Tidings, page 10
Where they’re waiting, is one of the largest holly bushes in the whole valley. It’s in full sunlight and if there’s one place where there should be berries, that’s the place. But it’s as bare as all the other bushes.
This is just the Christmas without berries. We’ve had other Christmases when we’ve really had to hunt for holly with berries but this is the first year I can remember when there haven’t been any. I don’t know if it has to do with the fall and winter not having been cold enough up till now, or too wet, or whatever.
I’ve been told that holly bushes are male and female; the dark green, pointier bushes are the males, the lighter green, less pointed, the female, but that doesn’t fit either. Other years, I’ve seen some of the most beautiful dark red berries clustered in with some of the deepest, pointiest green holly. Maybe holly has sex, but performs some kind of parthenogenesis, or maybe it’s bisexual. That’s a nice idea, bisexual holly for a jolly Christmas, make a nice Christmas card theme or a modern Christmas song like the one Arlo Guthrie did with the part ‘Let’s get Santa Claus … because …’
Mike’s staring into that holly bush.
‘I can’t believe it, Dad. There’s not a berry here. This was always the last desperation place for berries in bad years.’
‘Only goes to prove life is not a bowl of berries, maybe, Mike.’
Nicole and Maggie fall into each other.
‘Oh, please! Somebody stop him! Let’s not get Dad started on being witty, Mike. Please! It’ll just ruin Christmas to have him tail-ending everything with some way-out, stretched-to-the-edge pun.’
Mike’s turned and started along the path. I shuffle up to join Nicole and Maggie. Loretta drops back to walk with Ben.
‘Okay, I promise. I’ll control myself. Whatever it costs in blood pressure rising, in swallowed pride, I won’t inflict you with my unmitigated wit. I’ll mitigate.’
This part of the walk is best. The ground is covered with shades of brown leaves, oak, beech, birch, willow, still somewhat covered with snow in the shadier places. The dark green of holly and some pine trees punctuate the earth colors. There’s also the green of moss covering the base of trees and over all the rocks, definitely not the flora and fauna of a desert. The path here is crisp, frozen, crackling mud. We need to walk up on the road edge so we don’t slip. We traverse the side of a hill. On our right, there’s a bank about four feet high; on our left, a drop down through the thinning forest to a meadow stretching out from town. It’s amazing how, with all this cold, on the west and north sunlit hills, the grass is still green; it doesn’t look like Christmas at all.
I drop back. The others are rushing forward; even Lor and Maggie pass me up. I’m not tired, only a kind of lassitude falls upon me. I’m enjoying being out here in the woods with my family. I look ahead and know all those people I see are of our blood, come from Lor and me. It’s something I didn’t think about when we got married. Sure, I knew we wanted kids, but now seeing them; grown-up, regular people, even Ben; each with personal ideas, personal ways; God, it is a miracle.
Damn, I hope they all find good mates. Living alone would be the worst thing for me. Despite all the hard parts, the failure, the constant accommodation, accepting the inevitable, living with worry and annoyance; I don’t know what my life would mean if we hadn’t had a family.
Writing philosophical treatises, even if I did it, would never be enough; it’s only a substitute for the real thing.
Now Maggie’s breaking out, going it alone, and I think maybe there’s something bubbling between Mike and Geneviève for good or bad. But Nicole; she’s so hard to please, maybe she does need someone like Mike, somebody smart but with a laid-back approach to life. No, Nicole’d go mad. But it’s someone in that direction who will make the best husband for her, someone she can respect and at the same time not feel a need to compete with.
The whole idea of love is so complicated, it obviously isn’t just sex although sex, passion, should probably be part of it. There’s got to be some agreement about the reasons for living. Trust and tolerance are probably as important as respect and admiration or even passion. But there should be a minimum of manipulation, possession, dominance games, competition. Power plays can destroy love faster than anything; slight searching and demands for exclusive attention turn the protective power of love into a cage. These are some of the things I’ve come to believe, but now I’m finding it’s not so simple, the animal in us, call it the id, is not easily convinced. Our egos are generally too labile, too fragile.
