THE AMERICAN STORYBAG Page 5

  And that billboard was the mother ship, waiting for us.

  Our only hope.

  It was millions of light years away.

  And as we walked, we aged.

  We crept on, one step at a time.

  And our feet leaked blood, and left damp tracks.

  "I'm a hundred," I told Pete.

  "I'm a thousand," Pete said.

  Towards dawn, the billboard glittered a little less brightly.

  At last, we'd actually entered its orbit.

  And then -- we stood admiring it.

  A brown snowfall of summer moths tickled our necks and arms. They were dying so fast we couldn't count them. The gravel at the foot of the billboard was carpeted with their bodies.

  The billboard had but one thing written on it --

  -- Damariscotta, Your Kind of Town, it said.

  “Our kind of town,” Pete whispered faithfully.

  The actual village lay on the other side of a bridge that veered off to the right and down below the billboard.

  Pete walked forward a few steps and patted the giant mantis legs of the billboard. Again he said, "Our kind of town."

  At the same time, the billboard expired. Its arc-lamps dimmed, died.

  “I see only purple rings,” Pete said.

  "Same here," I said.

  The billboard, dead silent, had nothing to say.

  “I’m going to walk into Damarascotta,” Pete said.

  "Why?"

  "We have family there."

  I'd forgotten all about that.

  But we didn't walk anywhere; we lay down under the billboard and slept for a few hours.

  The sun woke us.

  We got up, stretched, walked into Damarascotta.

  "They don’t live here, but they sometimes summer here,” Pete told me. "With any luck they'll be home."

  “Who are they again?” I asked.

  “Ginny and Walter. My father's sister and her husband, and by the way, Ginny can cook."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've eaten her food before."

  “Call them.”

  We had one quarter between the two of us.

  Pete made a payphone call.

  By now the birds were singing and the town was awake.

  Ginny and Walter were at home.

  Pete hung up the phone. “They’re coming to get us!”

  I considered this while checking the bottoms of my feet. The blisters were broken. My feet looked like raw meat.

  “Ginny’s going to make us a big breakfast,” Pete said, and liking the sound of it, he said it again.

  We stood outside in the friendly daylight as the town and watched the kindly town go about its business. Damariscotta had dogs and kids and birds and milkmen and it smelled good, too.

  “What kind of breakfast you think Ginny'll cook?” I asked Pete.

  “The works,” Pete said.

  “Gimme an example.”

  “Well, pretty little sausages, for one. Rashers of bacon, for sure. A dozen eggs scrambled, hotcakes, biscuits, gravy, pitcher of orange juice, coffee, tea, milk and cinnamon buns."

  Right about then Walter appeared. He drove up in a sensible Ford station wagon. Walter was soft-spoken, nice as could be, reminding us that Damariscotta was, well, you remember what kind of town.

  We pulled up in front of a gray saltbox fisherman’s cottage with a dock right on the river. The kitchen was cozy and all aglow with sunlight and what smelled like heaven’s own baked goods, and we hugged Ginny and sat right down as she said to do.

  And the legendary breakfast commenced.

  We knocked off a tiny juice glass of tomato juice. My stomach grabbed the stuff and sang for more.

  “My, you are hungry,” Ginny said with a smile. She had beautiful blue eyes and lovely silver hair.

  Walter read the Bangor Times, sipped coffee. Every once and a while he flapped the paper. He was smoking a cigarette and the smoke laced the kitchen lazy atmosphere.

  Ginny gave Pete and me one hard-boiled egg. The egg was warm not hot. I looked around for the bacon, the sausages, the biscuits and gravy. Must be in the oven. We tapped and shelled the egg and ate it in one bite.

  “My, you are hungry," Ginny said. "Want anything else?”

  We nodded, but after the hard boiled egg there was hot tea.

  After the tea, one piece of toast, butter and jam.

  Pete and I chewed slowly. Fifty chews per bite of toast. A second toast came, too, but after that, the kitchen seemed to shut down. Or, rather, Ginny shut it down with – “Such a beautiful day, boys. Don’t you just treasure the golden days of summer? They’re so gorgeous up along the coast. We just love it, don’t we, Walter!”

