~I’d say that I really hate hotels, but we checked out of the one we were staying in and managed to leave the power cord for the laptop in the room. So I’ll be saying nice things about them until I get it back. Karma and all that, you know.
~We’re lodged in a rental house that was last massaged by a carpenters hands sometime before the boys landed in Normandy. And it’s urban. Middle of the city. There’s creaks and knocks and the neighborhood isn’t very secure. As in – the Ruger strays not so far from my hand – secure. On the plus side, Ally can walk across the street to go to work. and the dogs have a veritable football field to romp in, just out the back door.
~No email at the moment. Changing addresses for an existing account does that, I guess. Hint to my kids – leave comments here or call, okay?
~The lads working in the shop for my employer, the ones who produce the goodies that I spend my day installing, took up a collection for us. $67, and most of it in one dollar bills. I have to say, that one moved me closer to tears than anything. Most of these guys are minimum wage and struggling. Working in a sweatbox for 10 hours a day in June heat. Just . . . damn.
~I took a detour on my way to the jobsite yesterday so I could see a bit of countryside. It wasn’t the backwater by any means, more of a gentrified slice of brick homes set out in a nice way and nestled back among manicured pines and “rustic” barns. But it was something, a little something. A little piece of the woods.
~They’ll be pulling up to the husk of my (real) house with a D-8 shortly, and put big ruts in the lawn while the diesel engine powers a large blade through my living room. I might go down and watch the show but I don’t think Ally wants any part of that.
~Today we go sign some papers which will set in motion the building of a new house. There was a moment when we viewed the model house, something about the large bathtub, and Ally broke and there were tears. I guess I saw it too, giving the grandson a bath so many nights, and the giggles and the splashing, the shimmying of a small boy set in water. And later, wrapped in a towel and warm. The contentment of such things, my word . . . and what my good wife sees in a bathroom, in a model house.
~I dug Ally’s earrings out of a pile of filthy insulation the other day and remembered. It was the two of us out on the town . . . what, twenty years ago? Kids at the sitters, she and I strolling a waterfront on a brisk fall evening and there was a jewelry store set in there somewhere, and just an impulse. Dropping something north of a paycheck on a simple set of opals, and Ally protesting in that way women have, a smile and a frown all at the same time. But the look boy, the look. The dancing in the eyes, and the crook of a finger, and I was as lost as I was the first time I saw her. Little baubles and large dreams, they are.
~Battery’s getting low. Mustn’t let the precious go completely dead, here. We survive.
~Finding hotels that allow dogs to stay, legally or with that sort of wink and a nod thing, is a task best reserved for treasure hunters. Knobby kneed old timers in bermuda shorts and black socks, waving an instrument over a sandy beach.
~Finding one with internet access beyond that of a tin can and a bit of string? Oh please.
~Owning but two pair of pants and a sack of T-shirts is strangely liberating. ‘Cause they’re new! And new work boots, too!
~My wife, on the other hand, has filled the hotel clothes rack and is searching for more hangers. Those dresser drawers are filling up as well.
~Telling a tale to 3 people at the Watering Hole will result in an entire city dialing your phone. I tell ye, it’s just like the internet.
~My pal Pam at the Sixweasels site (over there, to the lefty side) wrote a thing yesterday and it was . . . darlin’ I have no words. And I’m sorry about your mascara, but the tears lubricated your typing fingers just beautifully.
~The prayers and notes left by good people mean everything to us. Thank you so much.
~Sifting through a burn out house is like playing in a bag of charcoal briquettes.
~Come tomorrow, we’ll get to inventory everything in the house. Ally sez her diamond earrings were on the nightstand, in a glass dish, where they always were. It’s about a foot deep in wet ceiling insulation and drywall right now. Boy, that might take some time.
More to come. Sincere thanks to all of you.
