Cooler weather has finally arrived with the annual return of the flocks of sandhill cranes. The winter wheat, usually burned by freezes to a retreated frazzle of dark green and brown at this time of year, has grown nearly ten inches tall, lush and emerald. Our four goats, not preferring to be fenced in, steal out to the green hills surrounding the farm, giving themselves the squirts. I should probably try to keep them off the neighbor's property, but his flock of guinea hens have moved onto my place, joining the hundred or so chickens in a constant cacophony, and anyway the millionaires who farm the land live 20 miles away and won't visit the fields until they're ready to harvest in July.
My 18 year-old son recently took a job at one of the last remaining family dairy farms in our county, so his alarm goes off at 4:20 though it's not necessary on account of all the crowing roosters. "What YOU doin today?" he asks after barging into my bedroom, returning home about 9 a.m., reeking of iodine, milk, and cow shit, puffing on a cigarette. "It stinks in here!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I say, watching the cigarette smoke drift towards me. I'm usually sipping a Bloody Mary, thankfully with tomato juice we canned over the summer, a hint of onions and jalepenos. I don't mention the obvious, that even though the room does offer the acrid ambiance of kitten piss and dirty socks plus the chicken shit clinging to my boots and the fresh hog lard on my flannel after several days of butchering pigs in the barn, the baseboard heater enhancing the aroma, the powerful punch of iodine overpowers everything else. "I know it stinks in here. B's coming over tomorrow to clean it up, she says."
In spite of what everyone in Verona, Indiana, thinks, I am not sleeping with B, mother of three who resides in a trailer in town. She's a tall blonde about 35 who is good friends with the other bachelor farmers but is more lesbian than straight and anyway has never come onto me, though I do pay her to clean my house. If B comes out this week to clean my room, which she probably will unless the economic situation for unemployed single mothers without reliable transportation living 30 miles from crappy temp jobs changes soon, she will be sorting through piles of laundry that include overalls, ragged and shredded jeans and flannels, thong bikinis and lingerie, high heels, old boots with worn-out soles, and hopefully a winter cap that a friend in Mendo possibly knitted for me last winter.
I haven't been staying at home much, lately, somewhat practicing for hitting the road, leaving my son in charge. It bothers him that I stay up at night playing the banjo when he has to wake up early, and certainly does not like to hear the sometimes obnoxious Jetta singing or yelling at me from the other room, so she first moved to B's trailer in Verona. They'd gotten along ok for a week but no way it would last since B has a catty 18 year-old daughter, also one who is 15 plus a whiny son about 12. Adding Jetta there were not enough rooms with the cold winter rains pelting the windows. So I received about a dozen texts and phone calls Saturday night, and on Sunday morning caught up to Jetta in another trailer sitting on the couch with a toothless tweaker hitting whisky at 9 a.m. She wore this fishnet black shawl with a witchy black skirt and wanted to take one more shot before we headed off to my country Lutheran church. One more shot, she said, and plugged her nose, tilting the bottle. One more shot, one more stop--at B's trailer, to pick up her stripper-high heels to complete the outfit.
"They got a gravel parking lot at the church," I said. "It's a bunch of uptight millionaire farmers but they're still country people, and it ain't paved."
"Just please. They're MY shoes."
Of course World War III erupted at the trailer, me in the Ford Ranger waiting while rain splattered the windshield, sipping a Bloody Mary, thinking damn I'm on my way to the Lutheran church, and we're probably an hour late. I didn't even remember when church started, it had been so long. The only reason Jetta and I were attending church was we frequent the tavern in Verona and an alcoholic Lutheran lady my mom's age had told us she and her husband were renewing their wedding vows after 40 years. Notorious for putting on "Hoefest" as well as being a hippy, organic farmer, going in with Jetta in that outfit would raise some seriously bushy German eyebrows. "They'll probably burn us at the stake," I said as we passed a joint en route.
