A to Z Challenge: Ike

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What do you do when a trusted friend suddenly disappears? That’s what Ike and I were wondering as we sat in the feed room looking at each other. That was also the day I decided that if I were to go missing, I would want Ike looking for me.

I was a relative newcomer to Ike’s territory, a Yankee, he called me. He had taken my daughter on as a project when she decided to bring a horse into her life and had nowhere to keep it. He graciously provided the trailer to get it to Florida and a pasture when it got there. We had become good friends since then and I liked hanging around the stable. It seemed like Ike knew most everyone in town, and particularly, everyone connected with horses.

Although he had a “house”, loosely defined, he preferred to hatch his best morning plans in the feed room next to his coffee pot and a collection of mugs. I was always wary of using those mugs, but I’d never heard of anyone dying out there. Likely no germs could survive the strong coffee he put in them.

He had been thinking over the absence of his best hired hand, Juan, since earlier when he had come out to help feed the horses and found Juan wasn’t there. He had already done some calling around to friends. No one had seen the man.

“Let’s get in the truck and check the highway. Maybe he’s broke down and had to leave his van on the side of the road somewhere. He was going to the store last night.”

The old, red diesel truck, a dually, wasn’t my favorite ride but it was his favorite, so we went. It was alarming that he kept checking the ditches, not just for a vehicle, but for a person.

“You don’t think he could have been mugged and left for dead, do you?””

“Doesn’t hurt to check. He did carry a bit of money with him sometimes.”

We traveled the highway to the store and a few other likely places but didn’t find the van, or any bodies, thankfully.

Back in the feed room, Ike got on the phone calling the local hospitals to see if the missing hired hand might have been admitted, but that didn’t turn up anything either. We couldn’t decide what to do next. Juan wasn’t a drinker, a drug user or a rowdy so it didn’t occur to us that he would have gotten in trouble with the law. From what we knew, Juan was in Florida on a student visa and had no family or friends close by. If we couldn’t find him, who could? We were stumped.

Ike wasn’t going to give up though. That’s always been one of the things I like about him. There’s just not much he won’t do for you if you’re his friend.

Several days went by, and then, “I found him. He’s in jail up at Port Manatee! Let’s go see what we can find out.”

Although he was an old timer himself, Ike was well aware that the “good ol’ boys” weren’t necessarily all good. What we were about to find out was surprising to say the least.

(Continued tomorrow with the letter J, for Juan)

A to Z Challenge: Helen

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This character sketch is not fictional. Helen was her name and this is a part of her story that is real, as closely as I can remember it.

Her funeral was in Gladewater, Texas, the place where I had known her years before. There was a lot of time on the flight from Florida for me to think about who she was, what she had done, and what she had meant to me. Even though we think of the West having been won and settled a long time ago, she was a true pioneer woman with a spirit that would have survived even back then.

It was the early 1970’s and I was a transplant from the north, attending a small private school in Big Sandy, Texas. Helen lived on a small farmstead about three miles off campus. She had already earned the title of “grandma” to lots of students that she had met attending the college church. Anyone who needed to have a break from the busy educational scene was, sooner or later, invited to come out and experience a completely different environment with Helen.

Her story had a tragic start. She and her husband had moved from California to some undeveloped acreage that was going to be their homestead. They had plans for a self-sufficient lifestyle and were willing to work hard to see it take place. The land, hilly in places and covered with pine and oak forest, had to be cleared first. Her husband was cutting trees one day when one fell the wrong way and pinned him. Helen got to him, only in time to be there when he died.

They had sold everything to buy that land, and she had nowhere else to go, so she stayed. She had a small mobile home, a pole barn, a few small storage buildings and a chicken house. She was in her 50’s, alone, trying to figure out how to make ends meet. College students and church friends rallied to help her. My husband and I were newly married and looking for a place to garden and maybe build a house. Helen had property, we had manpower and some resources. It was a mutually beneficial endeavor – we adopted her and she adopted us.

Hot, east Texas summers were spent planting, weeding and helping Helen. In the fall, we would drive around town looking for bagged leaves sitting out for trash pickup, and we’d take them to her for the garden. Helen and her chickens made sure we never ran out of eggs, and after a hard day’s work she always supplied ice tea, and the best ever cornbread.

Helen, leading her flock to the coop for the night.

One summer she went back to California to visit her grown children. I was most familiar with her animals and the chores so I stayed and “trailer sat”. I remember trying to fall asleep at night with all the sounds of the country, under and around me. It took some getting used to. In the morning the roosters woke up so early! I fed the cats, milked the cow, and collected eggs. I had always loved farm life, but living in a trailer was new to me. I loved being able to hear the animals close by, chickens scratching in the dirt under the trailer, guinea hens perching in the trees overhead, cows drinking from their water tank.

