21st Century Bogatyr: August 2020

Friday, August 28, 2020

Some Relief Amongst the Chaos at Woodpecker Flats

"Oh, put it on the ground/ spread it all around/ dig it with a hoe/ it will make your flowers grow" Ray Glasser

This is the twelfth part of a work of fiction in progress. Links to all of the other parts can be found at the bottom of this page.

by Zvi Baranoff

My first impression of the place when we arrived there in the middle of the night was that it resembled a junkyard. In the daylight, with Dave leading us about as he pointed with his staff, my initial impressions hadn't shifted much.

My first impression of Dave was that he was fairly advanced in years. In the decades upon decades since that morning when we met, I would see the fellow every few years and he never really seemed to age much. It is as if he had gotten old at a fairly young age and then settled into that role forever unchanged.

Dave did often talk about his eventual demise and elaborated in complicated details about his eventual funeral. That was one of his favorite recurring monologues. The details would keep changing but always involved a Viking theme, a huge pyre, explosives and guns, loud music and large crowds that included the Hari Krishnas and the Hells Angels.

Dave was exuberant about everything and believed himself to reside at the very center of the universe. He spoke with run-on superlatives about the history and future of Woodpecker Flats, whether or not anyone else could see it the way he described it.

For Dave, Woodpecker Flats, which wasn't really flat at all, was a dream come true and a Great Quest and the Promised Land and his personal playground. He relished in all the junk and chaos and confusion and the odd collection of broke-down people scattered about as if each of these bring light and beauty to the world if one just looks at it from the right angle.

Everything about the place was a mess, chaotic, a disruption or a confusion and in some stage of decay. David was immensely proud and satisfied with it all.

He showed me art projects that he worked on for months. They were full of whimsical details and complex planning. They were all built with no regard to physical reality or even gravity. Shortly after any of these labor intensive projects reached completion, they would fall down.

There they would be in a devastated heap and Dave would glow about how wonderful it was but for some tiny flaw or another. He seemed to be in denial as to why the project would not stand for centuries or millennium. He would never acknowledge that the primary flaw was that while trying to defy social and artistic norms, he also tried to deny the Law of Gravity, which is one law that none of us can defy for long. A project might clearly be in a pile and a heap, dead and quite unlikely to see resurrection. In his eyes, however, a monument was erected that will be a glowing beacon to the Universe in Perpetuity.

There was a generalized disregard for any sort of expertise there. Most higher education at Woodpecker Flats was suspect. There was a broad disregard for all scientific theory. Invisible things such as gravity and germs were disregarded. On the other hand, rarely observed phenomena such as fairies, angels and space aliens were all taken very seriously and held in high regard.

As we wandered about, following Dave and taking in the sites of fallen down art and broken down cars, we heard a stream of expletives in French accompanying the sound of banging on metal.

"Ah, that would be Jacques. He is a Class A mechanic and a wonderful person and a wizard with tools. You boys have to meet him!" Dave carried on in his ebullient and exuberant manner as he led us in the direction of all that French cursing and banging.

Jacques spoke with a thick rural Quebecois accent and mangled any English words that he reluctantly used if he absolutely wanted anyone else to understand him. I don't think that he much cared if anyone understood him unless they were in his way and then he made himself perfectly understood.

English was usually accompanied with spitting and wild gesticulation. He drank heavily, starting early in the morning. Most of his words in any language were slurred. The slurring definitely contributed to the incomprehensibility of Jacques.

Over the following years I heard various possible background stories about the man and have no way of knowing how much truth there was in any of those tales. I never heard a word about the past directly from his lips.

Others told me lots of contradictory stories with all sorts of possible explanations of his demeanor and circumstances. He was wanted for a politically motivated bank robbery, a series of bombings or an attempted assassination, perhaps. He had killed or maimed a man, fighting over a woman, maybe. He had beaten a wife or girlfriend that had cheated on him, some claimed. He was a pilot for drug lords and lost or stole a load, they said. He was wanted by the American Feds, or the Canadian Mounties or the Mexicano Federales or had a price on his head with one set of mobsters or another.

