by Dede Crane
14 Caveman
A week later, I was woken not by my clock radio playing tunes from my fave rock station but by Clarence, the demented rooster.
Clarence didn’t crow. He pecked. When the sun rose in the east — luckily on the other side of the woods, which meant I got a half hour more sleep — he flew to the roof of the horse barn and tapped Morse code on the rusty weathervane (which happened to be a rooster).
Then, because a few pecks would make the weathervane move, he’d have to catch up to it. So the tapping was followed by a scrabble of his chicken feet. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch. Squeak. (The old weathervane squeaked at one sticking point in the revolution.)
It was an irritating way to wake up, but effective.
I sat up in my bed — a wooden platform I’d banged together from some (untreated) scrap wood in Mr. D.’s workshed, an organic cotton futon and an old army-issue sleeping bag (one hundred percent cotton with wool batting). The sleeping bag I got from Salvation Army. The futon I bought new so it took half my savings.
This morning the outer layer of my bag was damp with dew. Even my hair felt wet. I shivered in the cool morning air. Maybe I’d grab a toque next time I was home. Through my net walls (some old cotton fishing nets I found at a flea market) a pale blue sky dawned over the valley while a giant hotdog of mist rolled along its bottom.
I thought of my steaming morning showers back home, lay back down and closed my eyes. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch. Squeak.
I was tired. The night sounds had been making me paranoid and keeping me awake. I didn’t think there was anything really dangerous out here — Nacie said she hadn’t seen a bear for five years, then corrected herself saying maybe it was two — but still, I was pretty damn exposed, my roof nothing but an old canvas tarp Mr. D. had dug up, my fishnet walls more holes than anything. I’d weighted the net walls down with rocks and trusted that was enough to keep out squirrels and raccoons and the bigger mice, meaning rats. My floor was earth. But that was okay. At least it could never get dirty.
I’d set myself up at the back of the property, at the top of the hill along the tree line. The tree canopy protected me from wind and rain, which was good because the canvas tarp wasn’t waterproof. But I was determined to avoid plastics, nylons and polyesters, or anything else made from petroleum because of all the crap by-product.
A mosquito buzzed in my ear. I swatted it and ducked my head inside my bag.
Work started at seven so I forced myself out of bed and threw on my clothes.
This was my first real work week. Last week was devoted to setting up my place and being shown around the farm, told what would be expected of me and all. Like how I couldn’t piss in the woods but had to use their old ramshackle outhouse where the toilet seat froze your ass off. How Nacie would provide lunch but I was responsible for my own breakfast and dinner. I was allowed all the chicken eggs I could eat and free access to their produce but any other food I’d have to buy. I was to get paid twenty-five a week, which would more or less cover my food and extra things like soap.
I also had free access to wild food. Dad, as a joke, had given me a book called Living Wild. It was actually proving handy. The mushroom section especially. I loved mushrooms and the book clearly showed how to tell the edible ones from the ones that would cause people’s faces to melt before your eyes, or make your brain implode.
Mom was pretty freaked about me doing this and made me promise to come home every weekend. Which was kind of ruining the point but since I couldn’t very well abandon Maggie, I agreed as long as I wasn’t charged rent. Mom promised she’d work that out with Dad. Maggie thought what I was doing was cool and as soon as the weather got a bit warmer and I had my food thing down, I told her she could come visit. Be great to get her out of the polluted city, out of the offgassing house. A kind of detox.
I put my hiking boots on and went to collect mushrooms from the woods, some scallions from the garden and a few stray lamb’s-quarters — weeds, but all right tasting and, so my book said, the highest source of calcium of any green thing you could eat.
Keeping one eye out for Clarence, I went to hunt eggs. Clarence, the watchcock, didn’t like people touching his hens’ eggs. Though the dozen chickens usually slept in the coop, they ran free during the day and therefore hid their eggs all over the farm. It was like a big Easter egg hunt.
