Crime & Punishment Redux

It was a beautiful morning, nearly 50˚ degrees by the time we went for our first walk of the day. Duncan was quick to climb from bed, and eagerly pranced around the apartment while I made his breakfast and opened the windows to let the day's warm air waft through the apartment. I sang one of my favorite Poi Dog Pondering songs to him while I scooped out the dehydrated salmon from the box  and into his bowl before pouring warm water over it. He sat at the edge of the kitchen, ears up high, tail swishing back and forth while he watched me and waited.

"Dreams dreamt and thoughts thunk
Tooth brushed and watch wound
Before toast and tea
Before toast and tea

Breakfast! Good morning everybody,
The sun is up and there's
lots of toast and jelly.
Wash Wash, you gotta wash the dishes
If you're gonna eat upon 'em, 

ya gotta wash 'em.
You can get it if you really want,
you gotta try hard, try hard. 

Keep on the sunny side."

We walked down The Run, which, after a week of temperatures in the 60's, is nearly free of ice. Duncan galloped ahead, scattering the squirrels and sniffing among the low shrubs for the little brown birds hidden among their branches. I strolled idly behind, watching his propeller of a tail cut through the bushes, pushing him forward. On the low branch of a scrawny and young maple a single squirrel, fat and talkative, perched and watched me carefully. Duncan had prowled ahead and seemed caught up in his own business so I reached into my pocket and took out a bit of one of the papaya and mango coconut crunchers I keep there. The squirrel leaned far forward as I held it up. She sniffed cautiously then crawled slowly down the thin trunk toward me, reaching out two tiny paws, the nails long and dark, cupped the thing and pulled it from between my fingers. No sooner had she chittered softly at me and put it in her mouth than Duncan was at my side, practically standing on my foot glaring up at me contemptuously.

"We have plenty to share," I told him but he barked and leapt and chased the squirrel up the tree, far away from us.

"That wasn't very nice," I scolded. He stared at me a moment longer, huffed then turned his back and stomped away.

After we returned home he refused to sit still while I said the blessing before he ate, turning his head away from me and refusing to add anything after I'd finished, as he does every morning. After he'd eaten and I'd packed my bags, he hid in his kennel and refused to come out to give me a kiss. I said a soft farewell, wished him the cats a good day and descended the stairs. I glanced up at the window, expecting to see him perched there, the sun on his face, his tongue lolling out, but saw nothing. He was mad that I'd given one of his treats to a sworn enemy and wasn't about to let me off the hook easily at all.

Tonight when I came home there was no chirping dance, no playful tail wagging, only patient waiting while I changed clothes and grabbed his leash. Once we'd crossed the street to the park he sauntered on ahead, careful to keep his back to me and stopping every three or four feet to tirelessly examine every fallen leaf, every gum wrapper, every twig and branch which had come down during the weekend's wind. I tugged on his leash and encouraged him to move along but to no avail. He had taken control and was not going to allow himself to be rushed. I took him to the nook where the bunnies roost, I led him to the field to chase geese into the sunset sky, I offered him treat after treat but his will has proven unbreakable. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Beau, the puppet double who played him in the holiday video. After dinner, while I rinsed dishes and put away food, Duncan forcibly removed Beau's tail, both ears and a sizable portion of a leg before I was able to rescue the poor fellow and put him up some place high, far from Duncan's wrath.

I'll make it up to him tomorrow. Somehow. Any suggestions? I've certainly learned not to feed the squirrels.

Thankful

Among the many things for which I am thankful (my family and friends, my health, the sweet sunlight of laughter, the crispness and weight of a good book in my hands, new pens on new paper, the feel of climbing into a bed with fresh sheets, the unexpected exhilaration of a shooting star, fireflies, the poems of Mary Oliver, hugging someone and being hugged back, kiwi and bananas for breakfast, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, a letter in the mail, the song "Pulling Touch" by Poi Dog Pondering, the color red, Winnie the Pooh) I am thankful for Duncan's kisses, which are quite often forced on me, but always welcome.

Tonight I got some good ones, but Duncan saved one for you.

Duncan and I are grateful for each and every one of you.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Slow

Blue skies are enormous and night skies are even bigger, almost as big as our imaginations. Meadows are vast and succulent with flowers and bees and the clouds of gnats hovering over them, visible only when the sun dances on the edges of their wings, spinning and churning in the air before us like stars and space dust and other things we've meant to think of but haven't gotten around to yet. Even the rocks, trapped as they can get in the hot cement of our streets, are wonders to behold, countless and vast. They are not like the little dots on ceiling tiles, the kind of things you can count if you choose to. And there would be something limiting about knowing their precise number, something sterile and too specific for a mind like mine. The world––or rather, the world I want to live in––is not meant to be framed in such ways. There doesn't seem to be much room for poetry and magic in precision and exactness.