All of the versions agreed that he was both wanted and unwanted everywhere else in the world except for Woodpecker Flats.

Years later, coincidentally while I was visiting Woodpecker Flats, FBI agents came and quietly arrested Jacques. No one saw or heard from him for three years.

Then, one day, he walked up the driveway carrying a small knapsack which contained all of his worldly possessions. He had sobered up in prison. He had not learned much English. His accent was still thick but the words were no longer slurred. He was still difficult to understand and truly still did not try much to be understood. He never spoke of his time away and he would glare at folks when he thought that they were talking about it.

As we got closer to all that banging and yelling, we saw a disabled Chevy similar in model and vintage to my personal heap. The car was up on blocks and a pair of legs were sticking out from under it, and bare feet. Dave kicked the bottom of the feet.

Jacques jumped up and looked ready to pounce, until he saw that it was Dave. They each smiled widely and embraced in a bear hug. Then they commenced to yelling and gesticulating. It was all incomprehensible to us, yet there was all appearance of some form of communication going on.

When they came to a conclusion and some sort of agreement, Dave took us aside. Dave lowered his voice and spoke to us in confidence and with as close to a whisper as he could, which was not really very whisper-like. He told us that Jacques had agreed to see what he could do for my car and that he would cannibalize that other vehicle for any useful parts. "I know that it has a very nice cigarette lighter," Dave told us with a wink.

I cannot say that I had any coherent thoughts whatsoever and no real expectations at that point. I handed my keys over to the French-Canadian stranger. I hoped for the best as we followed Dave along a trail towards his house. He said that there was likely to be breakfast waiting for us.

On the way to the house, Dave pointed out his gardens, vineyards and orchards. The gardens were full of weeds. The fences were all knocked over. What the deer and moles hadn't eaten the insects and worms had decimated. The grape vines were all stunted. The apples in the trees all looked mealy and the trees looked sickly.

When we got to the house, the hitchhikers that guided us to Woodpecker Flats from the backseat were cooking pancakes by the stack. They were cooking outside and flies buzzed all about.

Dave brought us into his house, yelling an introduction to his young wife, Rose. She was stretched out on a mattress on the floor with a mostly sleeping babe at her breast. The yelling woke the little one and the baby started crying. A couple of other little children were running about in varying stages of disarray and undress. Rose looked at us and she smiled. Rose smiled at us, at her children, at her husband and at the universe.

Over the years, when I returned to Woodpecker Flats, I would watch those children grow up and grow into themselves. As soon as each of them were old enough to get out on their own, they went as far as they could to get away from their parents, that place and the way people lived there. They each studied at prodigious universities, graduated with honors and accolades and became committed professionals.

Shortly after the youngest of these three had left the nest, Rose got sick and rapidly became increasingly ill. All sorts of herbalists and crystal workers and faith healers with salves and lotions and potions and tinctures had absolutely no effect on her.

By the time that the first medical doctor had seen her, the cancer was quite advanced. She passed away at home and is buried there as well. Dave planted a rose bush on Rose's grave which he took very good care of.

A few years later, Jacques also passed away. He was buried near Rose. Dave carved a tree stump into an elaborate memorial for the French-Canadian. A rifle, a wrench and the Fleur de Lis are obvious and observable, with other symbols and images blended in as well.

Of course, all of that dying and burying occur many years later. At that moment, a baby was bawling, hippies were cooking pancakes and a fugitive Frenchman was banging on old Chevrolets.

We ate our fill and Dave led us over to his workshop. He told us that he had gifts for us. We followed the old man with the staff and floppy hat.

The workshop was piled with half-finished carvings. Tools were spread all over. Sawdust drifts were on the floor and the dust filled the air.

Books and magazines were piled all over the place. This was, of course, long before books had been criminalized. Books were cheap and plentiful back then. Now those books that he tossed about would be worth a fortune.

The changes in Federal law never really affected how Dave handled his books. He never took any laws or regulations or protocols seriously. The Prohibition of Books did, however, slow his acquisition of new additions to his unread piles.

