The Trouble Way Page 2

  I’ll fill you in on Polly Wriggle’s downward spiral to her eventual selfish, small self. It was a gradual affair; Priscilla and I didn’t see it coming until it was too late. Each level of her unstable behavior became the new normal so it was hard to tell she progressively dropped a notch. We were comparing her behavior with the most recent level while we should have been looking back years rather than weeks. I’m still trying to get it straight in my mind as to what nudged Polly over the edge. This period turned out to be the “not happy” part of our lives. I got that phrase from Bella. She was warning me of a particular part of a movie we were watching, the not happy part. I don’t believe that Polly is even aware of the horrific damage she has inflicted. It was far worse than what Old Mrs. Ashoff from Bella’s preschool did. Mrs. Ashoff’s unkind reprimand is no comparison with the damage Polly caused.

  Polly seemed mostly normal for the six years that I have known her. Priscilla has known her longer since she was Priscilla’s daughter’s roommate before I came into the picture.

  The one who took the prize for instability was that lunatic Janis, my ex. The worst she did to me was to stab me in the goolies with a serrated steak knife. It took Polly a while to catch up with Janis; but she did. On the “crazy” scale, Polly’s action knocks Janis right out of the arena. She’s the Mike Tyson of crazy.

  Bella is one of the few normal people I know. And that’s no stretch. I’m going to tell you some things about Bella and about her mom, Polly. And, I’m going to tell you about a few other nuts I’ve met on my long journey before I ever met Bella. Many people I’ve known, for the most part, had lost their moral compass. Their internal gyro mechanism that kept them flying straight and level seemed to have gotten out of balance, mine included. Bella has the effect of smoothing down the rough parts in my guidance mechanism, allowing the gyro to spin smoothly, leveling my flight path. And none too soon. And, that too, is no stretch.

  My name is Jake Forest. It’s my real name. To give you an idea of my age I’ll tell you what Bella told me as I drove her home from preschool.

  “Papa, you are really old and soon you’re going to die.”

  How can a little three-year-old have such thoughts? Bella tells it like she sees it, for true, as an old acquaintance of mine used to say; she was from the South. New Orleans. What Bella said didn’t even hurt my feelings. I was glad she was so honest with me.

  Chapter 2 Jake Forest, Priscilla, and Uncle Wendell Obviously there was more spit and a bit less polish on the old home front. Lesson Number 3: Same as Number 2; it’s an important lesson.

  Late 1950s, Early 60s

  Shit happens.

  No shit, Sherlock! As Roy, Jake’s old school buddy, had a habit of saying. Roy had a few like that. Another was “I shit you not.” If you ask him how he was, he would say, “Fair to middlin’.”

  One of the few things that didn’t involve crap happening during that short space of his pre-teen, double-digit years was that Priscilla James, his cousin, made a brief entrance into his hapless life.

  Things happened before then that were not pleasant, but he didn’t consider them to be a high level of unpleasantness. It would have been nice if his dad were around more.

  “Why is Daddy gone all the time,” Jakes said. They were living in an old tarpaper roof house that belonged to his grandfather on his Mom’s side.

  “Well, he is in the Coast Guard, honey, and there is a war going on,” she said. As if that was sufficient explanation for his perpetual absences. “He’ll be home soon.” That “war” comment was not comforting. Nobody really talked much about that place he’d heard his grandfather talking about called Korea so it didn’t seem to Jake that there was much danger there. After all, his daddy was in the Coast Guard; they didn’t fight wars. It wasn’t until much later, when Korea was over that he learned of his daddy being in that very dangerous war, World War II.

  Life sometimes decides to take the fork in the road that leads down the Trouble Way as if someone deliberately turned the sign post, like they do in those cowboy movies where the outlaws send the good guys down the wrong path. Jake careened happily down the wrong way at top speed just like those cowboys riding headlong down the path into certain ambush. There’s a good reason they call it the Trouble Way, Jake came to realize. For him, much of the trouble occurred before he was thirteen. Two biggies were that Priscilla abandoned him when he was nine and his dad dying three years later.

