by David Thorne
“I might go in too actually. I’m pretty sweaty from waving the flag.”
“I thought you were terrified of river monsters pulling you under?”
“At least it would be quick. It’s better than slowly starving to death out here.”
We swam across to the other side. I did the thing where you scream and go under the water as if something’s pulled you under but Geoffrey just glared and kept swimming. To the left of the swinging rope tree, cliffs ran straight into the water but I remembered all the best spots to climb up. There was an old rusty iron pipe that ran all the way from the top of the cliff into the water, which we used to pull ourselves up onto a large smooth boulder. Geoffrey tanned himself like a giant white lizard while I climbed up to a ledge, ten or so feet above, and jumped off. I tried to convince Geoffrey to have a go but he wasn’t having any of that and quoted made-up statistics of how many people die jumping off things into water. I climbed back up and jumped off several times. There were higher ledges above me but I hadn’t been able to reach them when I was younger. Or perhaps it had just seemed too dangerous to jump from that height and I had never tried. I grabbed onto the iron pipe and lifted myself up; it was a good five feet higher than the first ledge. I’d never been this far up the cliff and it offered a great view. There was another ledge so I made my way up to it. Then another. I looked down, there was no way I was going to jump from this height but I could see far up the river. I climbed another ledge and the area flattened out somewhat. Using the iron pipe as a kind of banister rail, I was able to walk up to the very top from that point. I heard Geoffrey shout, “What are you doing?” from below and I yelled back that I was almost at the top of the cliff and could see for miles. I waited for him to scramble up to join me and we continued to the top together.
…………..
“What was at the top?” Seb asked. He was seven and it was his first time at the spot. We were sitting by the edge of the river drinking beer. I’d poured a little bit in a cup for him and he was sipping at it, making a face.
“Orange trees,” I answered, “Thousands of orange trees. The iron pipe is an irrigation pipe that supplies an orchard. We walked through the orchard, eating oranges, and after about twenty minutes, came to a house with a big red barn. An old man was inside the barn, fixing his tractor, and we asked if we could use his phone. He called a mechanic in Morgan for us, who piloted his boat down the river and gave us a jump-start. We left that afternoon and this is the first time I’ve been back since.”
“Have I met Geoffrey?”
“When you were a bit younger. He was struck by lightning at a Mediaeval Society event a few years back. Apparently they were out in the woods - probably chasing each other with swords - and ran and huddled together under a tree when a thunderstorm rolled in. A few of them survived, those that weren’t wearing chainmail I suppose, but Geoffrey didn’t make it. The news did a follow-up interview with one of the survivors a week or so later and her face was just burnt puss - bandages hid most of it but when she talked you could see she had no gums.”
“What are you meant to do?”
“Sorry?”
“In a thunderstorm. Are you meant to just stand out in the open? That seems just as dangerous.”
“I think you’re meant to just lay down flat, so you’re not the highest point. I’m not sure though, seems like a strange thing to do - to just lie down on the ground in the open getting wet. I’d probably run under a tree.”
“At least he got to see the spot. It’s nice out here.”
“It is. If I ever make enough money, I’ll build a cabin out here. Over the water, with cantilevers.”
“What’s a cantilever?”
“It’s a projecting girder fixed at only one end.”
“I like it how it is. Can we swim over to the cliffs and jump off?”
“Sure, after I finish my beer.”
The sound of an outboard motor in the distance grew louder and a houseboat cruised around the bend. Seb grinned at me and I nodded.
Signs
When my wife Holly and I are arguing, I'll double down rather than admit I'm in the wrong. Sometimes I'll triple or quadruple down. It doesn’t matter what the argument is about, we once didn’t speak for two days because I wouldn’t accept that the blonde girl who plays Piper in Orange is the New Black wasn’t the same girl from the movie Clueless.
Just a few months ago, I ordered a pair of expensive pants online. Nowhere in the description did it state they were 'skinny' and the twelve pleats around the crotch weren't noticeable in the photos. When I tried them on, my lower half looked like a pumpkin stuck on two poles. I intended to return them but forgot and missed the thirty-day window. When Holly complained that it was a waste of money, I stated that I actually liked the pants a lot and had changed my mind about returning them. They were, in fact, my favourite pants. I wore them to Olive Garden that night - it was Holly’s parent's anniversary and they had a $50 gift card. The left leg seam gave out as I climbed into our booth which was quite disappointing as they were the best pants in the world and really it was Holly's fault for making me decide to wear them that night when I'd actually been saving them for a special occasion. I ordered another pair.
