzata, as their new County Health Director. The application a whim, borne out of a deep desire to escape traffic, sprawl and rigorous office politics at her huge metropolitan, corporate health institution, it did not ever seem like a serious proposition. Yet there Damini stood.
She had always liked the North Woods, but the reality of moving three and half hours North of certain territory excited and frightened her. It baffled Thomas who remained asleep amongst the piles of 400 count Egyptian cotton. She watched one particular boat amongst the many early risers. It had a red haul and the canopy was up. Occasional puffs of cigar or cigarette smoke would billow out from beneath the canvas or the pole would waggle a bit. Patience at a distance, she thought, before turning away from the window, sweeping her hair back and flipping the collar on the robe down as she went to the dressing room.
She heard Thomas stir and mumble, “you know you don’t have to be up yet.”
She studied her eyes in the mirror. “You do if you feel the way I do,” Damini finally replied.
After a long pause, Thomas asked, “how’s that?”
She did not reply, letting the robe drop to the warm bluestone floor, turning the shower on and testing the water. Stepping in, Damini reveled in the sanctuary provided by pounding, hot water. This morning ritual created a safe, comfortable launch for her demanding days. As she stroked soaking hair, her face to the water jets, a rapid array of items flashed across the mind like a PowerPoint presentation gone mad. Everything from housing decisions to whether Thomas had ever known when she climaxed. His status on the wane as lover and friend, they both knew the move would be a final blow, but nevertheless hung together out of convenience. But the time would come when a rapid succession of decisions would need to be made: take the job or not; buy land and build or not; continue the County’s current policy of ignoring Meth use; break up with Thomas soon or let it continue to slide away. Big issues unlike the normal kind that stumped her, like whether to send her father the new Salman Rushdie book now or give it to him for Diwali. Will the rural life have the right organizing effect? Would she develop, as Sinclair Lewis’ characters did, the Village Virus -- that crippling tether, which kept talented individuals with perspective and aspirations, running in place. Would a dose of this be a good thing?
The water tasted sweeter than in the Cities. Turning away from it, she opened her eyes and looked at the tiled wall behind her, its gorgeous craftsmen pattern creating the illusion of autumn harvests with gold, green and burgundy. Damini could see a new place decorated so – with this more earthy palate.
Through the water, steam and glass partition, she could see Thomas had entered the bathroom, breaking the illusion of solitude. “Looks like a nice day out there,” he called.
“It’s supposed to be beautiful,” she responded from beneath a current. “What are you going to do when I am at the meeting?”
“I’m going to try to find a place where I can get a signal and get some work done.” He studied his face in the mirror. “It seems dumb to have this nice resort and not have any cell service or high speed. How can anyone get anything done or even just stay connected?”
Damini worked shampoo into her hair. “I think that is precisely the point, Thomas.” She rinsed and looked out to see him still studying his face, moving his jaw around with his hand. She decided that she was weary of seeing him naked and tired of having him see her that way. They had arrived at a point where no mystery existed and nothing appeared to beguile. Thomas was kind and respected her intelligence, but just did not provide a big picture.
He straightened and turned to her. “What? You’re looking at me with a really weird expression.”
She turned the shower off. “Why don’t you hike over to the Nature Reserve we read about?”
He handed her a towel. “Oh I get it. The stop and smell the roses thing people talk about.”
“Well, in this case it would be stop and smell the wet leaves, but yes. That’s the general idea of you accompanying me up here in the first place.” She wrapped the towel around her and stepped by him.
Thomas stepped into the shower. “I thought I was here to lend support. To nurture this scheme of yours toward a successful conclusion whatever that may be.” He turned the water on, smiling at her with his eyes closed as he received a big blast right in his face.
Damini went to get dressed, first checking the lake through the large picture window. The red boat with the puffing smoke no longer bobbed about amongst the others. The hour must have grown too late for it. She turned to the large full-length mirror, letting the towel drop. She liked herself like this – wet, no clothes, no make-up, no cover of any kind. This self-confidence radiated from a bright mind, she decided. Putting her hands on her hips she twisted theoretically to loosen her back, but she really just wanted to admire her body a few seconds more before beginning the task of applying layers.
As she dressed, Damini thought about her Grandfather back in Malwa. A country doctor at peace with himself though surrounded by the havoc of a large family. She used to question him about confidence, skill and humility. But that was back in school, when answers to the mysteries of the profession eluded her. Instilled with a work ethic and sense of modern female empowerment, her household was a heady, progressive stew of achievement. And now, if all went well on this day, she would need to explain to her parents the drastic move. Damini wished her grandfather still lived. He would undoubtedly be able to understand her retreat from the urbane and familiar.
She went into the bathroom, now in underwear and a slip. “Do you think the dress I brought to wear is too much? I have this feeling I should wear slacks and a blazer.”
Thomas turned the water off and grabbed a towel. “Do you have a blazer with you?”
“The burgundy one.”
He grunted and shrugged.
She looked at Thomas drying his hair and quickly flashed on putting her knee right into his genitals. This image startled her somewhat and she chalked it up to the nervous energy she had felt since the entire opportunity had come up some weeks ago. “Thomas, I was asking for your opinion on whether or not I should wear a blazer and slacks, instead of the dress I brought. I thought you could render a helpful suggestion.”
He finished drying his legs, looking up with a wry smile. “Where’d you buy the dress?”
Damini left the bathroom growling, quickly peeled her slip off and snapped the slacks out of her suitcase. “Why did I think a dress would work?”
“You could wear a burlap sack and still dazzle the bumpkins.”
“Thomas, please. That’s a bit of a cliché, don’t you think?”
He came out of the bathroom and sat down on the bed. “I know. But the point is still valid. You’re always the smartest person in the room and you look great in anything you wear.”
Damini sat down next to him and he put his arm around her. “You can be an incredibly charming man, Thomas. Thank you.”
“Can be?” He kissed her cheek. “That sounds like a hedge. A qualified vote of approval, but options are being entertained. Am I right?”
She stood and shrugged her blouse on. “Yes. Be warned. More charm required.”
Thomas tugged her toward him and kissed her stomach before she could fasten the buttons. He pulled her down and she fell on top of him. “Thomas. Please.” Damini quickly stood back up and nervously worked to finish the buttoning. “Do you want me to have to iron this? You’ll wrinkle me.”
Thomas stayed where he had fallen. “Come on Damini. It’s still way early. I’ve never seen you this uptight about this job or, well, anything for that matter.”
The many meanings of that statement did not get by her. She knew how she sounded and did not like it. “I’m really keyed up, Thomas. I’m always this way before an interview.” She looked out the window. “I know for sure that afterwards...my head, my nerves, everything will be in a lot better shape."
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Three
The front door opened and Barry felt the decompression again, the expectation of activity, of time passage and of more alien visitors. “This place is really rockin’ tonight, eh?” Said the voice of Karen Gill, which meant a loud-talking party of four.
He opened his eyes and there they were. Karen, her husband Wayne and Wayne’s Mom and Dad. “Hi, guys.” He said jauntily as he bent down to grab some glasses for brandy.