Nicole stops and pulls out her camera. We’ve come to Mike’s cabin. It’s just ahead, almost hidden in the trees.
‘Hot shit. I’d forgotten how beautiful Mike’s place is. It’s the kind of hideout everybody in America talks about when they’re spaced out on pot or something. It’s like a dream.’
Mike stands and watches as she takes one photo, then she walks forward past him for another. It gives Maggie and me a chance to catch up. I look back to Loretta and Ben. Ben is far behind, walking in the streambed. Reaching into the cold water rimmed with ice, he picks up a stone, looks at it, then drops it into the fast-running water. Ben loves smooth, egglike stones; he has a collection of them.
We go under some barbed wire to enter Mike’s woods. It’s about two acres and he has it landscaped almost like a park. The trees he’s thinned out are piled around the edges of his property and are dry, so he not only has a fence but an unlimited supply of wood for burning.
There’s a small, all-year stream, flowing less than five paces from the porch he’s built in front of his door. This door makes the door on Maggie’s place look like a door for giants. It can’t be four feet high. The way he’s slanted his roof lines to fit in with the landscape, it couldn’t have been much higher. At a distance, the door is the only really visible thing. Mike’s painted it electric blue. The rest is natural tree surface of slashing he bought at the sawmill to use for outside siding, or the gray, moss-encrusted slate of his roof.
Mike goes on ahead and pulls out the key from under a slate where he usually keeps it. I imagine I’m the last one to put it there, back at the end of August. He squats and pushes the key into his padlock. He’s fashioned a hasp from two large nails and the padlock’s hooked through them. It actually wouldn’t keep anyone out, but does signal that the owner would rather not have casual visitors.
However, when we go in, there’s a piece of paper on the table. Mike built his table from rough-cut lumber he bought at the same sawmill. There are names of various local kids with signatures, greetings and dates. Mike looks at it and smiles so I imagine he told some of his country friends where the key was. I’m glad somebody’s getting use from the place; what a perfect hideout for young lovers seeking peace and quiet, or even old lovers, those few who are left.
Maggie’s happily immersing herself into the whole cabin. Her head turns slowly, taking notice of the little corner kitchen, utensils hanging on the walls, the food cabinets, the sleeping platform next to the uncut stone fireplace. From inside, looking up, the lath for hanging slate hooks looks like a wooden spiderweb. To really insulate this place in winter, that space under the slate would need glass wool or Styrofoam. But this isn’t a winter home, only a great getaway hut for summer.
The rug’s spread on the floor. Mike had left it rolled against the wall but when I came out in August it was molding badly.
Maggie looks up at the roof where Mike’s built in some windows he pried out from the windshield and side windows of our old Volkswagen. That VW had been the car she and George used in high school; it was practically their private home.
‘Gee, Mike. This is a great place. If I had a cabin like this, tucked away, I’d live here all the time. It’s a true Franky Furbo house.’
Franky Furbo is a character, a smart fox, a mutant fox, smarter than any human. For over twenty years I used him as the basis for morning stories to our kids. I hadn’t thought of it before, but there are Franky Furbo qualities to this place, deep in the woods, everything small, simple, practical. Only Franky’s house was built into a tree.
I start trying to get a fire built. Loretta finds the broom in a corner and begins sweeping. Ben and I swept the rug in August and maybe some of the intervening visitors did the same, but now there’s a soft layer of leaves and debris. Ben begins bringing over light twigs and bark scrapings. He also gives me the paper he brought with him, and the matches. It’s going to be hard getting a flame going in the damp, wet-surfaced fireplace.
When I have enough paper and dry shuckings piled, I stack small pieces of wood in a little teepee shape. If this catches I can start adding larger pieces. Maggie and Nicole are sitting at the table behind me; they both have their arms wrapped across their breasts trying to keep out the cold. Coming directly from California sun to a dank, dark wood like this can be a terrific shock to the system. I hope my fire catches; I know it will smoke like hell at first but then, when the flue gets warmed, the smoke will dissipate. At least that’s the way it’s always been before.