From: David Thorne
Date: Saturday 19 August 2017 10.07am
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Sign
Hello Carl,
Hope you are doing well. I saw an ambulance at your place Thursday night and thought you may have died but I see you've mowed since then.
As you know, we listed our house for sale this week.
Our agent has organized two showings for tomorrow evening and, as such, I was wondering if you'd mind removing the large Trump/Pence sign from your front yard?
It's been several months since Trump won the election and I doubt anybody requires further convincing of what an outstanding choice he was.
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Saturday 19 August 2017 12.29pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Sign
I told you not to email again.
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Saturday 19 August 2017 12.37pm
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Re: Re: Sign
Hello Carl,
I assumed that was only in regard to the HOA fees. And the bonfire. I accepted responsibility for it getting out of hand and offered compensation for your myrtle.
Regards, David.
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Saturday 19 August 2017 6.22pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Sign
No its everything. Ive got a right to have a sign in my own yard. And yhy would i know your selling your house? I couldnt care less. Good riddance.
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Saturday 19 August 2017 6.51pm
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Hello Carl,
My mistake. While making coffee this morning, I watched from the kitchen window as you made your way to the realtor's sign in front of our house and took a printed sales sheet from the plastic display unit. The sheets include photos, details and pricing of our property but it's entirely possible you may have mistaken the information for boat-building instructions or a sewing pattern.
I'll address the issue with the realtor - maybe have them add a few starbursts and a photo of a Dancing With the Stars contestant.
I understand you have a right to share your political preferences with passing vehicles and I'm not
asking you to remove the Trump/Pence sign permanently. In fact, putting it back up after we've sold the house will save the new owners months of wondering if they made the right decision.
Regards, David.
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Sunday 20 August 2017 8.43am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Myabe you shoudl find something better to do than spying on people. Im not taking down my sign. Why would i do you any favors? You dont respect the property lines and you let your dogs run wild and smoke pot. nobody wants you here. theres been 4 complaints at the HOA meetings about you riding ATVs on the street. Probably when your high. We had a friendly village atmopsphere before you moved here.
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Sunday 20 August 2017 9.25am
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Carl,
Firstly, our dogs don't smoke pot. Laika just isn't into it and Banksy will lose his forklift license if he tests positive at work.
Secondly, it's a subdivision, Carl, not a village - you're the subdivision idiot. Nobody wants to live in a village. I've seen them in movies, there's pigs and goats everywhere and everyone has to run when the king's swordsmen ride through. Our letterbox is at the entry to the subdivision which is too far to walk and too close to drive so I take the ATV. At least it gives you something to discuss at the meetings apart from how much you all love Consumer Cellular.
I simply assumed you'd begrudgingly facilitate a simple request that may increase the likelihood of us no longer being neighbors. It's not as if I asked you to remove the plastic wishing-well with the huge $39.95 Dollar General store sticker - or the cast-iron single bed frame you turned into a flowerbed on your front lawn - it looks like a child's grave, Carl. Nobody is driving past your house and declaring to their passengers, "Oh look, that's a creative use of a child's bed, the owner must be a professional landscape designer, let's stop and make a wish." They're shuddering and locking the doors.
Would you consider covering the sign with a tarp?
Regards, David.
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Sunday 20 August 2017 3.02pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Kiss my ass. Im not covering it with anything. Ive got a right have a sign on my own property and Im proud of our president. Trumps done more for this country already than obama ever did and lying hillary ever would.
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Sunday 20 August 2017 3.49pm
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Carl,
I never stated otherwise. Suggesting, as some may, that Trump is anything other than a man of integrity, empathy and intelligence, shows little faith, if not contempt, in the judgment and values of the people who voted for him. Nobody would purposely elect an uneducated narcissistic sociopath to represent the people of the United States... to say, "This is our best. This is who we are." It would just be embarrassing.