  His dad’s death was a monster happening. Someone doesn’t just die and that’s the end. When someone dies, it’s the beginning. That event precipitates a whole log-raft of additional life altering trouble. It changed Jake’s respectable middle class military family to one living virtually two-doors down from poverty.

  Then, if that weren’t anguish enough, right smack after his dad died, his baby sister died at the raw age of four days old, and his grandmother, who always kept a bag of Circus Peanuts in her cupboard for Jake and his sister, died within a year. Jake didn’t cry at his grandmother’s funeral like he did for his dad and sister, as if crying would cause someone else to die. He had the stupid idea that he would be seen as tougher if he didn’t. Jake felt bad about not crying for years. He should have cried. Her death ended one of those wonderful eras of childhood, Ma’s house with the “secret” stash of Circus Peanuts in the cupboard.

  Jake owned one pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, and one jacket, none of which were replaced before they practically fell in shreds off his body and then only by someone else’s worn-out crap. For gym class, his mom had to let the water bill “drift,” as she said when a bill did not get paid on time, to buy him a pair of Converse high-tops.

  One thing he did have to admit, they were never hungry and always did have warm clothes to wear, ragged or otherwise.

  They did have a used nineteen-inch black and white television. The weak signal was received from a transmitter over a hundred air miles away in Portland via a dilapidated antenna. Jake’s mom would sit in the living room watching two separate shows at the same time on the same channel because the screen displayed nothing but the ghosts of both shows and snow. She never complained saying she got the drift of both programs.

  One time, he remembered being embarrassed out of his gourd because the glue on the sole of his right shoe came loose and several of the kids in his class laughed. The shoe was one of those Sears and Roebuck cheap brown canvas slip-ons with a two-inch elastic band across the arch and a thin rubber sole covering a sponge inner sole. The rubber came unglued in the wet Oregon climate allowing the sponge inner sole to become saturated. Along with the squishy sound it made, the sole kept rolling under his foot causing him to trip unexpectedly as he strutted his stuff down the hall at school. When he was not tripping, that sole made a clap, squish, clap, squish noise. He tried to conceal his shoe disability by limiting all unnecessary walking around and walked gingerly when he had no alternative. He tried to fix it with some baling twine, wrapping it about a hundred times around the toe of his shoe to hold the sole in place, but the twine slipped off after about four minutes and he was back squish-flap walking again. What a shitty idea that turned out to be. He tried rubber bands but that made his toes fall asleep and he gave up and resigned himself to flap walking. Eventually, he cut the rubber sole off and squish-walked until the sponge wore through.

  There were a few other trouble examples as far as Jake was concerned. His sister’s reaction to the recent family experience manifested itself in her adding to her menagerie. The result was her accumulation of nineteen dogs, an similar number of cats, and a black and white Billy-goat named Dexter. Five of the nineteen dogs had names. None of the cats did. An accompanying herd of sinister fleas skulked onto the homestead and didn’t give a diddly-bump what they infested, a dog’s butt or Jake’s.

  Dexter would head-butt anybody who came into range, something that was actually cute when he was a young kid but much less so in his adult years when he grew a set of angry looking horns. He would look all cute and innocent a
nd lure someone to within butting-range, about three feet, and would cease the “cute” face, lower his head and those horns would inflict some real damage on an unsuspecting grown-up and knock them on their fat keister. His offensive odor could deck a grown man at twenty yards down-wind; thirty on a wet day.

  Dexter’s demise came one winter afternoon as the result of being tied to a length of chain for weeks to a stake under the pine trees near the blackberry bushes in the backyard. Dexter tangled himself, unnoticed by anyone, in the chain around his neck and darn near strangled. The chain was so tight Dexter could barely bleat. Jake’s dad had to reef the chain from being imbedded like a barbed wire fence strung tight around an alder tree in the hide of Dexter’s bloody neck. Jake couldn’t watch and went back into the house but heard the pop of the 22-cal. rifle shot when his dad ended the goat’s unfortunate misery. Jake thought that maybe his dad should have shot first, maybe weeks earlier, before it was necessary to yank the chain imbedded in the poor beast’s neck.