I strike the match. We keep feeding small bits of paper onto the feeble flame. Gradually it starts to catch, twisting fire begins threading through the dry twigs. I work in some more of the dried brush Ben keeps handing me. We both like kindling a fire and the more difficult the problem, the less materials we have, the more fun it is. Our ideal is always a ‘one-match fire’. But this one’s going to be a problem. There’s too much smoke, there’s steam, too, from the wet wood and soaked ashes in the fire pit. But we keep at it; now smoke is pouring into the room, it’ll be hard getting enough heat up that flue. We force the flame some by fanning it. I expend most of the dry wood and paper we have trying to get a hot, high flame going; develop a hot spot.
Ben is down on his knees blowing at the bottom of the fire, a human bellows. I can hear the girls coughing behind me. Lor has stopped sweeping and stands by the door to breathe clear air coming in around the cracks. We either make it in the next few minutes or we’ll have to abandon the whole idea; the room is filled with smoke. I turn.
‘Why don’t you girls take a little walk with Mother over top of the hill, while we try to get this fireplace drawing properly. It should only be a few minutes and maybe then we’ll have a nice roaring fire.’
Lor pushes the door open a foot.
‘Come on, let’s go, girls. There’s a lovely stream over the ridge there. I’ll show you where Mike panned for gold.’
Mike, in the meantime, has been out with his saw cutting significant logs for us just in case we do get a fire going. He has some trees nearby, ones he felled in his effort to allow light through to his house. They should be dry now after two years.
But the big if is this smoldering fire in front of us. Ben finds more leaves and grass in a corner behind the fireplace. We put them on and their flare seems to be just the extra heat we need; the smoke reverses itself and starts sucking up the chimney, twirling lines of blue smoke twist out of the room and up. We pile on some finger-thick twigs. They’re dry and if we can only keep the fire hot long enough they’ll catch. If they get going, then we have a chance. Mike backs through the door, arms full of logs; he drops them on the floor in front of the fireplace.
‘Hey, it looks as if you two have actually got something going there. If these big logs start burning we’ll be toasty in no time at all.’
The jump from finger-sized twigs to wrist-sized ones is treacherous for a minute or two but then they catch.
We nestle one of Mike’s logs into the center. I send Ben out for Lor and the girls.
Mike’s started to unpack the lunch. He takes down some of his dishes from the cupboard he built to keep rats and other vermin out of his food. He and Geneviève lived here most of one summer two summers ago; she’s a true homemaker and got Mike to install some of the amenities he wouldn’t’ve thought of himself.
The fire’s definitely caught and I’m not sure if it’s only psychological but the place already feels warmer. I take off my scarf and gloves. Also, a brisk wind has sprung up outside; so being inside and out of that wind makes it seem warmer, too. The smoke is almost gone and it’s a quiet joy to be here in Mike’s private home surrounded by woods.
I’m just beginning to worry if Ben got lost looking for the women when I see them coming from the direction of the spring. Ben is stumbling along, carrying a leaking wooden bucket, probably filled with that unbelievably clear, almost tasteless water from Mike’s shallow spring. Nicole and Maggie have arms filled with pine branches; Loretta has a sprig of holly. I go over to open the door for them. They stomp and wipe their feet on the porch. Nicole comes in first.
‘We thought we’d decorate Mike’s cabin for Christmas. My big-little brother had a knife so we cut branches from pine trees up on the hill and Mom actually found one branch on a holly bush with real berries. Maybe we’re going to have a Christmas after all.’
Maggie struggles through the door, hunched over, wet pine branches poking in her eyes. Her cheeks are glowing from the cold through her Arizona tan. She looks beautiful. I can’t help thinking of how hard it must be for George losing her. I wonder what I would’ve done if Lor wanted to divorce me after we’d been married only seven years, when we had little Maggie six years old, and Mike three. Something dumb and desperate probably. It’s hard enough thinking about something like that, even now with the kids mostly all grown.
