I'm Listening, Seattle

"Life comes hard and fast, Ms Wonder," I said as I entered the salle de bains. A dozen or so cats brushed past my legs on their way out but I maintained my composure and was not distracted. 

My mind was troubled with serious thoughts and I was focused like a laser pointer. The appearance of two or three strange cats held little interest for me, in much the same way that I was little interested in just where the hell Napoleon found that sleigh he used to escape Moscow.

"Inn of The Three Sisters" 

"Are you concerned about my driving to the cat hospital in the remnants of the Great Flood?" she said. She referred to the blustery winds and torrential rains that had recently rolled up their sleeves and begun throwing their weight about south Durham.

"No, no," I said. "Not the storm. I care not a whit for the storm. The storm is like the idle wind, which I respect not." 

That's what I said although I doubt I would say it again if the opportunity arose. I have a habit of quoting Shakespeare when I don't have anything better to say. It doesn't always get the job done but it could be worse.

"Not concerned about the storm? We have high winds and possibly flash flooding all day," she said.

I held up a hand. "I didn't come for a weather report," I said. "I have pressing matters that require your fish-fueled, size 10 brain."

"I'm listening," she said and for some reason, I thought of Seattle and morning rush hour in the 80's. I don't know why. Just a whim I suppose.

"Well, it's the Village of course," I said. "I thought I could forget that hell hole until the solstice rolls around, but," and I emphasized that last word to set her up for the punchline, which was, "it's gone and reared its ugly head again."

"You mean Pittsboro?" she said.

"Please, Wonder Thing, let's be perfectly clear," I said, "Pittsboro is quality. Pittsboro is full of special little treats, like unique shops and even uniquer events. No, it isn't Pittsboro that concerns me, it's what lies near there on the shores of Deep River--it's Cyrstal Cove village, for god's sake, and it's hovering again."

"Hovering?" she said.

"Hovering is what I said," I said, "and it's beckoning."

She put an arm around my shoulder. I should say she tried to put an arm around my shoulder but I'm a good deal taller and so she rather draped an arm from my shoulder.  Still, it was enough. I felt better immediately.

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," she said. "I'm sure you're imagining something far worse than the future actually holds. Remember, the universe has your back."

And before you ask me, yes, it's what she said. I wouldn't mislead you, ever. You've stuck by me through thick and whatnot. She actually said the universe has your back.  I felt worse immediately.

"You wouldn't worry?" I said.

"Not at all," she said.

"Just one of those things, you think it to be?"

"Precisely."

"Then what the hell are those dozen text messages on my phone, all sent by denizens of the village, and most of them from inmates of the Three Sisters Inn?"

I thought that would get her attention and it did. She raised an eyebrow and I raised one back at her. She raised a second eyebrow. It seemed to be catching.

"Well," she said and I waited to hear what would come next.  But it was a bust. She said nothing and I realized that her finely tuned brain had finally come unglued. The Genome was now adrift on an angry sea and the blustery gale outside the window was nothing compared to what waited at the end of those text messages.

"Fraiser!" I exclaimed.

"What?" she said.

"Fraiser," I said. "It's what I was thinking about when thoughts of Seattle popped into my head."

 I couldn't actually see her as I turned and walked out the door but I have a feeling that she was watching me leave and shaking her head.

Strangers Offering Scones

It was a cool, damp, and windy evening with leaves blowing around and that peculiar electric feeling you get when magic is in the air. I wasted no time in moving the empty garbage can from the curb and toward the darkness of our backyard. That darkness gave me an uneasy feeling for some reason.

I paused halfway around the house to allow my eyes to adjust, the better to see the ghouls waiting for me behind a bush. Glancing overhead, I saw an almost full moon, making an appearance through edgy, fretted clouds. It may sound like a beautiful sight but it's beauty was lost on me. Didn't make me feel one tot better about the ghouls waiting for me in the darkness.

The deeper I crept into that darkness, the more I became like that little boy from Shady Grove that I once was. It was as though a grown man returning a barrel to it's storage bin had been transformed into a 10-year-old boy told by his father to go out into the night and move his bicycle from the front yard to the garage for the evening.

Exactly why my brain work this way is not fully understood. Some say it has something to do with serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but I expect it has more to do with a Creator who became bored with the usual routine of evolutionary improvement and decided to have a bit of fun for a change and, unfortunately, I was next in line.

