City Haul

 

 

Salish County Superior Court Judge Scott Key was stoned. Very stoned. And drunk. He couldn’t get a fix on where he was, let alone count to ten as the young sheriff’s deputy asked him to. He wobbled on the cowboy boots he customarily wore—an affectation not particularly helpful in his present state. He muttered to himself as he fumbled for his license, red-eyed, his otherwise fashionable hair in disarray. One moment he’d grin and try to put a sentence together. The next moment, he’d sigh and lean against the car. He was confused, and the rational, totally together façade—the stucco wall behind which he usually hid shortcomings—cracked.

            Dolores Key sat in the passenger seat. Dark-eyed and motionless except for fingering a diamond-encrusted Cartier cross displayed against her little black dress. One might suppose that her paralysis was due to fear for her husband’s career as a sitting superior court judge and the resulting damage these circumstances could inflict on their personal commonweal. But that would not be accurate. She didn’t move because she was beyond intoxicated, stupid drunk, which is why the judge was driving. Clear thinking was not in the cards.

            His Honor—for the record “Francis Scott Key, Esq.”—stepped farther to the side of the roadway and assaulted the dawn’s early light, pristine in its quiet seaside slumber, with a rich mixture of bass-register retching and a potpourri of his stomach contents. Even the sheriff’s deputy was impressed.

            By now, the license and plates had been run and the lad realized who he was dealing with. A bright fellow, he didn’t call in on the radio, but punched in a number on his personal cell. His boss answered, Sheriff Lucas Barkley. “Weaving all over the road, baggie in the glove box, sir. Car smells like Hempfest. Yes, sir, I’m sure it’s him.”

            Sheriff Barkley congratulated the deputy on notifying him personally. Asked him to bring the report directly to him. Then, he fixed himself a cup of coffee and, in the emerging day, reflected on the vagaries of life. And smiled.

Chapter 1

            On a splendid Pacific Northwest fall day, scattered sunrays poking through disappearing rain clouds, I turned my faithful pickup truck into my usual drive-through latté stand and pulled up to the window.

            “Double-punch Monday, Matt!” Tiffany, the barista, grinned at me with her toothpaste ad smile. She leaned out of the booth. She wore a loose white peasant blouse, from which I averted my eyes as quickly as I could and handed her my Joltin’ Joe Espresso frequent-buyer card. I ordered a tall doppio caffé mocha.

            “Good morning, Tiffany.” It was almost noon.

            “You’re lookin’ sharp, handsome.” It must have been the sport coat, the blue shirt with white checks, no tie. Tan Dockers and slip-on loafers completed my better-than-usual ensemble, but she couldn’t see them.

            “You lawyers.”

            “Well, it’s what I do.”

            She turned and did whatever they do to extract coffee out of little spouts. Over her shoulder she asked, “Whip or no whip?”

            “With, please.”

            She came back to the window and drizzled chocolate in little circles on the whipped cream. She stabbed the drink with a pink plastic straw and handed it to me.

            “You used to do something else, right, Matt? Like, with the government?”

            “Very true, Tiffany. I worked with the state legislature.”

            “So hey, I started community college this week.”

            “Hey, that’s wonderful.”

            “And I’m, like, taking this class on government.”

            “Good for you.” Barista Tiffany was pretty as a cheerleader, but why the turquoise swath across her blonde hair? And wouldn’t one piercing in each ear have been enough? Jeez, I was old!

            “And my teacher says if we don’t like something the government is doing, we should write our congressman.”

            “That’s good advice.”

            “Who is he? What’s his name?”

            “Her name is Jeanette Smith.”

            “A girl?”

            “A woman, yes. Go online and you can find her address. So what don’t you like?”

            “Parking meters. I hate ’em. I went in for maybe three minutes to take back a CD my boyfriend was, like, bored of. And the grumpy lady in that stupid little car gave me a ticket.”

            “I’d be upset, too. Those people are vicious.”

            “Fifteen dollars! Who has an extra fifteen dollars?”

            “Tiffany, here’s what. It’s not your congressperson you need to talk to. Parking fines are handled right here in Church Harbor at City Hall.”

            “Oh.” She frowned.

            “Yep. Just go down there and tell them your story.”

            “Will I have to talk to a real person? Can’t I text them?”

            “No, they won’t let you do that.”

            A truck larger than mine and a car were now in line behind me. “Think of it as a learning experience,” I continued. “For your class.”       

            “You’re the best, Matt.” She punched my card with a flourish and handed it back. “Thanks, and bye-bye,” she mouthed. Excellent customer relations, that gal.