Maggie goes near the fire, turns her back to it, pushes her butt close to the flame.
‘Dad, it’s so beautiful in these woods. There’s moss growing on everything and the trees are magic-looking, without being scary. It’s like something from a German fairy tale.’
She piles her branches, with Nicole’s, along the wall facing the meadow. Lor has strolled through the door in her inimitable gliding way, smiling, turning her head back and forth, absorbing everything as if she’s a condemned criminal walking toward the electric chair, looking at this world the last time to see how beautiful it is.
‘See my holly, Will dear? It was the only branch with berries on a huge dark green, pointy, absolutely bare bush. It must mean something. It’s a gift to us for Christmas.’
She’s holding it over her head.
‘We went up Mike’s stream, then doubled back to the spring. Ben intercepted us just as we were going by Madame Calvet’s wood. He helped us with his knife, cutting branches to deck the halls and all. Isn’t it lovely?’
Ben’s come in behind Lor. The bucket is three-quarters filled with water. It looks as if he really did a good job cleaning out the bucket before he filled it. This is such a terrific part of parenting, watching your young gradually learn to do things properly.
‘Where do you want this, Dad?’
‘Put it over there in the kitchen area, Ben. How was the spring, all filled with leaves again?’
‘Yep, but I cleaned them out. The water was so clear it was like air. And those clay pots we made by hand last summer and stuck in the fork of the tree beside the spring are still there. Even all the rain and snow and everything didn’t melt them. We should bring up some of this clay to Paris with us. I could take it to school and show it to my ceramics teacher. You know, Mrs Wright is always looking for new kinds of clay.’
‘Well, it’s too cold now to be digging in clay, Ben; maybe we’ll bring some up when we’re down here for Easter.’
‘Oh, come on, Dad; you’ll forget. We never do the things you promise.’
‘You just remind me and we’ll do it, Ben. I promise, cross my heart. I’m just getting older and I forget things. You remind me.’
Now, Nicole backs her butt against the fire. Maggie snuggles beside her. They look frozen. Maggie glances over at Ben.
‘It’s not just he’s getting older, Ben. He never remembers the things he promises, promises don’t mean much to him. But he’s still a good Dad. Only he’s always spinning his head in the clouds about cosmology, time, meaning, reality and stuff like that. If you’ll remind him, I know he’ll help you get some clay up to school.’
And she’s right. Maggie wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. Honesty and doing the right thing have always meant a lot to her. It must have been difficult for her growing up with a person like me, someone who’s never sure what really is and couldn’t remember if he were.
It doesn’t bother me much any more, I’ve made most of my excuses. Lor has learned to live with it but for Maggie and Nickie I think it’s been hard. I’m the big promiser. If the road to hell really is paved with good intentions I’ve built myself a Roman royal freeway straight to the nether regions. How do you change what you are?
Poor Lor. When we were first going together, even when we were first married, she was always calling me on what I’d promised, what I’d said. Often I’d wind up saying the complete opposite of what I’d said the week, the day or sometimes only five minutes before. I used to quote the famous line from someone I don’t remember about hobgoblins and consistency but it didn’t help. Now I think she’s finally given up; only rarely does she challenge me in my inconsistencies. Maybe she’s accepted that I am a lightweight, perhaps sometimes a likable lightweight, but don’t ever count on me. I don’t count well either.
At least Lor knew something of what she was getting involved with; I hope. Maybe she thought she could reform me, maybe she still does, but I don’t think so. Meanwhile, Mike and Lor are making a beautiful lunch spread on the table. They’ve found an old tablecloth which isn’t too moldy, flattened it across the table to cover the rough boards. They have plates, glasses; dishes they’ve rinsed in the water Ben carried from the spring. The lunch sack has produced a three-quarter loaf of French bread, some Camembert, tomatoes, hot dogs, butter and pickles. Ben is sharpening sticks to cook the hot dogs. Nicole is pushing the first finished stick into the fire with two hot dogs speared on it.