Dave pushed himself into his overcrowded and disarranged workshop and we tried to find somewhere to stand while he ransacked the place as he looked about.

"It's here somewhere," he said as he tossed things about. He muttered and clucked and snorted as he opened drawers and moved things about until he came to one particular book. "Aha and eurika!" he shouted. He leafed through the book until he found a single dollar bill, which he held up proudly and waved about for a while.

Dave climbed over the mess and stood in front of me and very formally handed me that single dollar bill. "When you get down to the bottom of the hill," he told me, "stop at that little store and buy a scratch off lottery ticket. You never know…" He trailed off speaking and winked at me.

He turned to Greg and said, "I have something here, somewhere, for you too. Wait and I will find it." He was back at searching, opening drawers of his semi buried desk until he shouted "Eureka!" again. This time he came up with a single quarter which he handed to Greg. "Buy some candy with this. They have good candy at that store." He smiled broadly.

Dave stepped over the new piles that he had recently created, pushed the door open with a theatrical flourish and strolled out of his shop. Greg and I looked at each other and we each simultaneously shrugged. We followed him out the door and on a trail through a wooded area and around and about until we were back to where Jacques was busy switching out Chevy parts.

Jacques had banged out some of my dents. He had replaced the driver's side back door with the back door from the other Chevy, so I now had one door on the driver's side that could open and close. The "new" door had a window that was stuck, three quarters of the way up. He used baling wire and duct tape in various creative ways.

The exhaust system was held up by a couple of metal clothes hangers. My worn out windshield wipers were replaced with slightly less worn out ones. My two most bald tires were replaced with slightly less bald ones. We had inherited, as Dave had suggested, a very nice cigarette lighter. There was now a jack in the trunk but still no spare.

Greg and I were ready to roll and we piled ourselves into my slightly less of a disaster car. We drove away, down the winding mountain road, back towards the highway.

At the bottom of the hill we found the small country store and parked that heap in the store's lot. We had $1.25 to spend and clear directions on how to spend it.

Greg found two gumballs for a quarter and we got ourselves a Scratch Off lottery ticket with the dollar. We sat on a bench outside of that store, each of us chewing gum and both of us staring at that lottery ticket for a really long time. Eventually, I went ahead and put my thumbnail to work on the ticket. The ticket was a winner and paid off $100. We bought gasoline, junk food and a couple of beers and pointed that car towards home.

We made it back almost to my parents' house, running out of gas about a block away. We each tried to get as straight and as right and as settled we could.

Greg found a factory job with union pay and worked his way up to a supervisor position. He married. He bought a house. He joined a bowling league.

I tried to do similarly, but that was not how things worked out for me. Now I am in Indiana, staring at the hyperloop station and trying to work up the nerve to jump down into that gut wrenching, mind fucking monstrosity.

Yea. Now, many years later, here I am on the road and still unsettled but still alive. Greg died from a drug overdose and is buried in New Jersey.

The beginning tinges of daylight were then visible. It was already an hour later on the East Coast.

I put my flask to my lips and tipped it back. The whiskey helped calm my jittery nerves. I accepted my fate. I determined at that moment that if I survived the East Coast phase of this buggered up voyage, I would stop off in Tennessee on my way home and check on Dave at Woodpecker Flats.

I drove as if watching myself from afar. I set the car into gear and dropped into the hyperloop.

I was swirled and flushed and pushed and yanked all in a most discomforting manner. I emerged just a few minutes later in Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. I blended in with the morning rush hour traffic.

Links to the other posted parts of this story, Chapters 1 - 26.

