Chagrin Falls

1.
A guy knew a guy who was friends with someone partnered with a land developer. The first guy was an ER doc who was pals with Dr. Reis. The land developer was promoting a new golf course upstate near a town called Chagrin Falls. Dr. Reis had a coupon for cart rental and a voucher for the pro shop. The resort wanted to attract the right kind of customers. The web-site advertised the course as "challenging" with "bunkers and ponds ready to swallow errant shots" and "picturesque tees overlooking generous fairways that play harder than they look." Dr. Reis was booked to attend a conference on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, an annual event at another excellent golf course and, when he googled Chagrin Falls, a place to which he had never traveled, he was pleased to see that the property was about midway between his home and the conference venue located on the peninsula jutting into the lake. He sent a message to his nurse informing her that he was leaving a day early for his annual PTSD seminar, had her clear his calendar, and, then, booked two rooms at the Chagrin Falls resort. Dr. Reis had invited his girlfriend, Nurse Norman, to accompany him to the three day conference (now extended by another night). Nurse Norman's divorce was only six weeks post-decree and she was obliged to bring her eight-year old daughter, Zazie, with her. For appearances' sake, Dr. Reis booked two adjacent rooms both at Chagrin Falls and the resort on the peninsula.

2.
The morning was dark and stormy with oppressive, sepulchral clouds pressing down on the horizon. Dr. Reis was sweating as he loaded Nurse Norman's suitcases into the back of his black Mercedes Benz GLE. As is always the case with women, Nurse Norman's luggage was very heavy, so tightly packed that it seemed ready to explode. Zazie had a duffle-bag that was lighter, even limp -- the duffle bag was decorated with the logo Skull Kandy. They drove toward the place where greenish columns of falling rain anchored the clouds to the wet, steamy ground.  The corn and soy beans hissed in the falling rain. Zazie listened to music through ear buds plugged into a little I-Pod. Dr. Reis and Nurse Norman gossiped about people at work.

3.
Dr. Reis was explaining to Zazie that warm air could hold more water and, therefore, more energy. He tried to visualize an equation to this effect. Zazie had taken out one ear-bud, holding it cupped in her hand. The other ear bud was still in place and her music continued playing.  The sky hurtled past clotted with big, bluish-black tumors, some of them spitting rain. At the bottom of the clouds, tassels of dark fog spun like tops.

4.
The rain smashed into fields already soaking. The freeway median filled and became a lagoon between lanes. The downpour overwhelmed the windshield wipers. The black wiper-edges sliced across blurry sheets of water drowning the car.

5.
The rain stopped for a moment, vacuumed up into the bulging black clouds overhead. They saw the wind before they felt it. A shabby-looking semi-truck in the oncoming lane swerved left, then, overcorrected and jack-knifed into the ditch. Dr. Reis felt the impact of the squall on the side of his

GLE and the vehicle rocked like a cradle on its wheels. Nurse Norman looked over her shoulder at the crashed truck: "Do you suppose we should stop?" she asked.  "It's across the median and the water     looks hip-deep there," Dr. Reis said. "Besides, my trauma skills are pretty rusty," he added. Nurse Norman shrugged:  "I  just had a refresher  on CPR."  "I'm pretty sure no one's hurt," Dr. Reis said.   "How do you know?" Nurse Norman asked. "I guess, I don't," Dr. Reis admitted. The point was moot anyway. They had now gone a half-mile past the wreck, the wind still howling and trying to kick the Mercedes Benz off the road.  Then, the rain fell in blinding torrents.  "How can you see?" Nurse  Norman said.  "I can see okay," Dr. Reis said, tightly gripping the steering wheel and leaning forward so that his nose was only a foot from the sluice of rain on the windshield. A siren sounded and some lights flashed past them in the oncoming lane.  Then, Dr. Reis felt the big SUV hydro-plane under him,  a sickening sensation as if the vehicle were skidding over ice. He took his foot off the gas and the tires caught suddenly on the concrete, ramming the car across the line into the passing lane. Dr. Reis saw a grotto of over-pass ahead and steered for that shelter.  Breathing heavily, he yanked on his emergency lights and glided to a stop in the dry, hollow cave under the bridge.  "That's a relief," Nurse Norman said. "It's a little hairy," Dr. Reis admitted. He rolled down his window and sipped some wet air.  The  rain thundered on the bridge deck above and fell in white curtains over the edges of the over-pass. He slowed his windshield wipers. A few cars sloshed by, although a pick-up pulled in ahead of them, also huddling under the bridge. Dr. Reis fiddled with the radio. Flooding was all about and tornados and golf-ball-sized hail.  Across the median, three motorcyclists had stopped.  They looked soaked to the skin. The motorcyclists passed a pipe between them.  After about ten minutes, the storm seemed to subside. The cataracts of falling water descending from the bridge deck became lacy plumes of white spray.  Dr. Reis edged the Mercedes Benz back onto the freeway. About a mile down the road, they passed fields that were glittering and resplendent with white shards of hail.

6.
Chagrin Falls was 13 miles away. Dr. Reis took the exit and drove up to the crest of the hill overlooking the town. The trees on the hillcrest were all split down the middle. It was as if a giant hand had reached down from the sky, seized the crown of the trees and, then, twisted them until they broke into bright, blonde wood, the color under the bark like timber in a lumber-yard. The town was in a bowl-shaped valley, surrounded by turbulent-looking lakes.

7.
The water was high under the bridge at the edge of town. A caramel-colored torrent veined with foam and rafts of shattered trees sucked against the concrete piers under the span. Wan sunlight probed slits    in the clouds. The heat was smothering, air all fury with humidity and hard to breathe. Another storm  was massing to the west, black thunderheads waltzing cheek to cheek.  Dr. Reis rolled down his   window and sniffed the hot, wet air. Big puddles iridescent with oil were pooled at intersections where  the storm sewers were clogged.   Sidewalks were littered with twigs and crooked sticks, branches clad   in green leaves flipped over to show their pale undersides.  On every block, trees were down, resting  aghast on wet lawns above writhing masses of roots. Long, charred-looking javelins of bare wood, branches dead before the wind had pulled them down, lay on the grass or tilted across fences or drowned in the flooded gutters. Aluminum cans skittered across the pavement like cockroaches and  plastic milk jugs and water bottles were strewn about -- the garbage cans had all fallen on their sides   and, then, rolled, hurling refuse onto the pavement. On several occasions, Dr. Reis had to gingerly navigate around big plastic garbage bins. A fallen tree had pinned a car to its driveway and shrubbery  was all plastered with wet paper, tattered shingles, and pieces of shredded lathe.  On the main   commercial thoroughfare, billboards  had been flayed by the wind and the signs of several fast food
places were knocked sideways. The metal awnings over the fuel pumps at a convenience store had tilted to the side and blocked access to gas and diesel. Dr. Reis nervously looked at his gas gage, drove another couple blocks, and, then, pulled into a Kwik Trip that didn't seem damaged. The pumps were working and he filled the tank on his SUV. Nurse Norman went into the gas station and found that the lights were off. The manager had a calculator his hand and was stooped over his cash register, scribbling transactions on a yellow pad. It was already sweltering in the convenience store. A line of four angry-looking men were waiting to buy ice in 25 pound bags.  They shifted back and forth on their heels as the ice cradled in their arms chilled them. Nurse Norman mentioned the gloom in the store and the heat. "Power is out all over town, all over the county," the manager said. She bought an energy drink for herself - she had pulled a double shift the night before - and a Sprite for Zazie. She wasn't entirely sure what kind of soda Dr. Reis drank and so she bought him a bottle of Aqua-Fina water.

8.
It had become very still. Trees and bushes crouched against the vapor skidding overhead. Despite the roiling sky, not so much as a leaf moved. Far away, thunder was rolling in long, rumbling peals. The sound was continuous like a heavy train lurching over an irregular right-of-way.   The road on which   they drove ran past the Hospital. An ambulance had just lurched to a stop next to the emergency room door. Three men were setting up a white tent next to a helipad painted with a yellow bulls-eye. Nurse Norman glanced sideways at Dr. Reis. He was aware of her eyes turned in his direction, but pretended  not to notice.

9.
The resort was tucked under a steep hillside. Pines and sumac clung to the slope and slate cliffs were wild and green with ivy. A creek had undercut the hill, swollen now and spilling out over several fairways. A cracked tree had split and splashed its crown down on the grass next to the resort office. "This doesn't look promising," Dr. Reis said. "Is this where we're staying tonight?" Zazie asked. "At least the buildings are all upright and still standing," Nurse Norman said. Sirens wailed in town and thunder growled and black clouds fused together to the west and still there was no breath of air moving anywhere: the hydrangeas along the sidewalk leading into the office were motionless and the sumac on the hill was still as a photograph and the darkness gathering in the groves of trees and the glades next to the flooded water traps was inert, massive, like a predator waiting to pounce.  Zazie stood by the back of the SUV waiting for Dr. Reis to drag out the luggage.  "Let's wait," he said.  "1’l1 go inside and check in." Some flashlights were bobbing up and down in the interior shadows, rays of light piercing the gloom in the club house lobby.  Heat crushed down on him, stagnant, bitter with the smell of sewage and rot. Dr. Reis went to the desk where a girl wearing a resort tee-shirt was lurking in the shadows. "May I check in?" he asked. "No," she said. "What do you mean 'no'?" Dr. Reis replied. "I have reservations." "There's no power," the girl said. "I can't check anyone into their rooms." "But I have reservations," Dr. Reis said. "I don't have any way to check any one into the rooms," the girl repeated, adding again: "there's no electricity." Dr. Reis asked: "Well, when will the power be restored?" The girl shrugged: "I can't say. It could be tomorrow. It could be a week." "A week?"
The girl reluctantly nodded her head. "I suppose I could play 18 holes and, then, check on the status..." Dr. Reis said. "No, we can't let anyone on the course," the girl said. "The ground is saturated.  The carts will sink into the grass and ruin the fairways and tees." "But I have a voucher for a cart rental," Dr. Reis said. "I can't do anything," the girl said. "Then, you'll have to cancel the reservation," Dr.
Reis said. "I can't cancel any reservations," the girl replied. "What?" "There's no power," the girl repeated: "The computers don't work." "But you have to cancel the reservation," Dr. Reis said. "No can do," the girl said. "The power is out." "Who is your manager, Missy?" Dr. Reis asked. "You 
don't need to sexually harass me," the girl said, indignantly. "Sexually harass?" "Yes," the girl said. "I want to talk to the manager," Dr. Reis said. "I am the manager," the girl said. Dr. Reis stood in front of the desk without moving for a minute. He painstakingly took a handkerchief out of his pocket, inspected its pale white folds, and, then, wiped the sweat off his forehead.   Beads of sweat were   spilling into his eyes and the salt stung. Then, he folded the handkerchief again and replaced it in his pocket.

10.
Dr. Reis returned to the car, explained the situation, and, then, steered back into town. They drove aimlessly, zigzagging along the streets.  Barriers had been set up in some places.  The sky was green and clouds were piled up as if about to fall out of the heavens in a great avalanche. The trees and flowers and leaves were all motionless.  "This is pointless," Dr. Reis said.  He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart. "We'll have to make for Green Bay," Dr. Reis proposed. He asked Nurse Norman to see if she could use the internet on her cell-phone to locate two rooms for them in that city. The big store far away at the other end of the asphalt lot was sheathed in pale plywood.  The asphalt was warped down toward a place where four battered-looking cars were parked next to a tall aluminum pole. Dr. Reis had stopped his Mercedes with his windshield aimed across the empty parking lot toward the abandoned cars and the plywood-masked facade of the K-Mart. Rain fell in big drops spattering the glass.

