According to Aunt Vi who had heard it from Uncle Shad who had gotten it from John Sullivan's brother, Jacob, who had been told by Bill Albright's new wife who had been passing by and practically witnessed it, Miss Coraline had put aside her mending, laid her head back against the old cane chair and said to her old dog, Fetch the ferryman, Dutch, I think I'll go now, and with one last whispery breath, she died. Dutch obediently trotted down to the ferry slip and found Cap just about to pull out, then raised such a fuss that the old sailor reversed his engines and pulled back in. Got me a bad feelin' about this, Mac, he told the scowman and set out to follow the dog, Don't wait for me.
Miss Cora, as everyone called her, had been a spinster, what the islanders graciously referred to as a maiden aunt. She and Cap were the only surviving children in the family and she had kept house for him since the age of fifteen. She had been a seamstress and a music teacher, had tended a small garden and sometimes raised goats, written several columns for the mainland paper, sung in the choir. She was buried the following Sunday while a gentle rain fell and James read the 23rd Psalm. The island women descended that very afternoon bringing covered dishes and casseroles, pitchers of iced coffee and tea, cakes and pies and freshly baked muffins. Enough to feed a damned army, Cap protested in vain and Nana shushed him sternly as she directed the deliveries and herded him onto the front porch and out of the way. Take the dog for a walk, she advised, Sort yourself out.
And so the ferryman and the dog set out to escape the chatter and the woman, the casseroles and the pity. The walks soon became a habit with them - at the end of the day, Cap would light his pipe and he and Dutch would walk the coastline to the cove. Here he sat smoking and watching the ocean while the dog explored the driftwood and abandoned fishing shacks. Here he talked with Cora, thinking over and over about her last words and the miracles of life and death and old dogs. With his sister gone, he couldn't bear to leave Dutch at home so the dog became a fixture on the ferry, sitting proudly in the cabin or patroling the scow as cars were guided on and off. He made friends with the tourists and locals alike, and was soon as well known as Cap himself.
The last I saw them, they were walking the path past the graveyard, an old and nigh deaf ferryman and a half blind dog, leaning on each other for strength and - as we all do - still sorting themselves out.
In his prime, the gentleman cat stood several inches in height and length above the other cats - he was solid black and long haired, an impressive 22 pounds. He was a study in feline grace and elegance, fearless and impassive with the dogs, slow and deliberate in motion. He spoke only when spoken to and then with a soft and cultured meow, waited patiently for his meals and ate with delicacy, almost never arrived in my lap without an invitation. He was well mannered, dignified, mammoth and soft to the touch, a contented and undemanding animal who walked away from conflict and disputes.
His health began to fail this past year and he declined gradually. His luxurious fur became matted and lack luster, his weight dropped considerably until I could feel his hip bones and ribs, he grew lethargic and withdrawn. There was a resignation in his eyes that I couldn't dismiss. Late on a Friday afternoon, they brought him to me wrapped in a towel and placed him ever so gently on the exam table - he lay barely moving, silent, meeting my eyes with a forgiving kind of awareness and trust. I talked to him and stroked his ears as the syringe was prepared and the injection given and in a matter of seconds his eyes closed, his heart stopped, and he died. My magnificent gentleman cat, overtaken by renal and liver failure, had moved on without protest and I think, without regret.
Even though I am completely sure he is now strolling through fields of flowers and has regained his health, that he is walking proudly and confidently with clear eyes and a new curiosity about his surroundings, there is yet another scar on my heart.
Nicodemus
3/18/2000 - 6/25/2010
There was a commotion in the trees and when I looked up I saw a squirrel sprinting through the branches with a bird hot on his trail. The dogs watched this little drama with me, mildly curious at all the chattering and protesting but more interested in the cat sitting and washing its paws just outside the fence. In their eyes, the enemy was at the gate - squirrels and birds were were out of reach but the tabby was just a few seductive feet away. The more they fussed, the less attention he paid them, an altogether unacceptable situation from their point of view. Given the choice of detaching from the cat or creating a riot, the dogs would instinctively choose the riot and sacrifice their peace of mind for the chase and the opportunity to interfere. It goes without saying that for the dogs, this would be for the cat's own good.