  Much of that animal related anxiety occurred after Priscilla left and before Jake’s Coast Guard Daddy died. By that time, his sister already had enough animals to stock a small petting zoo. Jake sometimes wondered where that military enthusiasm his dad must have had for spit and polish. Obviously he applied much less of it on the ol’ home front than the ol’ war front. Maybe the Coast Guard was a bit unfamiliar with the havoc a multitude of dogs, cats, and one goat named Dexter can create.

  During those post-Daddy years, the family meals tended toward substantial quantities of Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup, bought in case lots, and toast (which, to his sister’s benefit, was her favorite meal ... it was not Jake’s). They had mush (the military term for oatmeal) for breakfast. For lunch it was the mixture of the mushy Bumblebee chunk light tuna fish with Best Foods Sandwich Spread, a mixture of mayonnaise with chopped dill pickle, on Franz white bread sandwiches. It constituted the solitary item in their lunch sack from the time he was twelve till he graduated from high school. It took Jake at least forty years before he could bring himself to eat another tuna sandwich. But, by then he graduated to the higher quality solid white tuna meat and his own mix of mayonnaise and dill pickles.

  During those times, the family could never afford to eat out, even at the Custard King, the cheapest of the poor people’s drive-inns in the Podunk little town, Astoria, thirteen miles west of where the menagerie wandered about the steadily dilapidating homestead.

  And, all the misfortune happened before he was in the sixth grade. Talk about a gold-standard example of happening trouble.

  Before Priscilla left he was in what he imagined Lutheran heaven would be like. For a scrawny, freckle-face, redheaded, farm boy from northwest Oregon, Jake felt the Lutheran God his Grandmother prayed to and instructed him, his sister, and several of the neighborhood kids about, had shown a blinding spotlight directly on him. It was as if He hand-delivered Priscilla to him. She was tall, and absolutely best of all, had irresistible dimples. He knew his Lutheran Grandmother would never approve of his liking her the way he did; she was his cousin. So, as all good practicing Lutherans do, he crushed any expression of his feelings down deep inside, concealed safely from everyone except for the only person that counted, Priscilla.

  When he finally garnered the courage to tell her how he felt, it was nearly too late. It was a short time before she left him. They were in the hay barn, jumping from the rafters into the haystack. On one jump, he crash-landed next to her and, on impulse, he turned to her and said, “I really like you, Priscilla.”

  To his surprise and amazement, she responded, “I really, really like you, too, Jake,” and, to add a thick layer of carrot cake cream-cheese frosting on that second “really,” she wrapped her gangly arms around him and gave him a tight squeeze which caused them both to lose their balance and tumble over backwards, laughing, into the prickly hay. With that, he nearly floated to the rafters for his next jump.

  Jake walked the horse – his dad surprised him and his sister with a pony two Christmases earlier – to the rail fence and Priscilla slipped on behind him. He purposely left the saddle at home and only used the blanket because it was more fun riding bareback. Besides, Priscilla would have to hold on tighter around his waist if they rode without the saddle. He really liked the way she held tight to him as they rocked in unison as the pony ambled easily along the county road.

  Priscilla had a brown paper lunch bag with some sandwiches. They headed out toward the creek that ran through a grove of alder trees at the edge of the back field. His grandfather called it the back forty, like in the old John Wayne movies. In reality, it was the back eight or ten. She had been unusually silent for the entire ride.

  Priscilla slid off Apache first and Jake followed and tied the pony to a low hanging branch of an alder tree nearby, leaving enough slack for the pony to graze. He took the saddle blanket off Apache and laid it on the grass where Priscilla proceeded to empty the contents of the lunch sack she had packed.

  “Mmmm,” Jake said when Priscilla pulled the tuna fish sandwiches from the sack and handed one to him.

  “Jake, I have something to tell you.” She did not have her usual smile and her dimples were not activated.

  He stopped chewing on the bite of the sandwich and stared at her.

  “I’m not sure, but we may be moving back to Wisconsin,” she said. “Mom keeps crying and pleading with Daddy to move back home.”

  “If you do move, when do you think that will happen?” Jake asked.

