Stronghold

by Ron Tufo

  Then there was the final straw with mom. I got back to the condo, pizza in hand, only to see dad on his knees scrubbing piss out of a mattress.

  “Dad, what the hell…?”

  “Your mom couldn’t make it to the bathroom again.”

  “Again? What do you mean ‘again’? How long has this been happening?”

  “A few weeks now. Didn’t want to tell you; I knew what you would say.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Dad, what am I missing here? Look, you have to know mom is just doing her: ‘I am the Queen’ thing and thinks she can do whatever she wants because you are there to clean it up. This is freaking stupid. If she wants to keep doing this, let’s get her into the nursing home–where she wants to be anyway–so that people who get paid to deal with this crap can take care of her. I am not working with you everyday to see you come home and wash pee out of a bed.”

  Meanwhile, mom comes out of the bathroom and goes to the couch to watch TV, all the while not paying any attention to the conversation dad and I are having. The word “casino” was never mentioned, therefore it was of no interest to her.

  That night, she fell asleep on the couch and of course, pissed all over it. Thankfully, this all happened on a Friday evening. I called around to my sibs on Saturday morning and Lyn agreed to come up from Connecticut to be there for a family meeting. Gary was only a couple of towns away, so he made it with no problem. Mike and Glenn were on Lyn’s speaker phone. Lyn may not be able to cook, but the girl does know technology. None of us could figure the stupid thing out. Dad, Gary, and I felt like a bunch of Luddites next to her.

  The conversation was short and sweet. All of dad’s kids were far more concerned with his well-being than we were for mom’s. Mom had done an admirable job of humiliating and alienating all of us at one time or another, but, hey, everybody is good at something. The vote was painless and unanimous. Even dad agreed it was time.

  In the morning, an ambulance came to take her to the nursing home.

  Dad was now alone for the first time in a lot of years. Later he told me that the condo seemed like a tomb. So, in my father’s OCD world, one problem solved only meant the next one in line gets to rear its ugly head. Dad may be my hero, but he is not without flaws.

  One night around eleven, mom called from the nursing home, as she usually did. “Can you bring me a donut and a cup of Dunkin’ coffee? Everything here sucks,” she whined.

  Everything sucked to her if it was not served from inside a gambling establishment. Dad was off the couch, setting a new hundred-yard dash mark getting to his car and off to Dunkies he went. His car screeched out of the parking lot and you could hear the mantra as he raced down the street: “Mary wants a donut. Mary wants a donut!”

  He got to the nursing home quicker than one would think possible for an eighty-one year-old man with degrading vision and presented her with a box of three assorted filled donuts and a large cup of coffee. The first words out of my mother’s mouth were: “I don’t like jelly donuts, only jelly crullers!”

  Dad finally got mad; halle-fucking-juhah!!! and the words began to fly. Next morning, when I came in for a visit, I made the cardinal error of trying to reason with my mother only to be told: “Yeah, Bozo. You always side with him anyway!”

  So, I was “Bozo.” Well, it only seemed fair that I had a pet name too. Gary was “The Jerk,” Glenn was “Geni-ass,” Lyn was “The Bitch,” and bringing up the rear was Mike as “The Idiot.” It continually amazes me that we turned out to be anything even resembling functional, if somewhat paranoid, adults. No doubt, my mother’s machinations served one purpose to which she was blissfully unaware, or she would have sabotaged that, too. The misery she caused us brought us all together as brothers and sister.

  Dad promised that on his next donut run he would try and remember: jelly crullers only. He was so intent on getting her treats to her quickly, that on his next run he blew through a really busy intersection and caused a three-car pileup. I got the call and drove to where he was immediately, not but a few streets away. I got there just as the police and tow truck arrived. What a mess. Thankfully, no one was hurt, even though two of the three cars were totaled. As the tow truck driver was loading his Stratus-turned-prime scrap metal, dad was trying to climb up the moving loading ramp to open his trunk and get his prized Marine Corps wool blanket out. Can you say: In-Shock.