Wayne’s Dad, Wayne Senior, spoke up. “Barry, what the hell is this? You’re not watching pre-game?” Wayne Senior referred to the Gophers opening hockey game against Michigan Tech. “I thought you would have the dish zeroed in.” Wayne Senior seemed to believe Barry was still a flashy winger for the Dell High NightHawks around whom nothing orbited except pucks, sticks, net and boards.
“The Dish is down. Mom forgot to pay the fee on time. Now we gotta wait for our check to clear.” He stopped the elaboration and held up his hands. “What the hell am I supposed to do about it, you know? She keeps the books.”
Wayne Junior peeled off his down vest and plopped his considerable frame down on Carl’s vacant stool. “Set us up, Bix. We’ll have a couple rounds then get out of your hair.”
“You betcha.” Barry started to work. Karen wiggled her gigantic self on to the stool next to Junior, but Wayne Senior and Cora kept standing. Karen and Cora ran Blue Ox Vacation Shop up the road and their business of selling over-priced Walleye T-Shirts, Loon Wind Socks and post cards kept both Wayne’s in their respective easy chairs. With his back to them, Barry began to pour their brandy. “So Wayno, they gonna open the Mill again over at Norton Center?”
Wayne Junior snorted. “No. It don’t look like it’s in the cards. I heard talk that some guys from corporate came in and had big notebooks that they checked stuff off and such.”
Wayne Senior interrupted. “Inventory. They’re packing it up it looks like. No more timber’s gonna go through that mill.”
Wayne Junior snorted again. “At least with that company. But maybe someone ‘ill buy it and start runnin’ it again, eh? You ever thought about that?”
Barry set the brandy up on the counter and everyone took one in a well- choreographed move. “There’s not much timber available, you know?”
Cora finally offered something up. “I heard the Reservation may release some,” she stated in her gravel-trashed low frequency voice, “since the casino didn’t get approved. They’re lookin’ for cash like the rest of us.” She sipped the brandy, then whipped her lips with her free hand festooned with an Eve cigarette featuring an impressive inch long ash. “Do you think that might be?”
Barry leaned back against the register, wiping his hands on a towel. “I heard the DNR is going to release that stand down at Rilton. Paul Ambrose was in here last week.”
Cora squinted, “he’s that guy from the Co-op office?”
Barry nodded. “Yep, and he said it might happen with the way it’s all going down at the capital these days.”
Wayne Senior took his brandy in one shot and held the empty glass near his mouth for a few seconds while he swallowed. “That’s bullshit. The state can’t get it through the courts. It’s over.” He put his glass down finally. “Looks like retirement continues.” He grabbed Wayne Junior by the shoulders. “Right, my boy?”
Karen smiled. “We can always use your help at the shop, maybe in swimwear.” She giggled, then slammed her brandy to punctuate the absurd notion Wayne Junior would work serving the retail needs of invaders from the South.
Damini popped back into Barry’s mind again. He consulted his fingernails, then regarded Cora.
“Say Cora, does your sister still work over there at the Aspen Grove?”
“Selma? Oh, you betcha. She’s at the front desk now. That place is really growing. Have you been by there lately?” She asked this of the entire group, but no one responded.
Wayne Senior rubbed his hands together. “Give us another, Barry.” He glanced at the television. “I can’t believe you don’t have the game.” Barry took the empty glasses. “And your playing music? What is this?”
Wayne Junior, Karen and Barry all answered in unison. “Carly Simon.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” muttered Wayne Senior. “What’s happened to you Bix?”
“Hey, Mom didn’t pay for the service in time. I can’t do anything about it. Go on up to the Sandy if you want to watch the hockey.”
Wayne rubbed his hands together and huffed. “The fucking Sandy Lake Inn?” He sat down next to Linda. “Listening to girl music, sending customers up to the Sandy.” Wayne Senior looked around, swiveling like a cartoon character. “Where the hell is your Mom, eh? Does she know you’re acting this way?”
Barry smiled. “Fuck off Mr. Gill.”
They all laughed at Barry’s impertinence. Wayne Junior leaned forward to address his father around the eclipsing frame of his wife. “Come on Dad take Bix out and give him a lesson.”
They all laughed some more, though Barry joined in out of congeniality with old friends. In back of the expression, he harbored bitterness, because he knew they laughed thinking about the mismatch – lumberjack and former assistant wrestling coach Wayne Senior versus the nearly blind barkeep with a penchant for Carly Simon. In an earlier time, when Barry played hockey year round, didn’t smoke or drink and had the eyesight of an osprey they would not have laughed in the same way. As he watched the jowls of his gigantic patrons vibrate with drunken laugh he imagined them all suddenly and exponentially expanding into an enormous fungal growth, something scientists would find attached to an ancient aspen along the shore of Leech Lake. Gill mushrooms would become a delicacy in Malaysia, perhaps served at a dinner club high atop the building he watched a program about the other night, those Petronas Towers. His flashy illusion of the exotic and densely urban delivered his mind back to Damini.
“Hey Bixy, where is your Mom and Dad tonight?” Cora asked while finally flicking her cigarette into the ashtray just cleared of Carl’s butts.
Barry picked up Wayne Junior’s empty glass and held it up to him, silently asking if a refill is in order. Wayne gave him a salute and Barry picked up the Brandy bottle. “They went in to Bemidji to visit Aunt Lydia.”
“How’s she doing there?” Cora squinted while taking the last drag of her Eve.
“The last time I was over there with Mom she wasn’t too good. She thought I was Uncle Joe.”
Linda brushed her wild and thick mane back. “Ohmigawd that IS weird. Is your Aunt, like psychic?”
Barry looked at her to see if she was serious. “Um, no.” He handed Wayne his fresh Brandy. “It’s called dementia.”
Wayne snapped his Brandy back. “You dumb ass, Linda. Don’t you know Lydia has Alzheimer’s?”
Barry crossed his arms and settled back against the bar back. “Actually, Wayne, that isn’t really accurate to say.”
“Well, okay Doctor Bix.” They all laughed again. For Barry, this part of the show wore him down mightily. But the Gill clan were great customers and so in order to help the evening’s take, he had to roll with their solar flares of laughter, which seemed to erupt out of a set of private jokes generated from years spent too close.
The door opened and as the new customers came in their voices chattered at once and in such a multiplicity Barry could not identify who or what sort of a crowd came in. He thought he heard the high whine of Max Lundergaard, the unofficial mayor of their little unincorporated nation-state of Tellema. This was a wonderful turn of events as Max would be traveling with a pack of six or seven of his courtiers – usually Paul and Fran Goddard, Brolly Babcott and her little sister Emma, plus one or two other town elders. Brolly had a strange Mrs. Robinson vibe for Barry that long ago he learned to handle appropriately. She was at least thirty years his senior so the Mrs. Robinson vibe always seemed like more of a sad commentary than anything else.
Sure enough, coming into sharp focus was Max. He sidled up and drummed his fingers on the bar top. “Hello, hello to the Gills.” He did something of a bow towards them, then turned stiffly to Barry. “And hello to you Bix. How are you doing son?”
