NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Mishaps … happenings that is … they cause delay, disruption, and disorientation, even momentary despair but these are not disasters. Disaster is on another scale.
It is fall, cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon. Lambert has recovered from his ACL surgery and restrictions imposed by the “Cone from Hell”, which prevented him from gnawing the stitches out of his right hind thigh. Red and purple maple leaves stick to his fur after he rolls around at the roadside. He has a passion for cigarette butts and loses his equilibrium, falls into the ditch, and comes up again with a yelp shaking himself violently. Muddy water from the bottom of the ditch and wet leaves fly from his coarse white fur in all directions. Water spatters an oncoming jogger’s orange and black track suite with a Snazz logo over the right breast. Perhaps there is grit in that dispersal and that is what gets in her eyes. She doesn’t stop to get the irritant out. She keeps going, but more slowly, rubbing her eye and veering blindly from the side of Wicket Street into the intersection with Oval Street. An old chalky blue F150 comes down Oval Street hill. I notice the gun rack is full against the back window. It breaks hard and swerves to avoid an accident when I hear a loud yell from the open cab Window. It is Hank Dumpty. Coffee spilled down the front of his tea shirt.
Bel Vionnet has her hands up to her face fearing disaster. “You shouldn’t drink and drive!”
Hank Dumpty gets out of his truck, leaving it running and stopped with the door open. It is at an angle across the bottom of Oval Street blocking the way. “That stuff is god damn hot.”
He pulls his green t-shirt off over his head and rings it out over the ditch, then wipes his broad hairy protruding gut with the bunched cloth as if it were a rag. Bel Vionnet walks over to Hank.
“Sorry Hank I am sure that was painful. You dropped something you know.” She picks up the cell phone, which fell out of his t-shirt pocket as he hurriedly took it off.
“Thanks bel. It is still hot from the coffee too.” He drops it in the front pocket of his jeans.
The jogger has stopped by the truck. “Look where you’re going there!” She looks up, only a shadow inside the cave of her hood, and runs toward Hank.
“Hank, what happened to you?”
“You happened Daisy!”
“Hank, what did I do? You must be freezing! Don’t you have a jacket?”
Hank walks over to his truck and pulls out a paint-stained shearling jacket with a hole in the elbow and tufts of wool hanging from the bottom. He puts it on but doesn’t bother to fasten it. Daisy tries to do it up for him.
“Hank, where’re the buttons on this thing?”
“It has a zip and it’s busted.”
“Oh Hank, honey, get in your truck and turn the heat on.”
“The heat’s busted. I am fine Daisy. Well, I was fine until you wandered out in front of me, and I damn near ran you over.”
“I didn’t know you were a jogger Daisy.”
“I am not bel. This is my second try. I bought this outfit last year and it just stayed in my drawer until now.”
“How far do you go?”
“Last time I went through the woods on Cockroft Lane and back on Walton Street, but the light on Maxwell Avenue takes for ever to change. So now I am going once around Wicket Street. It’s only about a mile and it’s killing me.”
“What do you mean Daisy? I, damn near killed you.”
“Hank, I know. I’ve got to be more careful. I nearly fell in the ditch yesterday, like Lambert. I am ready to give it up anyway.”
“Why did you start?”
“Fred, I just thought it would be a good idea to get fit, before I get too old to even try.”
“Daisy, sweetheart, you still have plenty of time. Better look where you are going though. I’ve got to get moving up to the cabin and shoot some Thanksgiving dinner.” Hank climbs back into his truck as a UPS van comes down the hill behind. The driver gets out and delivers three cartons to the old Tripp house. Leaves them next to the side door where Juanita had let me in when I made my first visit. As Hank pulls away towards Maxwell Avenue, Lark Bunlush walks up behind us. No one noticed because we were all so interested in the happenings on the corner.
“So who is living there now?” Lark is pointing up toward the Tripp house. Some-one a few houses away starts a leaf blower. Then, as if in response, another one starts up the hill from us.
“I don’t know Lark. Let’s get away from that noise and go for coffee, on me.”
“Daisy, what happened to you?”
“Oh, I almost got run over Lark.”
“Is that why you are all spattered?”
“No she has Lambert to thank for the decorative dirt.”
Lambert has been sitting patiently at bel’s feet. He looks up on hearing his name. His tall expressive ears stand up from the top of his head like conical sections. Getting no immediate response he barks, a single sound, loud, sharp and short. Daisy bends over to pet him and his ears flatten against his head. He grunts as she rubs them, one with each hand. Daisy stands up again when Lambert breaks away.