We pulled into the gravel parking lot that spans several acres, lined with brand-new cars and SUV's, emblems of frugality and the Protestant work ethic. I'd never seen the place so packed. Lutherans had converged from all over the county. Naturally I had to roll my beat-up old truck to the very end of the line, late as we were. No way Jetta could tread on the gravel in those heels, especially with all the rain, so she had to carry the shoes and prance barefoot on the cold limestone rocks, huffing and nearly hyperventilating by the time we reached the steps leading to the lobby. Of course it took a minute to get her heels on, and she had to grab my elbow for a prop. We looked like we'd just left the nightclub and were returning to a hotel.
A couple of Lutheran ladies with the androgynously-cropped blue-gray hair met us in the back of the packed church while everyone droned or sang or slurred this dreary tune translated from 18th century German.
"Did we miss the exchange of vows?" I quickly asked.
"Yes, Spec, you did."
"Hey will you just tell her we stopped by?"
"Oh, we'll tell her."
"Thanks."
A few more Lutherans turned around from the back pews, distracted from the hymnals by the slight commotion. Satisfied that we'd made our appearance, we proceeded back down the carpeted steps, Jetta holding my arm like a wedding bride in that witch skirt and fishnet top with her purple-hued hair in developing dreadlocks, teetering from the whiskey on those ridiculous heels. I had to admire her audacity. For years I'd dreamed of a moment like this, all those monotonous hours of dutifully dressing in uncomfortable duds for the same routine every Sunday. I'd always imagined some rock band would take over the sound system, or the organist would finally let her hair down and play something lively, and the women would dance like they do in the more evangelical churches.
In the parking lot, still clutching my arm like a black Sabbath bride, Jetta paused between hyperventilating and said bluntly, "Now I see why it was so hard for you to get out and sing, after hearing that. I've never heard such depressing music." Once we were headed down the highway, though, she fidgeted with the radio and found some hot mix station with this computerized chick voice going, "I just wanna look good for ya, good for ya, good for ya," and turned it up.
"That shit is so contrived."
"Well what about the gay-assed country you like?"
"You're calling Hank and Junior and III gay-assed shit? Waylon Jennings? Willie?"
"If you'd open your mind, you'd see there are creative people doing the sound enhancement. Just because it's not your style doesn't mean you have to dis it."
"It's over-produced and phony."
We found a hotel room with weekly rates near the freeway on the east end of Seymour. That night we practiced a bunch of songs as I played the banjo. Part of the reason I got the room in town was the last time I'd succumbed to writer's PMS and sent Jetta to B's trailer, I'd written this ditty about a young horse, a filly named "Fitch" who liked to buck and tore up my house when I let her in. "No Cowboy Ever Rode That Buckin' Fitch" attracted Sean Malone, a local music promoter, and we were supposed to record the next day at a studio in town.
"Everybody knows the song is about me!" Jetta said, locking herself in the bathroom the first time she heard that song. "I'm just a fucking bitch, and you're just a cowboy!"
That night I ended up playing songs in the front seat of my truck, out in the parking lot, watching cars pull in and out, crank heads darting inside and emerging from the PLEASE DON'T SLAM DOOR, the door insisting upon banging each time like a crack from a revolver. I tried contacting a buddy of mine, Jetta's ex, who is naturally talented at guitar with a great voice and not afraid to perform publically, to help in the studio, but his newly-wed wife informed me that my friend already had signed up for the infantry in the army for WW III.
"He's getting ready for the piss test," she said. "He can't smoke weed and is too pissed off to play music."
"Are you serious?"
"They gave him a 20,000 dollar cash bonus."
"MY GOD! Are you aware what bullshit this all is? Supposedly like 20 vets commit suicide every day! The infantry? He never told me!"
"You're a hard guy to get hold of."
Yeah, I live four miles away. I know why you didn't tell me, I thought. "It's not too late to change his mind?"
"Yeah. If he backs out he goes to prison."
Nice work, I thought. You take this 23 year-old dude, you get pregnant, marry him, and immediately ship him off for three years in the service so you don't have to deal with him! He signs up because he'd rather the military than another day of hearing you nag! The combat infantry? Now you get the paycheck! I've known this fellow for five years. He's played with me on stage and helped put on our music festival, and now he's doomed to participate in something he totally does not believe in, but hey that's the way the whole economy is organized. Guy sitting there feeling insecure and broke in his trailer will do anything to get out of that pickle.
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