11.
The rain intensified. First, it fell straight down onto the hood of the Mercedes and the windshield, thudding against the car as if buckets of water were being poured from the skies.  Then, wind pulled the rain into lateral jets that buffeted the parked car. Sail-shaped signs and sheets of shingled wood skated across the empty K-Mart parking lot scuffing up fountains of water. A dumpster hydro-planed across the lake filling the lot and a nearby sign tore loose and like an errant guillotine blade sliced through the air vanishing in the chaos of water and wind. Trees blew like tumbleweeds across the drowned landscape. Dr. Reis felt the SUV rocking helplessly on its springs. "Get down," he said. "Something might come through the windshield." They crouched in the car, faces shoved up close to the icy plume of air-conditioned air billowing out of the console. Sirens sounded and the windows were all glazed with sheets of water, rivers flowing over the car that caught fire suddenly when incandescent lightning flashed. The low-lying clouds suddenly were scooped up and catapulted high into the sky and the rain fell again in vertical, solid-looking black columns. The parking lot had seemed, more or less, flat before the downpour, but, now, the deluge of rain showed that it was a landscape complete with subtle contours. Slopes and ridges that had not been visible before the flood now channeled water into the center of parking lot. The expanse of asphalt, in fact, revealed itself to be a sort of huge irregularly-shaped funnel around a central depression staked-down by the lamp pole where the four cars were parked. The wind kicked sheets of falling water back and forth across the flooded surface of the parking lot and waves rose and fell, ebbing up against where Dr. Reis was parked. For a moment, the wind shifted a little and, through the wet lens of his windshield, Dr. Reis saw something wiggling through the passenger side window of a white Impala, one of the parked cars at the bottom of the funnel basin. Water was swirling against the cars, foaming up and over their hoods. The rain blew against the Mercedes windshield again and everything vanished in a blur of windswept water surging down toward the funnel basin. Dr. Reis blinked. The shapeless thing dangled for a moment from the open window of the white Impala and, then, was knocked up onto the roof of the car by a white-capped wave.  "What is that?" Dr. Reis asked.  Nurse Norman didn't know what he meant.  "There!" he pointed across the lake of the parking lot to the cars under the central lamppole. "What is that?" he asked again.

12.
"It's a child," Nurse Norman said. Her words clarified things.  Dr. Reis saw a small child squatting  on  the roof of the Impala, crouched against the driving rain and sudden piston-blows  of wind.  "The   water's too deep," Dr. Reis said. Zazie began to cry. Dr. Reis opened the car door and trotted in the direction of the stranded child.

13.
The rain soaked his shoulders and hair and, then, Dr. Reis felt the water, strangely warm, sluicing   between his skin and clothing.   It was ankle-deep underfoot at first, then, knee-deep for twenty yards,   the flood animate with strange, unpredictable currents. Thunder boomed close at hand. The cars were ahead of him, a little  besieged  group in a corral around the lamp pole.   The wind throbbed  in his ear    and bored droplets of water into his skull.  He thought it was like being in a dream, buffeted from all  sides, and, suddenly, the water growing deeper and deeper with each step, and, therefore, the resistance    to him, also increasing  and, then, he was chest deep in the agitated flood, a current knocking him off his feet so that he had to roll onto his side and swim toward the vehicles. The rain crashing onto the surface of the ephemeral  lake made a white mist rebounding upward that blinded him.  High-pitched  cries reached across the flood and, when he straightened and put his feet, toes downward, probing the water the temperature of a lukewarm bath, there was no bottom. The cars were above him now and Dr. Reis saw that they were bobbing like corks on the swell of the flood, untethered from the asphalt parking lot, and, it occurred  to him that if the vehicles floated up against one another and pinched him,  he would be crushed.  He rolled between two of the floating cars, sleek walls of metal on both sides of him and the wet sky bolted down tightly overhead,  sutured to the surface of the surging lagoon by warm rays of rain. He tapped the aluminum  lamp pole like a swimmer turning around in a race, caught hold  for a moment, and, then, followed, the high-pitched whistling cries to see the child white-faced and screaming atop the Impala. The car was fully afloat and, in fact, grinding its side against the fourth car that seemed strangely tilted on its side. Dr. Reis kicked hard, came to the Impala and took hold of its door-handle. It was strange to feel the car rocking up and down, weightless in the tide. At first, the car seemed to roll toward him and Dr. Reis was afraid it would topple in his direction, going wheels up in the flood.  But, instead, the Impala stayed upright, a little restive, like a horse carrying its small rider on its back.  Dr. Reis lunged, grabbed the child with one arm and pulled hard.  The child fought to stay atop of the floating car, but, only for an instant, then, they were together in the flood with the kid writhing against his grip, spitting and coughing water, rising up and down in the turbulent lagoon. Dr.  Reis went under, fought his way to the surface, and leaned away from the peril of the cars tossed on the waves.  The child clawed at him and broke free for an instant, dropping like a stone in the flood.  Dr. Reis went down again, took the child by the hair, and dragged the kid forward, then, his feet touched bottom, then, the water was suddenly shallow, waist deep although still animate with currents against him, spiraling and plunging toward the funnel-shaped  basin where the cars now seemed to be spinning  in a sort of spiral vortex. Then, the water was knee-deep, ankle-deep, and he was standing by the Mercedes Benz with the wriggling child locked in his arms.

14.
A police squad car rocked to a stop, red lights whirling, a car-length from Dr. Reis' SUV.  A cop   wearing a yellow rain slicker came from the car.  Dr. Reis was still holding the child.  The kid was   sticky and smelled bad.  "You shouldn't  have gone out there," the cop said.   He was a young man with
a military-style crew-cut. Dr. Reis handed him the child. The policeman scrunched-up his nose. "You might have drowned," the cop said. "The cars could have crushed you." Dr. Reis was breathing heavily.  "Yep," he said.

15.
"You have to get out of those soaked clothes," Nurse Norman demanded. The water was foul. The flood had overrun the wastewater treatment lagoons. Dr. Reis smelled of sewage, spilled gasoline and oil, and some kind of astringent chemical that made his eyes water. Nurse Norman drove the SUV away from the flooded parking lot. The rain had stopped and the sun had emerged from behind the clouds and the monstrous humid heat revived. She drove through an office park. Freshly laid sod had slipped from a sloping lawn and formed a wet bulwark along the street. Although there were some cars parked along the lane, the buildings were opaque, mostly without windows or even doors or loading docks, elongated low-slung cubes sitting among the smashed shrubs. Nurse Norman stopped the car and Dr. Reis got out and rummaged in his roller-bag for some shorts and a golf shirt. "Change your underwear too," Nurse Norman said. "Here?"Dr. Reis asked. "Zazie, don't look," Nurse Norman commanded. "Ew," Zazie exclaimed, "why would I want to?" Dr. Reis stood next to the car, stripping down. When he was naked, he looked up and noticed two small black boys standing nearby, pitching shingle rafts into the flooded gutter.  The boys looked up at him, giggled, and pointed.  Dr. Reis clumped the soaked, bad-smelling garments together, squeezing out some of the water before putting the clothing in the back of the car. Then, he got behind the wheel and drove. "We have to get out of here," Dr. Reis said. He found the main commercial route and drove to the city limits. A long line of cars and trucks were lined up ahead, some of them, suddenly, pulling out to the side to make u-turns to escape the queue. Dr. Reis could see a couple of semi-tractors ahead lying on their side next to their ruptured trailers. A police barricade made from orange-painted saw-horses blocked the road. Three highway patrolmen in slippery-looking rain coats were signaling to the traffic to turn around and return to town. The sun was overhead now and hot.  The level flood in the ditches was motionless.  Birds were singing. Dr. Reis pulled to the right and got out of his car. A police officer paced along the file of waiting vehicles. "Turn around," he said.  "There are trees on the road and power-lines down.  You can't come this way." "What about that way?" Dr. Reis pointed to the blue dome of the water tower on the other side of the city. "The bridges are all out," the cop said.  "Can't go that way either.  For the time being, we're cut-off." Overhead, a couple of helicopters idly circled.

16.
Zazie said she was hungry. Nurse Norman got out a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. But they didn't have a knife.  The SUV was parked at the edge of a grocery parking lot.  Dr. Reis hiked over to    the store.  It was closed.  But the door opening into the cart storage area had blown open.  Dr. Reis    went into the dark store. Puddles of water were everywhere, making the aisles between the product slippery.  Droplets splashed down from above, dampening Dr. Reis' forehead.   The place was like a   cave.  He found the deli.  In some bins, there were plastic forks and knives and spoons.  He scooped up   a handful of the plastic utensils.  "So I suppose I'm a looter," Dr. Reis said to himself.

17.
There was a city park with teeter-totters, swing sets, and some public toilets. Not too many trees were down and the wet lawns glistened in the sunshine. Dr. Reis parked in the lot and, for a while, they sat at one of the picnic tables. A family was grilling meat at a fire-pit and, across the road looping through park, a softball game was underway. The storm seemed to have mostly overlooked this place. A radio tuned to a top-40 station was playing in the green shadows. Dr. Reis felt terribly tired. He left the
picnic table and stretched out with his back against a tree.  The air was hot and humid.   When he   opened his eyes, it was twilight. He got up stiffly -- all of his joints ached. Nurse Norman had made a small fire and she and Zazie were roasting marshmallows.   "I  see you're making the best of it," Dr.
Reis said. "It's sort of hot and sticky," Nurse Norman replied. "I'm afraid of mosquitos," she added. "We'll have to sleep in the car," Dr. Reis said. Nurse Norman took from her purse a deck of cards and they played five-card draw, penny ante, until it was too dark to see the markings. "I guess we'll go to bed," Nurse Norman said. She and Zazie went to the car and changed into their pajamas. Dr. Reis sat behind the wheel in the SUV. "Sorry about this," he said.  "It's no problem," Nurse Norman replied. "It's an adventure. We were pretty poor when I was first married --" She was talking about her ex- husband. "When my ex went fishing," she said, "we couldn't afford motels and so we always slept in the car." "Okay," Dr. Reis said. He tried to open the windows a crack, but mosquitos, then, swarmed into the Mercedes. He rolled up the windows and set the time on his cell-phone for half hour intervals. When the timer sounded, he started the car and ran the AC for ten minutes. This kept things tolerably cool. Nurse Norman said that the back seat was comfortable - "it's a big ole car," she said. Dr. Reis wondered what she meant by "old" - the vehicle had only 19,000 miles on it. Zazie stretched out in the back of the car. After about an hour, she woke up and said that the wet clothes on the floor were bothering her -  "they stink," she said.  Dr. Reis opened the car door, went around to open the hatchback. He put the wet, smelly garments on the asphalt behind the car.

18.
Dr. Reis kept thinking about the flooded parking lot. He couldn't sleep and went outside to sit at the picnic table.  The air was still heavy with humidity and very warm.  Fireflies flickered green-yellow in  the  bushes.  A man came and sat across the table from Dr. Reis.  He was smoking a cigarette and, by     the flare when the man inhaled, Dr. Reis could see that he had a shaggy orange beard.   They exchanged a few words about the weather. The man's body odor was bad. Dr. Reis preferred the stink of the cigarette to his smell.  "Did your house get damaged?" Dr. Reis asked.  "I lost my house," the man  replied.  "Oh, my god," Dr. Reis said.  "No, I lost the house by foreclosure this May," the man explained. "That's terrible," Dr. Reis replied. "First, I was livin' with my wife and two kids with my  Ma," he said.  "But women can't get along- my Ma and my wife they were fightin'  all the time."  "I  see," Dr. Reis said.  "So I had to move out and I been livin' in my car with the kids and my old lady since mid-June," the man said. Dr. Reis wondered what cigarettes cost nowadays - six dollars, eight?  "That's  awful," Dr. Reis said.   The man spoke: "You know what really worries me?"  "What?" Dr. Reis asked. "Winter... I'm just really scared of Winter," he said.