He can find his own way without your help, I tell them sternly and they reluctantly follow me inside. By the time I leave for work, the tabby has wandered off across the street where I see him sleeping on the neighbor's lawn, unaware or indifferent to the chaos he has left behind. It strikes me that I know people just like this - pot stirrers who take advantage of situations ( or failing that, create them ) just to offset a sense of boredom or worse, those who can only feel good about themselves by nitpicking at someone else. We are a strange species indeed.
Tend to your own self, my grandmother used to say, And it'll keep you busy enough.
We are a collection of fixers, rarely looking inward to make much needed repairs when there is so much to be done to and for others. We offer advice without being asked, we judge without a clue,
we complain when others don't have the good sense to listen and follow our wisdom. We interfere when we should detach and turn our backs when we are needed most.
Engage the cat if you must. But remember he's wiser and will likely not engage back - you'll end up out of breath and frustrated while he sleeps on someone else's lawn.
Nights like these make me wonder if snow was really all that much of a hardship.
There is no breeze at all off the river and the humidity washes over me like a warm rainstorm. A hundred or so other music lovers are packed into a small outside patio, the smart ones sitting motionless, drinking cold beer and margaritas, melting like ice cream. The musicians, under lights that only add insult to injury, play on and each shake of their heads sends a fine spray of sweat into the air. Trying to take photographs in this unbearable heat, my shirt sticks to my back, my joints ache, my glasses slip. Though still only mid June, it's a steam bath kind of night - mercilessly hot and wilting. After only an hour, I can do more and I trudge to the car, head for a nearby bar and collapse into a table in the back. Drenched, dripping and used up, I cursed hormones, humidity, hot flashes and the entire southeast United States. I would've traded a piece of my soul for a snowbank.
New England seems a lifetime away, another planet perhaps, where I froze for the first two thirds of my life, never being able to get warm enough despite longjohns and as many layers as I could pull on and still be able to walk. I took care with gloves and mittens and scarves and boots and my throat would often burn from the cold while my fingers turned numb and my toes reddened and itched madly with that pre-frost bite sensation. I prayed for an early spring, then for an endless summer and was never satisfied with any season. Moving south seemed like a dream come true, an end to the misery and brutality of winter, the answer to my prayers. Now, as sweat poured into my eyes and every breath was like inhaling a chunk of saturated sponge, as everything radiated astonishing mugginess and the heat was like drowning, I began to have second thoughts.
It was just after one when I left the bar and stepped back into a wave of heat. The time and temperature flashing on one of the buildings told me it was 1:03 and 99 degrees. In New England, I thought, it would be just after midnight and somewhere around 70. In Nova Scotia, it would be just after 11 and with the wind off the ocean no more than 65.
There are days and nights when the places you don't happen to be seem to be perfect.
She is a tiny slip of a thing and you would be hard pressed to believe she has two babies at home and works like a teamster. She has beaten back cancer, a family split apart, foreclosure. She put aside her dreams of nursing school to raise her children and tend her family and she is always the first to step aside for someone else. Her husband's leaving without warning or explanation caught her off guard and she missed a step or two as she tried to make sense of it all although there really was no sense to be had - he had kissed her goodbye that morning and packed his things that night - offering no reason, no apology, no cause. Like a freak summer storm, the weather took a violent and unexpected turn.
Over the course of the weekend, disbelief turned to anger and anger to rage. Her stunned questions went unanswered, her children pleaded for him to stay and all he could do was shrug. The door closed behind him and just like that, he was gone - why, where, for how long - who could say.