  “Sure do,” Walter said, well-hidden behind The Bangor News.

  That afternoon, Pete and I borrowed a twenty from Walter and we took the Greyhound bus from Damariscotta to Great Barrington, and after that we limped seven miles to Lake Buel where our parents met us and fed us and never stopped saying how skinny we looked. And, today, forty years later, if you should stop by, there's a sign on Pete's door -- Big Breakfast at Pete's. Just go in and sit down. It's worth the wait and you won't have to eat again for the rest of the day.

  In and Around Onawa, Iowa

  Some stories aren't stories at all; they're thoughts strung together. Leading to -- what? A man's name? "What's in a name?" a writer once asked. And what about his aliases, pen names, chosen or made up names? The name Onawa, seeing it and saying it, set all this off trembling on my tongue. Unpublished, this was scribbled by my wife as we drove through Iowa from one storytelling to another in the winter of 2006. I dictated it as I saw it, thought it, and as we drove through Onawa, Iowa, as if in a dream.

  White-fronted winter hawks sit tight on hooks of claw very near the Omaha Indian reservation. I came up here to tell some stories and I'm going to do that but meanwhile I'm watching the road signs.

  By truck and silo, field of fallow -- this is winter in the midwest and there's nothing funny about this cold, and I am a poor guy from Florida, a Floridian, if there is such a thing, and I doubt there is. But anyway: burnt stalks of harvested corn stick up and look so dead. We drive by a big roadside restaurant advertisement with a thermometer on it, and I say to my wife who's driving, "No, winter hasn’t given up out here, it's thirty degrees with the wind chill."

  The road peels away as we roll over it and the distant farms would make you think that the people here are as normal as the water they drink. But then out of a brick farmhouse comes a tow headed toddler in a plastic diaper. I disbelieve my eyes. Maybe it's because I'm from Florida.

  Maybe not.

  I look back -- she's still toddling along out there in the tundra of Iowa.

  I stare until I can't see anything but blur on blur and then I write this little poem on the back of an envelope.

  The only part of the poem I like are the last two lines:

  In the field of frozen dreams,

  nothing’s ever what it seems

  A few miles ahead I see a sign for Persia, Iowa, and that makes me think of my Armenian friend, David Kherdian, so I write him a letter on the same back of envelope that had the bad poem on it.

  Dear David: Because of the fact that you’re Persian by way of being Armenian, I thought of you today as we go through the town of Persia. If I remember right, your family were makers of doors all the way back to the beginning of Armenian time.

  And so it stuck in my head that a certain Turk wouldn’t pay for the work your relation did, a creation of excellence like your poetry only fashioned out of the finest wood, and, well, it was good and the carver was stunned when his craft was disgracefully belittled. Whatever reason, now lost in ancestral time, this tight Turk wouldn’t pay — and who’s to say after so much time why or wherefore. But the door was done, fancy up and swinging wide and your wily relative slyly slammed the ordered, unpaid door in the Turk's ungracious face and then he, your family man, ran off down the street and that’s
how your name got to be Kherdian...it came from "Khurda-Katchda", which, if I remember rightly, means "door breaker or door stealer" as in your poem, My Mother Takes My Wife's Side.

  Well, as you know, I believe in open doors -- or no doors. That comes from my Romany relatives in Hungary. But here's to you and the wide road we've shared for forty years --

  I’m glad you sell poems

  Light as a feather

  Instead of doors

  That keep out the weather.

  From Esther with Love and Directions

  There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who give good directions, and those who don't. I wrote this down exactly as Esther said it, and as it happened, and I have not shared it with anyone until now. By the way, I give directions just like Esther.

  "We're looking forward to your visit and you will be able to find our place as we are just up the road from Corrales—448 turns to Corrales Road, and we are just one block from there."

  "Well, okay," I said. "I think I can remember some of that."