19.
Sitting across from the man in the still air made Dr. Reis' eyes water. He said that he was getting up to take a walk. A sidewalk led him to the center of the park where there was a small pond spanned by little Japanese bridges. The County Hospital was across from the park on the other side of the street.
Dr. Reis went into the Emergency Room. A couple of male orderlies in blue smocks approached and asked him how he was hurt.  "I'm not hurt," Dr. Reis said.  "I'm a physician," Dr. Reis said.  "Have you had a lot of admissions?" he asked. "Can't really answer that due to HIPAA," the younger male nurse said. The other man was older with a pony tail. He winked at Dr. Reis: "The bad ones we had helicoptered out to the Regional Level II," he said. "Right now, it's mostly just worried folks, the worried well." "I suppose," Dr. Reis said. "That storm was pretty scary." Dr. Reis said that he hadn't done ER work for a long time but he was available to help if necessary. "Let me check," one of the nurses said. They left the waiting room. Some police came into the lobby and whispered something to the lady at the admission desk. Then, she led them back through the swinging door into the ER. A
little man with frizzy hair appeared. He was wearing a pager ostentatiously holstered to his hip. This marked him as an administrator -  physicians no longer wore pagers, but administrators almost always  had them.   "I appreciate your kind offer," the Administrator  said.  "But we don't know how we'd bill    for your services and, then, there's credentialing..."  "I'm in good standing," Dr. Reis said. "Oh, of   course, doctor," the Administrator  said.  "But we don't know about your malpractice insurance and  things like that and so..." Dr. Reis waved his hand at the little man. "Oh, it's okay," he said adding:  "Just an  idea." He asked if there was some coffee brewing. "Sure," the Administrator said. "I'll have someone bring you a cup." A couple minutes later, one of male orderlies appeared with a cup of coffee. "You  know what I’d like," Dr. Reis said.  "What?"  "Have you got a cubby somewhere, you know, a spider-hole where I could crash for a couple hours?"   To his surprise, the man with the pony tail winked at him again.  He led Dr. Reis down the hall to a little room stocked with mops and cleaning supplies.  There was a small cot against the wall.  "We really appreciate you offering to help, Doc," the older nurse with the pony tail said as he walked away. Dr. Reis took off his tennis shoes and lay down on the cot. It reminded him of his residency years ago. Immediately, he fell asleep. Someone had sent him to check on a corpse in the morgue in the hospital basement. He got lost.  There were cellars and sub-cellars, winding steps, rooms full of strange, sinister equipment and, then, grottos resplendent with stalactites around which the roots of trees were coiled. There was much below.  People could smoke  down in these sub-cellars and the air smelled of burning tobacco. The timer on his watch woke him up.  He had been sleeping for less than a half hour. He walked back to the SUV and slumped down on the
front seat.  Everyone was snoring loudly.  He couldn't fall asleep but, then, he did.

20.
Dawn seeped skyward, red at first, then bright orange and yellow. The air was dry, scrubbed clean of its heavy humidity and a fresh wind was blowing, stirring ripples across the lagoons made by the flood. The power had been restored and the breeze hummed with sound of chainsaws and, already, crews of Mexican roofers were patrolling the streets, propping ladders against eaves, workers crossing themselves before climbing up to the shattered shingles. At the gas stations, haggard-looking men with alcohol-ravaged faces stood patiently in line to use toilets - these were independent claims adjusters who had driven all night to reach Chagrin Falls.

21.
At the edge of town, the road was open, orange barricades pulled to the side, and they drove away on two-lane blacktop, free as a bird. For a few miles, they passed ruin and destruction, but, then, the countryside was intact, vast rolling fields of undamaged crops, ancient barns and silos standing behind dense green shelter-belts, lakes in pockets in the land, and distant freeways cutting across the rural lanes and byways, anchored by big cities in both directions attracting trucks and cars and motorcycles. The sun was vivid overhead and dew glistened on leaves and flowers. They came to a great estuary where steel ships, large enough to forge their ways through the Great Lakes were moored in concrete canals, restaurants with rooftop terraces overlooking the seaway, and steel lift-bridges arched over the water. Orchards where fruit was ripening stood on stony ridges and wild forests dropped from the sheer bluffs down to the vast lake. The resort was large with several swimming pools and time-shares with decks perched above the green fairways. Dr. Reis checked them into their two units and Nurse Norman went with Zazie to the pool. Dr. Reis had a two pm tee time. He met several colleagues and they drank beer while waiting for their time on the course. The tees were scenic, overlooking long fairways clinging to the landscape's contours. The roughs were deep and green, impenetrable with hanging vines and a dense understory bristling with thorns. The greens stood like altars lifted up above flanking sand hazards and water traps, held out on the palm of the lawns to the sun. A sweet cross-breeze animated the trees and brush. Sea gulls from the lake swooped and soared. Dr. Reis played poorly. This disturbed him: during the preceding month, he had been playing par golf, even, eagling many holes. The course was familiar to him, but his swing seemed awkward and his short game was erratic.  He bogied ten holes, double-bogied six more, and played par on only two.

22.
At the clubhouse, the players in his foursome bought rounds for one another. Dr. Reis drank whiskey and Seven-Up. He told the other doctors about the storm at Chagrin Falls. He didn't mention the flooded parking lot and the child - that memory was distasteful to him. He told the others that he had been among so much misery and doom that misfortune was contagious. "I seem to have caught some of what was going around there," Dr. Reis said, "...much to the detriment of my game."

23.
That night, Dr. Reis and Nurse Norman had a fine dinner at the lodge restaurant. They ordered a pizza with some Monkey Bread for Zazie.  Dr. Reis remarked that he had left his wet jeans and polo shirt at the park in Chagrin Falls. "My memory, my memory!" Dr. Reis exclaimed with mock dismay. He was on a turmeric regimen to ward off Alzheimer's disease - the illness had destroyed his father before killing him. "I've completely forgotten to take my turmeric," he told Nurse Norman. "You can't fight memory loss," Nurse Norman said, "if you forget to take your meds." After they were done eating, Dr. Reis suggested that Nurse Norman come to his room next to the suite where she was staying. She told him that it was the wrong time of the month. In his room, Dr. Reis read a book, a biography of Ulysses Grant, for a half-hour. He shut-off the lights but couldn't sleep.  There was heat-lightning flashing in the clouds over the lake. He thought about the child and the Impala bobbing like a cork in the flooded parking lot. He felt feverish and all of his joints ached and his belly was unsettled also - he wondered if he had swallowed some of tainted flood waters when he rescued the child. After an hour of tossing and turning, Dr. Reis went to the common door between the two adjacent suites, wiggled the door handle and found that it was unlocked. He tiptoed into Nurse Norman's unit and found her asleep on one of the two queen beds in the room. Zazie was in the other bed, breathing deeply, her eyes shut and her mouth open and feet kicked out from under the sheets. Dr. Reis crawled into bed with Nurse Norman and traced a finger down her spine under her pajama top. She rolled over against him.  Dr. Reis whispered to her that he felt feverish and was aching in his joints and wondered whether the flood water in Chagrin Falls had poisoned him. "You're just imagining things," she said. She put her hand between his legs and rubbed him. "I guess I'll have to relax you somehow," Nurse Norman said. "But Zazie's right here," Dr. Reis said. "You think I don’t know my own child. She's sound asleep," Nurse Norman whispered. "But what if she wakes up," Dr. Reis said. "She won't," Nurse Norman said. The risk seemed to excite her. "Life is dangerous," Nurse Norman said.  "You have to take risks," she said.  She dived down under the sheets and put her head near Dr. Reis' groin. "Let me take care of this," Nurse Norman said. Dr. Reis looked over to the bed four feet away. Zazie was sprawled diagonally across the mattress.

24.
When she was finished, Nurse Norman surfaced next to Dr. Reis and whispered into his ear. "How does he feel now?" Sometimes, she referred to Dr. Reis penis as "he". "Good," Dr. Reis said. "I'm sure he's happy now," Nurse Norman said. "Now go back to your room."  She said this without conviction. Dr. Reis remained with her until dawn and, then, rose and went back to sleep for an hour in his own cool suite.

25.
The seminar was about Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Reis was skeptical and said so on the golf course. He played a little better than the afternoon before. He remembered to take his Javanese Turmeric in the ginger-colored pill. After his game and cocktails in the club house, he drove into town and got Zazie a sandwich at Arby's with some curly fries. Then, he and Nurse Norman drove to a seafood restaurant in the town below the bluff on which the resort was built. The food was expensive but very good. The next morning, Dr. Reis took his memory pill and attended the morning session of the seminar. Pastry was provided and coffee with orange juice. He bogied most holes on the course that afternoon, but, also, scored an eagle on number 16, a particularly difficult par 5. They ate at a pancake place in the next town and, then, attended a summer stock performance of Woody Allen's play Don't Drink the Water. The play was presented in an old barn with exposed rafters and hay bales marking the path to the ticket booth. It was very funny. The next morning, Dr. Reis took his Javanese Turmeric pill and attended the morning session - the lecturer had run out of things to say and so he ended the program around 10:30. With Nurse Norman and Zazie, they were checked-out and were on the road home before noon.

26.
Dr. Reis gave Chagrin Falls a wide berth. He had no desire to go near the town. They stopped for lunch at an IHOP near a military base about forty miles from Chagrin Falls. The newspaper on sale bore this headline: Mystery Man saves Child from Flood-Authorities seeking Hero-rescuer. Nurse Norman pointed at the headline and paid 75 cents to buy a copy. "You are a hero," she said. Zazie said: "You should go to the police and let them know it was you." Dr. Reis shook his head: ''No, no, there are too many complications." And, so, they returned to the Mercedes Benz continued their trip back home.

27.
A young Black man with hair in henna-dyed dread locks was hitchhiking by the freeway exit. Dr. Reis slowed down. "We don't pick up hitchhikers," Nurse Norman said. "Sometimes, I do," Dr. Reis said as he pulled onto the shoulder. "I'm sure he's hot and thirsty." Nurse Norman told Zazie to crawl over the seats and sit alone in the way-back. "There's luggage in the way," Zazie complained. "Make it work," Nurse Norman ordered.

28.
The young man said that he had been in Chagrin Falls at the time of the storm. "We were there too," Dr. Reis said.  He asked Nurse Norman to give the young man a bottle of water.  "It's hot out there," Dr. Reis remarked. "That it is," the young man replied.  He was wearing cologne that filled the air in the SUV with a fruity, sweet smell.  "There's bad stuff happenin' in that town," the young man said. He told Dr. Reis that he and his cousin had gone to Home Depot and just purchased a gas generator with a cord and an eight-plug power-strip. "My cousin got a call from his lady. She said that someone was hurt from the storm and all and that he had to go home right away. So he goes and leaves me with the generator.  Then, the cops come and haul me out of the pick-up and want to see my receipt for the thing. But it's with my cousin 'cuz he paid for it. So I got no receipt. So, then, the cop cuffs me and takes me in his car somewhere. There's a bunch of brothers sitting on an outdoors parking lot, all of 'em cuffed and the sun just blazing down. Then, a school bus comes rattling over and we're ordered to get on the bus and if we don't move quick enough, we get hit hard upside the head. I seen it. People beatin' on us and blood all over. Then, we go out in the country to this hole in the ground, like a stone quarry or somethin' and they march us over to the side and say that all looters are gonna be shot, gonna all be killed for their crimes, gonna be executed right then and there. So I'm sayin' you can't do this, I want a lawyer, and so the big boss cop takes a guy next to me, drags him to the edge of the quarry, and shoots him right in the face. Then, he drops down in the water--splash! And, then, the cops are draggin' the other brothers to the edge of the quarry and guns are going off and some of 'em they don't even bother to shoot-- they just pitch them over the side- splash! Right into the deep water. But I got away, obviously I got away..." "How did you get away?" Dr. Reis. "I don't know. I just got away." "Were you handcuffed?" Dr. Reis said. "You said you were handcuffed." "You know, I don't rightly remember," the young man said. "It was all over that gas generator," he added. The young man said that he was hungry and wondered if they had anything he could eat. Zazie gave him a bag of M & M's.

