“But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before”
Two houses are going into the fields next door. From what I could find out, those fields have been open for over two hundred years. We could once walk the ridge from Warwick Furnace coming off Rt. 23 to Coventryville Road and be under sky or trees the whole way. That’s all gone now. This place is tightening up, and both my wife and I are feeling a longing for more country.
I do not know what this means in real life. In my flush and absurd imagination, it means us standing under a huge sky looking at mountains or water. I have an axe on my shoulder because it makes me look competent, as if I could strip mighty logs and then heave them into line for our snug cabin which I will grapple into creation with my meaty-paw-handle-saw-good hands. Some hovel-looking home crouches behind us. We’ve been clearing the animal lairs from the pantry and painting. In the small town 15 miles distant, the stumpy natives, all of whom have unibrows, look at us from behind shop windows and ask each other ‘why, the new people moved into the old Grendel homestead why didn’t nobody tell them about the turrible thing that happened there?’
Oh, right, Real Life.
In this life, we’ve talked of Maine and the West and have exhausted Zillow with searches and lists. Ties keep us here for now. Family obligations, a job, friendships, the familiarity of the known, the little communities of new friends I’ve made, the geography I carry in my head, our histories, the sound of our names said warmly in others’ voices.
We’re also growing older which preaches ‘stay, take it easy, don’t be foolish’. Those voices sound like death to me and only spur my rebelliousness until my back hunches me over as if I am hoisting beams upon it or my hands ache with the arthritis, but I can still hold tools and work from 6 to 5 with only a few more breaks than I once took. I cannot imagine moving to a ‘retirement community’ where I just see the ancient go to be among themselves as they decay, or choosing someplace because it’s near good hospitals and doctors.* In the suspicious, luddite recesses of my brain, I envision the whole slow, sad process of desperately trying to stay alive so I can watch more TV from my wheelchair in a neon-lit coffin of an old age home. Yea, all those good hospitals and doctors delivered me to this place, where beshat and dimming out, I drool to pass the days.
My father’s great fear was ending up in in one of those facilities. He didn’t, but I carry the fear for him now.
We both think about more country in which to walk, a deeper silence, a relief from the push of crowds. All of this of course without becoming two of that intrusive crowd depleting what we love. Is there no relief from irony?
However, my problem with such two-in-the-wilderness conjecture is that I like most human beings and have found many, like me I hope, to be mostly screwed up and good. I like standing behind the coffee bar at Wellington, making drinks and listening to customers tell their stories … of India and lost love and books and rough times opening into good. I like story time and having former students bring their children to sit with all the others and count Iron Men and bulls and sing songs about the bear who sleeps under the hickory dickory dock clock. In Hershey, I like listening to police officers reach back and make alive again their experiences, both funny and tragic. I love the crew who walk dogs with me at Lamancha and my fellow booksellers.
I have been ‘sivilized’, but I want Huck’s desire, that deep urge to go out into country I have not seen. Tick-tock tick-tock and the mouse runs up the clock, and I want to keep running until the clock gives out.
*I would like a competent dentist with 50 miles. I would prefer not to drop dead while toothless.