He had known Max forever, yet unlike Brolly Babcott, Barry could not get himself to accept the man’s eccentricities. Max liked to address him with ‘son,’ which Barry resented. Max knew his father well. Barry assumed Max thought of himself as some loosely defined uncle figure – a byproduct of being one of the late season fishermen on Needle Lake along with Barry’s father and uncle. A club of old men that prided themselves on drinking, conservative politics and chancing it out on the softening ice. Fools, Barry called them and that included his father. “Fine, Max. What can I get you guys?”
“I need a brandy, two Schmidt’s, a coke and two white wines. Say, have you heard from your sister?”
Barry started assembly, thinking the question about Alison to be a strange and somewhat creepy gambit for Max. “I’ll bring it over.” He hoped this would be a good enough hint for Max, but he loitered.
Cora interceded, “Max, when is that damn hole on Windy Road gonna get fixed? Hell I nearly busted an axle the other day.” Barry gave Cora a glance, catching Cora’s eye right as she gave him a conspiratorial wink. “You told me a month ago the county would be out to fix it.”
Max leaned up against the bar. “Aw now Cora, I never said that.”
Linda piped up. “You did Max. I was in the shop when you told her.”
“Well, I’ll call over there on Monday and check it out. The county gets to things when they’re good and ready and not necessarily when we’re ready.”
Cora waved at him. “Max you’re so full of shit. Why do you tell us things like you know? Like you’re king shit.” The Gills laughed their proprietary laugh, which sent Max back to his booth and friendlier company. Barry picked up the tray with the drink order and as he started out from behind the bar.
As he crossed over to the line of booths that stretched across the front of the Loon Nest, Barry wondered why he felt reticence about Alison’s story. On the one hand, it was none of Max’s business, but on the other hand, Barry wondered if it had more to do with his own issues with Alison. She had made her escape and had not been back to Tellema in five years, her last time being the funeral of their Uncle Nelson, when she extolled the virtues of complete escape and utter abdication of family business. Alison had stayed in school, busted her ass getting through grad school and now made piles of cash as a consultant in Atlanta. Barry understood precisely why she felt the way she did, because he felt it too. The difference being she had done something about it with energy and bravery and he had not. The basic fact of this defined so much of his world.
When his injury happened and he could no longer play hockey at the highest level, studying lost all significance. This loss of ambition, coupled with his increasingly bad vision and routine headaches made retreat back up into the North Woods inevitable. He knew now how dumb he had been back then, but he also understood a little bit more about himself, which to him felt a bit like maturity. And the advent of this maturity linked with a glimmer of sports-induced positive thinking just enough to give him a solid restlessness.
He opened his eyes and there they were. Karen, her husband Wayne and Wayne’s Mom and Dad. “Hi, guys.” He said jauntily as he bent down to grab some glasses for brandy.
Wayne’s Dad, Wayne Senior, spoke up. “Barry, what the hell is this? You’re not watching pre-game?” Wayne Senior referred to the Gophers opening hockey game against Michigan Tech. “I thought you would have the dish zeroed in.” Wayne Senior seemed to believe Barry was still a flashy winger for the Dell High NightHawks around whom nothing orbited except pucks, sticks, net and boards.
“The Dish is down. Mom forgot to pay the fee on time. Now we gotta wait for our check to clear.” He stopped the elaboration and held up his hands. “What the hell am I supposed to do about it, you know? She keeps the books.”
Wayne Junior peeled off his down vest and plopped his considerable frame down on Carl’s vacant stool. “Set us up, Bix. We’ll have a couple rounds then get out of your hair.”
“You betcha.” Barry started to work. Karen wiggled her gigantic self on to the stool next to Junior, but Wayne Senior and Cora kept standing. Karen and Cora ran Blue Ox Vacation Shop up the road and their business of selling over-priced Walleye T-Shirts, Loon Wind Socks and post cards kept both Wayne’s in their respective easy chairs. With his back to them, Barry began to pour their brandy. “So Wayno, they gonna open the Mill again over at Norton Center?”
Wayne Junior snorted. “No. It don’t look like it’s in the cards. I heard talk that some guys from corporate came in and had big notebooks that they checked stuff off and such.”
Wayne Senior interrupted. “Inventory. They’re packing it up it looks like. No more timber’s gonna go through that mill.”
Wayne Junior snorted again. “At least with that company. But maybe someone ‘ill buy it and start runnin’ it again, eh? You ever thought about that?”
Barry set the brandy up on the counter and everyone took one in a well- choreographed move. “There’s not much timber available, you know?”
Cora finally offered something up. “I heard the Reservation may release some,” she stated in her gravel-trashed low frequency voice, “since the casino didn’t get approved. They’re lookin’ for cash like the rest of us.” She sipped the brandy, then whipped her lips with her free hand festooned with an Eve cigarette featuring an impressive inch long ash. “Do you think that might be?”
Barry leaned back against the register, wiping his hands on a towel. “I heard the DNR is going to release that stand down at Rilton. Paul Ambrose was in here last week.”
Cora squinted, “he’s that guy from the Co-op office?”
Barry nodded. “Yep, and he said it might happen with the way it’s all going down at the capital these days.”
Wayne Senior took his brandy in one shot and held the empty glass near his mouth for a few seconds while he swallowed. “That’s bullshit. The state can’t get it through the courts. It’s over.” He put his glass down finally. “Looks like retirement continues.” He grabbed Wayne Junior by the shoulders. “Right, my boy?”
Karen smiled. “We can always use your help at the shop, maybe in swimwear.” She giggled, then slammed her brandy to punctuate the absurd notion Wayne Junior would work serving the retail needs of invaders from the South.
Damini popped back into Barry’s mind again. He consulted his fingernails, then regarded Cora.
“Say Cora, does your sister still work over there at the Aspen Grove?”
“Selma? Oh, you betcha. She’s at the front desk now. That place is really growing. Have you been by there lately?” She asked this of the entire group, but no one responded.
Wayne Senior rubbed his hands together. “Give us another, Barry.” He glanced at the television. “I can’t believe you don’t have the game.” Barry took the empty glasses. “And your playing music? What is this?”
Wayne Junior, Karen and Barry all answered in unison. “Carly Simon.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” muttered Wayne Senior. “What’s happened to you Bix?”
“Hey, Mom didn’t pay for the service in time. I can’t do anything about it. Go on up to the Sandy if you want to watch the hockey.”
Wayne rubbed his hands together and huffed. “The fucking Sandy Lake Inn?” He sat down next to Linda. “Listening to girl music, sending customers up to the Sandy.” Wayne Senior looked around, swiveling like a cartoon character. “Where the hell is your Mom, eh? Does she know you’re acting this way?”
Barry smiled. “Fuck off Mr. Gill.”
They all laughed at Barry’s impertinence. Wayne Junior leaned forward to address his father around the eclipsing frame of his wife. “Come on Dad take Bix out and give him a lesson.”
They all laughed some more, though Barry joined in out of congeniality with old friends. In back of the expression, he harbored bitterness, because he knew they laughed thinking about the mismatch – lumberjack and former assistant wrestling coach Wayne Senior versus the nearly blind barkeep with a penchant for Carly Simon. In an earlier time, when Barry played hockey year round, didn’t smoke or drink and had the eyesight of an osprey they would not have laughed in the same way. As he watched the jowls of his gigantic patrons vibrate with drunken laugh he imagined them all suddenly and exponentially expanding into an enormous fungal growth, something scientists would find attached to an ancient aspen along the shore of Leech Lake. Gill mushrooms would become a delicacy in Malaysia, perhaps served at a dinner club high atop the building he watched a program about the other night, those Petronas Towers. His flashy illusion of the exotic and densely urban delivered his mind back to Damini.