  Esther plowed right on with some more "directions" -- "So from 25 South take the exit at Bernalillo and pick up 550 which takes you to 528 & Corrales Road or 448. This will be the second stop light after you get on 528, and I believe that's correct just as I said it. Got that?"

  I hesitated to say, but I decided I needed to explain I was already lost, but then Esther got rolling again and said, "Now there is a Giant store, gas and short stop type where you turn. Go to the second entrance for River’s Edge Number One, which is Canvasback Road, so take a left for one block to Cottontail and then take a right for 6143 which will be on your left."

  There was silence on the line, while I breathed and she did I don't know what because she wasn't doing much breathing that I could hear anyway.

  "Got that?" she asked.

  "Well, not exactly," I said.

  "We're about halfway down the block with a police car on the right and a mean guy who doesn’t talk to nobody on the left. There’s a big cottontail rabbit that Ben feeds out in front of our house, so you can’t possibly miss it."

  There was another one of those silences while I thought about Motel Six, and then Esther chimed in with -- "Hey, by the way, if you see a guy with binoculars, hanging his head over the fence, that’ll be Ben. He can spot bear and deer all the way over to the Sandias."

  I was silent again, imagining the bear and the deer and myself lost in Rio Rancho.

  Then Esther said, "Look, if you can’t find us, we’ll find you."

  The Railroad Oil Field Cotton Boll Blues

  This little "sudden story" was told to me by a woman in a parking lot at a Mexican restaurant in Clovis, New Mexico, when I was there one year telling stories to children. I love sudden stories -- for the way they spring up on you and take you by surprise. Some have a moral and some don't. This one does.

  --My stepdaddy used to say . . .

  --Ever time the old Santa Fe roll by on summer nights in the crickety dark I feel the ground swell under me.

  --Was he talking about an earthquake?

  --Naw. We were miles and miles from them tracks at that time.

  --Well, sir, I was railroadin in Muleshoe, Sudan, Littlefield, Anton and Earth. Drove trucks on old 84 when the morning sun blinded you and the wind pert near cut you in half but the spudnuts at Carla’s Café took the sun an wind and road weary blues right outta ya. Know what uh mean?

  --I sure do, I sure do.

  --Now, let me tell you something else. They called us O’Flaherty. That is until my stepdaddy turned our name into Fleeharty.

  --You had that Fleeharty moniker hanging round your neck for the rest of your life?

  --Naw. The kids at school turned that into Flea-hardy. They used to sing a little song back then that went like this...

  Clickety-clack, clickety-clack

  Wore out your welcome

  And don’t come back, Flea-hardy!

  --That waddn't nice.

  --Want to know what was under that good ground out by our old house?

  --Sure do.

  --Well, sir, that same house where my stepdaddy lay awake listening to them crickets stitch up the dark and take it all apart, and stitch it up again, that house, that very one. That's what I'm talking about.

  --Well, I've no real idear whar that was.

  --Was near here, in Carlsbad.

  --Okay.

  --So what'd you guess was unnerneath the house?

  --Gold?

  --Ahl.

  --Don't say.

  --Do say...ahl.

  --Dang.

  --An ocean of ahl. Anyways, he sold the place cause he couldn’t get no sleep, and he was outta there by the time they drilled an he dint get a dime fer all them rickety-crickety-tickety rights and all them nights sittin and lyin and listenin to that black gooey ahl just a-bubblin unnerneath our beds.

  Lady Bug Blues

  Bob Marley wrote -- "Everything in life has its purpose/find its reason/in every season." But our friend Ernie from Tank lane in Oracabessa, Jamaica, used to say things like this all the time but once, just once, he said . . .

  If old lady bug lights on your arm, that's good luck

  and then you spit on her she don't come back, that's more good

  But say she returns, well, that's bad luck for sure

  you got to remember, after you spit, say, ladybug, ladybug

  fly away and don’t come back another day.

  Well, I don't know nothin about no ladybug ladybug fly away home

  business and her house's on fire none a my business.

