My name is Stephen Coomerford. I have been lost for a long time now. At least, that’s what I believe about myself…or think. I see the looks in my colleague’s faces when they talk to me. Not that I’m any different than other people; I’m just more aware of the nothing I experience daily…and it shows. The looks of my colleagues have the whiff of pity. I make half-hearted attempts to belong, but it’s easier to fall into the flow of my small life…to live and to comply daily. I keep my life simple, focused on the tasks at hand. To discover something new takes an energy I’m not willing to expend. So I go to my friend’s farm…Caleb Looms, to somehow find the something I’m missing and to help him on the renovations to his property. And between my visits to the farm and teaching, I watch television and sleep and rake leaves on the weekends and walk to the mail box…as I wave to the neighbors I seldom talk to, checking for the special something that never comes. And when I’m really bored, I go to the local bar & grill.
And then, there’s the reading and the school work. The book on my night stand is Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. I have a difficult time getting through the first couple of pages, so I put the used hardback on the night stand, letting it sit there, picking it up over and over, running my hand across the dust cover, putting my nose between the pages, setting it down, week after week. I want to read this book. I’m curious about the history of salt. I see salt as the salve for the soul. But my will to read just isn’t there. I think it’s because of school; reading is my job, not my pleasure. I only read the things I have to read−the school work of my students, current academic journals and curriculum documents and the school memos which are intended to be constructive updates from the administration, but become nothing more than the clutter of exhortations on the things we cannot do, things we should already know about proper behavior. As I enter the teacher’s lounge each morning I’m pelted with the memos taped to the vending machines. The tape and the paper have yellowed over the years, encrusted on the glass:
Attention Staff:
Please do not shake or punch the machines. Contact the dean’s secretary for any refund of lost change.
Thank you.
It bothers me that it actually needed to be said. It’s difficult to believe that the teachers and the staff at this respectable institution have to be told not to punch the vending machines. The poor behavior of one affects the psychology of the many.
Caleb invites me to the farm monthly. It’s an opportunity to clear this clutter from my head. He senses I need something more…something different in my life. His wife wishes I was happier. She looks at me with sad eyes. I can’t help thinking that by going to the farm I’ve become a project to Caleb. He’s quite aware of my issues.
* * *
Crete, Nebraska has three major industries for a town of seven thousand people: the Mill which fills the air with the scent of cooked corn…especially late in the afternoon, a meat packing house just outside of the city limits and a dog food plant…none of this attractive to the person looking to escape the big city…to find a bucolic paradise, but then, it’s a working community and on top of all this, a couple of miles east of town is a rendering plant where farmers take their dead or diseased animals not worth the cost of making soap. I don’t live in Crete; I work there. I live in Dorchester eight miles west but I teach English at the small college in Crete, and the bulk of my day is watching bright-eyed, optimistic students shuffle from one class to another in their kitsch t-shirts and jeans, Lotta Davis midi dresses and Okatu flared pants. They have a nescient confidence in everything they do. Their world is all bright lights and the crisp scent of a promising future. I have to constantly remind them to turn off their cell phones in class. Their attention wanes. It makes me feel old. I’ve come to understand that school is not so much about learning…though this does happen−the expanding of young minds and the broadening of their world view, but also, it’s about establishing a certain discipline and the presentation of the self in public−who you know and what you know working together.
Dorchester is a small community−anonymous: a crumbling gas station with crippled gas pumps and a couple of paint-scarred stores and other small businesses…barely surviving, limping economically through each year. It has an undersized post office, not much larger than a couple of sheds. The rest of the town is filled with turn-of-the-century bungalows…mostly white, needing paint, with moss-covered roof shingles, crumbling and melting into the wood slats it covers. Those people having a little money…those committed to their lives in Dorchester, wanting to create an obscure history…well, they build new ranch houses, small rectangle boxes with a few accessories, austere landscaping and well trimmed bushes, to make it all look like something more.