“Hey Bixy, where is your Mom and Dad tonight?” Cora asked while finally flicking her cigarette into the ashtray just cleared of Carl’s butts.
Barry picked up Wayne Junior’s empty glass and held it up to him, silently asking if a refill is in order. Wayne gave him a salute and Barry picked up the Brandy bottle. “They went in to Bemidji to visit Aunt Lydia.”
“How’s she doing there?” Cora squinted while taking the last drag of her Eve.
“The last time I was over there with Mom she wasn’t too good. She thought I was Uncle Joe.”
Linda brushed her wild and thick mane back. “Ohmigawd that IS weird. Is your Aunt, like psychic?”
Barry looked at her to see if she was serious. “Um, no.” He handed Wayne his fresh Brandy. “It’s called dementia.”
Wayne snapped his Brandy back. “You dumb ass, Linda. Don’t you know Lydia has Alzheimer’s?”
Barry crossed his arms and settled back against the bar back. “Actually, Wayne, that isn’t really accurate to say.”
“Well, okay Doctor Bix.” They all laughed again. For Barry, this part of the show wore him down mightily. But the Gill clan were great customers and so in order to help the evening’s take, he had to roll with their solar flares of laughter, which seemed to erupt out of a set of private jokes generated from years spent too close.
The door opened and as the new customers came in their voices chattered at once and in such a multiplicity Barry could not identify who or what sort of a crowd came in. He thought he heard the high whine of Max Lundergaard, the unofficial mayor of their little unincorporated nation-state of Tellema. This was a wonderful turn of events as Max would be traveling with a pack of six or seven of his courtiers – usually Paul and Fran Goddard, Brolly Babcott and her little sister Emma, plus one or two other town elders. Brolly had a strange Mrs. Robinson vibe for Barry that long ago he learned to handle appropriately. She was at least thirty years his senior so the Mrs. Robinson vibe always seemed like more of a sad commentary than anything else.
Sure enough, coming into sharp focus was Max. He sidled up and drummed his fingers on the bar top. “Hello, hello to the Gills.” He did something of a bow towards them, then turned stiffly to Barry. “And hello to you Bix. How are you doing son?”
He had known Max forever, yet unlike Brolly Babcott, Barry could not get himself to accept the man’s eccentricities. Max liked to address him with ‘son,’ which Barry resented. Max knew his father well. Barry assumed Max thought of himself as some loosely defined uncle figure – a byproduct of being one of the late season fishermen on Needle Lake along with Barry’s father and uncle. A club of old men that prided themselves on drinking, conservative politics and chancing it out on the softening ice. Fools, Barry called them and that included his father. “Fine, Max. What can I get you guys?”
“I need a brandy, two Schmidt’s, a coke and two white wines. Say, have you heard from your sister?”
Barry started assembly, thinking the question about Alison to be a strange and somewhat creepy gambit for Max. “I’ll bring it over.” He hoped this would be a good enough hint for Max, but he loitered.
Cora interceded, “Max, when is that damn hole on Windy Road gonna get fixed? Hell I nearly busted an axle the other day.” Barry gave Cora a glance, catching Cora’s eye right as she gave him a conspiratorial wink. “You told me a month ago the county would be out to fix it.”
Max leaned up against the bar. “Aw now Cora, I never said that.”
Linda piped up. “You did Max. I was in the shop when you told her.”
“Well, I’ll call over there on Monday and check it out. The county gets to things when they’re good and ready and not necessarily when we’re ready.”
Cora waved at him. “Max you’re so full of shit. Why do you tell us things like you know? Like you’re king shit.” The Gills laughed their proprietary laugh, which sent Max back to his booth and friendlier company. Barry picked up the tray with the drink order and as he started out from behind the bar.
As he crossed over to the line of booths that stretched across the front of the Loon Nest, Barry wondered why he felt reticence about Alison’s story. On the one hand, it was none of Max’s business, but on the other hand, Barry wondered if it had more to do with his own issues with Alison. She had made her escape and had not been back to Tellema in five years, her last time being the funeral of their Uncle Nelson, when she extolled the virtues of complete escape and utter abdication of family business. Alison had stayed in school, busted her ass getting through grad school and now made piles of cash as a consultant in Atlanta. Barry understood precisely why she felt the way she did, because he felt it too. The difference being she had done something about it with energy and bravery and he had not. The basic fact of this defined so much of his world.
When his injury happened and he could no longer play hockey at the highest level, studying lost all significance. This loss of ambition, coupled with his increasingly bad vision and routine headaches made retreat back up into the North Woods inevitable. He knew now how dumb he had been back then, but he also understood a little bit more about himself, which to him felt a bit like maturity. And the advent of this maturity linked with a glimmer of sports-induced positive thinking just enough to give him a solid restlessness.
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter Two
Midway down the bar Carl sat hunched, one eye closed as he moved closer to his glass, trying to concentrate enough to bring it into sharper focus. The perfect shot. He refocused on Barry. “How many of these damn things have I had?”
Barry, leaning up against the back counter watching the television set replied without looking at Carl. “Too many.”
Carl took a long drag from his cigarette, then blew a stream of smoke out at Barry, before snapping the glass up and pouring the remaining bourbon into his mouth. “Know what’s ironic?”
Barry kept watching the Simpson’s, despite bad reception from the station out of Grand Forks.
“When I was, was, was workin’ I never could stand drinkin’ bourbon. Now I ain’t workin’ I can’t get enough.”
A commercial lost Barry’s attention. He straightened up, tossing a bar towel over his shoulder. His frame lanky, broad shoulders made him appear to be a confident man, despite wire-rimmed glasses holding thick lenses and what his mother always called a ‘weak chin.’ “That isn’t ironic.”
“It ain’t?” Carl placed the glass back on the bar gently and returned the Camel to his mouth.
Barry, or Bix as his childhood friends or most of the county called him, fished his lighter out of the tip jar.
“Nope. It’s sad maybe. But it’s not ironic.” He lit a cigarette, tossing the lighter back into the jar. “Ironic just might be the most misused word I hear in this crap hole.”
Carl leaned back on his stool and regarded the empty Loon Nest. “Crap hole? Come on, Bixy. This here is an insti, in, intuition.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Institution, Carl.” He folded his arms and puffed away. “Why, because the Loon Nest has been sitting here on the highway, since the depression? Or is it because the roof leaks, the bathroom is a smelly swamp, we’ve got Buck and Merle on the jukebox, when it works? Or maybe it’s because we water the booze?”
Mumbling somewhat either due to the Camel bobbing and weaving on his lips or the large quantity of alcohol in his bloodstream, Carl replied, “ah, Bixy. Ever since you come back from college you’ve been an asshole. That was what, fifteen years ago? Long time to be an asshole, eh?”
“Thanks. It’s been ten” Barry took the empty glass from in front of his one and only early evening regular. “Now get out of here.”