I discovered a nest of three in the tall grass not far from my tent. Just as I bent to pick them up, Clarence came shooting out from behind my tent. I jumped, screeched like a girl, then ran at him, flapping my arms. Nacie had told me just to “show him who’s the bigger chicken.” Clarence fled, glaring at me over his shoulder.
I had picked up a used hotplate and Nacie had lent me three extension cords which I plugged into an outlet in Mr. D.’s workshed. He was not too happy about my leaching off their electricity and neither was I, so over the weekend I’d written a solar power company asking for a donation of some solar panels and a generator. In the letter I’d tried to make myself sound like a noble cause. Played the sick sister card.
I fried up my veggies and eggs in some organic butter I kept in a metal (not plastic) cooler in a hole I’d dug into the ground. I dug up one of Nacie’s buns saved from yesterday’s lunch. Then, sitting on this stump that I’d hauled out of the woods, I ate while I watched that hotdog of mist slowly evaporate into the warming air.
* * *
My first job of the day was to turn and water the compost — three giant bins of it — using a pitchfork. Mr. D. showed me how he wanted it done. He stabbed a giant forkful of the stuff — leaves and grass mixed with dirt and food scraps — and flipped it in the air into an empty fourth bin. This third bin was to be flipped into the fourth, the second into the third, etc. Then next week the process would be reversed.
He did a few more forkfuls, then handed me the pitchfork.
When I tried to copy him, I was shocked at how heavy it was. I could lift maybe half the amount he had. I thought I heard him sigh. So I was left to the job, mixing in dirt and water between every dozen forkfuls.
After ten minutes my arm muscles burned. Every fifteen minutes I had to sit down and rest. After an hour I thought my back would break.
It made me realize that Mr. D., who had to be sixty-something, could probably beat me up. A sad and therefore motivating thought.
After I’d turned the last bin and watered it, I helped Nacie plant some peas and green beans. That I could handle.
Odd as she was, Nacie was good company, and she told me lots of stuff about gardening. How planting marigolds kept pests away and how slugs wouldn’t cross a moat of ash or how weevils would take shelter from the morning sun in a rolled-up newspaper.
She left me to dig a slug moat around the garden while she made lunch. An hour later, when the sun hit the top of the sky, her brass bell rang out.
Today it was Bulgarian potato dumplings — Mr. D.’s mother’s recipe — cold beet and fennel salad, and these excellent-looking sausage patties. I hadn’t eaten meat for a month and I hadn’t worked this physically hard ever. My body was screaming for those sausage patties but I said I wasn’t eating meat and took a pass. Mr. D. gave me a weird look and Nacie asked if I was vegetarian. I said yes, kind of, and launched into my dioxin speech and mentioned hormones and antibiotics in animal feed.
“I see,” said Nacie. “I can’t say about that dioxin thing but we get our meat from Mr. Keefer up the road. He doesn’t feed his pigs any drugs or strange things. Though he does dress them up sometimes.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Well, maybe just one,” I said.
The patties were so good I ended up eating three more. Then, realizing they used an old cast-iron stove for cooking as well as heating, I felt it my duty
to mention that burning wood released PAHs into the atmosphere.
“And what are these PAHs?” asked Nacie.
I’d forgotten what the letters stood for.
“I don’t really know the science behind them but they’re considered carcinogenic.”
Mr. D. frowned at me and Nacie just nodded.
“Is that a fact?” she said. “We’ve been doing things a certain way for so long, we’ve never thought of that, have we, Milan?”
Milan grumbled something I didn’t catch and Nacie offered me some brownies.
* * *
That afternoon, Mr. D. gave me the revolting job of mucking chicken crap out of the chicken coop. The smell alone was enough to make me almost toss my patties. I think he was trying to scare me and my makeshift house the hell off his property. Which only made me more determined.
