Crumbling
I’ve got to start
with my aunt Mary Lou because she’s a real lady, you know. This woman is wide
and strong in a way no other woman is, at least no other woman in Toad River.
Not saying much, I guess, considering there’s only about five or six families
still up here. But still, she’s strong. Built are whole damn house as a 19
year-old high school graduate. Pulled that red pickup with the winch on back up
to one side, brought the cable over to the other side and just rolled the logs
right on up. That’s the story anyway, built it herself while her husband was
down in Fort Nelson on the patch making money. As far as I’m concerned she did all
the work. Anyway it’s a long story but I ended up in that cabin alongside the
Toad River living with my aunt Mary Lou and her husband Larry. Reason I tell
you so much about Lou is she’s not just stronger than most women but she’s got
these expectations too. Thinks everybody ought to be building their own damn
house when they’re 19 or something. Completely crazy of course, you’d have to
be, but she always means well and I like when she’s happy.
This
story isn’t about Mary Lou though. She’s not one for stories written on her
behalf. It’s Lou, though, that got me roped into the whole thing, the wild
moose hunt or goose chase or whatever they call it.
- -
-
The guy was a real
solitary type of guy, real lonely seeming. And that house, man, that house was
old. Crumbling, actually, rotting at each corner, sagging along the rooflines.
Thick green moss practically swallowed it up, wrapped it in a fuzzy damp layer
of organism. It smelled like moss smells, like humus and decay smell. It was
the kind of earthy, wet, devouring air that gets closer and tighter around your
body when you walk up the path towards his door.
The guy stayed up
there practically all the time, never really came down. I’d seen him in town
though, buying his groceries. Never anything fresh, which grossed me out
personally, just those big old 10-pound bags of rice, flour, brown sugar. Boxes
of butter, a slab of bacon once but never anything too indulgent, you know. The
sort of thing you’d provision an army or a work camp with or something. Spartan,
my friend had told me, was the word his mother used to describe the man.
At first when he
invited me up there I was totally creeped out of course. I mean, the guy is old
right, pretty old, and normally I don’t just hop at the opportunity to spend an
afternoon with this really musty wiry old guy. I wouldn’t normally just do
that. But when I saw him piling his army worth of groceries into that rusty
brown Dodge, probably a ’78 or something equally old, when I saw that I just
felt bad all the sudden. The hardware store is right across the street of
course, and I was working so I said to Mr. Hubert can I take a few minutes to
go help the old guy. He said yeah please, that guy looks like he might blow
away if those 10-pound bags weren’t holding him down. Leave it to Mr. Hubert to
crack some joke about this poor old guy, like old Hubert wasn’t headed home
soon himself.
So as I was
heaving these ridiculous, heavy bags into the back of his old Dodge he stops
and looks at me. The way he stopped made me stop of course and when somebody
stops what they’re doing and turns to you, you don’t just keep on heaving,
you’ve got to stop too. So I stare him right in the eyes as he breathes in deep
on this hand-rolled cigarette that’s hanging down almost burning his chin or
lighting his scraggled beard on fire. The guy holds that musty smoke in a while
and finally blows it out, right across my face as I’m staring him in the eyes.
He said, son I could really use your help with something. Could really use some
strong arms to help me out up at the place. At first I’m thinking, what’s the
deal with this guy. Then I’m thinking about everything that Lou did way back. And
I’m stopped by the thought, boy, that maybe this guy has got something real going
on that he needs help with. I mean, he can’t even get his groceries into his
rusty old truck.
- - -
Two days later I’m
slopping up his muddy rutted driveway, yawning and scratching my eyes because
the old guy has me showing up at 6:30 in the morning. Said this was a morning
job, couldn’t explain the details very good and that it would just be easier to
show me in the flesh. I get up to the porch, the whole thing is sagging down so
low its almost touching the rotten ground underneath it, and I place my feet
real gingerly on the steps and drag myself towards his door, practically
shaking with anxiety by this point because the place is leaning so bad to the
left and the wind is weird and hot and damp up here on the hill. I reach my
hand up and think about curling my fingers into a fist and knocking on his door
but then it just swings open and he’s standing there looking at me like a ghost
or just dust or something.
I’m expecting him
to say something or at least motion me in but he doesn’t he only steps slowing
through the doorway and stands on the porch next to me. Even though the old
guy’s dwindling and frail I can feel the stress his weight puts on the porch
underneath me. He steps off the porch and starts walking around behind the
house. As we’re walking he starts talking about this moose and what a good kill
it was but how heavy it is and how only a damn idiot shoots an animal bigger
than he can carry. Says what we’ll have to do is take it piece by piece from
the ridge and back down to the house. So we plod our way up this narrow muddy
trail behind his house towards the spot where hopefully this moose carcass is
still laying there stinking in the bushes.