Rather than bickering, we should all sit down together, perhaps over a plate of ramp & squirrel pie with grits at your place, and discuss what we are going to do with the shit-ton of coal we're all going to have once the mines are opened again. My suggestion, for what it's worth, is to pile it up along the Mexican border and set it alight. Rounding up and forcing the LGBT community, atheists, Muslims, non-whites, the unemployed and baby murderers to work in the mines would free up millions of real jobs.
Angry Bob from Hazard, Kentucky can finally move out of his doublewide and take that management position at a H&M in Seattle he's always longed for.
I wasn't questioning your right to display a sign and I do understand your reluctance to remove it, it's a double down thing: A Clinton landslide was predicted and the 'libtards' gloated so it was perfectly reasonable for you to gloat in November. Sure, Trump's played a bit of golf since then and each and every promise has been abandoned, diluted, or blocked by the courts or his own party, but this, of course, is entirely the fault of biased liberal media. We'd all be living in solid gold RVs and eating out at Denny's every night by now if they'd just let him do his job... Admitting, "Fuck, we elected an absolute dickhead, sorry about that," simply isn't an option because it's still your turn to gloat goddamnit.
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Monday 21 August 2017 11.40am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Boo hoo Im sad because Trump won. Get over it snowflake. This used to be a great country and its going to be again. the signs staying up. End of conversation. And keep your fucking dogs out of my yard. Im going to throw a party when you leave.
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 21 August 2017 12.18pm
To: Carl Mishler
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
Carl,
I've lived here three years and the only person I've ever seen visit you is the guy who fixed your lawnmower last year.
Is the party just going to be you and Jim from Jim's Mower & Backhoe Repairs standing around admiring each other's red hat and reminiscing about when, for a dime, you could take your sweetie to the matinee and buy sodas at the drug store afterwards - possibly with enough left over for a funnel-cake to share at the local park during that evening's negro hanging?
Regardless, you'll be pleased to learn we received and accepted an offer on our property this morning. I'm sure you'll get along well with the buyers - Mike & Taylor and their two miniature frenchies. Mike's an instructor at Planet Fitness and Taylor runs a small calligraphy business from home so if you'd like hand-written invites for the party or your next clan tractor-pull & pig-lingerie swap-meet, he's your man.
Regards, David.
................................................................................................
From: Carl Mishler
Date: Monday 21 August 2017 1.54pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sign
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
Cantilevers
My Design History lecturer at uni, Mr Bruton, had a very monotonous voice. It was as if a robot was reading one very long sentence. There was no inflection, no emphasis, no apparent excitement for the subject. Except when he spoke of Frank Lloyd Wright’s, Fallingwater.
Mr Bruton’s voice came alive when he spoke of Fallingwater, his body became animated and he thrashed his arms about wildly as he described its integration with the natural surroundings, it’s bold cantilevered balconies, the ledge rock protruding through the living room to demonstrably link the outside with the inside. Then, just as quickly, he’d become angry. Angry at those in the lecture theatre with their heads down on folded arms, those who were looking at their laptops, those talking. He’d yell that to be uninterested in something so visionary, so beautiful, so ‘designed’, meant an inability to grasp the fundamental principles of design. As it was a design course with limited enrollment spots and hundreds of applicants each year, it meant those not embracing the principles of design had no right to be there and had robbed the spot of someone more worthy. They were ‘Spot Robbers’.
Occasionally a Spot Robber
argued back that they were there to learn about graphic design, not old buildings, but they only ever did so once. Mr Bruton once threw a lamp across the room and kicked over a lectern before storming out screaming, “Fail. You all fail. Join the Army or get a job in retail because you’ll never be real designers.” Anger requires passion and nobody was more passionate about Fallingwater than Mr Bruton.
I thought Fallingwater looked like it had been designed in five minutes by a child with building blocks.
As part of our course structure, we had a class called Designer/Client Relationships, which really should have been titled Can I See It In a Different Colour? The class basically consisted of us being given a design brief, which we would fulfill, and then the lecturer, acting as the client, would tell us he hated it. It was meant to teach compromise, to accept a balance between creativity and the client’s needs, that an elaborate four colour corporate identity with transparencies and a spot-varnish means nothing to a client who sells shoes, wants a shoe as his logo, can only afford to print in one colour, and needs it by tomorrow. Also the logo is mainly going to be used on faxes.