Part 1: Grace and Mercy If Luck Holds

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/05/grace-and-mercy-if-luck-holds.html?m=1

Part 2: Everything Was Fine Until It All Went Sideways

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/everything-was-fine-until-it-all-went.html

Part 3: I Blink In & Out and Awakened In the Zone

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/i-blink-in-out-and-awakened-in-zone.html

Part 4: Out Of Time

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/out-of-time.html

Part 5: Even Without Clocks

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/even-without-clocks.html

Part 6: Cerveza & Barbecue Before I Go

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/cerveza-barbecue-before-i-go.html?m=1

Part 7: Heading Towards the Exit

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/heading-towards-exit.html?m=1

Part 8: A Sign, Divine Guidance & Moxie

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-sign-divine-guidance-moxie.html?m=1

Part 9: Somehow We Kept Breathing

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/somehow-we-kept-breathing.html?m=1

Part 10: I Squinted and Stared Through it All

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/i-squinted-and-stared-through-it-all.html?m=1

Part 11: Riding a Wave

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/riding-wave.html?m=1

Part 12: Some Relief Amongst the Chaos at Woodpecker Flats

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/some-relief-amongst-chaos-at-woodpecker.html?m=1

Part 13: A "Classy" Operation in the District of Columbia

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-classy-operation-in-district-of.html?m=1

Part 14: In the Shadow of the Dome

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/09/in-shadow-of-dome.html?m=1

Part 15: Hidden Places and Dark Corners

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/11/hidden-places-and-dark-corners.html?m=1

Part 16: On the Jersey Shore

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/12/on-jersey-shore.html?m=1

Part 17: Dreaming at the No Tell Motel

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/01/dreaming-at-no-tell-motel.html?m=1

Part 18: The Coffee Didn't Help

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-coffee-didnt-help.html?m=1

Part 19: Like Two Drops of Rain

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/02/like-two-drops-of-rain.html?m=1

Part 20 : Chased by the Devil

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/03/chased-by-devil.html?m=1

Part 21: An Arcade and a Penny for Your Thoughts

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/11/an-arcade-and-penny-for-your-thoughts.html?m=1

Part 22: We Have to Talk, She Said

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/11/we-have-to-talk-she-said.html

Part 23: She Climbed Out of the Water

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/12/she-climbed-out-of-water.html

Part 24: Passions, Fires and Unfinished Business

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/04/unfinished-business.html

Part 25: The Book Trade Hasn't Killed Me Yet

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-book-trade-hasnt-killed-me-yet.html?m=1

Part 26: A Detour Through the Fire

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-detour-through-fire.html?m=1

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Riding a Wave

"The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea."

Vladimir Nabokov

This is the eleventh part of a work in progress. Links to the rest can be found at the bottom of this page.

by Zvi Baranoff

Gas was cheap and all the cars ran on that stuff back then. Day labor was plentiful and they could pay you in cash, which not only was legal to have but was widely used by everybody for most transactions. We would pick up an odd job for a day or two and have folding currency in our pockets. Money put gasoline in the tank and that internal combustion engine would power the car, with us in it down the road.

Lots of free food could be found in dumpsters behind grocery stores and restaurants. That was before the poisoning of disposed food or the locking of dumpsters. That was long before they began pressing such excess into building blocks for public housing projects.

We camped and sometimes slept in the car and occasionally rented a cheap room, because back then camping was widespread and even encouraged and there were lots of cheap rooms.

We were in the flow and everything was going our way. At highway rest stops families would invite us to picnics and sometimes birthday parties.

We found change every time we passed a payphone or a vending machine. I found a quarter - the most widely used coin in the days when coins were used - on the floor of a casino, where we stopped to use the pisser. I dropped that quarter down into the nearest slot machine and lights and bells and bouncing coins were, in our eyes, the obvious natural phenomena attached to our very being, and we left there with a bucket full of quarters.

Restaurants often accidentally supersized our orders, bringing us extra food at the price of the smaller order. Pizza guys would give us whole pizzas free. Gas station attendants would overrun the amount paid half the time.

If there was a concert or a festival, we always got in for free. Every town we hit had plenty of day labor, so we had work whenever we needed money. The weather had been persistently pleasant.

All told, we felt blessed by the universe and we were quite convinced that we deserved to be blessed so, and that surely it would go on forever, like an endless summer and perpetual youth.