Why am I telling you all this? I live a life void of imagination. The only source of entertainment, besides the trivial eruptions of drama in the course of the school day, is drinking alcohol, taking drugs and having sex…all shared with the same people I have known most of my life. I suppose it’s the same in every small town but at least some towns etch into their history the sparkle of uniqueness…the tallest ear of corn or the oldest church in the state−quick distractions off the main highway for the consideration of the passing motorist, all attempts at garnering a little attention to their small lives. It quickens the spirits of the locals, giving the community identity and tenure. And of course, there are school sports but that’s nothing more than evening tea…the gathering of restless souls…spurts of excitement in an otherwise sedate and well-managed day. Our athletic teams in Dorchester always lose. It’s a part of our tradition. It should be splashed across a large billboard just outside the city limits: Dorchester: The Town With The Longest Losing Tradition in Nebraska Sports History−an accomplishment of sorts. It’s not the largest ball of yarn but it’s what makes us unique. I know what you are thinking: what is the point of all this? And I get it. Who wants to be dragged into the mundane? I just feel it’s necessary to establish the vanilla in my life. I drive a used 2014 White Jetta Volkswagen.
* * *
Driving between rural towns, I see open fields, the cut of barbed-wire fences slicing through the air passing the occasional cottonwood tree…massive sages, ancient and silent, at the sides of the road. And as ironic as it sounds, under one of these trees, is a lone picnic table, never used, painted white and aging and next to it, a rusted trash barrel.
Beyond Dorchester, another 18 miles, is Beaver Crossing, where my friend Caleb Looms and his wife Clare tend a small farm. He’s tall and lanky with scruffy blond hair, his body all bone and muscle, wearing worn overalls with a hammer slipped through the loop at his thigh. He’s bare-chested under the straps and driven daily by ideas that swirl through his head, converting his farm into a place where he and his wife can disappear from an always intrusive world. It’s a contrived paradise, carved to their personal taste.
On select weekends I go to the farm, helping Caleb convert his barn into a home. Help is a deceptive word, misleading at best−I hand him tools. He’s been working on this project for a long time, at least as long as I can remember, dismantling the old house on the property for lumber and wiring and plumbing and anything else he can salvage, redirecting the electrical lines and plumbing to the barn. And each time I visit there is less house and more renewed barn.
On one particular weekend, entering the graveled driveway, I notice a long yellow school bus on cinder blocks just to the left along the dirt road. Caleb is nearby, hooking up utilities. He’s focused on unraveling electrical romex. The soil leading to the old house is folded over into fresh mounds where I imagine plumbing lines lead from the old house to the bus. He raises his head and smiles as I pull in and walks over to my open window.
“Clare’s sister is coming to stay with us. I found this old bus and I thought I could make it into something livable.”
And that’s how Caleb thinks, there’s always a way to make one thing into something else. I don’t think he and Clare can live a conventional life. They tend to avoid a pre-packaged existence−a life already prepared for consumption. They gravitate toward the unusual, living in the land of misfit toys, turning things abandoned into things wholly new, wholly wonderful. Everything on their farm has been converted from one reality into a new reality−re-imagined. Caleb is an inventor of sorts. He’s always planning his next project.
“I bet if we took this and did that we could make this generator work.”
I had my doubts about this project–turning the old barn into his new home but after clearing out the stink of old hay, the cobwebs and the lumber that didn’t support walls or the roof, the general cleaning and prep work, the clearing out of all the rusted tools and finally the pouring of the concrete floor, I started to believe. Somehow, he was able to insulate the barn walls and build a wide staircase, using the thick lumber from the barn−the guts, he quipped, laying each board outside along the ground by size until he needed it. The staircase was wide and open, leading to a loft…creating an open bedroom, filled with the fresh smell of the forest. And gradually, I saw the old house disappear and the barn take new form, complete with the windows from their old house, squeegeed cleaned with the sparkle of the sun. He found a school which was building a new gymnasium and talked the superintendent into allowing him to pull the old floor up. The superintendent agreed so long as he took everything away when he was finished.
“Beautifully sparred,” Caleb stated, “you couldn’t find a sounder floor anywhere.”
He laid the planking throughout the lower level of the barn, leaving the old red and blue lines on the wood, the half-court and free throw lines and placed a wood stove in the center of it all, near the staircase.
I asked him once how he came to the skills he possessed. He flipped up his welding mask, looking puzzled, taking inventory of the surrounding landscape. He takes a long breath, moving his gaze to the row of cottonwood trees along the dirt road.