Helen’s mobile home. Come sit a spell on the front porch

Sadly, my husband’s work plans changed and we left Texas for the west coast in 1976, but we stayed in touch with Helen. Letters passed back and forth between us and we often took care of financial needs for her. She was like our “other mother”. We visited her several times over the following years, and Helen made a surprise trip up north to visit us after the birth of our first child. Others took our place helping her over time.

I was so impressed that she traveled, alone, to visit our firstborn.

We were informed of Helen’s death in 1998. At 81 she was relaxing in her living room chair, still independent, still sharing what she had with others, still living the lifestyle she had chosen for herself, still strong in her faith, when she died. An amazing woman, a worthy role model, not soon forgotten.

Grandma Helen, a pioneer spirit.

A to Z Challenge: Gayle (and Allie)

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Most of Allie’s friends were special in one way or another, but not often did one come along with the cultural charm that Gayle had. Here was a person who had grown up in a foreign country, even spoke a foreign language fluently – this was rare for Allie’s small town lifestyle. Always the opportunist, Allie signed Gayle up for giving French lessons to her homeschooled daughters. That was the beginning of years of shared adventures, shared ups and downs, shared faith.

Gayle was a superior hostess with French flair. Instead of “get to the table before it all gets cold”, which Allie was used to, there was a before dinner conversation time, with appetizers and wine. Art on the walls, flowers in the vases, music in the air, and a leisurely but simple meal could always be counted on with Gayle’s invitations. Without Gayle, Allie would have never tasted kir or known what a porte couteaux was. Probably wouldn’t have known that a madeleine was a cookie or have adopted that wonderful slow roasted brisket recipe.

Porte couteaux. Why? Because you don’t want a greasy knife on your tablecloth.

Gayle was the kind of friend she went to for advice on furniture purchases and making home a lovely place. Gayle worked in a design shop and with that as a credential, she talked Allie into painting her bathroom dark green – whoa, shocking! She helped Allie find a great upholstery shop to revive a favorite recliner. In turn, Allie helped Gayle network, even if it was just helping her find horse manure for her rose garden. They both loved taking long walks, cooking out at the beach, and breakfasts in small morning restaurants. They both loved their cats, and their husbands.

They both loved their God. After Allie had pestered her numerous times to go to Bible study with her, Gayle gave up and went. Mutual faith deepened the friendship and became an anchor as they shared their saddest times and prayed for each other. They both knew God to be adventurous, and frankly, kind of wild, in a good way.

Allie got the kayaks out one day and made Gayle go with her on the inland waterway. It was a bit out of Gayle’s comfort zone but it ended well. They survived a beautiful afternoon with nothing but a little sunburn.

Gayle asked Allie to watch her house and feed her cat one year when she and her husband visited France. She suggested a midnight skinny dip in the pool which was surprising to Allie and a bit out of her comfort zone, but why not? Who’s to know?

Most often though, it was that they talked and knew how to tell each other important things. Sometimes they were on the phone, sometimes in person, but over time it all started having a preparatory nature to it. Because of that, they were not all that surprised when the big “thing” finally came around… Not really.

A to Z Challenge: Fade

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real characters, like us.

We were standing around the operating table, gowned and masked, working on a late evening emergency case – a young guy who flipped his motorcycle. The doctors were calmly discussing vacation plans. I was stabilizing a leg while they did major reconstruction on it.

“I’m going to Wisconsin. We have a fishing cabin up north. It’s one of those out of the way places on this great lake. Going catch a musky.”

“Oh yeah?” the other doc said. “Where exactly?”

“Probably Hayward.” I said, deciding to join the conversation.

“You know the place?”

“It’s my hometown. I grew up there. I’m due for a vacation there too.”

“Well, what are the chances of that?” He said.

And so began my acquaintance with Fade. He wasn’t the doctor. He was the guy whose leg I was holding.

After surgery he was one angry young man. His leg was in traction with pins at the knee and the ankle. He was on his back in bed and would stay that way for quite a while. He was lucky that walking again was even a possibility, but the sudden change in his plans didn’t make him feel lucky. Formerly cute, popular, and definitely on the cocky side, he was now in pain and trying to learn how to manage a bedpan. He was my patient, on my primary care unit, which meant that we were going to be spending a lot of time with each other.

At first he was in no mood to have visitors but it didn’t take long for his room to be named “the party room”. His group of close friends started showing up often, regularly breaking visitor rules. Fade would charm his way out of trouble with whoever was in charge. He was so sweet when he wanted to be, and almost abusive when he stopped caring. I never knew which guy I’d be dealing with when I went in the room. But, things were working in my favor – I was young and fairly good looking.