It's on nights like these that I remember my Great-aunt Nanny McFarland teaching me to see fairies. That's the night she taught me about magic. According to her, it was magic that kept all my personal bits and all the bits making up the entire world from flying off into space. And who can say? The Egyptians believed that magic held the world together and kept everything working smoothly. Maybe Aunt Nanny was right.

One thing I do know about magic is that it gathers in the mountains in the western regions of North Carolina where it's stored in the quartz crystal that forms the foundations of the Blue Ridge. Geologists say that quartz granules wash down from the mountains and are carried by the rivers and waterways to the sea. That explains the whiteness of the Crystal Coast beaches. It follows then, that North Carolina is a magical place.

But I'm leading you away from the way in which you should go, as the expression has it. Back to the garbage can in the dark then. The cool, damp air was full of whispers, I remember thinking.

Looking in the direction of the whispers I thought I could see three stooped figures gathered around the embers of a small fire that gleamed like the madness in a weasel's eye. There was a far-off rumble as if a thunderstorm approached, and I thought I heard a voice say, "When shall we three meet again?" Could have been my imagination.

The point I'm trying to make is that now it's October and we're on our way to Halloween--that time of year when the curtain grows thin between the reality we make up in our head and the reality that's the actual basis of the world we live in. I love this time of year because it makes me feel really alive. Someone said that we never feel so alive as when we're close to death. I believe it.

One of my most memorable events occurred to me when I was completing a tour of duty to a country I once knew. It involved an accident that left me pinned underneath the vehicle that had been carrying me back to field headquarters. I was lying in a sort of hallow waterway and the vehicle was balanced on a small ridge and it was rocking back and forth, first in my direction and then away, and then toward me again.

Each time the truck rocked downward, it compressed my chest. I remember that I didn't like it very much. I also remember seeing a very large wooden door, with a brass ring large enough to fit a basketball. Somehow, I knew the door was the entrance to the Land of the Dead. A voice like the wrong end of a howitzer spoke, "WHO'S THERE?" And each time HE asked, I thought, "Never mind. I'm not opening that door."

The experience had a big impact on me. It made me intensely aware of what being alive actually feels like. It taught me never to open big doors. And it taught me that when someone speaks in all capital letters, I should never answer. And of course it taught me that life comes hard and fast and that I should be ready for anything.

But that's enough about me and my musings on magic, Halloween, the meaning of life and everything. What about you? That's the important question. Before you answer, let me offer, if you don't mind, this little piece of cautionary advice.

If you're walking the dog after dark between now and Halloween, especially if you live in Woodcroft, Parkwood, or anywhere there have been rumors of magic, do beware. If your dog whimpers at unseen things along the path, turn back home. If you see a reddish light in the wood along the trail, resist the urge to investigate.

And if you meet three stooped and hooded figures, who aren't wearing hip-hop fashion, and if they speak sweetly and compliment your dog, and especially if they offer you a scone, don't accept it. Take it from one who speaks from experience, that is not a scone!

Have a Happy Halloween!

Cats Figure Into It

Summer is past they say, but Chatsford Hall is still basking in the afterglow of golden, summer-like evenings. Birdsong fills the sunsets that are now the color of opal and amethyst. The air is fresh and sweet and the damp earth exhales a soothing fragrance. The stars seem younger somehow as though the world has been reborn.

It was on an early autumn evening exactly like these when drainpipes and cats in the bedroom became forever linked with the Genome. I was about 11 years old and staying with my great-uncle and family at their farmhouse near the river. 

My older cousin Doyle was visiting with us. He'd been called by God to make my life a long sequence of events that could easily be described as just one damned thing after another. He took his calling seriously. No doubt he was motivated by the story of Jonah and didn’t want to be found wanting in his duty. No one wants to be swallowed by a whale.

Doyle was visiting the farm to be near the pretty daughter of a neighboring farmer. He was smitten with the girl. You might say that she’d gotten right up his nose. She had a great fondness for kittens it seems and my uncle's farm was overflowing with them. Doyle planned to exploit this surplus of cats to entice his girlfriend to drop by.

He requested access to my upstairs bedroom for a couple of hours and it was singularly important that I not be there when the young lady arrived. I was unclear on the particulars of why but imagined it had something to do with his divine calling. To prepare for her visit, we selected 13 of the kittens with just the right level of playfulness. Then I was told to disappear.

