forever in the hills

forever in the hills

early summer

thumbing a ride

The glass wand inside the lid of Mercurochrome and the smell and pull and feel of white adhesive tape;
That red string, crispy paper and odd fragrance of a Band Aid;
The thin strip you had to very carefully tear in order to open a Kleenex box.
Its glass stopper, and to leave or not to leave the paper on a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce?
Cartons of ice cream with their big smeary flaps;
The tiny round tab on a milk bottle cap, echoed by one on the lid of an ice cream cup with its awkward wooden spoon.
Zippers on the side of a dress, under your left armpit.
Hooks and eyes.
Ridgy, crimped caps on soda pop that hurt, with bubbles that stung and weird stuff swirling around the bottom of the bottle.
Cary telling me how much she hated the big rubber toecaps of her US Keds when she was little;
Paper frills on the bony ends of swell meats;
And all the funny things flowers were stuck into or wound with--tape, wire, fake leaves or real ones from something else--so you could wear them on your shoulder.

NON-STICK BAKER

air waves

The radio was a real companion growing up. Mine sat on my bedside table. It was small and brown with a light and a red thing for the stations with a hole in the side of its celluloid cover over the station numbers where I’d dug it away to let out a gnat once. I would fall asleep listening to the radio, for years. For a very long time, well after I’d moved away from home, I hated sleeping on my other side. I felt out of balance and the ear that was up got cold. The other one, more used to being out, never did. I told a medical student about it once and he was delighted. He recognized my symptoms as the exact same ones he’d just learned miners suffer from always lying on one side digging ore.

hanging out

An Old Family Recipe

Every year for a number of years a horse show in Calistoga called the Napa Valley Classic raised money for kids. It was an evening-long event held on a Saturday in July. Jumps were set out on a grass arena at the fairgrounds, and people sat in the stands on one side or at tables along the other to watch. Because of the grass and the horses the arena smelled rich and wonderful and the colors were grand; everyone was dressed in fresh summer shirts and dresses, and lots of women wore hats; the jumps were freshly painted and tubs of greenery set throughout the grounds. Beneath a huge tent there was that nice swishy chuffle of ice as bottles of wine and spring water were fished out of bins; people brought elaborate picnics they set out with lots of energetic steppings back to check for the effect; caterers bustled about the pricier tables; teenagers in scarlet shirts shuttled electric “gators” to fetch hampers and the tired or infirm from the gate to the stands, and there was a solid feeling of well-being emanating from so many of us all enjoying the same thing for a good cause.

The main competition of the evening was a speed event, meaning the horse with the fastest time over the jumps won. Each horse could only go around once, time was added on for any faults, and the horse with the lowest time was the winner. It is very exciting to have horses ridden at top speed soar right by your seat. The horses seem close enough to put your hand on as they gallop by; and they pick up on the crowd’s excitement and try even harder. The riders, cued by their horses, try harder, too. Together they flew over huge mock-ups of castles and walls, gates and fences and, because Calistoga is part of the Napa Valley, a few wine barrels. Before the race the riders were auctioned off in teams. After all thirty or so horses jumped, lucky bidders split the proceeds, which ran into thousands of dollars, with half going to charity and the other half divvied up among the bidders whose teams took Win, Place or Show. Bidders cheered on their riders, the crowd cheered on the bidders and horses, and everyone had an extraordinary time seeing such beautiful athletes, both horses and riders, at the peak of their form competing for all they were worth, going like the wind a hand’s-breadth away.

Weeks before, I’d been invited by my friend Boris to sit at a table he had taken for the Classic. There were to be twelve of us and we’d each been asked to bring something. Two days before the event I realized I didn’t know how to make what I wanted to bring. Well, I didn’t know how to make the dressing for a cold vegetable salad I thought would be just the thing for a hot July evening. So, the day before the Classic, after several failed experiments, I called my cousin in Rhode Island. It was she who had made the salad I was trying to duplicate. I could do the vegetables, I just couldn’t figure out the dressing. I had last had the salad about twenty years ago. I could still see the platter in my mind’s eye perfectly. It had been all my godchild had asked for on her birthday. No cake or other dessert, just this salad. “Can you imagine?” asked her mother, wonderingly, as she got the table ready. She had indeed achieved a superb vegetarian array for her daughter and it had proven to be absolutely delicious. But, try as I might now, I couldn’t get the dressing right.