“So, is any one up for coffee? I’ve had it with exercise.”
She starts toward Maxwell Ave. with bel and Lambert in the lead. Lark and I follow and cross the road behind them. Leaves fill the hickories with yellows as if remembering summer as they fade into fall, and gray white-oak leaves are blowing up from the road in swarms, animated by the steady flow of traffic along Maxwell Avenue. The parking lot in front of us is filling with Saturday morning shoppers maneuvering their SUVs among small cars.
“What did you say Lark?” The wind roars in my ear and her voice is carried off as a fire engine is slowed to a crawl at the intersection with its siren sweeping all other sound away.
“Fred, I said that was a pretty sickening midterm election.”
“The economy is picking up. I thought the Democrats would do better.” The sign on the door to the Cavendish says “No Pets Please”. Daisy, Bel and Lambert go in with another short bark from Lambert who is straining hard from his now shortened extendible leash. He knows Mrs. Rutherford will give him some thing. It is usually a left-over from the sandwich selection, maybe roast beef or cheese. Lark and I keep chatting outside. She steps off the shady sidewalk with a shiver and into a sunny parking space. I open the door for her.
“Fred, I don’t have time for coffee … but anyway, think about it. The stock indexes are going sky high, but who benefits?”
“I see what you mean, not the average voter.”
“That’s it Fred and they are mad at Obama who’s got only himself to blame.”
“Really Lark? I thought it was the Republicans!”
“Ha Ha, Fred, seriously though, he ditched the campaign organization that first got him elected and the oligarch’s machine just kept rolling!”
“Lark, come on in for a minute.” I open the door again but she refuses. I stand to the side as more customers go into the Pie Shop.
“The oligarchs Lark? Do you mean the conservatives.”
“You might say that, but they are not conservatives. Conservatives have been marginalized by the so called Tea Party.”
“So called? They are the Tea Party.”
“The original Tea Party was more diverse and sprang up all over the place at once. What passes for Tea Party now seldom says anything about the corporate excess, which they used to do.”
“What do you mean Lark, there is a Chantilly branch and an Alexandria branch which is emphasizing K-12 education issues.”
“I didn’t know that Fred. Are you into it?”
“Read those you agree with for reassurance and read your enemies for growth…”
“What’s that Fred? Are you quoting something?”
It is from “Lament for a National Hero” by Peter Dale Scott.
“Oh yeah the poet, the guy who wrote “Coming to Jakarta.”
“The same, Lark.”
I can see Daisy beckoning to us inside from the coffee line.”
Max Plank pulls up in a battered gold Toyota Corolla. He cranks down the window and says something that’s drowned out by wind and a horn. Some one is honking at him trying to get by. Max ignores them and yells at Lark to get in.
“Okay, Okay! Look Fred, the corporate state is consolidating along with militarized police and Obama’s war or journalists is keeping a lid on.” She has her hand on the car door handle but it is the driver’s side door. “Other side Kid.”
“What Max?” She is still looking at me. Werner grabs her arm and pulls to get her attention.
“Get in the other side.” The car behind Max is flashing its lights and honks again. It is a small white Lexus with the driver sitting low in the seat craning her neck to see over the steering wheel.
“Max, what are you doing here baby?”
“Get in Lark!”
The woman in the car behind leans out of the window. She has a peaked leather cap on with ear-flaps and thick gray hair spilling out from under it on the sides.
“Move your car, will you?”
“Alright lady, alright!”
Max moves on leaving Lark standing in the parking space looking at me.
“Listen Fred, our demonstrations and civil disobedience bring on the heavies, the swat teams and dirty tricksters and show their true colors.”
“Lark we can go on later. Mind that car!”
“Fred, will you join the movement to head off disaster?”
“The angry woman punches her horn as she inches up to park in the space Lark is standing in. “I am the one trying to move honey, not him. Get out of the way!”
The impatient woman moves up in the comfort of her Lexus as Lark steps off the street and back into the cold shade of the sidewalk in front of the Pie Shop.
“Get out of the way!” I can see a fat orange cat curled up in the seat next to the driver. It looks like a large round pudding until it wakes up and stretches in a distinctly feline gesture. The cat doesn’t move again but Max’s car has moved out of her way and so has Lark.
I couldn’t respond to Lark above the commotion and invited her in again gesturing towards the open door.
“I don’t have time Fred.”
She turns around. “Where’s Max?” She mops back the black strands of hair that grow in front of her thick gray mass and walks off into the crowded parking lot. I go in to find Daisy, bel, Lambert and coffee.