We were at least somewhat cute and women would regularly take pity on us. We were fed, cuddled and coddled. Older women would baby us. Younger women would experiment on us. All of them would tell us secrets about their boyfriends or husbands, their fathers and brothers and their brothers' friends and the boys in their schools or the men at their jobs.

They would show us the secret places where skinny dipping occurs.They would all claim to be monogamous or virgins or religious, and therefore have limits as to how far they would go with us. These various and arbitrary sets of limitations resulted in rules and promises and rule breaking and white lies and some very creative and interesting interpretations of commitments and responsibilities.

During that carefree road trip we met all sorts of lovely companions of varying shades and shapes and sizes and degrees of sweetness and saltiness. They had a range of accents and customs and habits. We experienced and learned much along the way.

So all was well and we were having lots of luck and more fun than any two young men could ever deserve. We found our way to a small college campus in Georgia and we sat in the shade of the grand trees there to eat lunch, drink a beer and watch the world go by, soaking it all in.

When a couple of pretty coeds approached us, we just assumed that this was the way our life would continue to unfold because a cornucopia of blessings was our destiny. The trajectory of our fate, however, was shifting dramatically and we were totally unaware of what fate had in store for us.

The girls chatted and joked and babbled and bubbled and flirted with us and we returned the nonsense in equal or greater proportions. They batted their eyes and rearranged their skirts and flicked their hair and they weaved their webs and we buzzed happily right into the webs.

They said that they could sneak us into the Sorority House. They said that we could bathe and eat and sleep. We thought we were being dipped in honey or maybe some better fate than that. Fate takes its own course.

We were fed delicacies and magic potions, or maybe it was just junk food and odd combinations of drugs. The sorority sisters were all being very nice to us. There were a whole gaggle of them coming and going and giggling around us.

We thoroughly let our defenses down. When we were told that we each had a bubble bath waiting for us, it seemed to be the course of nature and gracious divinity at work. We were led in separate directions by giggling coeds.

I was brought into a large bathroom with a comfortable tub filled with water complete with a froth of soap bubbles. The young woman guiding me giggled some more, hugged me briefly and skipped out of the bathroom, leaving me alone.

I undressed and climbed into the bath. I sank under the water while contemplating my fate. I was very self assured and believed sincerely that I was having very good luck. Only the very young can be so very sure of themselves and their circumstances.

While I soaked, two sorority sisters in revealing bikinis wriggled into the bathroom and sat themselves down on the edge of the tub. Without speaking to me they played through Rock-Paper-Scissors best out of three. I could certainly not tell you which was the 'winner'.

One of them took a gentle bite of my right ear and then whispered that she was going to wash my back. She climbed behind me with a leg stretched forward on each side of me and proceeded to soap up my back with some fruity bar of soap.

This was all a little embarrassing, but certainly enjoyable to begin with. The remaining coed on the side of the tub gabbed and gossipped and prattleled and rattled. It was all quite confusing and distracting and then went on to be even more so.

The girl in the tub let go of that fruity bar of soap and it slipped off my left shoulder. It slid down my chest and dropped into the water above my lap. It sank under all those bubbles of the bubble bath. The soap disappeared from sight.

Ms Gabby broke off her monologue and her face went most serious and determined when she gave me a direct stare and said, "Don't worry. I will find it." Then she thrust her arm through the frothy suds groping about until she found something and clasped it firmly. She certainly had not found the soap. I let out a gasp or a whimper or a sigh or some combination. Whatever was going on, I was baffled.

When she was done, they both were done with me. One sat on the toilet seat and the other sat on a hamper. They chatted and squeaked to each other as if I was totally inconsequential or not there at all. What they didn't do was go away. By then I was beginning to wish for a modicum of privacy.

I cleared my throat and um-hummed and such until they looked in my direction. I told them that the water had gotten cold. My bathroom attendants called me a "silly boy" and told me to get out of the tub so they could dry me off. Evidently, they had further plans for me.

So, I guess it still felt mostly like a game as they towelled me down and even as they doused me with perfume from every conceivable orientation. I was not keen about the pink bathrobe nor the fuzzy bunny slippers, but I was not sure if, as a guest, I should complain, and all told, my visit had been fairly pleasurable so far.