Carl dug into his shirt pocket and produced a few mangled dollar bills. “Gimme one for the, for the road. Then I’ll get the fuck outta ‘ere.”
“If I give you one more will you promise to walk home? I don’t need Wally or the Troopers calling me up bitching, because you ran someone off the road or wrapped your Dad’s truck around a phone pole again.”
Carl waved his hands at him. “I don’t got any choice. Dad dropped me off so I got to walk home or bum a ride.” He looked around him. “Since there ain’t nobody here looks like I’m walking, eh.”
“All right then.” He set Carl up one last time with a bourbon neat.
“You’re a good egg, Bix.” He stubbed his Camel out. “Ever since Kindee-garnen, you been a good egg.”
“A second ago you were calling me an asshole.”
Carl squinted at Barry suspiciously. “Naw I wasn’t. You know never listen to a drunk.”
Barry shook his head and attempted to get interested in the snowy television images again.
“And don’t worry about Wally. Since the State bought ‘im that Bronco he’s afraid to do anything. ‘Fraid he might get it all banged up. So then it’s left to the seven dwarfs.” He pulled another cigarette out of the pack in front of him. “I hear he sits in his office and watches cable all day. Less there’s something goin’ on at the Reservation.” With the Camel pursed between his lips, Carl closed his eyes while he felt around in his huge shirt pocket for a lighter. “I don’t know how, how he got that new Bronco.”
Barry let Carl riff on the County Sheriff and worked as hard as possible to ignore the halting speech of his old friend. Just as Carl’s words were fading, mixed with Homer Simpson dialog and the ever-present fizz Barry has heard for nearly 10 years, the front door of the Loon Nest popped open and visitors from outer space arrived. He could sense immediate change, the decompression fresh customers always brought with them. Despite their distant, fuzzy forms, Barry could tell they were up from someplace wealthy, modern and above all, urban -- the Planet Modern City, just on the other side of Venus. He tossed his towel beneath the bar top and went down the line to greet the aliens.
He waited with his hands on the counter until the couple came into better focus. The two forms in leather jackets and jeans, became humans and Barry, startled by the neat attractiveness of the couple, responded by straightening his spine as best as possible. “Hi. How are you folks this evening?”
The woman, a sleek, dark-skinned person with shiny black, shoulder length hair tucked behind her bejeweled ears stepped up to the bar. “We are really very lost, I think.” She looked back to her companion, a stocky fellow with a shock of blonde hair falling across his forehead as he fiddled with a PDA. “We’re looking for the Aspen Grove Resort,” she looked back at Barry, “and I’m thinking we’ve gone too far. Is this Tellema, here?”
Barry liked the hint of an accent she seemed to have, which reminded him of College. So taken with the woman’s looks, he nearly forgot the name of the place for which they searched. “Um, right. This is Tellema. You’ve gone too far for the Aspen Grove. Yep.”
She whirled to her companion. “You see, Thomas. Once again you didn’t listen.”
He finally spoke, holding up his PDA. “I can’t get a signal.”
Barry looked beyond her. “You aren’t going to get much of a signal once you go passed Stogginsville.” He then addressed the woman. “Sounds like a line from one of those films where the city people are fish out of water.” He made quotation marks in the air for ‘fish out of water.’ A quizzical expression flared then she nodded before Barry quickly moved along. “Okay, well, you guys need to go back to Highway 37, back about 7 miles or so where there’s a Holiday station and Otto’s Lounge. Can’t really miss Otto’s, because there’s a big ol’ Northern on the roof. Anyway, turn right or west and go about a mile to County Road B, then north, oh about, say, maybe 3 miles. You’ll see the sign then. You just missed the 37 turn at the Holiday station so you aren’t too far out of the way.” He tried to smile, but the sudden strange ache in his stomach made it difficult – a sudden crush of attraction worked hard to over take his powers of reason. She was so incredibly different than anyone in the area or most of the other tourists that he ever encountered; but then again, the Loon Nest isn’t a place where many tourists visit. It is strictly for the Town’s working class, the invisible backbone of the local industry, which catered to invaders from the Cities or more far away points like Iowa. “Up for some early fall colors, eh?”
She smiled graciously, but ignored the question. “So back south to 37, then west, then north on B. Thanks so much. If we hadn’t stopped, I think we would’ve gone all the way to the border.”
“Can I get you guys anything, since you’re nearly there. You might as well have a welcome to North Woods cocktail, right?”
Once again the easy smile. “Oh, gosh, no thank you. We need to get to the Resort and check in.”
Stowing his PDA, Thomas spoke up again. “Thanks a lot, man. We really appreciate it. I can’t believe there’s no signal. Wow.” He swept his hair back up and took the woman’s arm in what Barry thought a proprietary and highly cliched manner. “Come on Damini. Let’s go.”
“Thanks very much.” She turned and started to leave.
Barry waved to their backs as they went out of focus, into the leather and jean forms they were before. “You betcha. You two have a great time. Come back and see us. Two drinks, on the house.” He heard the door open and close, letting in the early evening outside for just a moment.
Carl laughed. “Two drinks on the house? Fuck, what was that, Bixy? You sure the boss ain’t gonna care that you’re givin’ drinks away?”
Barry went back up the bar to take up his station in front of the television. “Mom and Dad won’t care. They give drinks away all the time.”
“Right. Whatever, maaan.” He threw the final bourbon into his mouth. “I better start walkin’ now or else I won’t make it before the puck drops.” He pushed himself off the stool.
A small desire for Carl to stay came and went, as Barry looked more forward to an empty bar, perhaps a chance to read a little. But he most wanted to think about the woman asking for directions to the Aspen Grove -- Damini. He found a pen by the register and jotted the name down on a napkin. “Okay, Carl. You be careful, now. Don’t wander into the highway and get squashed like a skunk.”
“You betcha, Bix. I’m always careful. I may be drunk as a skunk, but I won’t get squashed like a skunk.” And with that Carl went out of focus, leaving behind a statement that to Barry’s ears sounded like foreshadowing.
He shut the big television off and went over to the stereo receiver (a relic from his high school days his Mom had commandeered while he was down at the U). It teetered on a serving tray creating a platform atop old glassware. He turned the power on and pushed the play button on the cassette. Scratchy rock music pushed a static charge beyond the woeful speakers hung at each end of the bar. Something from Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Barry thought, leftover from the day shift when Megan watched the place. He pushed stop and started to root around in the shoebox piled with tapes beneath the counter – none of them having a container or much in the way of description. “Russian roulette,” he said to himself.
Finally pulling a tape out he knew well, the Led Zeppelin was ejected and replaced by the more soothing tones of Carly Simon. He stood up, crossed his arms and closed his eyes, trying to remember as much as he could about Damini. Shiny black hair cut like a Flapper from a Fitzgerald story. He considered the image of her perfect skin, the black leather jacket, simple silver earrings and a necklace with sort of a green glass pendant on it. Damini.
She resembled a girl who taught a math class he had back at the U. She was the only Indian he’d ever met who was actually from India. Was Damini from India? He knew plenty of Native Americans who called themselves Indians, but the real thing didn’t make it up to Dell County. Though no one could understand much of anything the math teacher said, she certainly got the syntax right enough on those confidence-killing tests. If Damini had taught the class he felt sure he would have achieved something higher than a C.