            On my way out, I spotted a spiffy green Jaguar pulling up to the opposite window. My stomach lurched. The vehicle, with its too-familiar café au lait leather upholstery, was piloted by a certain female legislator who was possibly the last person on earth I wanted to make eye contact with. The back tires of my truck caught gravel and spun as I left like a high school kid peeling out.

            But as I drove away, what I thought about was neither the driver of the car I’d managed to avoid, nor the pained face of Judge Scott Key and his ongoing saga—once again above the fold on the newspaper lying on the passenger seat of my truck. It wasn’t even the curious message on my cell from Canada about someone called “Gunk.”

No, my mind instead lingered on barista Tiffany’s turquoise hair and piercings, and my precious ten-year-old daughter Allie, who’d grow up—and not be caught dead wearing a fetching blouse, if I had anything to say about it.

If, that is, thanks to enough stupidity on my part to jeopardize my marriage and leave “visitation” with my daughter to the whims of her mother, my wife Ellen—up till recently my best friend; these days, hardly.

      Back to something I did have control over, I weaved through late morning traffic on my way to the monthly Salish County Bar Association meeting. Tiffany got my past role “with the government” right, but now I was back to lawyering. And in my renewed incarnation, these dry-toast gatherings were part of the drill. ...

Unidentified Fueling Object

 

 

Unidentified Fueling Object

 

            There are no good places to run out of gas but some are worse than others. In the middle of a desert, for example. Or the middle of a desert frequented by extraterrestrials.

            On a recent summer road trip my wife and I took to the Southwest, we made a decision to turn off U.S. Highway 6 and onto Nevada State Highway 375 toward the town of Rachel. Our original destination, Tonopah, fifty miles away, could wait. We decided instead to investigate the eponymous "Extraterrestrial Highway" that passes within a milli-parsec of notorious Area 51, the landing site of choice in the United States for Unidentified Flying Objects. Curious about what we'd find, we gave not so much as a glance at the gas gauge in our spiffy black late-model Ford Ranger pickup as it reliably purred along on six happy cylinders.

Fotos de Madrid

            En la Mañana

 

 

            Hoy es sábado, el doce de mayo. Mañana será el Día de las Madres en los Estados Unidos. ¡Besos y abrazos, madres! Mothers' Day, May 13th, 2012.

             This morning, our second day in Madrid, I set off to be adventurous - to find a café for breakfast different from the one the day before. However, the half-remembered map in my head, the original of which lay open on the nightstand in our hotel room next to my sleeping wife, turned out to be no match for the twists and turns, alleys and backstreets and unfamiliar thoroughfares of Old Madrid.

            Short as some streets and alleys are, others seemed to go on for blocks - except when there were no blocks or intersections, just row after row of buildings and shops that played with my sense of direction. Tracing the cobbled streets hunting for breakfast was like tracing the sketchy lines on my palm, some distinct, others faint.

            My grumbling stomach signaled surrender.

Feelin' Squirrelly - A Fable . . .

 

. . . or You Don't Have to be Paranoid to Have Enemies

            The squirrel said, "Nice day, huh?"

            Terry looked around. Nobody.

“My apologies," said the squirrel. "I’m being rude, interrupting your solitude."

            Terry looked up and saw a gray squirrel, perched on a pine branch not six feet above his head. Not knowing quite why, Terry said "What do you want?"

            "You humans fascinate me.”

            Terry imagined telling this one to Dr. Fischer, the shrink to whom he paid $150 an hour regularly on Tuesdays at three pm. "Take some time off," advised his brain doctor. "Go into the mountains, sit by a stream, don't even take a book."

            Okay. Overnight, no longer. Maybe enough time to temporarily turn off the police scanner that was his prefrontal cortex, the row of blue and red lights that flashed and chased each other back and forth along a black bandwidth of his mind. The job, the wife, kids, politics, the truck making a strange noise, his weight. The nameless dreads every morning. The walking worried, said the doc.

            Nothing Terry tried had worked -- self-help books, classes, yoga, meditation, all quickly abandoned. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was play-acting a centuries-old mystical tradition.

            So now, sitting on a camp table next to his backpack, in a clearing that let the sun shine in through dark green trees, Terry was having a conversation with a squirrel.

            He stared at the critter. "Fascinate?" The faraway drone of a small plane came and went.

            "Yep," said the squirrel. "Tell me, is this a beautiful spot or what? The weather's glorious. That burbly creek over there has been washing those river boulders -- singing its song -- longer even than you’ve had your job!”

            "What in the world do you know about having a job!" snapped Terry. "Your job is to forage for nuts. Yummy!"

            The furry-tailed beastie jumped down to a stump close by. It sat up on its hind legs and flicked its tail like squirrels do.