I don’t know where I got it from. Probably a genetic thing, gifted from farming grandfathers who heeded lowing bovines to rise from their slumbers on any given day. But I’ve always been one who spent the best hours of the day before 6. That’s 6 am. As in pre-sunrise, with no demands save for a coffeepot and a sleeping dog stretched at my feet.
Yesterday was a 3 am sort of morning. Stillness in the backwater, a flash of heat lightning from the front window as I sat in reclined surf mode, the laptop carrying me hither and yon as it often does. The stories, the ranting. Checking the local weather radar. “Hmmm. . . big slice of rain blowing in. Need it. Ought to be here any time now.”
And indeed, the lightning turned frequent, and a trickle of rain became a heavy downpour and the light show was spotlighting the front yard beautifully for me, long seconds at a time. “Good rain, be cutting grass this weekend for sure, now.”
There came a pittering sound, a sputtering from somewhere in the kitchen, and the big Laborador shifted with a grunt in his sleep, even as I shifted in my chair and silently blessed my sleeping wife. “Made the coffee last night, just kicked on out there. Nice of her”, because she does not always do this for me.
Dark, and quiet. The glow of a laptop and a single table lamp.
For whatever reason, and I guess I’ll be forever wondering, I happened to look at the cable modem which all of a sudden had gone dark. A bugger it is, to live in storm country where modems go dark and the morning internet is stilled. I heaved up out of the chair and stumbled to the kitchen, the sputtering sound, and flicked the light switch. Nothing. Still had a table lamp on, but no overhead. Huh?
And the laundry room.
Filling with smoke.
There’s minutes that turn your brain to absolute mush. I yanked to back door open to find flames curling up the outside wall of the house and my feet were flying toward the hose – the HOSE! – hanging in blackness at the other end of the house. Drag the hose, hit the nozzle and . . . nothing.
“No pressure . . . Jesus the well pump’s out too!”
There was thumping feet and slick wood deck and a battle cry coming from my very soul out there in the dark, and an eerie glow from the ventilated soffit that finally tripped my carpenter brain – fire in the roof trusses! Move goddam it!
The sputtering sound. Racing into the bedroom where my wife lay dreaming, and the hellish noise of a bass voice gone tenor on me, and a look to the dogs, and Ally coming up flying and grabbing for clothes.
A very long moment with a flashilight that appeared in my hand, and breaking it on the foot of the laptop table as I yanked cords and pushed wife and Lab to the front door, and raced down the driveway to the rig and Ally to her car, and throwing stuff in the rig, and back to the house for, what? What to save, what to gather? Ally blowing her horn and screaming “Get out Jim, get out!”
But for a small dog, almost forgotten, cowering by the coffee table, and unmoving in fear, and me scooping him up and getting out, Jim. Getting the hell out. To move cars to the yard next door. 911ing the hell out of cell phones that were somehow in pockets.
And standing, in rain, to watch the backwater burn.
There’s a slowness about it all. Hearing fire trucks race across roads miles from you, and know that they are lost trying to find this little place, and seeing the roof slowly succomb to flames, and a wife in tears seeing a horror. There’s a slowness to backwater living even as there’s a slowness to its dieing.
I sit here in this little motel room, with the two dogs and Ally, and the smoke is still thick on my clothes from yesterday. Likely ruined, so far as clothes go. But I might wear them today, trudging through the sodden mess that 30 firemen make when going about their business. A business that wafts great sheets of spray on dreams afire, and you see it in their eyes, and they look at you and grip a shoulder for a moment, and you know sorrow.
Yet we live, and haven’t made any promise beyond the next hour or day. The dogs look at me and remember the shouting and feel as if they’ve done something wrong, and I soothe them and say “It’s all fine boys”, and they aren’t convinced.
I tried to tell Ally not to go with me this morning, to meet the insurance man, and sift through that rubble, but she is Ally. She looked at me. The very deep part of her looked at me and murmured, “I’m going.”
And she will. Because it is ever and always her and I.
God willing, it always will be.
On a completely unrelated note, blogging may be light for a while.
That’s a joke son. . .