Barry, leaning up against the back counter watching the television set replied without looking at Carl. “Too many.”
Carl took a long drag from his cigarette, then blew a stream of smoke out at Barry, before snapping the glass up and pouring the remaining bourbon into his mouth. “Know what’s ironic?”
Barry kept watching the Simpson’s, despite bad reception from the station out of Grand Forks.
“When I was, was, was workin’ I never could stand drinkin’ bourbon. Now I ain’t workin’ I can’t get enough.”
A commercial lost Barry’s attention. He straightened up, tossing a bar towel over his shoulder. His frame lanky, broad shoulders made him appear to be a confident man, despite wire-rimmed glasses holding thick lenses and what his mother always called a ‘weak chin.’ “That isn’t ironic.”
“It ain’t?” Carl placed the glass back on the bar gently and returned the Camel to his mouth.
Barry, or Bix as his childhood friends or most of the county called him, fished his lighter out of the tip jar.
“Nope. It’s sad maybe. But it’s not ironic.” He lit a cigarette, tossing the lighter back into the jar. “Ironic just might be the most misused word I hear in this crap hole.”
Carl leaned back on his stool and regarded the empty Loon Nest. “Crap hole? Come on, Bixy. This here is an insti, in, intuition.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Institution, Carl.” He folded his arms and puffed away. “Why, because the Loon Nest has been sitting here on the highway, since the depression? Or is it because the roof leaks, the bathroom is a smelly swamp, we’ve got Buck and Merle on the jukebox, when it works? Or maybe it’s because we water the booze?”
Mumbling somewhat either due to the Camel bobbing and weaving on his lips or the large quantity of alcohol in his bloodstream, Carl replied, “ah, Bixy. Ever since you come back from college you’ve been an asshole. That was what, fifteen years ago? Long time to be an asshole, eh?”
“Thanks. It’s been ten” Barry took the empty glass from in front of his one and only early evening regular. “Now get out of here.”
Carl dug into his shirt pocket and produced a few mangled dollar bills. “Gimme one for the, for the road. Then I’ll get the fuck outta ‘ere.”
“If I give you one more will you promise to walk home? I don’t need Wally or the Troopers calling me up bitching, because you ran someone off the road or wrapped your Dad’s truck around a phone pole again.”
Carl waved his hands at him. “I don’t got any choice. Dad dropped me off so I got to walk home or bum a ride.” He looked around him. “Since there ain’t nobody here looks like I’m walking, eh.”
“All right then.” He set Carl up one last time with a bourbon neat.
“You’re a good egg, Bix.” He stubbed his Camel out. “Ever since Kindee-garnen, you been a good egg.”
“A second ago you were calling me an asshole.”
Carl squinted at Barry suspiciously. “Naw I wasn’t. You know never listen to a drunk.”
Barry shook his head and attempted to get interested in the snowy television images again.
“And don’t worry about Wally. Since the State bought ‘im that Bronco he’s afraid to do anything. ‘Fraid he might get it all banged up. So then it’s left to the seven dwarfs.” He pulled another cigarette out of the pack in front of him. “I hear he sits in his office and watches cable all day. Less there’s something goin’ on at the Reservation.” With the Camel pursed between his lips, Carl closed his eyes while he felt around in his huge shirt pocket for a lighter. “I don’t know how, how he got that new Bronco.”
Barry let Carl riff on the County Sheriff and worked as hard as possible to ignore the halting speech of his old friend. Just as Carl’s words were fading, mixed with Homer Simpson dialog and the ever-present fizz Barry has heard for nearly 10 years, the front door of the Loon Nest popped open and visitors from outer space arrived. He could sense immediate change, the decompression fresh customers always brought with them. Despite their distant, fuzzy forms, Barry could tell they were up from someplace wealthy, modern and above all, urban -- the Planet Modern City, just on the other side of Venus. He tossed his towel beneath the bar top and went down the line to greet the aliens.
He waited with his hands on the counter until the couple came into better focus. The two forms in leather jackets and jeans, became humans and Barry, startled by the neat attractiveness of the couple, responded by straightening his spine as best as possible. “Hi. How are you folks this evening?”
The woman, a sleek, dark-skinned person with shiny black, shoulder length hair tucked behind her bejeweled ears stepped up to the bar. “We are really very lost, I think.” She looked back to her companion, a stocky fellow with a shock of blonde hair falling across his forehead as he fiddled with a PDA. “We’re looking for the Aspen Grove Resort,” she looked back at Barry, “and I’m thinking we’ve gone too far. Is this Tellema, here?”
Barry liked the hint of an accent she seemed to have, which reminded him of College. So taken with the woman’s looks, he nearly forgot the name of the place for which they searched. “Um, right. This is Tellema. You’ve gone too far for the Aspen Grove. Yep.”
She whirled to her companion. “You see, Thomas. Once again you didn’t listen.”
He finally spoke, holding up his PDA. “I can’t get a signal.”
Barry looked beyond her. “You aren’t going to get much of a signal once you go passed Stogginsville.” He then addressed the woman. “Sounds like a line from one of those films where the city people are fish out of water.” He made quotation marks in the air for ‘fish out of water.’ A quizzical expression flared then she nodded before Barry quickly moved along. “Okay, well, you guys need to go back to Highway 37, back about 7 miles or so where there’s a Holiday station and Otto’s Lounge. Can’t really miss Otto’s, because there’s a big ol’ Northern on the roof. Anyway, turn right or west and go about a mile to County Road B, then north, oh about, say, maybe 3 miles. You’ll see the sign then. You just missed the 37 turn at the Holiday station so you aren’t too far out of the way.” He tried to smile, but the sudden strange ache in his stomach made it difficult – a sudden crush of attraction worked hard to over take his powers of reason. She was so incredibly different than anyone in the area or most of the other tourists that he ever encountered; but then again, the Loon Nest isn’t a place where many tourists visit. It is strictly for the Town’s working class, the invisible backbone of the local industry, which catered to invaders from the Cities or more far away points like Iowa. “Up for some early fall colors, eh?”
She smiled graciously, but ignored the question. “So back south to 37, then west, then north on B. Thanks so much. If we hadn’t stopped, I think we would’ve gone all the way to the border.”
“Can I get you guys anything, since you’re nearly there. You might as well have a welcome to North Woods cocktail, right?”
Once again the easy smile. “Oh, gosh, no thank you. We need to get to the Resort and check in.”
Stowing his PDA, Thomas spoke up again. “Thanks a lot, man. We really appreciate it. I can’t believe there’s no signal. Wow.” He swept his hair back up and took the woman’s arm in what Barry thought a proprietary and highly cliched manner. “Come on Damini. Let’s go.”
“Thanks very much.” She turned and started to leave.
Barry waved to their backs as they went out of focus, into the leather and jean forms they were before. “You betcha. You two have a great time. Come back and see us. Two drinks, on the house.” He heard the door open and close, letting in the early evening outside for just a moment.
Carl laughed. “Two drinks on the house? Fuck, what was that, Bixy? You sure the boss ain’t gonna care that you’re givin’ drinks away?”
Barry went back up the bar to take up his station in front of the television. “Mom and Dad won’t care. They give drinks away all the time.”