When I telephoned my cousin, I got her machine. I hadn’t spoken with her for a long time, at least a year and probably longer, but I could imagine her in her house on the shore in Little Compton, where she’d made the salad. I hoped she was only down at the beach and left a message. I explained my predicament and prayed she would call me back. She did, the next day. I had already been to town and gotten most of the vegetables. I had blanched and boiled, peeled and sliced all sizes of beets and carrots, radishes, endive, potatoes, and cauliflower from the store with string beans and herbs from the garden.

“Oh, I’m so glad you asked,” said my cousin, Annie. “The dressing really is an old family recipe and it came from California, from Aunt Peg (a native Californian who had died at home in Dedham, MA many years before).” And she told me. So simple: equal parts of mayonnaise and sour cream, a dash of horseradish and enough lemon juice to taste. “Peg would be so happy,” Annie said. “She’d love to know it’s being handed down and returning home.” Then we caught one another up in where our children were and what they were doing. My oldest had been married in Spain the year before and now their baby boy was to be christened there in August. “And you’re going?” asked Annie. “Well, no. I can’t afford to,” I said. “You should be there,” said Annie. “It’s important that you be there. I’ll send you a ticket. I can and I’d like to. Go find out and tell me how much it is. I want you to go.”

Reeling, I went off to buy sour cream in town and made the dressing in a daze. Fortunately, it was simplicity itself. Still dumb-founded by my cousin’s extraordinary generosity, I showered, changed and drove to the Classic, with the tray carefully bedded down in back so the vegetables wouldn’t slither away, and the dressing wedged in front so all that simplicity wouldn’t spill. The Classic was again a huge success. The spectators, the horses and the riders all had a grand time. Boris and his guests were no exception. They liked my salad. They liked everything everyone brought. We ate and drank, bid and watched intently as the glorious horses glided by under the lights. Lots of money was raised for charity, and lots of people came away amazed that such a beautiful event could happen practically right in their own backyard. They had been so moved by the competition they felt like they had been somewhere else for the evening, to a big city or the Olympics.

And I? I would be going all the way to Spain on the wings of an old family recipe.

A Cocktail Shower

One of those general truths, or old wives' tales, that's out there in the American cultural ether is about skunks: if your dog gets sprayed by a skunk the best remedy, the only remedy, is tomato juice. Useful or not, this information had been dormant in our collective family mind for years. Dormant until after dinner last week when we walked into the back room off the kitchen and were immediately sure we'd accidentally caused some electrical disaster. What else could explain such a full, peculiar stink that filled the room? Ah, not electrical or mechanical, but skunk. Skunk and dog. The dog looked up from where she'd been lying asleep on the floor, eyes expectant, tail brushing the rug as if to say, “Yes?” Oh, yes indeed, what a noseful. Although the dog had been with us for eight years, this was her first real full-fledged skunk engagement. It was too late at night to do anything about it so we said “Good night”, closed the door and let her be.

 

Come morning and plenty of mild air and sunshine, we put the skunk-shot dog outdoors and the back room out of our mind until after dinner. And then we really had to do something. We drove into town to the all-night supermarket to buy tomato juice. Big tomato juice can sales must still be strong. Unlike almost every other canned juice, tomato still comes in large, two-quart cans as well as a dinky bar-shot size, which tells you something about the validity of our American skunk lore. How many big cans does it take to do a dog? Oh, three should be enough to do a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, one for each third of the dog.

 

We took down three and put them in the basket and then, still wondering how we were going to do the juice thing, cruised a couple of more aisles to pick up a few items we should have gotten earlier that day. We noticed a guy in front of the ice cream locker reading varieties. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, we figured, so we asked him, totally out of the blue, if he'd ever washed a dog in tomato juice because of a run-in with a skunk. “Hey, all the time, last summer,” he said. He'd lived by some canal down south that attracted skunks to its banks which in turn attracted his long-haired Australian shepherd, which meant he'd bought tomato juice by the case and could still see it, in his mind's eye, stacked by thirty-two's in his garage.

 

There must be something in the experience that still surrounds the guy like an aura, because out of all 25 or 30 people in the market at that hour, he was the one we chose to ask. “Thing is,” he said, “you've got to let it soak in, for at least 20 or 30 minutes for it to do any good. What kind of dog you got, long or short-haired? Chessy, hunh? Probably two cans'll do. But get three and you can always have a glass of juice in the morning if you have any extra. My dog, she always took four, being long-haired and all. And, watch out when they shake.”