Outside Clarence was running in circles and pecking at the coop walls, insanely pissed that I was in his house. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the door in case he flew in and pecked my eyes out. Every so often I’d see his head in the doorway and I’d screech and toss chicken crap at him. Mr. D. kept checking back to see if I was doing a good enough job: getting under the roosts, mucking out the corners, the cobwebs, etc. I worked my butt off and by the end of the day, four-thirty, was sore where I didn’t even know I had muscles.
I dragged myself up the hill to my tent. There was a dead mouse on the path. A neighbor’s cat must have got it because an owl or hawk would have eaten it. It was lying on its side, so plump and fresh looking it could have been sleeping if it weren’t for the blood around its nose and mouth.
The blood made me think of Maggie, and as a fly came and landed on its staring eye, I nudged it into the long grass with the toe of my hiking boot.
I was thirsty as hell, but the two glass jugs Nacie had given me were both empty. I dragged myself back down the hill to the outdoor tap. The farm used well water, no chlorine or ammonia added. It had a rotten-egg smell to it and I had to plug my nose to drink it, but it was clean. I hauled my stinky water and tired ass back up the hill, collapsed onto my stump and thought how good Dad’s leather recliner would feel.
I looked out over the view, pretending this was my own wide-screen TV. Maybe there was only one channel, but shit happened, didn’t it? Please let something happen.
A minute later, two ducks came in for a landing on the pond, creating two wakes which eventually joined up into one big V. Thank you, God. And a few minutes after that, a serious number of crows lifted up out of the trees in the valley, creating a cawing black cloud that swirled around the sky before coming up the hill toward me. Wings pounding the air overhead, they momentarily darkened the sky and finally disappeared behind the forest.
Better than the IMAX, I thought.
My stomach growled. What to scrounge for dinner?
I heard the shuffle of leaves in the woods behind me and my instincts went on alert. Bird? Chickadees, I’d discovered, were disproportionately noisy in underbrush.
A twig snapped. Deer or human? Then a hiss and a “What the…” Definitely not a deer.
“Davis, hey.”
“Hey.” His hair had snagged on a branch and he whipped his head back and forth, whimpering.
“It’s a jungle out here,” I laughed.
“No shit.” He held onto his hair with his free hand — he was carrying stuff — and pulled, leaving strands of hair hanging in the tree. “Afraid I was lost.”
“Some bird’s going have a Davis hair nest.”
“Feckin’ trees.”
I had to laugh. “How did you get here?”
“Hitched.”
Out of respect for the D.s, I’d asked Davis to come by way of the park and not the road. I didn’t want them to think this was going to become some teen party place.
“So this is your new cave, huh? The garden of Gray.”
“Check it out.” I pointed at the so-called tent behind me.
“Pretty sparse,” he said, peering through the net at my bed, a crate for a side table, a hurricane lamp with its half-burned candle, one old pressback chair, a table with hotplate, dishes and a glass bowl for washing, and some concrete blocks and boards that held my clothes, soap, towel and dry goods box.
“Got to start somewhere. What’s in the bag?”
“Mom Two made you some banana bread,” he said, handing it over. “No preservatives, organic flour, organic bananas, unpasteurized honey, yada, yada.”
“Hey, say thanks from me.”
“She also sends Jesus’s love,” he said in a sticky voice. “She’s become ‘Jesufied.’” He pumped quotations into the air. “At dinner a couple nights ago, she announced all teary-eyed that she’d found Jesus at her AA meeting. I said I never knew Jesus was a drunk, and Dad gave me a back hander.” He pushed aside his hair and showed me a neat little cut dissecting one eyebrow and the yellowing bruise. It looked like it hurt.
“Ow.”
“Wedding ring.” Davis shrugged. “Anyway, she’s starting up a Jesi collection.”
“Jesi?” I asked.
“Plural of Jesus,” he said with a crooked smile. “She’s been putting crucifixes around the house.”
“There was one in the kitchen last time I was — ”
“Now there’s one over their bedroom door and one over the toilet in my bathroom. The way his head droops down, I swear he’s trying to check out my self.”
I laughed.
“Serious creepage is what it is,” he said. “I may have to move in with you.”