29.
After about ten miles, the young man tapped on the windshield and said that they had come to his destination. "I can get out right here," he said. Dr. Reis pulled over. The crossroads was still, hushed, even expectant.  Insects buzzed in the tree tops.  A gravel road ran along a slough where there were tall,  straight cattails furred at their tops.  In the distance, a white country church crowned a small green  mound, a bit like a place where Indians buried their dead. "Are you sure this is where you want to get out?" Dr. Reis asked.  "I'm sure," the young man said.   They let him out under a flowering hedge,     some pink petals blowing in the wind.   When Dr. Reis searched his rear view mirror for the young     man, he had vanished. "Do you think what he said was true?" Nurse Norman asked.  "Not likely," Dr.  Reis  said, "but, who knows?"

30.
The thing with Nurse Norman didn't work out.  Dr.  Reis went to the Clinic Christmas Party with a lady psychiatrist that he had known in medical school. It was bitterly cold and big, tremulous-looking flakes fluttered past the colored lights hung in wreaths on the Country Club’s car-port.  Dr. Reis' date was wearing high heels that were a little tricky on the snowy sidewalks and parking lot ice. "I'll get the car," Dr. Reis said. "Please wait here."  He walked to the parked Mercedes Benz.  The wind scooped up snow from the greens and tees of the golf course beyond the trees and carried it over the parked
vehicles. "My god," Dr. Reis said to himself. "It would be terrible night to be outside without shelter." Then, he started the car, turned on the heat, and drove to the car-port to pick up his date.

Family Reunion at Buena Vista



Gramma Story: failing fast, they say, declining, (must be more than 90 now), so prone to fall that she’s confined to a wheelchair now, and, mentally, maybe not all there... although (for my part) I’m not so sure.  You know, hard of hearing can make a person seem aloof and stupid, and, probably, she’s pretty much deaf.  But we know her eyes work, they see just fine, because she says that she wants to go to the look-out, down the sidewalk a hundred yards from the park pavilion to where the trees have been cut-back and you can gaze out from here to forever, all the way across the river valley to the lock-and-dam and the bluffs in Minnesota which are pretty much like the bluffs here at Buena Vista Park, steep and green with woods in the folds and creases and rocky tops like broken crockery.  She wants me to push her wheelchair along the sidewalk and down the steep ramp to the look-out in the hot sun, ravines on both sides hissing with insects, the railroad track six-hundred feet below between the state highway and the lagoons and the stretched-out lakes nestled up against the main channel.  “There!” I say to her, my duty done, “you can see now.”  And she nods her head and licks her lips a little and gazes out over the panorama – it’s why they call it Buena Vista.  So we wait for five or six minutes and people come pushing strollers with babies in bonnets to protect them from the sun and Gramma Story looks at the babies and, then, up at the big hawks hungrily circling overhead and, then down to the green valley full of jungly green bush and swamps and flooded places rippling with current that means that this lake or that is somehow connected to the main channel and, under the lock-and-dam, there is a white sailboat sailing as pretty as can be...

She knows what she is seeing, no question about that, and Gramma thanks me in a whisper since it’s been hard for her recently to talk and, then, I push her back toward the pavilion, wrestling the wheel chair up the steep ramp and she says, clear as can be, “You can see the whole wide world from up here” and I reply, “Yes, you can Gramma Story, yes, indeed, you can.”

Then, Melinda comes down from the pavilion to help me, but I really don’t need help with the wheelchair so she just walks alongside and, then, lights a cigarette and, so, I suppose that she has really come away from the family gathered under the shelter mostly to smoke, although that’s okay with me.  We pause to look at the squirrels dancing under the trees and the big yellow dogs chasing, but not catching them, and I slow down a little to accommodate Melinda’s need to smoke her cigarette – it’s our annual family reunion and I know things like this stress people out, family’s more stressful than strangers, at least that’s what I think, and, then, Big Bob comes down to walk with us, also lighting a cigarette, and he says that we all need to keep an eye on the kids because there’s some weirdo loitering around the public toilets, but, when I look that way, I don’t see anyone, just a couple other families at picnic tables or with blankets spread on the grass or drinking from the fountain, a man playing catch with a boy and two long-haired kids pitching a frisbee this way and that over the shadow-dappled lawn...

Then, we’re at the Pavilion and Vicki, Granma Story’s daughter, big and red in her blue pants-suit comes up and asks about her mom, and Granma Story blinks her eyes at her daughter and says that she’s not in the least bit tired and that it’s wonderful to get a little field trip away from the nursing home and Vicki tells her: “Mom, just say the word and we can take you down to town and back home” – meaning the nursing home on the grassy terrace over the railroad tracks and river-side swamps, also called Buena Vista – but Gramma Story says that no, she is having a good time and not the slightest bit sleepy and she will tell us when she is tired and wants to go back to her room and, then, Vicki pushes the wheelchair and puts it under the shadow of the pavilion, next to the buckets of KFC chicken and the cole slaw and the potato salad and the tray where there are pies waiting to be sliced and ice-cream in a cooler and soda pop in another cooler and, of course, a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice surrounded by the men who are standing there in the shade, bullshitting one another, laughing loudly and waving their hands in the air.

It’s a good turn-out, all the Hanson’s and Mork’s and the Norberg’s too, some of them come from as far away as the Carolinas and Pittsburgh and Portland – people that you will see maybe a half-dozen times in your life, mostly, I’m afraid, at funerals, and others whom you see twice a year, also at funerals or baptisms, and, then, those you see monthly and weekly and every other day for Christ’s sake!  It can be comfortable or tedious as hell or both at the same time.  And, now, Uncle Jerome is ferrying the kids from the park two miles over the gravel roads to his farm on the ridge-top where the girls are riding ponies and the boys tooling around on four-wheelers, five or six kids at a time coming and going since he lives just beyond the ravine snaking around the bluff on a farm with a silo and a big red barn and, each time, Jerome comes to let off kids and pick up the next group, he seems more and more drunk, slurring his words, and, maybe it’s a little bit of a risk for him to take those kids and supervise them (or not) doing godknowswhat on his farm, but these are city children and they don’t get out to the boondocks that are also god’s country that often and, so, no one really wants to spoil the fun, no one wants to intervene and be a spoil sport and, returned from their adventures, the boys and girls cluster into groups, male here, female there, and chatter with one another and dart back and forth from under the pavilion down to the overlook and, then, along trails in the ravines where they might encounter poison oak or poison ivy and, then, throwing around helium balloons from the pavilion by the public toilets where someone should be watching them because, after all, there is supposed to be a weirdo lurking about that place.

The Trump supporters and the never-Trump republicans are getting up in each other’s faces and a little feisty, although so far it’s all goodnatured, and the Democrats really don’t have anything to say and so they are just keeping out of it and there’s Aunt Wilma recovering from hip surgery and a little groggy with oxycontin, Jill who’s on the wagon after a DWI sipping diet Coke, Tony who got in trouble with a girl down in Des Plaines and is still on probation and, probably, not supposed to be drinking although he’s got a beer in front of him, next to his plate of Kentucky Fried Chicken and potato salad, Kermit the investment banker with his polo shirt and golf shoes, Brandy who’s been married four times next to her new beaux, younger than her and blinking at all of the sunlight and open air and nervously brushing gnats away from his eyes, Tom who lost the farm, Gary who has the implement dealership, Tiny from the service desk and Georgina dying of cancer, Fawn who has diabetes, Wilma Ann covered in more tattoos than a carnival freak except that nowadays the carnival freaks have come out of their tents and booths to join the party, Eddie who’s supposed to be under a restraining order to keep him away from his wife, June sitting exactly three feet from June right now and whispering something in her ear, Gladys the family historian and geneaologist, William who has an African-American wife and Bonnie who is married to a Chinese man, the toddlers with smeared faces, the coughing first-graders, the sullen teenagers who keep vanishing into the forest, the first cousins and half-brothers and half-sisters and cousins once removed and the in-laws looking strained at the effort to remain non-judgemental and polite and, finally Gramma Story so-called because she taught Sunday School for forty years and read her Bible every morning and every night and so, always, had a fairy tale from scripture to answer every question and to solve every problem (and so named as well because for many years there were two grammas and one of them told stories and the other one, Gramma Sherbet served sherbet for dessert  – that was how you kept them apart when you talked about the two old ladies) and, now, Gramma Story is among her people but apart from them also, looking across her kith and kin, with a slight proprietary smile because, after all, these people are hers, she made them in one way or another, they have come out of her and, so, she gazes at them the way a farmer gazes at his growing crops, not exactly with love or, even, pride (after all growing things grow on their own) but with a sense of ownership and, even, compassion – after all, she’s old enough to know how all these things come out in the end.

Then, Jerome is back with another gang of kids, standing by the beer keg with a cigar in his hand, recruiting the next group to ride over with him to his farm, and I think, maybe this is not exactly all right, because the man is pretty obviously drunk, slurring his words and walking unsteadily, but also appraising whether it is my place to say something (it’s not) and what affect that might have on this heretofore happy gathering (unfortunate) and, then, I look across the lawn and see a couple, young lovers, I suppose, certainly a part of the family reunion because they are wearing name-tags although who knows who they belong to, and they are curled together on the sod cuddling and gazing up at the sky and I look up also, between the arches of the leafy trees where a pink helium balloon is temporarily nested, and see the hawks and a jet trail scratching a line on the blue sky... There’s a haze of gossip over the food and people excitedly telling one another about scandals, triumphs, and one of my aunts is talking about her niece who is attending Harvard and someone else says something about Yale and a train hoots far down in the valley, a sad, companionable sound like a well-loved dog barking and, then, I see the weirdo, a fat middle-aged man, a slob wearing shorts that are much too tight for him and carrying a miniature backpack slung around his wrist, all hot and panting and slippery with sweat, the bald spot on his head covered haphazardly by a baseball cap that’s stiff with sooty grime.   The man has mosquito bites all over his wrists and calves that he has scratched into red scabs and his shirt is open on a hairless chest that is also speckled with bug bites.  He wears thick glasses that are clouded with yellowish filth and, as a he approaches, circling the place where the family is gathered under the pavilion, I can see that he has plastic hearing aids pressed up between the greasy whorl of his ears and his skull.

Everyone ignores the weirdo and I don’t see any benefit in looking at him either – it’s distasteful -- and, so, I find a paper towel and a paper plate on the picnic table and take some chicken from the bucket with potato salad and baked beans and, then, I hear children giggling and squealing and see them crowding into the back of Uncle Jerome”s 4 by 4 pickup and, far to the west, beyond the Minnesota river bluffs I can see some remote pinkish thunder heads boiling up over the horizon and there is a loose balloon gone fugitive in that direction, bobbing over the cliff tops.

Someone brushes by me and I smell strong body-odor and a faint scent of cologne and, when I look up, I’m surprised to see that the weirdo has joined the group.  He’s now under the shelter of the pavilion and standing in line near the chicken with a paper plate atop his cupped hands and, I think, this isn’t all right, I mean the rudeness of this guy, his presumptuousness, who is this dude anyway? – I don’t pretend to know everyone in the extended family but that’s what the name-tags are for and I sure don’t see any name tag pasted on this fellow’s shirt or beer belly.  I set my food aside and stand up and, then, a couple of big guys who have parked themselves around the beer keg stand up also and approach the weirdo and one of them says, Excuuuuse me? And someone else asks: “Do we know you?” 

“I was just gonna eat,” the weirdo sort of lisps, almost like he’s got his mouth and choppers already full of food.

“Jes’ gonna eat?” Big Bob says.  “Who invited you?”

“But I’m hungry,” the weirdo says.

JayCee flips up his sunglasses so he can shine his hard blue eyes on the weirdo.  “You’re not part of this family,” he says and thumps the weirdo on his sweat-shining chest.