Life sometimes consists of no more than putting one foot in front of the other and praying for balance while hoping to avoid trips, falls and broken bones. Our best efforts to keep others on the right path always fail - we can guide but not force another's footsteps. And sometimes no matter that everything we do is right and honest, no matter that there are children involved and no matter that there is no fairness to be had, our lives go wrong or we discover that our faith has been misplaced. The wind can whip up and change and calm seas suddenly become a perfect storm.
She watched him leave, helpless to stop him and too stunned to try, then turned to her babies and got back to the business at hand, one foot in front of the other, praying for balance - it was more reasonable than praying for understanding.
It would have been easy to add my voice to those favoring condemnation and assuring her that she was better off without him or offering her the name of a divorce lawyer, but I hung back from this, partly I suppose because it wasn't my business, partly because I don't know him or what their life has been like, but mostly because the one thing I do know is that decisions made in crisis and rage are bound to be hasty and ill advised. Infidelity may indeed be grounds for divorce, this hidden liaison may have been going on for months or even years but it's equally possible that it's a meaningless fling and can be overcome. So I kept silent and hugged her, made sure she had my number and knew where I would be, and said I would keep her in my prayers.
Judgement and life changing decisions are up to her and I only hope she will find the strength to go a little slow and choose her steps with care. What is forgivable and what is not depends on each of us in a private and sacred kind of way.
The choirmaster, a bald, scarecrow figure of a man with a perpetual frown, rapped his baton sharply and the choir came to order. Again, he instructed, From the top.
We had been rehearsing for more than two hours and were hot, tired, and hungry but still anxious to please. Mr. Branton was a hard taskmaster, more than willing to call out a choir member for the smallest infraction, demanding the best we had to offer at every service, and never compromising for anything less than perfect four part harmony. Most of us had begun with him in the children's choir and most would go on to the adult choir - but for now we were the youth choir - too good for the old standard hymns but nowhere near good enough for The Messiah.
Jason, he barked loudly at the tenor section, Stop slouching! Mark, watch me not the clock! Sean, fix your collar! He paced back and forth in front of us, our fragile, impatient music director, not at all interested in winning the hearts of his choir but resolutely determined to mold our vocal chords. Anne, hands at your side! Christine, don't fidget! And Maryanne, if you're chewing gum again, swallow it right now! The baton cracked like a whip with every reprimand. Again, he ordered with a sweeping glare at all of us, And remember this is music for the glory of God so I want to see some smiles and rejoicing or I'll keep you all night, damn it! At this small linguistic irony, several of the older choir members laughed out loud and he gave us a reluctant, wry smile before tapping the baton on the podium. Okay, he relented, One last time - for the glory of God, remember.
He was, we thought, a hard man, overbearing and impossible to please, humorless and distant, but passionate about music. We worked hard for his approval, praise being out of the question, and any small break in the intense rehearsals was welcome.
If we'd looked a little closer or been a little more interested, we would have discovered another side to our choirmaster, a side he didn't talk about. None of us knew that his wife had been an opera singer or that she and his three daughters had all been killed in a tragic house fire while he was in rehearsal. We didn't know of his subsequent breakdown and the years spent in therapy, nor of the drinking and the guilt. Little by slow, he had been coaxed back to life through music, it had been his salvation and had become his strength - he wanted it to become ours.
I was never to sing in the adult choir - life and leaving home intervened and there was no time for church - but I did learn a thing or two about looking beneath the surface of people and discovering their inner workings. We all deserve a closer look.
Just because the monkey's off your back, don't mean the circus has left town.
George Carlin
I left home for the first time at fourteen, then again at sixteen, and for good at eighteen. It wasn't the solution I'd hoped for but it helped - home had long been a toxic environment and a geographic cure was better than doing nothing at all. It took years before I realized a simple truth, that troubles travel with you like a suitcase filled with bricks, that no matter who you marry or how far you run, you always keep that suitcase close by. Sooner or later, you have to open it, unpack it, confront it.