            "Do you know how much DNA is shared between you and me? We're not that far apart on the family tree."

            Being condescended to by a squirrel!

            “Okay, smart guy,” Terry said. “What’s the square root of minus one? Explain the space-time continuum. Brownian movement?"

            The squirrel smirked. "I’m not the one sitting out here jonesing, uncomfortable in my own skin. And it’s Brownian motion by the way."

            If squirrels can chuckle, this one did at the dig. Or maybe it was the snick-snick-snick they do anyway. The clever rodent went on. "Admit it, you humans with your massive brains have the illusion you can control things."

            "Illusion! And you’re under the illusion that that owl up there isn’t thinking of you as lunch.”

            "That owl is an illusion."

            "Oh great, now we're into Zen," said Terry. "Please don’t go all `lilies of the field’ on me."

            The squirrel seemed to think for a second, then hopped down and headed for the nearest tree.

            “Wait!” called Terry. “Hey, I’m sorry. Come back.”

            The squirrel scampered into the understory. It reappeared. “Up here,” it said. It dropped a pine cone onto the picnic table and returned. It demonstrated how to extract the caramel-colored pine seeds lodged tight in the brittle crevasses.

            "You ever eaten pine nuts?"

            "Not raw." Terry broke off the hard nubbins with his teeth and sampled a few. The blue and red lights were flickering, but only dimly. "Utterly ridiculous. I am losing my mind."

            “Not prime rib, I’m assuming,” said the squirrel, “but you’re being a good sport.”

            Suddenly tired, Terry started to relax -- but only for a second. Neither he nor the squirrel saw it coming. Like a guided missile, with outstretched claws and terrible hooked beak and blazing yellow eyes, a huge owl rocketed down out of the sky, then leveled off for an instant in a parabolic swoop before grabbing the stunned squirrel in its talons.

            Or it would have, except at the last instant Terry grabbed his backpack and swung it with all his might. The blow sent the bird, head over feathered tail, into a stand of manzanita -- from which it struggled, extracted itself, fluttered its wings once, and glaring eyes wide as saucers, escaped high into the distance and vanished.

            Terry's whole body shook. His head and heart were pounding. The squirrel had disappeared. He listened. No scratching or rustling in the underbrush, just the winsome sigh of an afternoon breeze in the canopy of evergreens.

            Clearly, he'd imagined the whole thing. Dreamt it. But he noticed that his mind was clear for the first time in days. No kaleidoscope of thoughts racing through his head. The scanner was off.

            Terry looked around. There was some pine-like debris on the table, but the wind must have sent it down.

            I was not talking to a squirrel, he thought. Squirrels cannot talk. I fell asleep.

            He stood up and tucked in his shirt. He stretched and walked stiff-legged to his truck to get a soda. Then he stopped cold and stared at the top of the utility box in the truck bed. There were three individual ponderosa pine cones, not stacked actually but placed together, and caramel-colored seeds arranged just so around them.

            Terry retrieved his smart phone and double-checked. Yep, next Tuesday at three, Dr. Fischer.

Postcards from the Road - Stories (update)

Friends,

            Acknowledging up front the shameless self-promotion, I nonetheless want to celebrate the terrific reception "Postcards from the Road - Stories" has gotten. From the well-attended launch of the book in November to the recent delivery of a third print-run, it's been enjoyable and humbling at the same time.

            Briefly then, I'd like simply to remind folks that copies are on the shelves at Village Books in Bellingham, and also in my possession.

            Ordering from Village Books couldn't be easier or quicker. Go to the website (http://www.villagebooks.com/), enter the title, and voila! Or email me, and I'll send a copy pronto.

            Thanks for your wonderful readership.

                Dick

P.S. If you've already bought a book, please forgive the repetition . . .  and thank you!

The Bee

 

            Before telling about crossing the Big River, I will report that the unwelcome exposure to insects in the Ozarks was in fact the second event of its type on the trip.

            There are things you learn about each other on a journey such as the one we took. Not necessarily new things, but character quirks that are brought into more visible relief over long hours in X cubic feet of necessary confinement. We all know this when we weigh whether or not to take such a trip with a companion no matter how good a friend he or she may be.

            Cherie and I have enjoyed a long and happy marriage - two kids, two careers, two home remodels, wallpapering.  But now, in early retirement and in each other's company more often, perhaps feelings that hibernate below the surface would percolate to the top through mile after mile of silence on this the longest road trip we'd undertaken.  We travel well together as a rule, but over the years we've also enjoyed solitary time.  Made a point of it, in fact. Put simply, we're independent people who love each other. We make joint decisions; unless we don't.  My lovely wife's patience is legendary; I work at it.  Driving directions, map queries, restaurant and motel choices, potty stops might be fertile ground for disagreement.  Nothing as routine as that happened, but there were some surprises.