  So, picture it; an older guy, rushed from his home in the night, befuddled from a serious accident, climbing a moving loading ramp to retrieve a blanket. The tow truck operator was trying to be a good guy through all this, but was looking at me like: “Dude. You gotta do something here!”

  I grabbed my dad and told him, “Let’s go home now, dad. We can get the blanket as soon as they get the car to the storage yard. Promise.”

  “What about Mary’s coffee and crullers?”

  This was the epiphany moment. Dad could no longer be left alone in the condo, and mom had to be better administered. We were going to start the family migration sooner rather later.

  Within days, arrangements were made to move mom to her new nursing home at Lookout Mountain up in Mid-Coast Maine. There would be one last dinner at Guido’s and off we go into the sunset. Well, almost.

  Squeak yelled at me and set to chasing me all over the restaurant the minute I told him that we were getting out of Dodge. He just couldn’t get past that I had not called to let him know. “Dude,” I explained. “I never in my wildest dreams thought you were serious about coming up to Maine with us. I really just thought it was a ‘bro thing’ we laughed about.”

  “Damn it, Ron! You bet your pasty white ass I am coming with you. Exactly when are you guys leaving? I can turn this place over to my sister! No sweat. She has been running the restaurant for years now anyway. Losing me will make her the new boss; she will be rather pleased.”

  As he’s saying all this, his sister comes up next to him. She’s about to protest, but the chef’s hat comes off and his apron gets thrown to the floor. He picks her up off the ground, gives her a big kiss and says: “Ua ou alu nei. Oute alofa ia oe. Fa.” She smiled and hugged him back.

  “Dude, what did you just tell your sister?”

  I told her, “I am leaving now. I love you. Bye!”

  And that was settled. We were leaving the next morning. Squeak would meet us at dad’s condo in his vintage Oldsmobile Rocket 88–a pretty good sized car, but he still looked like the Samoan version of a sumo wrestler cramped behind the steering wheel.

  We had already turned over the family paving business to our longtime employees, and we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly (Searsport, that is.)

  We had bought the property in Searsport, Maine, a few years before, as a place to retire and enjoy, or rather, hunker down and defend. It seemed like an absolute perfect location. Beautiful old Maine town, quiet, friendly and small. The piece of land we found had five buildings on it: the big old farmhouse, a smaller guesthouse, and three barns, two of which could readily be converted to homes. Perfect. Far enough north, but still able to have four seasons, although they did have to be renamed. The locals who had been there awhile called them: “Almost Winter,” “Winter,” “Still Winter,” and “Getting Ready For Next Winter.” Very astute!

  We became the newest “Flatlanders,” tourists from Massachusetts, to join the town population. We quickly found out that about ninety percent of the town were longtime Maine families. Some were able to trace their origins back to when Maine was actually still part of Massachusetts, even though it was separated then by New Hampshire. You can’t make this stuff up.

  Most long time Mainers refer to anyone, even a tenth generation resident, as “From Away.” That pretty much encompassed everyone who wasn’t there from the time of the Revolution.

  My closest Maine friend was Wink. His family was originally from Vermont. They had been there for six generations. Yet, when Etta, his wonderful mother, (a real mom), passed awa
y, the dear friend who gave her gravesite eulogy, lovingly and comically referred to her as “From Away.” Oh, man, tough club to break into!

  One thing we found out quickly was that local references could mean different things. If you were a good and honest person, respected the local culture and treated people with fairness and dignity, you were still “From Away,” but a good sort of “From Away,” an amusing moniker to be enjoyed by everyone. But if you were a jackhole, well, you were the “From Away” that no one would associate with, not now, not ever. You couldn’t ever make it back into the other category, and folks pretty much early on dropped people into one of those two categories while calling them exactly the same thing. It was all in the inflection; pretty cool.

  The drive to Maine was exciting and yet uneventful, save for one minor tollbooth episode. Remember, this was before EZ Pass and automated tolls were the norm. Besides, we were in Midcoast Maine, not exactly at the apex of the technology curve.