“I just believe that if you can think it, Stephen, you can do it.”
* * *
Finally, one weekend, there’s Crystal, Clare’s sister, painting the outside of the school bus as I pull into the drive, wild colors with butterflies, psychedelic swirls, very 60’s, retro pastels with bucolic scenes−exaggerated trees, flowers and rivers.
She’s wearing a thin cotton dress, white with meek fringe that swims around her body. Her blond hair is the sprout of angel-hair from her head, filled with the hint of wild flowers and purple…lavender, I think. She moves with the freedom of a forest nymph. She’s singing a song using words I can’t comprehend. They’re cryptic verses…her own language−hymns, and she dances as she works.
Caleb has his handmade wood smoker, made from a metal drum…halved, welded and hinged, set up on wrought iron legs; sheets of invisible heat rise−a rippling mirage, floating in the autumn air with the smell of lamb.
“I thought we would have a barbecue today,” he says, as I get out of my car. “No work. You deserve a break”
To me, this means I don’t have to learn the names of tools.
We stand near the smoker exchanging small talk−a picnic of sorts. Caleb passes me a joint.
“Godfather OG, the good stuff, I think you’ll like it,” Caleb whispers. He points the joint toward Crystal. “I know what you’re thinking, Sancho…but if you go there, you’ll have to go all the way. Crystal’s no romp in the park.”
This is not a warning but friendly advice. Actually, he’s trying to encourage me. He puts his wide hand on my back…slaps it and then squeezes my shoulder−a consolation.
“She’s high maintenance, Stephen. I think you will be good for each other. She needs a lot of attention and you need something to occupy your thoughts, but it’s your decision. I’m telling you this because we’re friends. And…you deserve the information before you embark on the journey. Think about it.”
It’s like he’s preparing me for a long trip, making sure I have all the right gear and the mental resources needed. I go through a internal checklist.
“So this is the accumulation of my monthly efforts.”
“Well…I’m not sure that was the full intent. It just evolved that way.” Caleb just laughs, nods and winks.
“Thanks,” I say, but I’m not sure what I’m thanking him for. I’m hesitant about bringing another person into my life. I like that my life is drama free. My thoughts drift as I attempt to sort out the intentions and I think…don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Crystal introduces herself. She’s as light and carefree as the air around us, short the scent of the lamb. But she has a young lamb’s innocence and playfulness. Her sister…Clare, makes an appearance at the threshold of the barn.
“Hi Stephen, it’s so good to see you. I wish I could visit but I’m getting our dinner ready.”
She’s holding a jute basket filled with the late harvest from her garden. She’s more cheery than usual, not that she isn’t on any given day…but today, more so, the song of Eurasian Wrens in her voice. I can’t help thinking this weekend is all about me…that there were conversations long before I arrived.
“Crystal…why don’t you show Stephen your new home?”
Crystal beams, she grabs my hand and leads me to her painted bus.
“Come, Stephen,” She’s skipping along like we have known each other forever … hopscotch buddies−intimate, pulling me along. Her face and hair have the splatter of paint. Her white dress is surprisingly unmolested as if she had changed her clothes minutes before I arrived, “I love my new home. It’s so me…so groovy.”
* * *
As I step up into the bus, I can see it went through a complete transformation. I didn’t expect any less. All the seats have been removed, except two with a table in-between. I’m not sure what Caleb did with the extra seats but I’m thinking…bartered. He used the leftover gym floor and installed taupe paneled walls. At the very back of the bus, against the emergency exit, is a queen size bed. The blankets are disheveled, piled in small hills. Art supplies, paint and the splash of acrylic on canvas scatter everywhere, stacked and leaning against the walls. Clothes and shoes litter the floor. Caleb hooked up a small stove and a refrigerator and a sink at the front of the bus, behind the driver’s seat which he left in as an accessory−a toy…or curiosity and in-between the front of the bus and the bedroom area are two egg colored futon couches, raised on pine platforms…stained, stacked with Crystal’s art facing each other with cable spools for end tables hosting glass lamps.
“Let me move a few things; it’s a little messy. I just moved in.”