“I just wanna eat,” the weirdo says.

“Well, we don’t want you to eat,” Big Bob says and he also thumps the weirdo over the heart and on his shoulder too.

“You can jes go away,” JayCee says putting his jaw up close to the weirdo’s face.

The weirdo throws up his hands regardless of the chicken on his plate so that breast and thigh drop down on the concrete under the picnic tables. 

“You know that Amy went all the way up to Red Wing for that KFC?  She had to go over the bridge to Minnesota for that,” JayCee says.  “Now you spilt it, you wasted it right here.”

“You gonna pay for that plate of food,” Big Bob says.  And, then, another man from beer keg, Tiny walks over, waddling like he’s pregnant, uncertain on his feet, and Tiny says: “Now what are we gonna do with this son-of-a...(he pauses) gun?”

Tiny pokes the weirdo hard in his beer belly and the weirdo grunts.

Then, we hear a voice ringing like a bell in the air, clear and high –it’s Gramma Story.  “That’s Carl,” she says.  “That’s your second-cousin once removed, cousin Carl right?”

The man looks at her quizzically. 

“Don’t be makin’ a fuss,” Gramma Story says.  “Carl, you come over by me and keep me company.”

The men from around the beer keg drop their fists down to their sides and look a little ashamed.

“I didn’t recognize you, Carl,” Big Bob says.

“Me neither,” Tiny adds.  “It’s been a long time.”

The man shrugs and goes to where Gramma Story is sitting and someone unfolds an aluminum chair for him and he sits down beside her wheelchair.  Gramma Story says to Wilma Ann: “Be a dear and get your cousin Carl a plate of food.”

Wilma Ann nods and gets up and walks back to the buckets of KFC and the other food. 

“While you’re at it, get Carl something to drink,” Gramma Story calls out. 

Wilma Ann puts food on a paper-plate and pumps a cup of beer for the man who is sitting next to Gramma Story. 

JayCee, who has retreated to the beer keg, mutters: “Cousin Carl died twenty years ago.  In a car wreck.  The old lady’s gone senile.”

Wilma Ann comes back to where Gramma Story and the man are sitting.

“You know I ain’t –“ the man starts to say.

“You just hush and eat your dinner here,” Gramma Story says.

Wilma Ann asks: “Is this really Cousin Carl?”

“You betcha,” Gramma Story says.  Then, she asks for a slice of pie and ice cream too and Wilma Ann, who looks warm in her sleeves and vests of tattoos, asks if she should get pie for the man.  “What do you think?” Gramma Story says.  “Of course, I will,” Wilma Ann answers. 

One of the great grandkids from Pittsburgh is missing and the men at the beer keg walk down to the overlook and, then, beat the bushes a little and, after a few minutes, a small child with a bloody knee and a bloody elbow is produced, trembling and snotty-nosed and, then, when people look over to Gramma Story they see that she is alone, even dozing a little with her eyes half-closed and a horse-fly exploring the whiskers on her chin.

“Where did that weirdo go?”  Tiny asks.

“That wasn’t Carl,” JayCee says.  “Carl got killed in a car crash in LaCrosse twenty years ago.”

Wilma Ann says in a whisper: “The old lady’s got Alzheimer’s I suppose.  She mistook him.”

Tiny says: “We should of charged that son-of-gun eight dollars for that damn plate.”

It’s time to go and so we wheel Gramma Story to my SUV and, then, with Vicki riding beside me (her car is parked down at the nursing home), we follow the high ridge-line, the road turning sharply to follow the contour of the highest bluff where the hillside trees give way to farmland planted in corn and beans, fields like stretched-out fingers with the deep green valleys between them, and, then, I swerve to avoid the weirdo, stumbling along the fog-line on the right side of the road, swinging his little backpack to and fro and leaning on a stick cut like a cane, foot-sore it seems and gimped-up with a stolen yellow helium balloon tied to his wrist, and, then, where the gravel lane intersects the asphalt, Uncle Jerome comes barreling out, turning wide in a cloud of swirling yellow dust, and comes damn near to clipping us, so that Vicki says: “That man’s a menace.”  Then, the two-lane black top plunges down the ravine, zigzagging back and forth, passing the drive-way that goes up to the winery under the cliffs, some cars parked up on the terrace parking lot above the staked grape vines, and, after another quarter mile, we are down at the bottom in the lush river-valley below the bluffs.

I pull into the Buena Vista nursing home, parking lot full of cars and trucks of weekend visitors, and we get the wheelchair out of the SUV and Gramma Story seems to be dozing a little.

“That wasn’t Carl,” Vicki says to me.

“How could it be?” I reply.

Gramma Story opens her eyes and looks at the flowers crowding up around the walls of the nursing home, an aide sitting on a bench under the carport smoking a cigarette, a humming bird like a dragon-fly at the feeder.

“What make you think I don’t know my children and my children’s children?” Gramma Story asks.

“No, it’s okay, mom,” Vicki says.

“What make you think I don’t know who my family is?”

“It’s okay, mom,” Vicki replies.  “It’s okay.”

Harmonia

1.
Winston got separated from his hunting buddies.  It happened this way. The deer stand was a canvas booth atop an aluminum scaffolding such as might support a lifeguard’s chair on a beach.  Indian summer lingered over the fields and green hillsides and it was hot in the stand, dull as well, dappled deer sleeping, Winston supposed, somewhere in the thickets that the hunters overlooked.  Winston finished his Pabst Blue Ribbon and said that he had to take a leak and, leaving his gun in the stand, climbed down the ladder to the field.  The deer stand surveyed a corn field where brown stalks were crushed flat by the harvesting equipment and, then, the dense edge of woods growing on the hillside that was too steep to till.  The trees were luminous, red and yellow and caramel brown leaves drizzling down, the hillside noisy with insects buzzing and humming in the drowsy heat.  A persistent yellowish haze hung over the ridges as well as the meadows and pastures in the valley where the county road snaked along a twisting stream, cutting back and forth over the peat-colored water on narrow one-lane bridges.  At the head of the valley, a little village was gathered up around an intersection where an old church reared its steeple like a brick exclamation point over the terrain.

Winston looked up and down the valley and, then, said that he would go into the woods a quarter mile from the deer stand and beat the bushes to drive the animals forward and within range of the guns.  Winston’s buddies were skeptical.  They said that it was dangerous.  “We’ll just probably end up shooting you,” one of his friends said.  Sometimes, the woods snapped with remote rifle shots.  At quarter-mile intervals, pick-up trucks were parked on the shoulder of the county road.  Winston tapped at his bright orange vest, gave his buddies a thumb’s up and, then, walked uphill to the tree-line, following the irregular and shadowy threshold of the forest for six-hundred yards before sliding sideways into the woods, slipping between two blisters of raw red sumac.

The woods were dense and tangled with thickets and nets of vine hung down to block his way.  At first, he followed a faint game path, but, then, lost his way.  For twenty minutes, he forged ahead, slipping on fallen logs where ear-shaped toadstools were sprouting from the damp wood, pushing forward through thorny brush elastic as a rubber band when it snapped at his face.  He climbed little hummocks buried in green foliage and, then, stumbled into small cellar-shaped pits jammed full of sticks and twigs and broken branches.  At last, he came to a dry stream bed that ascended the slope in a tunnel of brown and golden leaves clenched tightly over the ravine.  The water-course steepened and Winston had to twist around egg-shaped boulders and fallen trees barricading the place.  Above a big broken ledge, Winston found himself in a sepulchral vault, the crumbling limestone cliffs as high as the trees  curving up into a dome above him.  The way was impassible and, so, he descended the dry creek to a place where its banks were terraced with shattered yellow stones like irregular steps.Then, he went cross-country until he found a narrow track leading over a low-point in the ridge.

On the other side of the hill, the valley spread out beneath him, a river lounging between meadows where cows were grazing. Winston looked for the village with its brick steeple but couldn’t pick out that place in the narrow coulee beneath him.  It seemed that some houses and, possibly, a tavern or general store stood at an intersection about a mile away.  A white building like an old country school-house stood in a grove of trees between two fields that had not yet been harvested.  He had been in the woods longer than he thought – the air was now cooler and blue shadows were lengthening under the walls of the forest.  The dense mass of trees seemed to have been punctured and was leaking darkness over the land.  Winston knew that he was lost.  Breathing heavily, he sat for a while on the hillside, imagining a way down the slopes too steep to be farmed to the dark braid of the river.

Distances were deceptive.  The autumn haze seemed to act as a lens, as a great hazy magnifying glass, and it took him a long time to reach the road.  There was no traffic.  Far away, the lights in the village had come on.  Winston clawed his cell-phone out from under his orange vest but couldn’t get a signal.

Winston passed the structure that looked like a country school house. The building was white, an angular ice-berg in the gloom.  An ancient willow-tree stood near the path leading to the building and Winston glimpsed something squatting on the mown grass – it was a picnic table crouching like a tarantula in the darkness.  A brick outhouse with a tin rooster cupola caught a beam of light.  The moon rose over the hillside.

About a tenth of a mile down the road from the schoolhouse, Winston came upon a cemetery.  Some new burials were marked by imposing granite slabs, so smoothly polished that Winston could dimly descry his shadow in the stone as he passed.  In front of the granite monuments, little limestone tombs extruded from the sod, eroded down now into an appearance like broken molars poking up through the grass.  The little graves were lightless and caught no reflections at all and seemed even impervious to the moonbeams now decorating the country lane.

Winston heard singing.  It was unclear at first and he thought the voices were an artifact of his breathing, something in his sinuses or head.  He paused and scanned the dark landscape around him.  The hills were silent now except for choruses of frogs in the low, wet places.  The singing became louder.  The voices sounded and resounded, loud enough now to echo across the desolate pastures, the barbed-wire fence-lines, the black woods hovering over the cultivated land.  The voices were quite clear, well-organized, making harmonies with the bell-shaped notes that they sang.  Winston couldn’t understand the words – it sounded to him like Russian, except that he had never heard Russian except in movies, or some kind of Dutch.  The songs came quite close to him, as if the melodies and chords wanted to guide him down the moonlit lane.

Then, a pickup emerged over the crest of the one-lane bridge back by the willow tree and the white building.  Winston waved his arms and the man driving the truck stopped for him.  It was too crowded for him to ride in the truck’s cab, but the driver said he could climb into the back of the pick-up.  The carcass of a deer sprawled across the pick-up bed, nose all snotty with gore.  Winston put his thorn-scratched hands on the velvet of the deer’s antlers.  Moonlight reflected dully from the deer’s open eye.
In town, the man driving the pick-up stopped.  Winston had service on his phone and called his buddies from the General Store.  He wanted to tell them about the voices that he had heard singing in the dark, but decided that the story would seem too eccentric and so he decided to remain silent on that subject.

2.
The winery was tucked under a dolomite crag about six-hundred feet above the river valley.  The driveway up to the tudor-framed chalet had been steep, through a south-facing vineyard that seemed stapled to the sheer side of the hill.  Aimee and Geoff sat at a table on the big deck jutting out over the Mississippi River valley.  The wine-tasting had finished and they were a little tipsy.  Aimee held a bottle of wine produced at this vineyard in her lap.

A waitress dressed in a black Tyrolean embroidered bodice over her white blouse came to their table and asked them if they wanted anything else.  People were laughing and chattering on the deck but the great river valley, miles wide from bluff to bluff, the powerful brown flood of the Mississippi concealed among lakes and lagoons and swamps, seemed strangely still and empty in the hot August sun.

Aimee said that the artisanal sharp cheddar cheese served as an accompaniment to the wine was wonderful.  She asked if the cheese were for sale at the winery.  The waitress shook her head, but said that the cheese was, indeed, locally made.  “I can draw you a map as to how to drive to the farm,” the waitress said.  She remarked that it was about 18 miles away, the dairy located in one of the coulees extending out from the river the way that boughs branch from the trunk of a tree.  Aimee slipped her sunglasses up over her forehead and watched carefully as the waitress sketched some line on a napkin.  Geoff looked at his watch.  They were on an afternoon excursion from LaCrosse and he wanted to return home before it was too late.