  “I’m not even sure if we will move. It’s not for sure, but it might happen. I don’t know when,” she said and began to unwrap her sandwich. “I hope we don’t. I really like it here. And, I really like you too. I don’t want to go back.”

  “It probably won’t happen. Your mom is probably just homesick and will get well after she is here a while longer. Don’t worry.”

  “I hope you’re right, Jake. But, I’m scared.” She leaned over and gave him a hug and buried her face in his shoulder. “I’m really, really scared.”

  He felt cool moistness of her tears in his neck. When she finally let loose of him, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure everything’ll … be … fine,” Jake said, his voice breaking like when he had to give one of those horrifying class presentations. He shielded his eyes from her because of the moisture forming in the inside corners. Some hero, eh, Jake-O.

  The ride back home was even quieter ride than the one to the back forty. Priscilla held on to him extra tight, hugging his back, her head turned to the side. They remained that way for a long while after they got back home as if she didn’t want to ever let loose of him. Jake let Apache graze while they just sat on his warm back. Finally, Priscilla slid off, saying her Mom would be worried and then said goodbye and strolled toward her house.

  “Don’t ... try not to worry, Priscilla. It’ll probably be okay.”

  She turned and just stood there; then ran back to him, pulled him nearly from the pony’s back and kissed him. She spun and ran toward home and glanced back one final time and waved. Jake tossed a wave, reined Apache around, heeled him into a gallop, and was scarcely out of Priscilla’s sight before he began to cry in earnest.

  Ma –Ma is what he and his sister called their grandmother, like the woman in the old Ma and Pa comedy movies – talked of a God that just would not take Priscilla from him. He was absolutely, positively certain of that. Well, what he really knew absolutely, positively about it was absolutely, positively ... rip-shit nuthin’.

  Neither knew at the time, but she had two anxiety-filled short months to the day after that little picnic on the saddle blanket by the creek before God said something to his key grip angel like, “Cut … That’s a wrap … Kill the spot and can it.” The grip doused the spotlight and that little production came to an abrupt end. The light gleaming so brightly on Jake quickly faded to a dying amber glow and was soon merely a fading memory.

  Prisc
illa would be climbing over the tailgate and under the white canopy lid covering the bed of that old green Ford pickup she, her Dad, Mom, and brother drove west across country to Oregon. They had migrated just like those Okies escaping No Man’s Land of the Oklahoma panhandle, fleeing the dust pneumonia of the dust bowl and heading to California. Priscilla would disappear from his life, forever, for all he knew. He sure as heck had no reason to think her Ol’ Man would flip a U-ie in that rusted-up Ford and beat-tracks back to Oregon just because little Jake-O had a broken heart and really, really liked Priscilla. First off, it was a first-class sin, mortal, for all he knew, if Lutherans had such a rule – her dad’s family belonged to a tribe of Lutherans who lived in the East – second, as if a second was even needed, her dad didn’t give a flying fiddly what scrawny Jake-O thought. His uncle had a bigger problem, a homesick wife who hadn’t stopped her daily crying jag for the three months leading up to their departure. Problems don’t get any bigger than a blubbering woman. Jake knew that for darn sure, first hand.

  One time, Priscilla started to cry because Jake said she was sure tall. Well, obviously you don’t tell a tall girl she is sure tall and expect her to start blubbering. He meant it as a compliment. Priscilla was sensitive about her height and didn’t take it as any stupid compliment no matter what he intended; he found that out lickety-split, as his Mom would say. Crying women are no picnic. Another thing, it doesn’t do you a darn bit of good to say you didn’t mean anything by it either. Doesn’t matter one, single, solitary bit. You said it so you darn well meant it. You can say you didn’t mean it till the wet cows come down the lane on a rainy night and the crows roost in the cherry tree at dusk; it doesn’t matter. You better come proficient at saying “I’m sorry,” or you’ll be one miserable José till the last darn crow lights its pointy-ass in the cherry tree. Women are weird that way. “Height” and “I’m sorry” ... that’s about all you need to know about women; that’s it in a gift box with a fancy red bow stuck to the corner, and your name printed in black ink on the gift-tag.