At the side of the bus about 30 feet further up the road is an outhouse with a crescent moon and a star carved into the door. Crystal has already painted the outhouse with splotches of paint…dabbed−the impressions of Claude Monet, lily pads and bamboo stalks, the testing of colors.
“Caleb is so wonderful. My sister is very lucky. He knows how to do so many things−the perfect handyman but most of all he knows how to take care of a woman. Do you know how to take care of a woman, Stephen?”
It’s a rhetorical question…I think, so I just nod…not an answer but a smile.
“Does that mean yes?”
I could never be Caleb. I’m in awe of his energy and ability to come up with the things he builds and the patience he puts into his work is saintly. He’s converted an old truck into a jeep…or somewhat of a jeep, installing two new axles to raise the clearance of the vehicle and a wooden flatbed on the back. He uses a worthless old Chevy Vega engine as a generator. I have come to believe that being steeped this far in the country compels a person to build and to re-invent.
For me, living in town is a blur, something I endure, surrounded by a cluster of sleepy neighbors. It creates a numbness that induces me deeper into the ordinary…quiescent, free of drama and stress. I live anonymously. I wake up, have my breakfast…usually a granola-based cereal from hand to mouth, go to work and make my way through each class−a ghostly figure, distant and unimportant and then I come home, unscathed each evening and I watch meaningless television shows: The Big Bang Theory and NCIS. I try to spend an hour each night and part of the weekends grading school work.
“I don’t really have the experience to say,” I tell Crystal. “I haven’t dated much.”
* * *
Clare tells us dinner is still in progress, maybe an hour or so away; the lamb needs to smoke longer and she’s still prepping vegetables. Crystal doesn’t volunteer to help. She’s oblivious and detached, but in many ways, she and her sister are a lot alike. Clare gets lost in work. Crystal, on the other hand, disappears into the temporary obsession of the moment. This is my initial impression. I’ve already determined that she’s easily distracted, living in unknown worlds. Clare is beautifully aloof. She tends daily to her herbs and tomato plants. She’s a lover of the earth and all things that spring from the soil−flowers, vegetables and small wriggly creatures. Clare and Crystal are old school neo-hippies. They would have preferred to live a half century ago.
Clare can’t help touching anything that moves, picking it up…look what I found Caleb, as a small creature skittles across and around her hand. Her garden and flower beds are meshes of interweaving arms−life set loose. When she puts on her gloves and holsters her tools–hand trowel, shovel and pruners, a smile takes over her face. Her soft brown hair thins around her neck; her cheeks have the chisel of the earth. She always wears shorts that show off her tanned and muscled legs. It displays her strength and certainty. She spends her days with a dirt smudged face. And although Caleb is the architect of the structures he creates, Clare is the deity of the world they inhabit.
“Crystal…why don’t you show Stephen the Door?”
The Door…I’ve been coming to this farm for years and no one ever mentioned the Door, and now I feel a little left out like Caleb’s hiding things from me.
“It’s not much,” Caleb confesses, almost embarrassed−the quick hint of a smile to cover up a crime. And then, he brushes it off with a humorous gesture.
“Stephen, you need to see the Door. It’s so yummy!” Crystal bursts.
* * *
I see the Door in the distance, after we pass the half-standing shed where a scattered circle of chickens peck through the hopeless earth. I have to admit it’s very unusual. An old door…in its frame, scraped to the wood, planted in the open field. The pasture is the blend of all things autumn, browns and yellows blurred into the span of space with tall naked trees and prickly shrub lining both sides of the pasture. At the left line of the tree edge, nested in the yellowed grasses, is a rusted flat bed trailer completed by a gang of lazy cows. They nibble at the lumps of green hay laid out for their benefit. The autumn absorbs the landscape, which at one time was plowed…but now, has an awkward surface where the cows have plodded through the mud after the rains. Sharp corn stalks…years old, cut through the crust of the land, making the field difficult to navigate like walking on knives. I watch Crystal’s pale, sandaled feet carefully negotiate the space between the stalks. We measure each step so we don’t trip. The sky is dulled, blue-gray, covered in tumorous bruises. The occasional crow or sparrow goes from one side of the tree line to the other side. The air is filled with monotonous caws−a constant mockery. It’s a bleak black and white movie−a gothic scene. The trees scratch the autumn sky, Poe-esque with the hint of a dirge. The clouds move slowly; it’s a funeral procession.