 

 

Shake? We could just see the M*A*S*H effect of red juice splattered everywhere on the white tiles of the master bathroom. When we got home we caught the dog and put her in the stall shower of the kids' bathroom with the cans and then went and got an opener. We poured two cans of juice on her, rubbing it in, feeling really glad to be alive. Well, not exactly. It's hard distributing juice evenly throughout a large dog's wiry coat while you sit half in and half out of a glass-doored shower stall, late at night, trying not to think dark thoughts while getting doused with tomato juice. The dog's back and shoulders were easy to do but her tail and legs were impossible. How were we sure we were even getting the places where the skunk had got the dog? And then how to wait out that soak of half an hour? What do you do if an 85 pound, soaking wet, Virgin Bloody Mary dog bolts?

 

Wait a minute. This is the dog that drank the kids' apple juice when they were babies. Sure enough, she liked tomato juice. She began licking up the juice on the floor of the shower. She walked around and around the shower slowly and deliberately licking up the juice as it dripped steadily off her body. Ten minutes of full-dog engagement. No bolt, no whine, no agitation. Easy. After the shower floor and walls were clean as far up as her standing-dog height, she calmly stood. Ten more minutes to go. With the shower door open a crack we read aloud to her from one of the books on the shelf in the bathroom. She listened with her snout just poking out until it was time for a warm water rinse. She didn't mind at all, being a water dog. It's the cold water from an outside hose she hates.

 

 

Now she only faintly smelled of skunk and that deep vegetable smell tomato and V-8 juice have. Trying the portable hair dryer on her after a good toweling off, however, was a mistake. The hot air drove the dog to distraction, especially when it breezed around her ears. So we had to settle for the silver medal: clean and damp, not the gold: clean and dry; but, sweeter-smelling, nonetheless. We both spent a quiet, uneventful night in our respective lairs. It had taken two cans. The third is out in the pantry, ready in reserve.

 

You know, we won't mind a bit if we're reading ice cream flavors late in the supermarket

some evening and a nice, slightly agitated lady comes up, attracted by our aura, to ask if the old wives' tale about skunks and tomato juice is true. We, too, can give her an authoritative “Yes.” And, who knows, she might even luck out and have a juice-loving dog. But we will caution her that the time to rinse down the bathroom is right after you get the dog done. Letting tomato juice set until morning isn't a good idea, unless you like scrubbing off vegetable fibre that's bonded dog-high everywhere in a confined space. We had learned first-hand we didn't.

 

 

DH Stockton, 10 Mar 97

BACCHUS

Water falling too softly to bounce off of anything but itself, as it gathered across the ground, milk against the shores of brown sugar islands in a bowl of cream of wheat, soaking down and further down, the turf getting heavy.

One raised hoof, pinned against the frame of the stall door, stuck and immovable, hand around the hock like two fingers on the bone of an upright lamb chop.

Two shoulders went hard against an iron bar, and the bar against the leg, heaving till a crack let the great, black mass of body heavier than body shift enough for that last hoof to fly free and lie even more still, legs in the same plane now, nestled against that turf, splayed in mid-gate, and one wandering wild eye at an angle more upside down than a cat sleeping

And a backhoe shouldn’t have been rolling up through that muck if it wanted to get back out that night but Greg Abreu thought he deserved to settle into the ground in a dug-out bed to keep the morning sun from ever reflecting in that frightened eye, and the chain pulled him out from the stall.

He’s sleeping? . . . Yes, Bacchus is sleeping . . .And he’s not waking up? . . .No, he’s not waking up . . . He’s really sleeping a lot? . . .Yes, he’s really sleeping a lot . . .And he’s not waking up? . . . No. He isn’t . . . .When is he coming back?  He’s here.  He’s ded? . . . Yes. Ded.

Mounded up on the sides, and patted down with the smooth side of the big toothed shovel, big yellow arm tapping up and down more delicately than patty cake and Bob’s thumb and finger caressing that big shape and smoothing it over, and the wildflowers below and now new ones above . . .

And one day that mound dropped down just a little bit, like cool air over a soufflé, and settled back down below the lip of the pan . . .Spirit flying.

 

--- CHS

FOX DEATH

The guinea fowls’ cries brought me reluctantly awake.

 

The smoky thread of a grey fox

 

Insensate. A digger pinecone, big as a football.

 

Fish & Game was tongue-tied.

 

Ma in the garage, 3 dogs, the cat, all eyes.

 

The fox back and forth, back and forth. An episode of teeth chattering.

 

Fireman John, after the wrong chicken houses, perturbed neighbors and a pool scoop.

 

A paroxysm

 

2 shots

 

“Have you got a shovel?”

 

Limp; hair soft as clouds. The bright smear on the blade of the shovel.

 

The rest of the day disturbed. Unsettled. Misaligned.

 

We know so damn little about where we live.

 

 -- DHS