  Anyway, we pulled up to this tollbooth and this character looked the truck over like it was the first time he’d ever seen a pickup. And I swear to God, he says: “Ayup. You’ah not supposed to be on the highway with any open containahs.”

  There were four of us in my crew cab; we start looking around to see who popped a beer without telling anybody else, which, by itself would have been a neat trick as we are all conditioned to begin salivating at the sound of Kooshh when a poptop opens.

  “But no one here is drinking anything but soda or water, man.”

  “Ah’m not talkin bout yu’ah bottles. Ah’m talking about yu’ah gas can on the back of yu’ah truck.” One more fuckin’ yu’ah and I was going to smack this little bureaucratic piece of shit.

  So now traffic is backing up around and behind us. This idiot motions us to pullover to the side of the tollbooth plaza. I’m looking around; we’re boxed in on all sides. So, I did what any responsible Boston driver would do. I shut off my truck and fuckin’ sat right there.

  “So what the fuck do you want us to do now, you little pinhead?” Writing this, I realize I could probably work on my people skills some more.

  He smirks, then I see this guy place a call. Moments later, a Maine State Trooper walks over to the truck. We start the niceties with the usual: “So, what seems to be the problem, officer?” I know the drill. Just don’t ask me how I know the drill.

  He asks why we’re stopped here, and as the words are coming out of my mouth, I know they are not the right ones, but I just couldn’t stop them.

  “Little Teddy Tollbooth here won’t let us go through his fiefdom with a gas can on the back of the truck.”

  And the Statie answers with, “Well, you will have to pull over and fix that.”

  “Not a problem, officer. But I don’t feel like taking my life in my hands trying to stop a few hundred people from making their way through the other booths just so I can make this little shit happy.”

  Next thing, I see the Trooper walking through traffic, stopping anyone from moving forward and thereby clearing a path for me to move over to the right side of the road. So, very nicely I give Mr. Tool-Booth the appropriate single digit Bostonian salute and pull the truck over.

  Once there, the Trooper walks over to us again and suggests: “Throw a rag or something over that can and get on your way without my son over there in the tollbooth seeing you do it. Have a nice day.”

  My opinion of Maine State Troopers increased a thousand-fold that day.

  The Compound

  The beatings will continue until morale improves. - Captain William Bligh, Mutiny on the Bounty

  We had been living in Searsport for a couple of months and the compound we had started working on years earlier was really beginning to take shape. Barns were being converted to homes. Bunkers had been sunk. Connecting tubes had been laid. So far we had been extremely lucky. Our little corner sat on land that encompassed two granite-based ponds and a lake. Yet with just a little blasting we had been able to scratch out our underground facilities. The locals were a bit curious, but we were so deep into the woods that really very little sound escaped to the town. Every now and again some nosy old coot would saunter through the woods to have a look-see under the guise of scoping out a stand for hunting season. That ended rather abruptly one day when said nosy old coot, Abner, got himself a butt-full. (Yes, his name was really Abner. Told you we were way up in Maine.)

  Seems Abner knew how to read perfectly fine, he just didn’t think we meant him. Signs were posted every twenty-five feet of our perimeter warning people that blasting was going on. The usual message: Danger–Do Not Cross–Blast Area! Can’t be much clearer than that. Well, Abner had decided he wanted to see what the new boys were up to anyhow. Mainers are nothing if not nosy.

  Just moments after he entered the area, our muted but effective sirens sounded with three bursts. Abner told us later that he’d figured if he didn’t see any charges or yellow primer cord, then he was fine. Guess we weren’t the only ones who knew how to blow things up. I really don’t think old Abner’s elevator went all the way to the top, though.