  But when the rain a-fall, it don't fall on one man's

  house alone. Bob Marley isn't the only one say that,

  we all say that. Bad luck, good luck, you gotta

  choose your own luck.

  Just For Fun

  Big Fat Harry Toe

  Big Fat Harry Toe is a tale of missing parts, and there are many just like it. There is "The Man with the Golden Arm", "The Severed Hand", and a number of others I've heard. Ever lost something? Better remember where it is, or was, or might turn up. So this is also a "lost and found" tale. I first heard it around a campfire, and some of you did, too.

  Once there was a woman who found a big fat Harry toe in her bean garden. She knew someone named Harry but he wasn’t missing his toe, but just in case, she took it home and put it under her pillow, and forgot about it.

  That night, when the woman went to bed the wind moaned and groaned, and a voice started wailing, “Who’s got my big fat Harry toe?”

  The woman was afraid, so she scrooched down underneath the covers of her bed. She shivered and shook, and the wind growled round her house and all the while, the voice was wailing in the wind, “Who’s got my big fat Harry toe?”

  So the woman pulled the covers tight around her head and she shivered and she shook and she wiggled and she woggled and chattered and smattered, and finally, the wind smashed open the front door of the house. . . and something entered.

  The floor went creeeek, creeeek, crrreeeeeeek and a voice said, “Who’s got my big fat Harry toe?”

  The woman was way down in the center of the bed with the covers pulled tight around her, and she listened – but she didn’t hear anything. The wind was quiet. The night was still. The house was silent. The woman poked her head out from under the covers and – out of the still, silent, quiet darkness she heard a voice say –

  Who’s

  Got

  My

  Big Fat Harry Toe?

  YOOOOOOOOOOUUUUU DOOOOOOOO!

  Time to Call the Dog

  If you've never been on night hunt in the October hills south of somewhere, then you haven't heard the kind of blarney that comes out of grown men using Red Man chewing tobacco and spitting on stumps for narrative emphasis. So -- if you haven't been, here, and there you are. And now you know how real, made-up, fantastical tales come to be born out of waiting for something, virtually anything, to be treed.

  When a
storyteller calls the dog, he isn't just calling his hound.

  If you’re out on a hunt sitting under a persimmon tree in the pale moonlight, and it's October and the ground's cool and the air's cooler, and your dogs are off sniffing a trail, and you got nothing better to do than tell a tale, well, then, why don't you tell one?

  Anyhow, the tale drags on as the Mason jar is passed from hunter to hunter, and fellow to fellow, and something paler than moonlight is put into the bargain and gone straight to your belly. They say that adds to the storytelling, but that's only a theory.

  Somehow the story tilts a bit, turns too-tall-taley, as you might say. Too windy or bendy, or just too full-a-baloney, as I might say.

  Well, that's when it's time to call in the dog.

  One time, when I was waiting on my hounds, I saw something I'll never forget. My good faithful old beagle was out there in the field where I could see him and his head was so close to the ground, he was making a nose-furrow. Here comes the pitiful part.

  That poor little hound run smack into a scythe that was left out in the field for a century or two, and my little dog cut himself in half.

  I'd never seen such a thing, but there's a first time for everything, so I wrapped him up in my canvas coat, and took him back to the farm in my arms.

  Darned if that dog didn't lick my hand and tell me with his eyes, he was going to live no matter what. So I used one whole roll of duct tape and instead of sewing him up, I sort of wrapped him up all silver-like.

  And that dog, I swear, was good as new.

  But for one thing, I'm sorry to say. I'd taped him up all wrong!

  I'd mistakenly taped his hind end where his head ought to be and his head where . . . you know.

  Well, still and all, that little dog had the force of life in him. And, you know, he could still darn near run forever. Why, he'd start out on one pair of legs, and run until he was tired. Then he’d switch off and run on the other pair until they was plumb wore out, and he'd go on forever, most-like, but I knew that little dog never did get tired. Funny thing, too, I watched him run frontwards and backwards, equally fast and equally good. And he could wag both ends at the same time, or either end, one at a time.