They walked to the parking lot and drove their old Volvo down the steep driveway to the winding road that led up from the river bottoms to the bluff tops.  On the ridges, the land fell away in all directions, vividly green ravines and coulees extending in all directions between veins of hilltop, blonde with corn fields and sloping pastures.  The map turned out to be useless.  The waitress hadn’t included any scale and, so, Geoff didn’t know where to make the turns leading to the dairy farm.  After a while, they were lost, driving aimlessly in the bottom of the valleys, farms sometimes pressed close to the road or across the rivers that flowed like lanes of dark silver in the troughs of the coulees.  In this country, one place looked pretty much like another – the roads ran parallel to the streams or crossed them climbing up through dark, tangled woods to uninhabited ridges and, then, curving down into the adjacent valleys.  The countryside was strangely empty, abandoned, it seemed, with ruined silos like gravestones marking the places where farms had once been.

Aimee pointed to one of the barns.  “Hex,” she said.  On the side of the old red-painted barn, a geometric shield had been painted – it was weather-beaten and faded but still legible, a six-pointed star in a field of green and yellow.  Each barn that they passed was marked with a similar sign, although the geometries of the hexes, and the freshness of the paint, varied.  “Must be a bad witch problem here,” Geoff said.  “What do you mean?” Aimee said, looking over her sunglasses.  “The signs are supposed to scare off witches,” he told her.  “Witches are a sexist fantasy,” Aimee said.  “So you say,” Geoff said.

They quarreled a little because the wine had made their heads ache and it was growing late.

A town appeared ahead with a general store and fortress-like brick steeple above a church.  They passed a little white building that looked a township hall, half hidden behind a willow, and an old graveyard.  Beyond the town, a place that didn’t appear on Geoff’s map, they turned onto a gravel crossroads, following a sign that pointed to a place that Aimee recalled passing earlier in the day.  The gravel road passed through some tall corn and, then, rose above a contour plowed field planted in greasy green soybeans.  Ahead of them, a woman was jogging.  She was running with a loose, inefficient gait, head down, and, apparently, wearing ear-buds because she didn’t acknowledge them as the Volvo approached her from behind.  “It’s an odd place to be jogging,” Aimee said.  “No houses or farms anywhere around,” Geoff replied.

The woman didn’t waver from her lane in the middle of the road.  She seemed exhausted, arms flailing and each stride a lunge.  Geoff swerved carefully to the side, driving almost in the weeds of the oncoming shoulder, to pass her.  As the car went by, he looked to his right, across Aimee, and saw the woman’s profile – a white eye rolling a little and her mouth open wide and gasping for air.  The Volvo ascended the steep hill on which the woman was running and Geoff turned his eyes to his rear-view mirror.  He saw the woman’s face for a moment smeared across the glass in front of him and, then, the yellow fog of dust trailing behind the car on the gravel road covered her.

They drove in silence to the crest of the hill, about a mile beyond where they had seen the jogger.

Geoff pulled into a weed overgrown drive next to a silo built with old brown tiles.  It looked like lightning had struck the silo and split it open.

“Did you see her?” Geoff asked.

“Yes,” Aimee said.  “Something was wrong.”

“She isn’t jogging,” Geoff said.  “She’s running away from something.”

“I don’t know,” Aimee said.  “But she did look sort of ... terrified.”

Geoff held out the back of his arm.  “Look,” he said.  The hair on his arm was bristling.  “That’s how it affects me,” Geoff said.

He pulled onto the road and began to retrace the way that they had come.

“What are you doing?”  Aimee said.

“We should try to help her,” Geoff said.

“I don’t want to see her face again,” Aimee said.  “It’s too disturbing.”

“We have to help,” Geoff said.

They drove back down the hill without encountering the woman-jogger.  At the base of the hill, the road crossed the river on a one-way bridge, marked as unsafe for trucks.

“Now what?” Aimee said, pouting.

“We go back to LaCrosse,” Geoff said.  “We should have never come out here in the first place.”

“It was your idea,” Aimee said.

“No it wasn’t.”

A chill had come between them.  The wine in their bellies was turning into sour irritation with one another.  Both of them had classes to teach in the morning and it was time to go home.



3.
Reverberation is the sound makes as sound decays into silence.  Reverberation time measures the period that lapses between the impulse creating the sound and the silence that follows when echoes have ceased.  The nature of the energetic impulse creating the sound, the acoustic qualities of the space through which the sonic energy propagates, temperature, humidity, and the quality of the surface from which the sound rebounds will determine reverberation time.  This period may be measured by equipment timing the reverberations or can be calculated theoretically using complex mathematical models including Fourier transforms.  Some scientists claim that the calculations show that reverberation time tends toward infinity.  This means that, if there were a sufficiently sensitive monitor capturing the faintest echoes of echoes, we might hear, for instance, Lincoln speaking at Gettysburg – the President’s voice was said to be a "thin tenor" and "shrill as a boatswain's whistle."  But such equipment doesn’t exist and conjecture of this kind is fruitless.

All energy reverberates.  The reverberation of light is called reflection.  Taste gives way to aftertaste and smell resonates in sinus cavities in the skull.  People speak of “muscle memory”, a reverberation in touch and motion of some gesture or response previously learned.  And, indeed, memory is the reverberation of neurons firing in the brain, an after-image of the electrical impulses that make up thought and sensation.  Collective memory reverberates into traditions and folk knowledge.  Historical events reverberate in books and images and their consequences spread through the world.  Every sound and sensation that we experience is posterior to some impulse in the world that we can’t directly experience – human consciousness itself is a reverberation of energetic impulses mediated through mirroring systems.  Angels, devils, and God don’t experience reverberation.  There are no echos in heaven or hell.  For these beings, all events are simultaneous because time does not exist in the inferno or paradise.

4.
Aimee’s subject was Women’s Studies.  Geoff worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Engineering at the University, although he was completing a doctoral degree in Mathematics.  Aimee’s thesis was on the role of women in Wisconsin’s Freie Gemeinde – that is, Free-thinking Congregations.  In the mid-19th century, many German immigrants rejected organized religion and opposed State-sanctioned warfare.  These immigrants founded communities of free-thinkers and, often, built halls where they could meet.  Most Freie Gemeinde sponsored choirs and singing societies and, even, marching bands.  Music was an important element in their meetings.

The State Historical Society in Milwaukee possessed an extensive collection of Freie Gemeinde materials.  Twice a month, Aimee made the four hour drive to consult those materials.  Her German was reasonably good, but she needed help deciphering the Victorian handwriting, so-called Suetterlinschrift in which many of the letters and documents were written.  As a result, Aimee worked long hours with an older man, an immigrant himself, who could decrypt the tiny, indistinct letters.  She had an affair with the man, a relationship that she ended when her research was complete.  Aimee confessed her infidelity to Geoff and, after some unpleasant scenes, he said that he would forgive her.  By this time, they had a child together, Wilhelm, and their debts made it impractical for them to separate.  Aimee made Geoff promise that he would never mention the affair again – that was the condition of their reconciliation.

Geoff’s professors told him that his outline for his thesis in mathematics was without originality.  They suggested that he seek his doctorate in applied mathematics.  Geoff agreed to submit a paper on some mathematical aspects of acoustics involving Fourier Transforms.  But the subject didn’t inspire him and he put off writing the paper for several years, before, finally, conceding that the project would never be completed.  Having abandoned his thesis, Geoff lost his position at the University.  He took some classes on education and was hired as a substitute teacher with the local school system.

One Sunday afternoon in August when the campus was deserted for Summer Break, Aimee and Geoff drove back up the river valley to tour wineries in Trempeleau and Buffalo counties.  Wilhelm accompanied them and, late in the day, they stopped for a tasting at the vineyard with the Tudor-style chateau tucked under the dolomite crag on the bluff-top.  The artisan cheddar cheese was as good as Aimee recalled and, again, she asked the waitress in her Tyrolean outfit to tell them where they could buy this product.  The waitress drew a map on a napkin again, but, this time, Aimee troubled her for distances and the letters identifying the county roads and, also, wrote down the name of the dairy farm that made the cheese.  When she entered the name into her cell-phone, an address appeared and directions.  Geoff said that the Liebfraumilch had made him drowsy and that he wanted to turn around and drive home, but Aimee insisted that they go to the farm to purchase some of its artisan cheese.

Beyond the bluff crowned with stone, valleys thrust their slender fingers out and away from the river.  They drove on an asphalt lane through a long picturesque valley, passing farmsteads built on green terraces above the meander of a creek in the bottom of the coulee.  In some places, the road was flanked by corn fields with bright-yellow tassels shining atop the densely woven palisades of stalk.  Apple orchards with squat, determined-looking trees were rooted in some of the higher meadows.  The velvet-green wall of the forest, soft with vines and berry bushes and poison ivy, marked the place where the slopes became steep and wild rising to rocky ridge-tops.

Aimee picked-out the farm, a great barn rising over the bone-white house and steel outbuildings.  The timber prow of the barn looked like a seagoing vessel somehow run aground on the hillside.  A half-dozen cats, indifferent and regal, were lounging about the farmyard.  On the crest of the barn, a hex sign painted in the old Pennsylvania Dutch Distelfinks emblem looked down like a single eye on the narrow gravel lane spanning the flooded creek and leading up to the house.

The farmer was burly wearing ill-fitting jeans and with a red beard, and a hand missing several fingers.  He was friendly, but said that he had consigned the last of his sharp cheddar cheese to the General Store in Waunmandee.  He gave them directions while urging them to buy a jar of honey from his bees.  As she paid for the honey, Aimee asked: “What does the hex sign mean?”  “It’s for luck,” the farmer said.  “When you farm, you need a lot of luck.”  “I thought they were to scare away witches,” Geoff said.  “Them too,” the farmer replied grinning.  The honey was cloudy with wax and bits of comb.

Geoff turned around the Volvo and Wilhelm waved to the farmer as they went back toward the county road, cautiously clearing the small steel span over the creek.  The bog-colored water was high, brimming over the banks and making them slimy with dark mud.

Waunmandee was over the ridge in the next valley.  The coulee was lush and mostly deserted with the forests spilling down from the steep hillsides to the rounded embankments huddled around the river.  The village was marked by a brown brick steeple as sullen as fence-post rising over a few small, pale buildings at an intersection.  Two convertibles were parked in front of the general store, city folk from Madison or Milwaukee exploring the boondocks on a summer afternoon.  The shelves in the store were  a jumble of items, canned food and cereal, shears for castrating hogs and rings to insert in the noses of bulls, rat and mouse traps, fly strips, and many kinds of household poisons, guns and ammunition, and an old cooler holding deer sausage, artisan cheese, and a couple home-made pies.  Aimee bought some cheese and, also, three slices of the lingonberry pie, scooped into styrofoam trays “to go.”  She asked about the Freie Gemeinde hall in town.  The old woman at the cash register pointed along the main street out into the green and pleasant country.  “It’s about 20 rods from the cemetery, down the same road,” she said.

They found the Harmonia Hall without difficulty.  A big willow tree made many green veils partially concealing the old structure.  The Hall was one-story with a small boxy steeple on its ridge-line, without ornament or decoration and glacial under a thick coat of white-wash.  A lean-to porch was on the back of the building, sheltering a concrete patio where three picnic tables were located.  Another picnic table stood in the open air between the building and a brick outhouse with a rust-red rooster mounted on its cupola.  In front of the building, a sign explained the history of the hall – the Freie Gemeinde had flourished between 1861, when the communities gathered for abolitionist rallies, and 1916.  Tensions preceding the Great War with Germany made the Freethinker’s associations suspect and, since most of their members were now elderly and infirm, the organizations simply disbanded.

