Our young guys rob timber company slash piles, then park their trucks on Water Street. People walk along checking the loads. A good mix of seasoned fir and madronna brings the highest price.
So Mitchell went out shopping, and probably told himself and everybody else that they don’t grow firewood like they used to.
He likely fussed and poked and prodded and thumped like a man adrift in a melon patch. He’d never stoop to haggling, but you can bet he claimed prices were mighty dear. Anyway, he comes home in triumph, trailed by a wide-side pickup full of wood. The youngster driving is grateful and hiding it. Cordwood brings ninety dollars, and the kid sure needs ninety dollars. You can tell by looking at his truck.
The whole business turns out sort of liberating. Winter around here tucks us into our houses. We wave across wet or snowy lawns as we trundle to the woodpiles. There’s Dave and Sally’s small place, and it couldn’t be more clean and tidy if it was Dutch. Across the street sit the disabled apartments where social workers put up folks who need a lift. There’ s my place next to them, and Mitchell across from me. Christine and Ed live in the apartments and kind of make the place a point of interest.
Ed is blind and in a wheelchair, but he’s got a good mind for stories. He records them on tape for others who have his problem.
And there’s the crazy lady, Sarah Jane, who cranks up volume on her record player and dances before her front window, usually wearing clothes. She owns a good heart, though. Mostly. But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Just as the wood truck backs into Mitchell’s yard, along comes a break in the clouds. The snow is nearly melted after rain, and it’s like nature spoofs Mitchell who got nervous and bought wood. It’s like nature says, “Mitchell, old son, I’ve tricked you all over again, because here comes a warm spring. “
The break in the clouds is just enough so everyone can get out and superintend the wood truck, plus catch up on all the happenings. I go over, and my new pup bought before Christmas trails along; the new dog in the neighborhood.
Ed and Christine’s dog is Shadow, but Shadow doesn’t live here anymore except in memory; which we all have lots of. I’m the youngster in this neighborhood, being only sixty-one.
The pup makes a hit with the kid, and of course that takes time from unloading. The black-haired kid and the brown-furred pup go skylarking off somewhere, and I ease up to the firewood with a critical eye. Mitchell stands looking proud and shamed; proud because he’s bought well-seasoned fir, and shamed because he had to in the first place.
“It looks real good,” I tell him. He grunts, still standing tall as a ladder, but bent as a warped board, and ready to change the subject. His hands are larger than his thin arms say they ought to be. He’ll be two days stacking that wood. Maybe Dave and I will help, if Mitchell’s pride can handle it.
Dave and Sally step from their house and walk toward us, Dave walking straight, like the soldier he once was; Sally wearing a red scarf and looking pretty frail. If Dave did not check the load he’d bust.
From out of a stand of scraggly weeds the pup pops loose in that jack-rabbity way pups have. The kid comes back to his truck, breathing deep but not winded. Now we’ve got a crowd. The kid starts to unload. Balks of fir fly, hit the ground, thump and roll.
We talk about firewood and pups. Then we talk about Sarah Jane who went to hospital yesterday. Sarah Jane didn’t take her medicine, and that made her get a butcher knife and go after Christine. Christine ducked in the house and called 911. Ed couldn’t see a blamed thing, being blind, and, being in a wheelchair, in no shape to tussle a knife.
This business about Sarah Jane is news because sometimes I forget to open my drapes. When 911 came I missed it. I tsk and tush and figure something will happen next.
The kid has his load coming off thumpity-thump. I’m holding the pup so she won’t dance under a flying hunk of fir. Christine comes from her apartment. She’s still a pretty woman, but careworn. She has her hardships, but still congregates real easy. It isn’t the firewood that draws her, but the first meeting of the neighborhood this spring.
A squincy lot of snow still lingers among some weeds, and Christine has to get enough together so the pup can chase her first snowball. Christine throws the ball about eight feet, and the pup does what we expect. She jumps after the snowball and gets all confused when the thing falls apart. In between dead weeds a little green is starting to perk, and that’s a good sign of early spring, and a good sign Mitchell’s been bamboozled.
“She’s going to look like a beerkeg on stilts,” Christine says about the pup, who is half lab and half spaniel.
“But with a very fine smile,” I tell her. The break in the clouds disappears, and gray northwest mist sits high in the trees.
“I dread the day when we lose ours,” Sally says, and everybody is polite. Dave and Sally have a mutt who is nobody’s favorite, being a bad-tempered loudmouth, and rowdy. Sally just got over a dead-serious bout at the hospital, and now she’s got to make it through spring; because, have you ever noticed, how, if old folks are going to slide, they do it just before spring?
“I couldn’t bear to get another dog,” Sally says, and everybody thinks the same thing but nobody talks. Dogs live ten or twelve years. There isn’t a mother’s son or daughter in the neighborhood with a real long chance of outliving a pup, even though it’s a responsibility; something I’d better think about.
The kid bangs his fingers between a couple hunks of wood, and cusses under his breath but not loud. That means he’s had some raising from somebody.
“Things got sort of exciting yesterday.” Sally says this noncommittal in case Christine doesn’t want to talk about it, but Christine does.
“I hope she’s going to be all right,” Christine says. “I worry over Ed. He feels helpless as it is.”
“Sarah Jane’s okay when she takes her medicine. “ Dave thinks Sarah Jane is a nut, but defends her. Defending folks is what Dave does best.
We stand around thinking about all this. The doctors say Sarah Jane is paranoid schizophrenic, and it’s probably something wrong with her system and not her brain. She talks to herself a lot, but, hell, I talk to myself a lot.
“I honestly don’t know whether I hope she comes home or not. “ Christine looks kind of guilty. “We have our own problems. I feel like a hypocrite. “
“It’s cheaper to buy wood midsummer,” Mitchell murmurs.
He’s not wandering, exactly. He’s trying to change the subject because Sarah Jane scares the spit out of him. When his wife died, Mitchell got defensive. Nobody was around to stand between him and reality. Mitchell’s one of those dreamers without the steam to make dreams happen. He’s just cruised these many years. Then he lost Mary, and Mary is now like Shadow; living here just in memory.
The pup wiggles in my arms. The last of the wood flies off the truck. The kid has broken a good sweat, a tall kid and kind of skinny. The pup wiggles harder. She’s found a new friend, and she’s ready for more skylarking.
“The state people might not let her come back,” Dave says about Sarah Jane. “Those government people don’t like inconvenience. “
“Nothing to feel guilty about,” Sally tells Christine. She touches Christine’ s hand, kind of sympathetic, then holds onto Dave’s arm.
I set the pup on the ground. Sarah Jane has her own personal grocery cart that she pushes four blocks to the store. The store manager puts up with it. I wonder if 911 returned the grocery cart. Meanwhile, Mitchell heads toward his house to get money for the kid. Sally and Dave and Christine sort of drift away. Sally leans a little on Dave, her red scarf a spot of color on this gray northwest afternoon. Skylarking starts up between pup and kid. A breeze comes by, promising the temperature will hit sixty.