 

            I knew Cherie hated bugs - from the most harmless of moths and gangly crane flies to the B-52 houseflies that thrive in the Pacific Northwest. Don't even start about spiders. If an arachnid had been the subject of this brief episode, I likely would not be here to write about it.  Her tolerance for flying, buzzing critters is close to nonexistent. She comes by her aversion honestly: she grew up on the East Coast where some insects are the size of small birds - cockroaches in particular. Ugly, huge, Carboniferous Era, corner-lurking, night-crawling omnivores that roam in the dark, snacking on smudges of left-over pizza stuck to the box. The overhead light flashes on and the miscreants scatter, skittering into nooks and crannies too small for you to get at and sent it to the lower reaches of Hell.

            Clearly, I'm not fond of the little beasties either. And there's undoubtedly an important place for cockroaches in the ecosystem.  Maybe there's a Save The Roaches Society somewhere - t-shirts, monthly meetings, marches on Black Flag headquarters. The Franz Kafka Chapter in lower Manhattan, say.

            But, I digress.

 

            These vermin, are not the subject of this narrative.  Rather, members of the wonderful entomological order hymenoptera, consisting of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets. These industrious denizens of spring, summer, and fall perform wonders. Colonies live in beautifully constructed villages with intricate passages.  They protect and pay homage to a monarch, provide childcare, guards and workers, and roam far and wide to find food, yet make their way home. They band together and defend against enemies.  Bees even provide us food, however grudgingly.

            But they sting. Or bite.

            Like the one that flew in the driver's-side window, Cherie at the wheel, narrowly missing her head before disappearing somewhere in the car.  There aren't a lot of options when this happens in a vehicle traveling seventy-five miles an hour.  Skilled driver that she is - and screaming like she'd been shot - Cherie came as close as she's likely to come to a NASCAR sideways slide and pulled into a fortuitously wide driveway and jammed the brake.

            Where was the bee? Or wasp. Whatever.

            "It flew down there," she shrieked, pointing down beside her left leg, where, probably dazed by its collision with the window post, it was coming to its senses and assessing the wide cuff opening of Cherie's slacks.  Out the door she flew as fast as her tormentor had flown in.

            "So do something," she yelled from a good fifteen feet away.

            I got out of the car, stretched, and walked around the front. It was a bright sunny Utah afternoon, brown desert scrub to one side, distant green foothills in the other.  At the end of the curving driveway sat a small pair of buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence.  Then I noticed the sign. Terrific! The Carbon County Humane Society! I would commit brutal insecticide of one of God's elegant creations, whose only mistake it was to fly at an inopportune moment through airspace it had far more right to than we did, in full view of a humane society.

            Maybe I wouldn't find him. Maybe he, or it, had expired. Maybe . . . nope, there it was, crawling its sextipedal way over the door jam. From whence it harmlessly flew away without so much as a fare-thee-well.

            Am I overstating the drama? Grizzlies in Yellowstone?  I'll let the reader ask Cherie who shakily resumed her place behind the wheel and drove on, mumbling, while I resumed my place in the reclined passenger seat and fell back asleep.

            At this point, fairness compels me to add, speaking of character tics (not ticks!) that become more noticeable on such a long drive, I snore.  "Vigorously," it must be said.  Cherie didn't say a word about that over thousands of miles.

 

A Sense of Place

[Published in the Journal of the Santa Fe Writers Project - http://www.sfwp.com/a-sense-of-place-by-richard-little/ ]

A Sense of Place:  Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

    …round apples glowing red in the orchard and the rustle of the leaves make me pause to think how many other than human forces affect us . . . . I respond - how?

        Virginia Woolf - "A Sketch of the Past"

   

 

            There has to be an end to this hellish descent. Six miles so far in first gear over washboards and gullies, sometimes careening, then skidding to a stop and sending a cloud of dust and rocks over into an abyss.  Next, an open stretch across a bench several acres wide.  Maybe there will be an easy down grade from now on, but no, the road narrows and plunges into a funnel yet again, and the creeping and tumbling and inching down begins anew.  My uncomplaining truck clutches and shifts and brakes and wants to test its tipping point, so on we go.

 

            The worst patch of impossible road I can recall, and another six or seven miles to go and another thousand feet down.  I’m in northwest Colorado – Dinosaur National Monument -- high on the Uinta plateau above the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers.  I was told this would be worth it, a descent into Echo Park, the Center of the Universe; that the veil between earthbound reality and the eternal world of spiritual truth is thinner there than anywhere.