By the time we get
up there and get it loaded onto this terrible wooden frame and I’m slinging it
onto my back, we’re both starting to feel pretty tired. By then its probably
2:00 and if we weren’t so far up this mountain trail, past where the warm air
sits that time of day, I’m sure we’d both have been sweating bad. But we aren’t
and even though I’m dragging my feet and each time I do this wooden frame digs
a little deeper underneath my shoulder blade, I’m reminding myself who the
young one is and who’s helping who here. We keep moving slowly back down this
narrow trail towards his rotten shack. That’s you I say as a mantra to myself,
that’s you.
As we walk down
this trail I’m trying hard not to think about the bruising weight on my back so
I let my mind draw pictures and I watch what happens. Pretty soon Lou is
looking at me and I’m carefully tracing each line in her face, through each
season, wetter or drier, carving through clay and dust to the bedrock
underneath.
I look up and I
see his house slumped in the trees around the bend ahead. As we get closer, I
slide the wide leather strap off one of my shoulders and ease the frame down
onto the long grass behind the house. I look up at the house, think of bats
swooping in and out of rotting eaves at dusk. I caught myself appraising the house’s
condition out loud, but it was too late. The old man didn’t respond, just
nodded quickly before kneeling to unpack the load.
- - -
A
full week later I’m working down at the hardware store with old Mr. Hubert,
stacking paint cans, making slow pace of my movements to draw out the task. Don’t
believe me, fine, I’d never seen him at the store either, but sure enough the
old man comes rumbling into the gravel lot in that Dodge truck. I watch him
shuffle to the door, slowly swing it open and move inside. He scans the store
momentarily and then draws a slip of yellowed paper from his pocket, follows
his gaze towards the third aisle, nails and screws and fasteners. Mr. Hubert
nods my way so I hurry after the man, ask him what he needs. I can’t tell if
the man acknowledges who I am so I give him some time before I ask what he’s
working on. Roof, he tells me, and the thought occurs immediately that the man
has no business climbing onto the slimy, rotten roof of his shack out there by
himself so he can slip off backward and head first and crumple into the tall
grass where we set the carcass down. I tell the guy I know about building roofs
and starting over and I ask him if I can ride with him back to the house and
work on the crumbling thing with him. I tell Mr. Hubert I need to leave for the
day and then we’re bouncing out of town in the Dodge.
- -
-
The old man turns
to me as we’re driving and asks me if I’d ever seen a grizzly. I tell him no in
a moving on kind of way but he keeps going with his story. Said he was about
two hours from his truck, back in the draw across from Toad River. He was up on
a ridge, following an older bull when he saw her. Big round, silver hump on her
shoulders like they have, he said. Said it was late in the summer so the bushes
were high and he didn’t see the cubs right away. The old man stopped there and
kind of wrinkled his nose and eyebrows down like he couldn’t remember or
something. He started again slowly, explaining to me that he didn’t want to
shoot. Had nothing against her, was trying not to shoot, but she dropped her
head and charged. He fired as she loped through the grass towards him but the
shot was high. She lunged at his waist. Here he stops again, reaches his hand
down and pulls a fixed blade knife from a worn leather sheath on his belt. Said
she got his knife, tore it off
instead of his kidney. At this point I swallow hard and lean back in my seat to
ease the heavy mass that seems to be settling below my ribs. The old man
reminds me of the cubs, says the sow remembered and heads back to them. Old guy
tells me he’s still nervous of course, and for good reason. She charges again,
this time soiled canines land near the bottom of his back. Guy explains how
bears don’t tear right away, but puncture first before they excavate. I’m about
sick now as the Dodge drops over the bump where the road turns to gravel and
the trees close in. Tells me he saw what dying was like and wouldn’t have it.
Said he managed to roll his body away and tumble down the ridge, got far enough
that cubs were again the priority, and she sauntered off.
I
won’t go into the rest now but he managed the hike back to the Dodge before he
passed out. Woke up before too long and drove the 2 hours to Toad River.
We got the roof
finished too, eventually, and the old guy hadn’t kicked the bucket by the time
I left Lou’s the following spring. Something about that guy, something about my
aunt Lou that stops me sometimes, you know. Makes me think about my own feeble
bones and tired body and feel good, feel like if there’s something here for
them then maybe I’ve got something too.
No comments:
Post a Comment