  My father saw him in the woods about a nanosecond before the ignition. We heard my dad’s yell just as we see this guy flying forward from the blast concussion. Bounced his head off a pine tree and slumped to the ground. Everyone was yelling for a clear zone and running into the woods toward the downed man. When we got there, we heard moaning, which was actually a good thing. Seems Abner had been knocked out cold for a moment, but more importantly, he was bleeding a pantsload, literally. He had taken all kinds of shattered granite in the ass. He was stove up pretty good. If he wasn’t hurt so bad, it would have been hilarious because it looked like something out of a Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon.

  We did some emergency field work on Abner’s perforated butt. Packed his ass in ice which is a visual now burned into my brain that is NOT welcome there. Found his wallet, and yes, a moth did fly out of it when I opened it up to get some information.

  Dad wanted to just leave him on the side of the road figuring anyone arrogant enough to enter a blast zone shouldn’t be in the gene pool anyway. (I’m thinking maybe the whole Talbot family needs to go to a People Skills seminar.)

  I called Abner’s house and got his wife, Ida Maeve Littlehill. As I told her who I was, she got kinda testy. “Oh, you them new boys up the Pond. Driving your fancy cars around town.” I’m thinking, we have been coming up here for twenty-three years. When we moved up here for good, we showed up in old pickup trucks, an even older Oldsmobile, and a much-used Toyota. If that’s her idea of fancy, she must still have a buggy whip.

  Focus, Ron, focus! I got back on track and told her what happened and why. I get back this retort: “I told that old fool to mind his own beeswax. If the flatlanders want to build something in the woods that is their business. Besides, it will lower our property taxes. I can always go borrow some sugar later on and nose around myself. But no, he had to go see what was going on and get hisself blowed up.” She paused and then sighed noisily. “Well? Are you taking him somewheres or just going to leave him on the side of the road?”

  At this point, Tony, who was listening in, threw his arms in the air and yelled, “See! I told you that’s what we should do!” I shooshed my dad, something I’m not real comfortable with, and got back icicles that said, “We will deal with this later!” I can’t understand how I get myself into so much damn trouble so quickly and without even trying.

  We gingerly loaded Abner into one of the trucks. The nearest hospital was over thirty miles away, but Doc Jefferson was right in town. There wasn’t even a discussion about which resource to choose. Doc Jefferson’s it was.

  We got to the doctor’s house/general store. It was one of those places with a sign out front that reads: “Guns, Beer, Wedding Dresses, Surgery.” The state is crawling with them. Another old Mainer, along with the homeliest woman I have ever seen, complete with a hair-bun tighter than a hockey puck and thin lips all scrunched up to match, came out to greet us
as we started offloading our casualty. His first question, as he looked into the back of the truck was, “So what did old Abner do this time?” Seems this was a regular occurrence. Doc told us he was considering naming his office after him as a memorial for all the business he’d brought over the years.

  The walking nasty factory then piped in with: “How much is this going to cost me this time?” Rather than answer her many times asked question, the Doc turned to us and introduced Abner’s wife, Ida. She looked just like she sounded over the phone: mean.

  We left Abner in Doc’s care as soon as were assured he was going to be fine–just kind of drowsy for awhile from medication-then not able to sit down quite right for a few weeks

  Our civic duty accomplished, we said our goodbyes, and thanked the Doc, who gave us a bit of an insight to Abner and Ida as we were leaving. “They are two of the nosiest and most disagreeable people I know. Just my luck that they live down the road from me. Ida is even more obnoxious than Abner…but only when she is awake.” We made a brisk exit to the truck. No one wanted to spend any more time than necessary around Mrs. Sunshine.

  Old Abner was the last trespasser we had for the duration of our construction phase. Can’t understand why.

  The next week, we all took a little in-home vacation. Mike and Tracy were coming up with the kids from Colorado. Glenn and Sandy were coming with their brood from North Carolina. My middle daughter, Meredith, was also joining us and then staying to help with the build-out. First time in a while that the clan had been all together; definitely time for some enjoyment and relaxation. We had all been working long days and really needed to whoop it up bit with family and friends. Besides, I was looking forward to introducing Squeak to my brothers and their families. That alone was worth the price of admission.