I was raised in a small town just outside Boston - a small city, by Louisiana standards - and our neighborhood was divided by the dirt road that led to Spy Pond. On our side there were single family homes with lawns and backyards and tree lined sidewalks, not wealthy by any means, but not struggling. The other side began with two family homes that eventually led to the triple deckers near the Cambridge line, almost all rent properties and while not poor by any means, not exactly middle class. Arlington was bordered by historic Lexington and Concord with their mansions and tennis courts and country clubs - Belmont, a small bedroom community of old, genteel homes - and Cambridge with it's mix of industry and elite, strip joints and universities, old money and bohemians.
Our house, white with black shutters, a one car garage and cyclone fencing on three sides, sat on a busy street and was as ordinary as could be - three bedrooms, a bath and a half, full basement - a house like any other in what was considered a nice neighborhood. The milkman came every couple of days, my brothers earned their allowances by mowing the front lawn, two dogs and an old orange cat ( and an occasional parakeet ) were in residence, the mailman knew our names. Once or twice a year an immense oil truck arrived to fuel the furnace - my daddy would pale at the bill - and each morning The Boston Globe was on the doorstep. Life on the outside was routine and regular with my daddy's old Mercury station wagon in the driveway and my mother's pink Ford convertible in the garage - there was nothing special here.
We weren't on a bus route, that was several blocks away and we walked it each morning to get to school unless my daddy was running late in which case we hitched a ride. Massachusetts Avenue was shops and drugstores and a movie theater, the five and ten and a small specialty market, the library, and row after row of high rise apartment buildings with real estate offices scattered here and there and a branch post office on the corner. It was all familiar territory, comfortable and slightly cluttered, we walked it all endlessly doing errands, tracing and retracing our steps, window shopping and exploring under the watchful eyes of the ever present policeman at the crosswalks.
We were children then and we didn't talk of the bad things. We didn't have a lot of secrets but those that we did, we knew how to keep. It just never occurred to us that what went on in our own houses didn't go on in all houses.
We were children then and didn't carry many bricks.
Beneath and out of view from the kitchen window, my daddy had made me a sandbox. Here I built sloppy and unrecognizable castles, made mud pies, played with tiny toy soldiers in makeshift forts. I was anything but my mother's expectation of a well behaved, frilly little girl child, opting for cotton and denim rather than lace, preferring Cowboys and Indians to playing house, and more at home in the maple tree than seated at the piano. My mother despaired - loudly and often - of my tomboyish ways, predicting dire consequences for a child who didn't know her place and refused to wear hair ribbons. We were at war even then and I was barely four.
I found the baby squirrel in the sandbox, a tiny thing huddled in a corner with huge eyes, shivering and burrowed into the sand. Knowing my mother would disapprove, I smuggled out a towel and wrapped it up then found a shoe box for a bed and quietly took it into the basement, made it a meal of Rice Krispies and milk and watched over it all afternoon, finally falling asleep in the abandoned old chair by the piano with the shoe box in my lap. I woke when I heard my daddy and raced upstairs to tell him what I had found - by then I had already picked out a name and imagined an entire family of middle class squirrels taking up residence in the basement, a veritable squirrel haven in my care. My daddy, a reasonable and gentle man but with more experience and foresight, worked out a delicate
compromise - Skippy could stay but he would have to be caged and eventually released into the wild, in this case, our back yard, and under no circumstances could he be brought upstairs. Your mother wouldn't take kindly to this, he told me and then after a moment's reconsideration, In fact, it might be better for everyone if she didn't know.
The secret squirrel spent that spring and summer in the basement and in the fall, sleek and relatively tame, my daddy and I released him. He scampered to the maple tree and climbed with squirrel ease,
explored the fence line and dashed in and out of the shrubs, happy, well fed and free. Can't ask for more than that, my daddy told me and hugged away my tears.
It may have been my very first experience with what we all know as mixed feelings. The side of me that knew the secret squirrel needed to live in the outside world and be a part of nature's cosmic plan, knew that he belonged to the wild, felt like celebrating this small liberation. The other side had lost a friend to an uncertain and possibly dangerous world of cats and cold, traffic and bb guns.