“This is an old singing society,” Aimee told Wilhelm.  Between the droopy willow and the Hall, a swingset had been erected and there was a battered tin slide.  Wilhelm ran to the slide, climbed its ladder, and zoomed down it.  He did this several times, squealing with happiness, and, then, went down on his belly.  The slide disgorged him dive face-first into the gravel and, so, he stood up, nose bloody, and, crying, ran around the Hall to where Aimee and Geoff were sitting on the picnic benches under the shelter.  Aimee sent Geoff to the car for paper towels and, then, asked him why he didn’t bring the roll when he returned with a strip of towel wrapped around his wrist.  Geoff shrugged.  Aimee cleaned Wilhelm’s face and set a slice of lingonberry pie in front of him.  Instead of eating, the little boy got up and darted away, saying that he wanted to play on the swing-set.  “Should I go and watch him?” Geoff asked.  “No,” Aimee said, “He’ll be fine.  I want to talk to you about our relationship.”  “Okay,” Geoff said.

The hills with their conical tops cast long shadows.  The landscape was silent except for frogs belching in the ditches next to the county road.   Around the corner of the white hall, the rusty swing-set made a wheezing sound.  A cloud struck out the sun and, for an instant, everything seemed colorless, sculpted in uniform grey.         


5.
A journalist from LaCrosse attended the Waumandee choral competition and picnic in the Summer of 1893.  Excerpts from the article that appeared in the LaCrosse paper may be read in a book, Waumandee, Wisconsin 1860 - 1870, An Affectionate Portrait (Laverne Rippley).

Thomas Paine, a man greatly admired by the Freie Gemeinde, was born on February 9, 1737.  He died in June 1809.  February is a cold month in Wisconsin and, so, the Waumandee Freethinkers celebrated Thomas Paine’s life and thought, not on his birthday, but on the second weekend in June.  The custom had begun in 1884 in the year that marked the 75th anniversary of the great man’s death.  Each year around Easter, invitations were extended to other congregations of Freethinkers as well as to villages in the county with choirs and singing societies.  The Waumandee Freie Gemeinde possessed no fewer than 321 books in its library within the meeting hall.  Most of the books were printed in German, translations of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Thomas Paine, several copies of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise as well the collected works of Herder and Kant together with Schiller and Goethe.  On the morning of the picnic celebration, the society’s books by Paine were carried from the library and put on the podium under the lean-to shelter at the back of the Harmonia Hall.  Women brought pies made from apples, cherries, and strawberries as well mince-meat and strudel.  Chicken had been butchered in great numbers the night before and the meat was fried for the picnic.  Cauldrons of sauerkraut and kartoffelsalat were suspended over open fires and the air smelled of apple cider, bacon, and vinegar.  Banners decorated the austere front of Harmonia Hall, red, white and blue bunting and paper lanterns with candles were set in the trees shading the meadow behind the building.  Lime was poured into the toilets and bouquets of wild flowers were set on picnic tables.  More wild flowers in wreaths and garlands dedicated the speaker’s podium.

At about 12:20, the brotherhood hosting the picnic heard music on the dusty coach road in front of the Hall.  Freie Gemeinde singers had arrived from Alma and, also, Arcadia, marching in step, waving flags, and singing as they approached.  The Waumandee men’s chorus stood on both sides of the road and greeted them with a song of welcome.   Then, trumpets sounded and the Gesanggesellschaft (“singing society”) from Liberty approached, also raising on high a merry marching tune and accompanied by a cornet band.  Again, the Waunmandee brotherhood lined the pathway into their grounds, singing their welcome to the new arrivals.  More choirs arrived, some of them half-drunk on beer wagons.  The drum and fife corps from Arion came a little later, brandishing a banner that showed a handsome young man with curly hair riding on the back of a dolphin with a face like a bull-dog.  Beer was distributed from kegs and growlers and bottles sunk in the creek were fished-out, drizzling cold droplets on the grass.  Much of beer was brewed in Milwaukee by the Pabst family and some of the families that had been to the Columbian exposition in Chicago knew that the beer had been awarded a blue ribbon at the great fair.

After some competitive singing, people sat down to eat.  The meadow was a tapestry of blankets strewn across the rolling hillsides.  A speaker read from Thomas Paines’ Gesunder Menschenverstand and Menschenrechte and, then, some poems were recited and, from the pulpit, a conductor lead the massed choirs in patriotic songs ending with a thunderous version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Bands played as the pies were cut and served.  More beer was consumed and people debated politics, sometimes quite loudly and, then, as the sun began to set, several of the men’s choruses hiked up into the woods and stationed themselves on opposing peaks to serenade one another and all the people in the valley.  Trumpets blazed on high and fireworks sputtered in the sky splashing red and blue and yellow sparks that rained down from above.  Then, the families, carrying sleepy children wrapped in blankets, departed along the dusty country road, silent except for the bells on the oxen and mules tinkling in the darkness.  The lanterns in the trees were lit and some brand-new electric lights shone, drooping down over the back porch of the Harmonia Hall and young people appeared, couples silently moving through the thickets and glades, parting the fronds of the willow tree, gathering to dance on the meadow behind the building.  A polka band sat among the beer kegs and made music and the young people danced until the moon came out and the wind rose to sweep through the trees and, still,the couples danced  until the grass underfoot was all slippery with dew.

The reporter from the LaCrosse Daily Republican proclaimed that “a good time was had by all in attendance”.


6.
The conversation with Aimee didn’t go well.  Geoff went to the car and found the Bounty paper towels and wiped his face and eyes.  His hands were trembling a little.

Wilhelm was standing motionless behind the Volvo, head cocked and staring at something in the grass – perhaps, it was a dead animal or some kind of remarkable insect.

“What are you doing, buddy?” Geoff asked.

“I was talking to the man and then we sang,” Wilhelm said.

“What man?”

“He went away,” Wilhelm said.  “There was a trumpet,” the little boy added.

Geoff closed his eyes for a moment and listened.  Other than the wind sorting through the fronds of the willow tree, it was silent.  “I don’t hear anything,” Geoff said.  “It went away,” Wilhelm replied.

The drive back to LaCrosse seemed to take them a long time and no one had much to say.

A couple weeks later, Geoff couldn’t find his phone charger.  He thought he might have left it on Aimee’s desk and so he looked there among her papers.  Pushed into a cubby hole, Geoff found a small paperback book, apparently self-published with text that looked like typescript.  A couple of badly reproduced photographs showed old-time farmers staring at the camera and a band of cornets of different sizes carrying a banner on which a boy was riding some kind of fish.  The name of the book was Waumandee 1860 - 1960: An Affectionate Portrait.  Among the book’s pages, a note in handwriting that Geoff didn’t recognize directed the reader to several pages that described a picnic at the Harmonia Hall.  A stamp inside the volume’s front cover showed that the book belonged to the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

Geoff didn’t plan to say anything about the book.  So he was surprised when he heard himself suggest that Aimee return the book to the historical society by mail.  She bristled.

“I thought you promised to never speak of this again,” Aimee said.

“How am I speaking about it?”

“How are you not?”

“I’m just saying that it would be more convenient to return the book by mail than drive eight hours coming and going to Milwaukee.”

“This is none of your business,” Aimee said.  “You want to control me.”

They didn’t talk.  They shouted.  Wilhelm cowered in the other room.  At last, Geoff left the house and went to spend the night at an Americinn on the edge of town.  At first, they agreed to a separation.  Geoff found an apartment, half of a duplex in a part of town where African immigrants lived.  Aimee brought Wilhelm to Geoff’s apartment on the weekends.  Geoff didn’t have a bed for his son.  The boy slept in a sleeping bag unrolled on the carpet in the living room.  The separation became a divorce.  Geoff worked full-time teaching 9th-grade math at the High School – he taught geometry and remedial arithmetic.  To earn a little extra money, he drove an activity bus, dropping students off along a route that went through town and the farm country in the broad valleys nearby.  Part of the route traversed gravel roads and, when the bus lurched over those washboard-ribbed lanes kicking up clouds of yellow dust, Geoff recalled the jogger that he had once glimpsed far out in the country.  The memory was like a nightmare that came to him predictably every afternoon when his bus first rolled off the asphalt onto the rough road.  The world was full of peril and ambush – at least, that was how Geoff saw things.

Each weekend, Geoff took Wilhelm to church.  He had not been faithful in attendance before the divorce but he wanted to give his son some sense of safety and stability – in fact, he even hoped that Wilhelm could be confirmed.  Wilhelm didn’t believe in God and, like his mother, he was an enemy to organized religion, an institution that he thought hypocritical.  The boy said that he didn’t want to attend church and that it was ridiculous and violated his principles.  One Sunday, after services, Geoff was distracted by his son’s sullen opposition to worship, and, absent-mindedly, walked out of the church carrying the green hymnal that he had been holding.  The hymnal was the color of a forest in late May, deep green and incised with a trifoliate rose etched in gold.  It was a handsome volume and Geoff kept planning to return it to the Church.  But, then, Aimee moved to Madison where she had been offered a full professor position at the University and Geoff saw his son only once a month.  He had to drive to Mauston to pick up the boy at a truck stop on the freeway midway between Madison and LaCrosse.  There was no point in attending worship services any longer and, so, Geoff stop going.

In the Fall, Geoff coached the girls cross-country team.  Sometimes, he trotted along with the team members.  The girls ran from the school on the edge of town into the country, jogging along lonely country lanes that passed through deep, abandoned valleys, ruins of old farms crouched against the bluffs and lonely silos standing on hilltops among ancient groves of trees that had once sheltered long-gone houses.  The route ended at quarry cut into the side of one of the hills, a big square cleft in the landscape with sheer rock sides the color of a number 2 yellow pencil.  Although the drive-way into the quarry was chained off, the girls could slip around the gate and wander into the center of the big notch in the bluff.  Sometimes, they sang in that place, listening to their voices echo and re-echo off the steep cliffs.  Then, they ran back, downhill, a couple miles to town.

Once, when Geoff was running behind the girls, he sensed something was wrong.  The hair on his arm stood up and he stopped abruptly, whirling around to see if something was following them.  The girls were scrawny, just skin and bones, and they had very white faces and, one of them, in her sweat pants and hooded sweat-shirt had stopped to massage her calf.  “Are you okay?” Geoff asked.  “It’s just a cramp,” she said.  He walked toward her, trembling a little with the memory of the other jogger.  He thought – Everything scares me.  I’m always jumpy and afraid.  The girl’s face brightened as she saw him approach and, then, she stood up, squared her shoulders, and began to run toward him.  “I’m okay, Coach,” she said.  Geoff waited for her to run past him and, then, he followed at a slow trot.  He was troubled.

Geoff saw a physician’s assistant at the Clinic and said that he was afraid all the time.  She referred him to a doctor and he was given some pills for anxiety.  A month later, Aimee called Geoff and said that she had been offered a position at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.  Geoff said that he couldn’t let her leave the State.  He spent money with a lawyer opposing her move but it was to no avail.  The judge said that Aimee could take Wilhelm to New Haven on the condition that she pay to fly the boy back to Wisconsin four times a year.  The judge, a woman, seemed very impressed that Aimee would be teaching at Yale.

At first, Geoff was relieved.  Wilhelm didn’t like him and said that he detested his visits.  He preferred to remain with his friends in Madison.  And Geoff didn’t have much to say to the angry teenager – when they were together, they mostly ignored one another.  But there was injustice to being separated from Wilhelm and the more Geoff thought about the injustice the sadder he became.  It was further evidence that the world was full of unforeseen hazards.  Geoff found that he couldn’t sleep at night.  Bad dreams plagued him.  He tried to control his fear by taking two anti-anxiety pills when he supposed to swallow only one.  When he ran out of pills too soon and the pharmacist wouldn’t replace his medicine, Geoff began to drink heavily.  One night, when he drunk, he tried to slit open his wrist.  He cut himself in several places deeply enough to require stitches and, when the emergency room doctor saw his wounds, the physician called security and had Geoff escorted to the Psych Ward.  He was placed on a 72 hour hold and, then, agreed voluntarily to a ten-day in-patient hospitalization.  For a couple of months, his moods were erratic – it took some trial and error to adjust Geoff’s anti-depressant medication.