“Acres of room.” I spread my hands, then held the loaf to my nose. It smelled banana good.
“Hey, guess who I ran into in the hall of mediocre learning today?” he said, looking around for a place to sit before he flopped down on the ground.
“Who?”
“That Ciel girl.”
I don’t know why, exactly, but my stomach did a little jig.
“She gave me a note addressed to you. A crush, maybe?”
“She hates me.”
He dug an envelope out of his pocket but didn’t hand it to me.
“Hey, did you ever hear this Norris joke,” he said, ignoring the fact that I was staring at his hand. “If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars…” He slowed down for the punch line. “Chuck Norris has more money.” He laughed his messed-up laugh and slapped his knee with Ciel’s letter, bending it in half.
“Good one,” I said, forcing a laugh.
“But here’s another. This is like the best one. Ready?”
“Ready.” I forced my eyes off the letter.
“It’s a farm joke for you,” he said. “Chuck Norris on the farm.”
“Go on,” I said, impatient.
“Okay, okay. It’s about crop circles. You know what those are?”
“I know what they are.”
“All right. Ready?”
I just stared at him.
“Crop circles are Chuck Norris’s way of telling the world that sometimes corn just needs to…” His voice turned tough. “…lie the fuck down.”
As Davis was killing himself laughing, I stood up and snatched the letter from his hand. “Give me that.”
“Sometimes corn just needs to lie the fuck down,” he repeated, then rolled up off the ground and did a handstand on my stump.
The envelope looked like homemade paper. The kind made from recycled old paper matted together with glue and water. I wondered if she’d made it herself. On the front, my name was written in perfect textbook script. I got a little rush picturing her bent over a desk and focusing those X-ray eyes of hers on my little name. On the back of the envelope was a stick figure drawing of a girl flying sideways. She wore a triangle skirt, her arms stuck out to the side, four squiggly li
nes of hair blowing behind her, a small smile on her round head.
Sky dancer, I thought, liking it. I opened the letter.
Gray, How are you? Just wanted to say that I think what you’re doing, living off the land and trying not to pollute, is really admirable. I didn’t expect it from you. Ciel.
What did she mean she didn’t expect it of me? Snooty bitch. Did she think I was some sort of loser making good?
I crumpled up the note and stuffed it in my pocket.
“What did smart girl say?” asked Davis.
“Nothing.”
Davis and I hunted in the forest for these edible ferns I’d read about. We didn’t find any. Maybe they didn’t come out until later in the spring. A jackrabbit bounded across the path and I couldn’t help wonder what wild rabbit tasted like. For dinner we ate the Jesus loaf and drank a bottle of organic goat’s milk. I’d bought the milk from a guy up the road who, lamely enough, had a goatee.
“Hey, I almost forgot to ask,” said Davis. He was about to leave so he could hitch back before dark. “My dad’s first wife’s sister-in-law — ”
“Once removed.”
Davis sneered. “Yeah, anyway, she’s a journalist and I told her what you’re doing and she thinks it’s cool and wants to know if she can come interview you for some high-brow mag she works for. Probably bring a photographer.” He framed the air with his hands. “Gray Fallon,” he said, “Poster Boy for the Generation of Despair.”
I laughed, though I liked the idea of having my face in some mag. Imagined Ciel seeing it. I’d have to think of smart-sounding stuff to say. Make her realize she didn’t know me from dick.
“Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks the generation of despair with one foot tied behind his back.” Davis horked out a laugh.
“Tell her sure. Why the hell not?”
15 Maggie
Saturday morning I biked home for the weekend. Mr. D. had me pruning the orchard all day Friday, and I could feel every fiber of every muscle as I pedaled up the hill out of the valley. At this rate, I was going to be Chuck Norris buff in no time. I imagined running into Natalie at the pool this summer, her checking out my six-pack and begging me to take her back. I pictured Dad being a jerk and me shoving him, his eyes widening with fear at my strength. Oh yeah.