One day I arrived on the unit and noticed an unusual smell. I imagined it was coming from Fade’s room, and even thought I saw a bit of smoke seeping out from under his door. Laughter sounded from inside, and when I opened the door I saw it was indeed a party taking place. His friends were sitting around the bed and Fade was there in the middle, smoking weed. Pain medicine, he called it. I had to agree he looked pretty comfortable, but it was still illegal in California, our state at the time. I wasn’t sure what the Catholic nuns who ran the hospital would think of it either. Turned out they were way ahead of their time, agreed with him, and allowed it. I became familiar with that smell.

Over time, the adaptability of youth worked it’s magic. Fade got used to us as we cared for him. We were his encouragers and were able to develop solid friendships with him. He healed and walked out of the hospital eventually, a more thoughtful, careful and experienced young man. It was a long time before I heard from him again, but that’s another story.

A to Z Challenge: Evelin

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real characters, like us.

She seemed perfectly content to sleep in friend’s living rooms, on their couches – a few nights in one place, then switch. She was content to walk everywhere, or hitch a ride when it was offered. She was actually proud of her ability to wander about at night and not get mugged or in trouble. She felt zero obligation to be in school. It was a distraction to the rest of her life. In fact, she so enjoyed being known as “tough” and independent that, to this day, I don’t know why she decided to come home with my daughters. Maybe it was the colder weather and the thought of a bed that could be hers if she wanted it.

Seeing my daughter’s friends at school or youth gatherings I always assumed that they had home lives that were some variation of our own. Not so. I wasn’t aware of how abnormal we were, until meeting people like Evelin and hearing their stories. I seldom heard the parental version. I tried to imagine what I would have done with a girl who went into the garage with a lit candle and ended up setting her motorcycle on fire. Kicking her out probably wouldn’t have been my first remedy, but then again, maybe it wasn’t the first time.

We cleared out an enclosed breezeway and put bunk beds and a dresser next to the sauna. The room had windows and it’s own door to the outside. What more could a tough girl want?

She was quiet, polite and really quite good looking, although I don’t think she knew it. She didn’t try to look beautiful, feeling more comfortable with a style somewhere between grunge and Goth, covering it all with a long man’s raincoat. The coat probably came in handy in her late night wandering. She did have six toes on her feet but you wouldn’t have noticed unless you stopped and counted. Who does that?

Evelin wanted a job for spending money and decided to work the late shift at a fast food joint a good two miles from our house. She was the closer and in charge of spraying the grease off the floors – at 2 am when they shut the drive thru window. It wasn’t a particularly safe area of town and the thought of her walking home at that hour gave me shivers up the spine. I decided to set the alarm and drive down to get her. She hated it. She hated me for “pampering” her and making her soft. How did I know that? She left me a note saying so.

Part of the terms of her residence with us was that she go to school again. She was enrolled at a different school than my daughters were, so afternoons were spent in the car waiting at one school and then the other. We often would wait at Eve’s school until it emptied out and discover that she hadn’t been there.

She was a mystery to me. I think she would have liked knowing that, because maybe being a mystery is as good as being tough. I wouldn’t have guessed she would turn things around and become an architect with two beautiful children, one of whom has six toes on his feet. And that’s another story…

A to Z Challenge: Della

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There was no denying that Della was strange, in fact, that was why I was attracted to her in the first place. She was pretty, she was rich, and she presented herself as a prisoner. There had to be adventure somewhere in this mix, I thought, and there was.

I met her in church, of all places. She was “allowed” to come, as she put it, but she didn’t usually stay around to chat or go out for lunch. She had to get back before he noticed her absence and got irritated. She had a very nice car, and classy clothes. Her hair always looked perfect, her glasses were clean and sparkly and her teeth were beautiful. Her husband was a dentist.

She had been a dental hygienist and had worked for him several years before they became “a thing” and got married. I was never quite certain if she had loved him or just been overwhelmingly impressed with his story. He had escaped Egypt when the country turned on its royalty and had come to the United States for a new life. He went back to school to update his dental credentials and set up his own business. For a while, they worked well as a team. She had a son from a previous marriage and it was a relief when she no longer had to be a single mom. And even more of a relief when she quit working and started keeping house.

I should say “keeping mansion”. That would be a much better description of her new job of helping design and build one of the most ostentatious houses, in the most ostentatious part of town. I was only in it once, but what I saw was right out of a fairy tale. I think her husband must have had the royal palace in mind, complete with double, sweeping staircases leading up to his Egyptian room with tapestries, reclining cushions, and one of those crazy middle east tea pots. I think it was staged by National Geographic.

I saw it all on the night she left him.

There were three of us that night. I had a friend who was even more involved in Della’s story than I was. I was the one who had not yet met her abusive husband, so it was my name that went on the storage unit she had me rent. My name went on the U-Haul rental. In her customary dramatic way, she was hiding her tracks, certain that he would come looking for her.