The Christmas holidays were bad for Geoff and he broke up with his girlfriend.  But he had stopped drinking and, somehow, made it through the empty days and the long, dark nights.  Sometimes, he took the green hymnal down from the shelf by the TV and sang.  He couldn’t read music, but the book provided the words to the hymns that he sang.  He felt a little better when the holidays were over and school began again.

The Winter was dark and stormy.  The river froze, but was somehow alive and active under its white mantle so that jagged blue-green shards of ice dammed the span between the piers under the bridges.  Ragged fangs and spears of ice crowded against the river banks and growled in the darkness.  Geoff told his therapist that he was bored and lonely and that his mind was running in futile loops.  More adjustments were made to his medications and the counselor suggested that he try to meet new people.  On an impulse – it was five days before Valentine’s day – Geoff drove downtown and went into a bar that he had frequented during his college days.

Mid-week, the place was dead.  The marquee over the sidewalk said that there was karaoke in the tavern.  But no one was singing when Geoff entered, went to the bar, and ordered a Diet Coke.  In an alcove next to some folding chairs, a stack of speakers was emitting muted screams and the rattle of gunfire and explosion sounds.  A kid who looked too young to be alone in the tavern was playing a first-person shooter game projected on a screen in the niche.  The wand of a rocket-launcher waved back forth on the screen blasting away at lizard monsters.  When Geoff asked about the karaoke, the barmaid said that the kid was playing on the system.  Geoff asked if he could try singing with machine.  “Sure,” the barmaid said.  Geoff left a dollar tip with her and sat at a table near where the kid was slaying monsters.  He had another Diet Coke, left two dollars as a tip this time, and, then, went outside to make a phone call.  The night was bitterly cold and spinning snow flakes made a halo around the street lights.

When Geoff came back into the tavern, the kid was gone.  He went to the karaoke machine and found a play-list.  Most of the songs were unfamiliar to him.  He sang “Wonder Wall” by Oasis – the sound was tinny, like something heard over a telephone and the microphone felt sticky in his hand.  But he got through the song and the barmaid clapped a few times for him.  Then, he sang “Hey Jude” and the B-52's “Love Shack”.  A few people gathered around him and Geoff gave them the microphone.  Two young men, obviously drunk, sang together, passing the microphone back and forth: they performed “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”.  During the instrumental breaks, the young men jumped up and down and played air-guitar.

Before closing, Geoff bought the two men beers.  One of them, wearing a tattered black Ramones tee-shirt, said that his name was Winston.  He told Geoff that he and his friend had played together in a band when they were in college and it was fun for them to get a chance to sing again.  On the street, snow was falling and their windshields were crusted with ice.  Geoff said that they should get together to sing again, maybe, next week on the same night.  Winston nodded reluctantly, but his friend seemed enthusiastic.  They shook hands and parted.

A week later, Geoff went to the bar, drank a couple of Diet Cokes, and tipped the waitress five dollars.  The place was mostly empty.  Geoff sang again with the machine.  Everyone else ignored him.  But, just as we was ending, Winston arrived.  He said he wasn’t really drunk enough to sing in public.  Winston and Geoff spoke for awhile, seated in a booth next to the pool tables.  Geoff wrote his address on a napkin and handed it to Winston.  He said that it would cheaper and more fun if they just sang together at Geoff’s place.  “We can practice,” Geoff said.  Winston said that he would come to see Geoff and bring his buddy from their old band.

“No strings attached?” Winston asked.

“None,” Geoff said.

Geoff bought a bottle of vodka and two liters of coke for his guests, but suspected that they would not show up.  To his surprise, Winston came to his house, but without his friend.  Geoff made him a drink.  After talking for awhile, Geoff suggested that they practice singing some hymns.  He got the green book down and set it between them on the table, next to the bucket of ice and the bottle of vodka.

They sang for about an hour.  Geoff made Winston several drinks.

“You know you can’t really be pissed-off at anyone when you’re singing,” Geoff said.

Winston nodded his head: “That is very true,” he replied.

Geoff said that there should be singing societies.  Instead of armies, countries should have immense choirs in which membership would be mandatory.  Instead of battles, countries should wage war at singing competitions. “There shouldn’t be any ideas or politics or theology.  Singing should just be pure, for its own sake,” Geoff said.  “People are always singing for a purpose or to send a message of some kind.  Singing shouldn’t be entangled in so many other things.”

They sang another half-dozen hymns.  Winston seemed a little drunk.  Geoff wasn’t supposed to drink because of drug-interactions with his medications but, nonetheless, he mixed himself a coke with just a dash of vodka.  When they sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Geoff felt the power of the song surge through him.  His voice suddenly contained multitudes.  He was at the forefront of a great legion marching righteously from the past into the present and everyone was singing and he felt the music reverberating within his breast and, then, rolling in a great martial tide from hilltop to hilltop.

When the last note ceased its echo, Geoff took up a paper-towel and wiped the tears from his eyes and cheeks.

“That was wonderful,” he said.

“Great,” Winston said.

“We should form a singing society,” Geoff said.

Winston looked dubious.  “It’s my mania...my mania talking,” Geoff said.  “Grandiose, I guess.  I’m bi-polar.”

Winston shrugged.  “Let me tell you something freaky, really freaky that once happened to me,” Winston said.  He tilted his glass toward Geoff who poured more vodka for him.  Then, he told Geoff about how he had once been lost while deer hunting and the strange thing that had occurred to him.

Howard's Adventure

Howard’s Adventure




Howard, a retired lawyer, was driving home from a funeral. He took the interstate most of the way. A couple hours from his destination, Howard detoured from his path. A woman that he had known a long time ago had asked him to meet her. She had recently assembled an art exhibit for display in the library of a small city and had invited him to see the show.

The forecast threatened a snow storm, but, for the time being, the roads were clear and the February sun shone brightly. Howard hoped that he could make this social call and depart in time to avoid driving in ice and snow.

He was familiar with the city. It was a fine old town with many noble-look buildings of the kind that people no longer knew how to make. Although the city was no longer famous for this fact, some renegade Indians had been hanged there around the time of the Civil War. Howard’s father had been a historian and, when he was little, he had been taken to see the place where the Indians were executed. Howard, himself, was regarded as something of an authority on the event. For a law journal, he had written a commentary on the hangings and trials in which judgment had been pronounced.

Years had passed since Howard was in this town, but he recognized the familiar landmarks from appearing in court there during his practice. The town square was broad and shady in the summertime with ancient oaks and elm trees. Dignified old buildings lined the square: the 19th century courthouse, now a museum, the headquarters of a local insurance company, an incongruously tall fire station with an orange-steeple next to a dark, hulking church with a battery of bells that sounded on the hour. The library was a block away near the hanging site. There was construction on the outskirts of town and Howard was a little confused by traffic patterns in the city. He looked at his watch and saw that he was about to be late. (He had a horror of not attending appointments on time.) A parking space opened mysteriously in an out-of-the-way lane near the library and, so, Howard put his car there and, without taking too much account of his surroundings, hurried to the library. Before departing from his Impala, Howard put the bottle of bourbon from which he had been nipping back in its paper sack and hid it below the front passenger seat.

The librarian at the front desk frowned and led him to a conference room. The lady that he knew was there with another younger woman. Both of them were eating salads from white styrofoam trays. Howard shook their hands and they conversed for a few minutes in the conference room. What was the weather like? And when would the storm arrive? When the ladies had finished their salads, Howard went with the younger woman to the far end of the library where there wa a small gallery. The older woman said that she had to make a phone call, but would join them shortly.

The art in the gallery was largely conceptual. A big stack of government-issued blankets made a rectangular pillar in the middle of the floor. Viewers were asked to remember how the Indians had suffered when the government distributed to them blankets poisoned by small-pox victims. Some sod was staked with an iron post and chained to a wall bracket. A bucket of beads and sequins, the recompense to the Native Americans for their land, was set beside the turf. The younger woman touched Howard’s forearm as she spoke. She became animated. Howard had the sense that she liked him.

After touring the art exhibit, the younger woman showed him a grand room with old paintings on the wall and a plush carpet and regal-looking chairs and tables with gilt-tipped legs. “This is our lounge for donors,” the woman said, touching his wrist. She named some of the donors to the library. He recognized several well-known lawyers among the persons that she listed. He was a little surprised to hear these men were current donors – most of them, Howard thought, had died a long time ago. But, perhaps, they hadn’t actually died, but merely retired from their law practices. He wasn’t really sure. The woman smiled at Howard and ran her fingers up his arm.

Then, she showed him a kind of circular dumb-waiter. It was located in a niche behind a sliding door in the wall. Although the dumb-waiter had been built to carry loads of books between the floors of the library, it could also be used to transport food to the Donor’s Lounge when banquets were held in that place. The young woman suggested that Howard step into the dumb-waiter. (It was odd, but the library building, at least seen from the outside, had only one floor.) The door slid shut behind them and it was pitch-black. Howard felt the young woman clutching his arm and could sense her breathing beside him in the dark.

He thought that it was odd that this young and pretty woman was attracted to him. After all, he was an old man, not much use to anyone any more. What could she possibly see in him?

Of course, there was a penalty for his transgression, if the encounter could be characterized in that way. Howard had lost his car. He couldn’t recall where he had parked the vehicle. The storm was approaching and the wind now blew through the bare branches of the trees. Howard walked at random, hoping to see something that would trigger a memory of where his car was located. Bells on high sounded the hour – it was later than Howard expected. Then, he must have found the car, because he discovered that he was driving along the streets, turning at corners, passing between strangely familiar buildings, all the time searching for his lost car. It seemed strange to him that he was both driving in his car and searching for where he had parked it at the same time. But odd things were happening to him – after all, he had been on the very verge of an unanticipated romantic adventure in the library with the young woman.

He found that he was leaving town, departing on the highway where there was a road construction. His driver’s side window was frosted over and, so, he had rolled it down temporarily so that he could see to his left. The car was skirting a temporary barricade made from orange fencing drooping between orange cones and stanchions. Through his open window, above the sound of the wind, Howard heard a woman’s voice. The voice spoke in an imperative, insinuating way: “Mister, I’m thirsty. I’m so thirsty. Can you give me a drink of water?” The voice sounded in his ear and Howard felt a chill run through his body. Who was talking to him? He looked to his left, and, just a few feet away, an old badly rusted car was cruising next to him, only inches beyond the orange barrier. Some fat women smoking cigarettes were squashed together in the car. They had bleached blonde hair, disorderly and, perhaps, wigs atop their bald heads. The woman in the passenger side of the car reached out and her arm was very long. She reached into his car and seized Howard by his left wrist. Her fingers were cold and vise-like, gripping him like death itself. Howard’s car and the rusty vehicle were running at highway speed down the road, linked by the blonde woman’s hand closed around the retired lawyer’s wrist. He wanted to pick up the bourbon bottle and use it as a club to smash the woman’s hand and break her grip on him. But he didn’t know how to reach the bottle since both of his hands were occupied – the woman held his left wrist and Howard had to use his right hand to steer the car. But, somehow, he was able to seize the bourbon bottle and use it as a truncheon. He swung it and struck one time, two times, three times. The woman relinquished her grip and the car that she was riding veered off to the left, changing lanes. Howard found that he had smashed the bottle into his own wrist and broken bones there. He swerved a little to the right, wincing in pain, and drove right down the middle of the highway. Snow filled the air. He had tarried too long in the old city where the renegade Indians had been hanged. The storm was now upon him.