Well, it’s possible for a boy, aged 11, to entertain himself for a couple of hours on a dairy farm. Time passes in a flash—as long as you aren’t counting. I rode my bicycle into the cattle’s watering tank. I jumped out of the hay loft into a pile of hay. Still, after about an hour, I was bored. 

Even the company of my uncle’s prize-wining sow, a favorite of mine, wasn’t doing the trick. Watching this incredible creature tuck into her evening meal usually brought me to a blissful, meditative state but not on this evening. Bouncing a tennis ball usually helped to pass the time and I had one in my pocket. It bounced with a satisfying ‘pong’ on the back of the sow and she seemed not to notice.

I did it again and found the sound to be soothing. I don’t know how long I leaned against the fence of her enclosure listening to that sound--you know how you lose track of time when engaged in something you enjoy.

“Hey!” a loud voice called to me from somewhere nearby. It was the voice of my great uncle. Turning toward the voice, I saw that he was approaching at full speed and brandishing a wooden yard stick. He was quite fond of this pig and he had warned me about bouncing tennis balls off her back on more than one occasion. 

In the flash of leaving the premises, I heard a raspy grunt come from my uncle not unlike the sound made by a tiger when the goat on the menu disappears into the jungle just before the dinner gong sounds. 

I had no definite destination but I didn’t need one. I was lean and wiry, built for speed and my uncle was neither. And yet, where would my uncle not think to look for me? I was pondering this question when I rounded the corner and came face to face with the tile downspout that emptied into the rain barrels. This particular water pipe ran by the open window of my bedroom. To climb to the second floor and slip over the edge of the window sill into my room was with me the work of an instant.

I remember the feeling of a job well done as I rolled onto my back and lay catching my breath on the bedroom floor. But it was short lived. I quickly became aware of the sound of tires on gravel made by my father’s Oldsmobile. He was here to take me back home—an unforeseen complication. What to do now? Remain in hiding or meet him downstairs and risk running into my uncle again?

With all the excitement, I’d forgotten about my cousin and his plans for the room. I heard a low groaning coming from somewhere behind me. I saw that the covers on the bed were moving about, indicating that the kittens were under there, but not a single cousin, with or without girlfriend was in view. It seemed only prudent to release the cats. I approached the bed.

The expression on the map of my cousin when I pulled back the duvet outdid the look I’d seen on my uncle when he found me bouncing tennis balls on the back of the pig.

“Hey!” he shouted and began disentangling himself either from the sheets or from the girl. Hard to distinguish which.

You may have chosen a different course of action had you been in similar circumstances but I’m convinced any great military strategist—Napoleon for example—would have nodded in approval. Without as much as a glance to tell me the ground below was clear of bicycles and wheel barrows, I bunged myself out the second-floor window. 

Snakes in the grass couldn't have moved more smoothly. I bounced when I hit the ground but was pleased to learn that no damage was done. Then I heard it again for the third time. “Hey!”

It was my father’s voice this time. Like many people who make a defiant and dramatic gesture and then looking back realize they've gone beyond the limit, I was filled with regret. But too late. I was pinched and I knew it. Sampson must have felt the same when he heard the first pillar crack.

Dad rolled his eyes and I knew that he was making a silent but passionate appeal to the gods for support in a trying hour. My father followed the dictum that everything is figureoutable and so he knew that although it may seem puzzling that sons fall to earth like the gentle rain from heaven, he knew there was a reason for it. He knew that to ask, Why, would get a response like, “Oh, I dunno, I just thought I would.” 

“Mad as a coot,” said a voice from above and I remember thinking that a higher power had spoken. I looked up to see my cousin leaning out the bedroom window. “Type of a duck,” he said.

“Did you have something to do with this?” my father asked.

“Absolutely not,” said Doyle. “I do my best to take care of the boy.”

Without another word, my dad marched me inside and up the stairs to my room. It wasn’t until we were standing outside the closed door that I remembered the kittens. I had no way of knowing for sure but I surmised that finding them would not improve my dad’s mood. My hand hovered above the doorknob like a butterfly above a flower.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Dad and then he flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats rushing past us. I laughed. It was the another gesture that, upon reflection, proved to be over the line. My dad didn’t see the humor in it.

And that’s the story. It proves once again that rumor and innuendo are often less exciting that the actual truth. Still, the story is meaningful to me because even though my life has proven to be a  disappointment to many people, I've gotten a lot of stories out of it.