I have been riding my bike a lot lately, to and from work, around the lake, through the park and up the hills above Lilley Gulch. My walks with Duncan have taught me to be aimless and open to the slow revelation of the hours and the seasons. Biking is like walking, only from a slightly higher elevation. With the wind in your face and a rush of momentum pushing against you it can even be like flying. I spent much of my long ride this morning with my arms outstretched and my head thrown back enjoying the exhilaration of speed and the forward thrust of my body through the air.

I watch people. It's what I do. I see them walk the lake or the trails, or jog or ride their own bikes, and I see so many of them passing through the world without taking notice of it at all. Perhaps their televisions or car windows have convinced them they don't know how. They shield themselves with their iPods or their cell phones or their conversations about which neighbor is doing what or sick with this or that. There is safety in gossip and isolation, but there certainly isn't much freedom. They all seem so sad and weary and it's remarkable to me that they don't even let the world touch them. I am certainly no better than anyone else, but on mornings like today's I can not move even a few feet without startling at some sight or another, be it a bee plodding through the tall, pink fluff of a flower or the dance of light across the water in the brook while the moss pulls and twists in the current just under the surface. I watched the clouds form over the mountains, big and white, taller than anything built by man and I marveled at them and how in a strange way they looked like the Eagle Nebula, a nursery and place where stars are born and whose tallest spires are far wider than our own solar system.This morning was bursting with discovery and as I moved through it I was thankful for my pace and the slow unfolding of my passage through the valley, for the exertion of my legs and lungs and for my eyes and ears, which made me witness to much more than most of the people I passed even dream about.

"Didn't you know,
you get to know things better
when they go by slow ."
(The Ancient Egyptians, Poi Dog Pondering)

The Longest Mile

The Summer of '96 was the first I spent in Illinois. I'd gone home for Summer vacation each year I was enrolled at Lake Forest College but always managed to catch the tail end of it in August. My blissful and quiet months in Idaho somehow erased the memory of how truly oppressive August could be on the edge of Lake Michigan. I'd grown up in The West where the air is like dirt, dry and weightless, and wasn't accustomed to the heavy, moist stuff that passed as oxygen in the Mid-West where the nights were spent sweating into your sheets, which remained nice and wet for you all day, where envelopes sealed themselves, bags of cereal and potato chips grew soggy and sticky and hair, which had never shown the slightest bit of curl suddenly fro'd up in long, tight ringlets. About the only thing I enjoyed were the last of the fireflies, which my corner of Idaho, a desert, sadly lacked. They were like magic to me and I spent many a Lake Forest night outside on the edge of the ravine watching them, using my lighter and a burning cigarette to mimic their patterns and dances, drawing them close enough to see even when they weren't flirting. At that time of the summer most of their magic had already burned off, but for a few days I was able to witness more fireflies in two minutes than I'd seen my entire life in Pocatello. I had no idea that June and July brought swarms of millions and that every tree and bush would be aglow with more of them than there were people in my home town.

That first Summer I worked at Barnes and Noble in Vernon Hills. I'd been hired as a full-time temporary bookseller in September of '95 before the store had even opened. My job was to help set up the shelves, learn the cash registers, hang out through the Christmas Rush and then hope to God they wanted to keep me or find something else. I'd been there for less than a month before I was made a full-time, permanent employee and then Head Cashier two weeks after that. I spent many hours counting cash drawers, balancing the safe and supervising the cashiers, sometimes coming in early mornings to handle the deposit or staying late to close up and prepare the store for the next day. It was meaningless and low-paying work but I enjoyed it because, unlike my friends who'd gone straight into their careers, I didn't bring it home with me. I can't recall a single night of waking up in a sweat because I feared the store didn't have enough copies of Howard Stern's Private Parts or The Celestine Prophecy. I merely trudged home, got stoned with my roommates and went to bed.

Toward the end of July I finally made the decision and moved in with Ken, who lived in Round Lake, a little north and east of Vernon Hills, and a bit further out in the country. It was a long drive and even on late nights when I was the only person on the road it could take up to 45 minutes. The route I took was a winding one that followed the Metra tracks through several small towns, following the bank of an unhealthy little stream and skirting the edge of an enormous landfill, which was the longest and straightest part of the drive. It smelled horrible year round but was even worse during the Summer when all that garbage, a literal mountain of it, baked and simmered in the humidity.

It was Thursday night, the night my weekend began, and David and I had just finished closing the store. Ken had let me take his truck, a big Chevy S10 that stood taller and had more power than the tiny Nissan Sentra, Cleo, who'd seen me safely across the country countless times. I liked the truck because it was very unCurt-like and had a great sound system.

After leaving the store I drove down Butterfield Road until it turned into 83 and followed that toward the landfill. Despite the odor and the heat I loved driving at night with the windows down. I'd pull the tie from around my neck, loosen my collar or remove my shirt completely and just drive. A joyful and free drive. Fast because it was late and the road was all mine. I was young and in love, it had just sprinkled and the air seemed cooler, the night rich. I was on my way home where the weekend loomed ahead of me, full and promising so I popped in Poi Dog Pondering's self-titled first album, the one with the poetic songs, sexy and fun, and cranked up "Pulling Touch," my favorite song, hung my head out the window like a dog and sang into the night.