* * *
Crystal gets to the Door first and opens it, walking through the threshold into a flood of brilliant light−a new sky…in a new world, very high and very wide:
It’s a neon laced milkshake…paint spots of prose, the clouds− the whip of cream, purples and pinks with the burn of yellow. The drone of an airplane−a black speck in the sky, swims in monotone above … straight, through a translucent sea … again, surrounded by the spray of Claude Monet colors.
Just over a berm is the hump of a bank, over it a modest pond, small and mostly round, tapering, having the occasional burst of frogs…splashing, creating the ripple of green and the glint of shards, sunlight−fingers tapping at the surface of the water. The day contemplates.
And as Crystal descends
into the meadow,
kicking off her sandals
and placing her naked feet
on the cool, soft grass,
She lets her threadbare dress
drop…
… to the grass below, her arms outstretched … naked, wide windmills gathering sunshine, receiving the day and she spins in circles. She’s a forest nymph in worship. Her skin is white…homemade ice cream, vanilla bean between her thighs. The air is filled with the smell of green−springtime unleashed.
Sheep…lazy visitors with needy naaahs pick through the grassy meadow, specked by an assortment of wild flowers: Black-eyed Susan, Beardtongue, Coneflower, Purple Poppy Mallow and Spiderwort, freed from the tyranny of an uncertain season.
The sun is a big yellow ball, flared around the edges, blending into the blue. It doesn’t bounce to a happy song. But its truss of feathers spread the light, the colors of Easter,
Descending….
…a mescaline umbrella … a scree of summer sunshine — perfect.
The sky is peppered with open books…deckled, cloth covered, paint brushes and canvas, an assortment of musical instruments, trumpets and saxophones, gold lacquered and etched…collectible items and dancing shoes. I sit under a fully leaved tree and take it all in. A gold watch stuck at 7:11 in the morning suspends−spinning, surrounded by the flutter of 50 blue Croatian Kinas. They look like candy sparkles. There must be a Ferris wheel around here somewhere. A slightly excited breeze taps at my face…the whisper of a song, not unlike the one Crystal was singing when I first arrived−the lyrics, an unknown language. It’s the voice of the newborn day. An adult doe and its faun stand frozen in the grass, staring my way. They don’t see Crystal dancing naked behind them. At least, I don’t think they see her. But who am I to say how animals see. The burst of daylight is retro-Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces…it’s all too beautiful. Crystal creates her world with the dance−the turning of a carousel. Her arms lift skyward. All dreams are naïve…3-D, the taste of enchantment−perfect. And my reality shifts.
This life in the bowl of nature is an absorbing thought.
* * *
We get back to the barn and the lamb still isn’t quite ready. Caleb pulls me to the side to explain that it will probably be another thirty minutes.
“The mesquite is still romancing the meat.”
I want to ask him how he made the Door do what it did but before I can get a sentence in, he tells me Crystal wanted him to put the door up in the field when she first got here. It was just lying in a pile of junk, things he wasn’t going to use. It was destined to be burned or to go to the dump. But he saved it for her.
“Isn’t it funny how one person’s debris becomes another person’s treasure?” Caleb states, matter-of-factly. “Crystal thought the door was charming with the chipped roses carved around the frame. I could see the possibilities in her eyes.”
“Save it for me please, Caleb!”
The door was sun split in many places. He had no idea why she wanted it set in the middle of the field…by itself−a sculpture of sorts, but he put it up, varnished and sealed the wood, put new gold hinges on the door, attaching it to a threshold, and it kept her amused.
“And out here, Stephen, in the middle of open country, whatever keeps a person amused is worth the time it takes to build.”
So I’m not sure if it was Crystal…or something inside me that made me see what I saw…something hopeful, hidden within, the burst of a secret world I have never known, something I didn’t believe existed before this day. Call it inspiration. I never ask Crystal if she made all this happen. I’m afraid of what she might say. And she never mentions it. But then, our interests have gone beyond the door. I want to believe I came to this magic on my own. So I keep my mouth shut, my way of preserving the experience. The best magic never reveals its secret.