When I got back to the common room I found Greg to be attired similarly and reeking of perfume as well. We were seated in the middle of that room and we were surrounded by the sorority sisterhood.

They used a deck of cards and a couple of dice to make decisions about the parlor games that they had in mind. The games all seemed to be loosely based on Blind Man's Bluff and Musical Chairs and Twister and Truth or Dare. The eroticism was intriguing and some of it was quite enjoyable.

I did not start to get really bothered or concerned until they used the ropes to tie our hands behind our backs and our legs to the straight back chairs. There we remained for a couple of days, without food or a bathroom break.

We had weird concoctions of liquor and drugs poured down our throats. We were poked and prodded with varying objects from multiple angles, resulting in some bruising and small cuts and burns. All told, all of the fun for us had long since passed although some of the coeds still seemed to be enjoying the sport of it all.

I could not tell you exactly how long this went on, but at some point we were alone except for one sentry and she had fallen asleep and was snoring peacefully and comfortably on a sofa. Greg managed to wiggle his hands free. He untied his feet and then freed me.

We found our clothes piled in a corner and quickly dressed. We tied some sheets together and used them to scale part of the way down the Sorority House wall. We dropped the rest of the way and landed unceremoniously in the hedges.

The sun was just coming up when we found the Chevy. We drove as fast and as far as we could go before the adrenalin began to wear off and we realized how well done, cooked, burnt and decimated we truly were.

In the very way that everything had been going our way before, every demon and difficulty in the universe was coming directly at us by then. Dogs barked at us. People threw rocks and trash in our direction. We were threatened with guns by farmers and gang bangers. We were shot at a couple of times. Something fell off of a truck and it cracked the windshield of the Chevy. The jobs dried up. The weather was nasty. The Salvation Army refused to feed us. The dumpsters were all empty. The police tossed us repeatedly. Women sneered at us and their boyfriends cussed at us. We were caught shoplifting and ran away, chased from a grocery store by a security guard. We pawned everything of value that we had including my father's watch, the jack and the spare tire from the car. We were hungry, broke, sad and dispirited.

This was our condition and rolling the car was like a perfect topping on the shit sundae that our very existence had turned into.

After that accident, the car was leaking all sorts of fluids and exhaust fumes were coming up through the floor. We hobbled on.

The hippie hitchhikers were trying to get to some commune of sorts in the foothills of Tennessee. We drove them there. It certainly didn't seem to be much more there than some broken down trailers and cars. My nearly destroyed Chevy blended right in, backfiring as I turned off the engine.

While they were thanking us for not getting them killed and eventually getting them to their destination, the dog pissed on my leg. By that point, I didn't even react. Dog piss was about what I was expecting out of life.

It was late and dark and we were exhausted, but at least it had stopped raining. We grabbed our camping gear and went off to sleep in the woods. I might have cried myself to sleep if I had the strength to muster up tears. I think I just passed out.

That night we were bit by mosquitoes, chewed on by chiggers, sucked at by ticks, exposed to poison ivy and sprayed by a skunk. Then it rained cats and dogs. Our tent leaked. We both woke in foul moods.

We came stumbling out of the trees with twigs sticking out of our hair and clothes, wet and stinky, pulling ticks off of our arms and feeling very sorry for ourselves.

Walking towards us was a man in a floppy hat, a long wooden walking staff in one hand. His beard was almost white and it nearly reached his belt. His pot-bellied torso was wearing a light blue robe that reached down to his black hip boots. A sabre hung from his belt.

The man had a smile from ear to ear. "Why does a tea kettle whistle?" he yelled at us. "Because it doesn't know the words!" he answered himself.

He then laughed and laughed as if he had just heard the wisest and funniest thing ever, perhaps a message from another planet somewhere in the Milky Way, or perhaps beyond. He was letting us in on a grand and cosmic secret that had been whispered to him alone. This was Dave. He offered us the Grand Tour of Woodpecker Flats.