“Right. Whatever, maaan.” He threw the final bourbon into his mouth. “I better start walkin’ now or else I won’t make it before the puck drops.” He pushed himself off the stool.
A small desire for Carl to stay came and went, as Barry looked more forward to an empty bar, perhaps a chance to read a little. But he most wanted to think about the woman asking for directions to the Aspen Grove -- Damini. He found a pen by the register and jotted the name down on a napkin. “Okay, Carl. You be careful, now. Don’t wander into the highway and get squashed like a skunk.”
“You betcha, Bix. I’m always careful. I may be drunk as a skunk, but I won’t get squashed like a skunk.” And with that Carl went out of focus, leaving behind a statement that to Barry’s ears sounded like foreshadowing.
He shut the big television off and went over to the stereo receiver (a relic from his high school days his Mom had commandeered while he was down at the U). It teetered on a serving tray creating a platform atop old glassware. He turned the power on and pushed the play button on the cassette. Scratchy rock music pushed a static charge beyond the woeful speakers hung at each end of the bar. Something from Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Barry thought, leftover from the day shift when Megan watched the place. He pushed stop and started to root around in the shoebox piled with tapes beneath the counter – none of them having a container or much in the way of description. “Russian roulette,” he said to himself.
Finally pulling a tape out he knew well, the Led Zeppelin was ejected and replaced by the more soothing tones of Carly Simon. He stood up, crossed his arms and closed his eyes, trying to remember as much as he could about Damini. Shiny black hair cut like a Flapper from a Fitzgerald story. He considered the image of her perfect skin, the black leather jacket, simple silver earrings and a necklace with sort of a green glass pendant on it. Damini.
She resembled a girl who taught a math class he had back at the U. She was the only Indian he’d ever met who was actually from India. Was Damini from India? He knew plenty of Native Americans who called themselves Indians, but the real thing didn’t make it up to Dell County. Though no one could understand much of anything the math teacher said, she certainly got the syntax right enough on those confidence-killing tests. If Damini had taught the class he felt sure he would have achieved something higher than a C.
Posted By
BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
Loon Nest: Chapter One
Routine: Thoughts of work. Why couldn’t she ever reconcile how she felt when at home with what happened at the office? There, at the breakfast bar resolution filled her with modest enthusiasm, an energy shed across each mile of her 15 mile commute. Then upon arrival dread set in and a typical slog to get to the other side, to the evening. At work she was in the majority.
Everyone programmed to fill roles featuring exacting specifications.
But driving Northwest on the Interstate on the way out of town made her think about Sinclair Lewis. Thankfully.
She will pass directly through Sauk Centre as she turns off the Interstate and heads up Highway 71. This particular trip, as the detritus, flotsam and nuisance of the Cities fell away, Sinclair Lewis struck her as having even greater meaning. Lewis favored a particularly acute satirical voice, which skewered provincial, middle class America’s preoccupation with material advancement. This made her think of her routine again and then she thought of Carol Kennicott, heading to Gopher Prairie as a new bride with a mix of false enthusiasm, missionary zeal and trepidation. This trip, as she drove towards a final interview, attempting to become the first female Health Director of Dell County, she would need to side-step further comparisons to "Main Street." She would need to avoid presenting any sophistication unrelated to what would be necessary as a good administrator. Vaguely, in the background, she would need the humility of a care-giver.
She did not consider herself a sophisticate, nor the citizens of Dell County to be particularly dull witted. She had trained herself to be judged solely on the job-related. But maybe, she thought, she would need a role model like Lewis. While certainly troubled and carrying a helpful message, she could draw upon him as a reminder, some sort of cautionary framework. Drag Fitzgerald into this and it would be almost frightening, she said to herself. Oh, the whirling mind.
When did she ever have the time to read whole novels affording her an opportunity to form opinions on one author or another? The speed at which her life conducted itself made any spare time limited, blurry, fleeting. Yet somehow words were read, proving, she thought, that if you love something enough, prioritizing proved simple. And, of course, growing up the way she did, knowing the genius of authors like Lewis, their books, characters, style and message were only natural. Her father insisted. Part of the holy line, he said, formed along fence posts from Twain to Kerouac. She blinked this away and refocused on the pavement interrupting a gentle prairie valley.
Beside her, Thomas continued work using his Blackberry© so she was left to quietly gaze through the windshield, to avert her eyes from the mile markers attempting to trick her mind into forgetfulness. All her life, as she traveled from point A to point B, she wanted to forget precisely where, at any given moment, she was located. But no matter what daft magic employed, she could never quite achieve this. Now the daft magic was habit.
The smell of the crystal air made the flat, marshy farmland of the prairie valley more vivid and kept calling her back to Lewis. What a man, she thought, to have turned down a Pulitzer Prize, a clear jab at the old men who had earlier snubbed him. Whatever the reason it did not return to him upon winning the Nobel. A portrait of affable, Midwestern (inebriated) grace was Lewis, she thought wryly. This sarcastic turn of trivia swept by as though highway lines -- slipping beneath the car and fading quickly in the rear view.
Thomas looked up from the small screen of his PDA. "Do you want to eat anything or just drive on through?"
"I haven’t decided. Right now, it seems like we should stop someplace and eat before it gets late."
"We might be able to make it without stopping."
"Until we get lost." A sardonic grin flashed.
"We won’t get lost. How can we get lost? You’ve been there already."
"Why don’t you put that thing away and talk to me. The markets are closed. Time to fold up shop for the day, right?"
"Almost." He looked back down at the screen. "I’m waiting for an e-mail from Hong Kong. Need to get the word on what the Hang Seng will do about the energy sector."
"Can’t it wait?"
"Oh, contrar. I may need to order a buy on the DAX based on Randy’s prediction for the Hang Seng."
"But aren’t you supposed to be off?"
Thomas grinned. "The familiar naïve refrain of the financial neophyte. There is no off in today’s financial markets."
"Bonds are the answer." She chortled.
"Damini, am I going to be a literary device for you this trip?"
She glanced over to him, then back to the highway. "How did you know I was thinking about books?"
"You always think about books. Unless you have your fingers in somebody’s eye socket or your seeing a patient. You know, working, I mean. Otherwise, the nose is in the books."
"That’s not true. Do I read when you are attempting to maul me?"
He did not look up from the screen of his machine. "Ah ha! Vulgarity. I love it." He twirled his thumbs, moving them efficiently across the keys. "There." He set his PDA on the center console. "The buy for tomorrow’s DAX opening is done. Now, what is it we should talk about?"
She did not like being put on the conversational spot and made something up quickly. "Where’s the smart buy in the airline industry now?"
Thomas let out a hoot. "Good one. That’s what I love about you. The humor. The great sense of humor."
"So it is love after all." She changed lanes to move around a loafing eighteen wheeler. "I wondered what it was you felt for me."
He looked out his window and sighed. "Oh boy, I can’t believe I have left you any doubt all these, what, five, six years?"
Now it was her turn to let out a hoot. "Thomas, I am a rapidly aging single, career woman and that is the only reason we are still together."
"I don’t follow."
"Desperation. I’ve stuck with you, because the market is scarce. It’s not because you have overwhelmed me with your pronouncements of undying love." She smirked. "Or because I am wishing for your proposal." She moved over again to let a steaming group of motorcyclists by.