Caleb tells me Clare thinks Crystal and I look good together. I’m too embarrassed to respond. She’s convinced there’s something amazing happening. The autumn air releases icy fingers that touch, bringing out the rose in her cheeks and there’s an emerging awareness in the day. And of course, her day is already heaven afloat.
“The vegetables are so lush this year!” Clare sings.
“Your choice,” Caleb says. “I don’t want you to feel pressured.”
Well…just maybe this will work. But my real thinking is…what is Caleb trying to build this time?
“How long till the lamb is finished?” Clare asks, again.
“Twenty more minutes, sweetheart.”
In the background is Crystal, out of earshot, straightening the stumps outside her trailer…what has become her patio furniture. Her nose is bruised with autumn sniffles.
“Come on!” She calls, motioning me with the wave of her arm. I’m her temporary obsession…at least, until dinner is ready and she tells me we can wait together. So I go to her…the stutter of steps toward her magic bus. Something has changed since I arrived. I’m not sure how to explain it or how it all came about or even how much of it is my own doing, but it started the second I stepped through the threshold of the Door. My thoughts are numb, in the gray of the clouds and all of a sudden I want to carve our initials into the nearest cottonwood tree. I feel like a child. The colors of the day start to change. I look up…and now, instead of the tumorous clouds that drift, there’s the chalk colored sky of spring on a canvas of blue, the finger painting of a child−Cy Twombly unconcerned.
* * *
I live in a small white house in Dorchester, Nebraska…unremarkable, not unlike most of the small houses in Dorchester. It has a large unadorned yard, half grass…half dirt, mostly weeds, with a couple of humbled trees. Everything inside is small: the kitchen, the living room and the two bedrooms. The walls are dull, uninviting, no family pictures, only a couple of prints which mean nothing to me, bought from a local garage sale, wildlife sketches and landscapes, each print hangs…separated from a cluster of many−forgotten. There’s no rhyme…or reason. The prints only cover small portions of the wall. There’s a sea of white surrounding them. I am a world of one. The whole of my life is focused on the large flat screen television set in the center of the living room wall…in front of my reclining chair.
Crystal plans to move in next month. She’s been assured the bus will always be there if she needs it…when we visit Caleb and Clare. She’s already left stacks of empty canvas and her acrylic paints in the guest bedroom. She’s hinted at a few changes. I didn’t ask what she meant by a few changes. A couple of open boxes filled with shoes and old hats scatter in the room. I’m not sure what to expect when she moves in. She hints at play acting. It will be fun, I promise! I hope I’m up to it. I’m nervous but excited at the same time. There’s a knot in my stomach. It doesn’t hurt but it’s tight.
Yes, I know things are going to be different, in what ways I can’t begin to imagine. I’m no longer certain what is real and what is not real or if there is a difference. She’s going to be high maintenance, Stephen. It will give you something to do. Being with Crystal blurs the lines of reality. It does heighten my anxiety a little. If you can think it, you can do it…Caleb’s wisdom. And who am I to question his way of thinking … I mean, who would have thought that a person could convert a barn into a home and if that wasn’t enough, carpet it with the wooden floor of a gymnasium…or imagine thresholds in the middle of an autumn field, fresh as a spring day, a doorway to fairy tales and exotic fictions−a new way to digest the world?
But one thing is for certain and I knew it the day Crystal put the boxes and the canvas frames along with her acrylic paints into the guest room, my eyes are wide open, something akin to faith. Not a religious faith but a human faith, the application of hope, the type of thing that motivates a person forward one step at a time. I feel bewitched. I heat myself a cup of tea and take the book, Salt: A World History off the night stand and carefully pick through the initial pages. When I come to the Introduction, I start to read. The words are like magic. They float off the pages like helium filled balloons. It takes me to a new place. I’m no longer a smudge in a small place. I look past the mundane toward the extra-ordinary. The sky explodes, filling my home with possibilities. I can’t stop reading. All of a sudden words look like paint. My days are now accounted for and in many ways expanding. I am consumed by the sweep of color.
Michael L. Woodruff is a graduate of the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. At the workshop, he received the Riekes Scholarship for Writing. His stories have appeared in a number of literary publications. He has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Robert J. Dau Award and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.