When the first snow came, I discovered a trail of nuts and breadcrumbs leading from the maple tree to a barely open basement window and the warmth and protection of a basket atop the furnace, a basket lined with old towels and new straw, a basket that sat far above where anyone would look. He never owned up to it, but it seemed my daddy knew a little something about mixed feelings too.
He stood six foot five, if an inch, and weighed well over 250 pounds - a healthy and imposing young man in his 20's, I imagined. We helped him pick out twelve bottles of red wine, packed them up for him, gave him his discount. Out of habit, I asked him if he would like me to carry the case of wine to his car and to my amazement, he accepted - I followed him through the restaurant and out the front door, feeling, I confess, a little like a water boy trailing after a linebacker and trying to shrug off his lack of chivalry. When we reached the patio and the wave of 90 degree heat, I was stunned to see him him stop and decide to visit with friends while I stood waiting. And there we were - a young linebacker in a monogrammed shirt and a tired, senior citizen hefting a case of wine for him. The feeling that something was definitely amiss in this picture washed over me and I coughed - loudly - to get his attention. He shot me an impatient look tinged with condescension before reluctantly leaving his conversation and I did my best not to glare at him and his unforgivable bad manners. I knew that I would be forgotten the moment his key turned in the ignition - just another retail lackey in his world, but oh, my aching back.
I was hard pressed to know what exactly had made me angry about this - his attitude of entitlement, my feeling of being mistreated and invisible, or maybe just standing in the heat after a long day. Somewhere in my heart, I almost hoped that the wine would be bitter.
He was working the room when I walked in, a tall silver haired man in black jeans, a blue shirt, black vest. Hi, he would tell the individual audience members with a wide grin, I'm Ronny, thanks for coming. It was as if he was any old guest at a casual party, certainly not special or well known, anything but a well known Hollywood actor. He shook my hand when I introduced myself and took a seat at the edge of the small stage, chatting and joking with everyone around him. This was a man who came from film, who had worked with icons and played heroes and villains with equal ease. This was the guitar player in "Deliverance", the detective who had worked with Eddie Murphy, Ozark Bole from "Bound for Glory". But here in a small, intimate setting, this was Mary's husband and Katherine's grandfather, a traveling folksinger, songwriter, storyteller, a genuine, easy to know and open hearted man.
There were no Hollywood tales, rather, he spoke of his wife and the illness that had taken her, of the birth of his granddaughter and her initial struggle to survive. He spoke of public grief and the healing process and he put it into songs, sweet, gentle and sad, ending with a wistful smile. I sensed that he was on the edge of willing and anxious to join his wife, that he would not regret his own passing when the time came, that he had a fine tuned appreciation of love and loss and wanted to stay as much as he was unafraid to go. He was a handsome poet of a man, as down to earth as they come and his music touched everyone who heard.
All the solutions that have been offered to me to resolve the issue of the possom seem to involve deadly force, loss of life, and guns. Charity for possoms is apparently at an all time low.
Granted, this is not an attractive animal - it does not have a winning personality, does not sing or dance, and after its fourth fall into the trash barrel, I'm beginning to suspect that it may have a learning disability, unfair as it would be to condemn an animal to stupidity and ugliness. Just as I am about to deposit a plastic bag of used kitty litter into the trash, I look down and there it is, looking up at me pitifully from the bottom of the empty barrel, unmoving and silent. Not again, I tell it with a sigh, I thought we had an arrangement.
I drop the kitty litter into another barrel and before I leave I turn the occupied barrel on its side. From the other side of the fence, I watch as the possom emerges slowly and meanders off into the shrubs. It's slow moving with a slight waddle to it's steps, almost but not quite comical.
There should be a song in this, I think to myself, a lazy, bluesy, slow song with a southern accent. Something along the lines of:
I got a possom in my trash can and I just can't sleep at night,
I could shoot him, trap him, even feed him poison but it don't seem right,
To take his little life because I just can't sleep at night.