"Ah. So you’re saying you’ve stuck with me so you have a date for charity events?"
"Isn’t that why you’ve stuck it out with me too?"
"We got from love to charity in a nanosecond."
"Pretty good, wouldn’t you say?"
He held up a finger. "A new record." He looked out his window, then over to Damini. "You haven’t wanted marriage. At least when it has been tendered in the past. You grow unreasonably inconsolable when we are apart. So here we are. Speeding by St. Cloud on our way to the far reaches of civilization together. Stuck in the Volvo produced chamber of nonentity."
"Did Wharton teach you to speak like this?"
"The nuns at St. Ignacious."
Damini shifted in her seat. "Do you want to be let out of the Volvo produced whatever?"
"How do you mean? Like, right now, at," he leaned over to see the speedometer, "Holy Moses, 75 miles an hour? No thanks." He propped his arm on the window. "I would like to be married to you Damini. I’ve said it before and I will always say that. But there are powerful forces keeping us from doing that."
"Forces?"
"You. Me. Work. Career changes. Intransigence. Age. Habit. You know."
"As you say. Powerful."
Everyone programmed to fill roles featuring exacting specifications.
But driving Northwest on the Interstate on the way out of town made her think about Sinclair Lewis. Thankfully.
She will pass directly through Sauk Centre as she turns off the Interstate and heads up Highway 71. This particular trip, as the detritus, flotsam and nuisance of the Cities fell away, Sinclair Lewis struck her as having even greater meaning. Lewis favored a particularly acute satirical voice, which skewered provincial, middle class America’s preoccupation with material advancement. This made her think of her routine again and then she thought of Carol Kennicott, heading to Gopher Prairie as a new bride with a mix of false enthusiasm, missionary zeal and trepidation. This trip, as she drove towards a final interview, attempting to become the first female Health Director of Dell County, she would need to side-step further comparisons to "Main Street." She would need to avoid presenting any sophistication unrelated to what would be necessary as a good administrator. Vaguely, in the background, she would need the humility of a care-giver.
She did not consider herself a sophisticate, nor the citizens of Dell County to be particularly dull witted. She had trained herself to be judged solely on the job-related. But maybe, she thought, she would need a role model like Lewis. While certainly troubled and carrying a helpful message, she could draw upon him as a reminder, some sort of cautionary framework. Drag Fitzgerald into this and it would be almost frightening, she said to herself. Oh, the whirling mind.
When did she ever have the time to read whole novels affording her an opportunity to form opinions on one author or another? The speed at which her life conducted itself made any spare time limited, blurry, fleeting. Yet somehow words were read, proving, she thought, that if you love something enough, prioritizing proved simple. And, of course, growing up the way she did, knowing the genius of authors like Lewis, their books, characters, style and message were only natural. Her father insisted. Part of the holy line, he said, formed along fence posts from Twain to Kerouac. She blinked this away and refocused on the pavement interrupting a gentle prairie valley.
Beside her, Thomas continued work using his Blackberry© so she was left to quietly gaze through the windshield, to avert her eyes from the mile markers attempting to trick her mind into forgetfulness. All her life, as she traveled from point A to point B, she wanted to forget precisely where, at any given moment, she was located. But no matter what daft magic employed, she could never quite achieve this. Now the daft magic was habit.
The smell of the crystal air made the flat, marshy farmland of the prairie valley more vivid and kept calling her back to Lewis. What a man, she thought, to have turned down a Pulitzer Prize, a clear jab at the old men who had earlier snubbed him. Whatever the reason it did not return to him upon winning the Nobel. A portrait of affable, Midwestern (inebriated) grace was Lewis, she thought wryly. This sarcastic turn of trivia swept by as though highway lines -- slipping beneath the car and fading quickly in the rear view.
Thomas looked up from the small screen of his PDA. "Do you want to eat anything or just drive on through?"
"I haven’t decided. Right now, it seems like we should stop someplace and eat before it gets late."
"We might be able to make it without stopping."
"Until we get lost." A sardonic grin flashed.
"We won’t get lost. How can we get lost? You’ve been there already."
"Why don’t you put that thing away and talk to me. The markets are closed. Time to fold up shop for the day, right?"
"Almost." He looked back down at the screen. "I’m waiting for an e-mail from Hong Kong. Need to get the word on what the Hang Seng will do about the energy sector."
"Can’t it wait?"
"Oh, contrar. I may need to order a buy on the DAX based on Randy’s prediction for the Hang Seng."
"But aren’t you supposed to be off?"
Thomas grinned. "The familiar naïve refrain of the financial neophyte. There is no off in today’s financial markets."
"Bonds are the answer." She chortled.
"Damini, am I going to be a literary device for you this trip?"
She glanced over to him, then back to the highway. "How did you know I was thinking about books?"
"You always think about books. Unless you have your fingers in somebody’s eye socket or your seeing a patient. You know, working, I mean. Otherwise, the nose is in the books."
"That’s not true. Do I read when you are attempting to maul me?"
He did not look up from the screen of his machine. "Ah ha! Vulgarity. I love it." He twirled his thumbs, moving them efficiently across the keys. "There." He set his PDA on the center console. "The buy for tomorrow’s DAX opening is done. Now, what is it we should talk about?"
She did not like being put on the conversational spot and made something up quickly. "Where’s the smart buy in the airline industry now?"
Thomas let out a hoot. "Good one. That’s what I love about you. The humor. The great sense of humor."
"So it is love after all." She changed lanes to move around a loafing eighteen wheeler. "I wondered what it was you felt for me."
He looked out his window and sighed. "Oh boy, I can’t believe I have left you any doubt all these, what, five, six years?"
Now it was her turn to let out a hoot. "Thomas, I am a rapidly aging single, career woman and that is the only reason we are still together."
"I don’t follow."
"Desperation. I’ve stuck with you, because the market is scarce. It’s not because you have overwhelmed me with your pronouncements of undying love." She smirked. "Or because I am wishing for your proposal." She moved over again to let a steaming group of motorcyclists by.
"Ah. So you’re saying you’ve stuck with me so you have a date for charity events?"
"Isn’t that why you’ve stuck it out with me too?"
"We got from love to charity in a nanosecond."
"Pretty good, wouldn’t you say?"
He held up a finger. "A new record." He looked out his window, then over to Damini. "You haven’t wanted marriage. At least when it has been tendered in the past. You grow unreasonably inconsolable when we are apart. So here we are. Speeding by St. Cloud on our way to the far reaches of civilization together. Stuck in the Volvo produced chamber of nonentity."
"Did Wharton teach you to speak like this?"
"The nuns at St. Ignacious."
Damini shifted in her seat. "Do you want to be let out of the Volvo produced whatever?"
"How do you mean? Like, right now, at," he leaned over to see the speedometer, "Holy Moses, 75 miles an hour? No thanks." He propped his arm on the window. "I would like to be married to you Damini. I’ve said it before and I will always say that. But there are powerful forces keeping us from doing that."
"Forces?"
"You. Me. Work. Career changes. Intransigence. Age. Habit. You know."
"As you say. Powerful."
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BLUE HERON PUBLISHING
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