You are a butterfly and my eyes are needles
The cold has your breast and my hand is on fire
Are you resting and reposing
Oh my veins are pulsing
And nothing can cure me, but your pulling touch
I'll stretch you out, and lay alongside you
Run my hands along, devour and divide you.
In the cool of the night, under a rain-pelted roof
Beneath cotton white linen, our love is spilt
Are you the cup that I hold by the cheekbones,
I pull you close and I drink you up.
I'll stretch you out, and lay alongside you
Run my hands along, devour and divide you

I was doing sixty on a narrow, two-lane road as I neared the landfill and the stream. My foot was tapping, I was playing the drums on the steering wheel and just before I hit the first frog I remember thinking, "This moment could not be any more perfect." It wasn't until about the two hundredth frog that I thought, "What the hell?" and slammed on the brakes, turning off the stereo with a quick flick of my hand.

I am not the kind of person who kills things, even ants, without feeling a pang of guilt. I rescue bugs and put them outside, the only exception being that if they touch me and they're an arachnid I'm perfectly justified in executing them. Once my senior year I thought I hit a dog and spent an hour puking on the side of the road even though there was no body. My first summer back from Lake Forest I drove across the desert and hit a bird, which bounced off my hood, struck my windshield, did a somersault over the car and landed, still alive but not so happy about it, behind me. I have a respect for life, even those creatures that no one pays much attention to. Like the thousands of frogs that were caught in mid-migration on my sad and smelly little patch of Illinois 83.

I started to open the door to get out but upon looking down at the pavement reconsidered. I hit the high beams and as far as the eye could see, under that suddenly clear and brilliant night sky, the crickets louder than I'd ever heard them, the fireflies dancing and glowing all around me, I saw a country road covered in thousands, maybe tens of thousands of frogs, brown and green bumps, wet and silver under the stars, some hopping or climbing over the backs of their neighbors, some just sitting, chilling out, enjoying the night, almost all singing and chirping, content. Innocents. God's Creatures. Life. And me, in the big red truck, bearing down on them like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or rather the 190 Horsepower Men of the Apocalypse.

I'd driven right into them without noticing. When I looked behind me I saw the field of frogs stretched far behind me and even as I watched thousands more mounted the side of the road and hopped onto the pavement, closing up whatever open, life-free patch of an escape route remained to me. There was no place to go without killing them. I sat there a long time, my heart racing, my favorite Poi Dog song long since forgotten, home and love calling to me, the weekend waiting to be claimed.

So I did what any person would do with love and sex dangling on a string in front of them, I sat back in my seat, took a deep breath, cranked up the stereo, put the truck in gear and went for it.

I was hoarse from all the screaming by the time I got home fifteen minutes later, still shaking, my fingers frozen and curled from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. As I climbed the front step, the porch light on and Ken waiting for me in the living room, I could feel the horrible bump of the road as the wheels of the truck ploughed over all those small bodies, a bump like driving over a cattle guard, only bigger and longer, as if the guard were a mile long. And squishy. And made popping noises as you passed over it. The only thing that made me feel better was Ken's smile, the way he hugged me after I told the story and, of course, the drink he fixed while I showered.

Tonight Duncan and I took the sidewalk. The snow has started to melt and the day was warm but windy–a cold wind from the north–so even as the snow softened and melted, the wind hardened and sharpened it, turning much of the park into a coarse field of brittle ice-razors. The geese had been out but even the places where their warm bodies had crushed the snow were still jagged and frozen. There was nothing pleasant to be had walking on the grass.

It was dark by the time I awoke from my nap. Duncan had been quite patient with me when I got home and a part of me felt guilty for not taking him out sooner so I let him lead me where he wanted. He was excited in that Duncan way of his, running back and forth across the sidewalk sniffing everything he could, seeing the park in a way I can only imagine. He pulled on his leash, dragging me after him, pulling me over patches of ice and eventually breaking into a run. I tromped behind, my boots thumping loudly, the air cold on my cheeks and scalp. It was like flying, racing, blind, down the sidewalk, smiling as I took big gulping breaths, trusting Duncan to keep me from falling. The few street lamps above us had wound down and blinked out and it was only when one finally buzzed back to life, illuminating the ground in a dark orange glow, I gasped and pulled hard on the leash to reign in my grinning dog.

We were standing in a long patch of sidewalk littered with fresh goose poop, both ahead of us and behind. The grass on my right was matted with the stuff, still dark green, still fresh and slimy. There was no place to go. Duncan started sniffing around and I had to pull the leash tight because sometimes if I'm not careful he'll slurp one up and chew on it. There was no time to think so I steeled my nerves, took a deep breath and spurred him on and ran screaming all the way down the sidewalk to the high school.

Frogs and geese and cement. The story of my life.