I got a possom in my trash can and he's always on the prowl,
The dogs are goin' crazy, all they do is bark and whine and howl,
City life ain't easy with a possum on the prowl.
So God was strolling through The Ugly Garden and He decided to make a warthog, an anteater, and at the very last moment, an oppossom. The first two he exiled to the wild and the third he sent to my backyard.
The dogs were more frantic than I'd ever seen them, racing through the early morning darkness as if their tails were on fire, following the scent of something unseen but clearly present. They focused on the pale blue trash barrel with frenzied attacks - pawing it, ramming it, trying to climb its fortunately smooth outer surface. Turning on the deck lights, I approached the barrel cautiously - half of me expecting to discover some trapped mouse or broken winged bird, the other half expecting some three eyed night creature to lunge at me. I did not expect to be one on one with a small, narrow eyed and astonishingly ugly possom, curled up in the bottom of the barrel in a nest of sticks, still as stone and looking back at me with a steady, non threatening gaze.
He didn't appear to injured, in distress, or even particularly bothered by his predicament - he was, in fact, calm and quiet in the face of adversity. Perhaps, I mused to the dogs, falling into trash barrels is an occupational hazard if you're a possom and his mother is already looking for him. This sudden thought gave me a slight start and I immediately rounded up the dogs and put them safely inside then very gently laid the barrel on its side. The possom still didn't budge, made no menacing moves or sounds at all. Have it your own way, I advised him, But you better be gone by lunch. There's no room at this inn.
He was indeed gone by lunch but my the time it was dark, he'd returned. This time he was firmly planted on the rim of the city-provided barrel. He looked bigger, a trifle more confident, unmoved by the dogs' agitation, stoic.
There was no sign of aggression and I began to wonder if I hadn't encountered a pacifist possom who might share my live and let live philosophy. Still, the fact was that he was a possom, a wild and unpredictable night visitor with talons and teeth and I felt no need to be on a first name basis with him. Ok, I said reasonably, One more night but the trash goes out in the morning and after that I expect you to find different lodgings. This is not possom rehab and unless you want to contribute to the rent, consider yourself evicted. And as for you, I told the small brown dog and scooped her up and out of reach, I will not tolerate you having a crush on a possom. You're grounded until you're eighteen.
On the days when I fear I have lost my way, I remember my daddy. His optimism never seemed to falter and he tsk'd my worries away with a smile. Nothing you need worry about, he would tell me and give me a quick hug, The world will find a way.
Back then, the world usually did.
I wanted to believe in the world that he saw, wanted to have his faith in people and systems and justice. There was a war on, the Boston Strangler was roaming the city streets in a reign of absolute terror, Kennedy was dead, and each morning paper carried some story of corruption or murder. Scandal had been reborn in the city and the country was at odds with its very self. I never thought about the possibility that he wasn't sincere or might just want to protect me - I believed that he believed and it was almost enough to reassure me.
My mother, however, saw nothing but darkness. The world was inherently unfair and evil would always overcome good. The moon landing was a hoax, Nixon was the hope of the faithful, the world was flat and she was out of beer.
How two people so opposed had come together and created offspring was a mystery - how they stayed together was unfathomable- they had slept in twin beds for as long as I could remember. There was only day to day living, keeping food on the table and the bills paid - there were no dreams, no nights out together, no conversations, no shared times. We were all strangers under one roof, leading lives apart and estranged from each other even during the best of times.
I rarely thought of such things then unless there was some flare up that heated up the tension and brought it to the surface. Later I began to comprehend that people who hate each other can live together for years - no matter how dreadful things are in the frying pan, the fire might be hotter.
The war eventually came to an end, The Boston Strangler was eventually caught, the horrendous string of Mafia homicides eventually faded from the news and was replaced by the Manson murders. Watergate and Kent State happened and were forgotten too soon, protests and riots broke out over civil rights, Jimmy Hoffa vanished. The world was not an easy place but my daddy continued to believe and slept well on his side of the room.