“He’s going out of town, but I’m never sure he won’t surprise me and show up or change plans. If all is well, I’ll open the gate at 11:30 and you can drive in real slow and quiet. Wear dark clothes.” Everything but the ski masks and lock picks. I was worried we’d get taken for burglars and the neighbors would call the cops.

It took us an hour and a half to get her selected items out and packed in the truck. She didn’t take much. She didn’t take anything she thought would make him angrier than he would already be when he found her gone. She took the dog – a hefty Rottweiler, and her car. It was a bit of a challenge getting everything to fit in the storage unit but we were done before dawn.

She was sure he would look for her in every conceivable place, and possibly be violent if he found her. She had to have a place to hide that he wouldn’t think of, someplace humble, ordinary, and unconnected with anyone he would ever suspect. A place where the car could be kept out of sight. A place where she and the dog could hang out indefinitely.

Yep, my house. What was I thinking?

A to Z Challenge: Chance

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He had ridden his bike for 20 minutes in the sweltering heat so his dark skin was wet with tiny droplets, which he quickly dispatched with the bottom of his T-shirt.

“How ya doin?” he said with an enthusiasm she could hardly imagine him having. She noticed he was sniffing in the direction of the kitchen. “Cookin’ up somethin good tonight?”

He was a pretty good cook himself, an expert actually, at the kind of food he liked best. When he was given free reign in the kitchen there was usually a lot of tasty fried chicken, and a lot of greasy pans to wash.

But he wasn’t there for the kitchen. The piano was where he was headed. He slid to the middle of the bench and started chording and doing small riffs with a rhythm right out of a black church choir. That’s where he had taken a job, at the St. Stephen’s African Methodist Episcopal Church. Too many names to even fit on the sign.

He had started experimenting with the keyboard after coming to a small hymn sing in the park near his home. His name was Chance, and that’s what she had offered him, a chance to learn. He was short for his 13 years of growing, and there was one hand that hadn’t grown normal fingers, not that it kept him from learning the chords he was taught. He loved playing on the black keys – his fingers had no trouble landing on those.

“You going to teach me to read notes today. We got to work on that. They want me to be able to play printed music and I’m fakin’ it now.”

He could listen to a tune and play it accurately after one go. With soul. But he wasn’t familiar with a lot of church music and had to hear it played first. That’s what she did for him. “Wish I could do like that Miss Allie. Let me hear that verse part again.” But no matter what the lesson was, he would end up playing his favorites, quickly tiring of practicing notes on lines and spaces.

He would make it look so easy, going up and down the keyboard with chord progressions that were not the usual, but so compelling. She had told him that the piano was in the percussion family of instruments – hammers hitting strings inside a box – but his brand of percussion was foot on the pedal. It felt like the room was moving, and more than once she had to remind him to go easy. He had broken the inner workings of the sustain pedal once already.

He sang too. Quite well.

It was the beginning of a long acquaintance that branched out into lots more than music. Not all of it was easy or pleasant, but his optimism and bravado rarely failed him. Well, there was that one time…

A to Z Challenge: Bruce

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real characters, like us.

Probably in his 50’s, reasonably fit and with greying hair and beard that would be classified as distinguished, there was something unconventional about him that made him attractive, at least to women and children. It was probably that he didn’t mind talking to them, and didn’t mind topics of conversation that women and children might actually find interesting. He had men friends too, of course, but men were often busy during the day and Bruce, well… I’m not sure that he had a busy time.

I think he envisioned himself as a gentleman farmer, with ambitious ideas of working his little acreage into a productive garden, with fields of hay and grain to support his herd of milk cows, several horses, and a pig or two. But in reality he was not a particularly wise farmer. It was his good luck to have married a woman who doubled as a farmhand. He dreamed, she did.

A gentleman farmer always has other, more important pursuits however, and Bruce’s pursuit was writing. I always attributed his interest in people to his need for characters to put in novels. His writing was also how I came into the picture – that, and living on the adjacent farm. We shared a fence.

Bruce was a friendly neighbor. His daughters were good babysitters too, and his wife was nice enough to let me come over and buy fresh milk. I wasn’t particularly happy when he wanted to keep his angry bull at our farm. It was in the pasture in front of our house where it terrorized me and the children. On the other hand, he did occasionally drive his horse and wagon over and offer us rides, which we thought was pretty cool. The relationship felt reciprocal.

One day Bruce was sitting in my kitchen, in his farmer outfit of bib overalls and flannel shirt, discussing a manuscript he was working on. By the way, he wanted to know, would I mind doing some proofreading for him? I didn’t mind at all, in spite of the fact that I was raising two small children and working shifts at the local hospital. He was a real writer. He had a manuscript, whereas I was only wishing I had one. Being a proofreader for Bruce would be one step closer to the world of writing. At the very least I would be keeping my grammar skills current.

His manuscript was not finished, but more of a work in progress, and Bruce began inviting me over to the farm to help him work on the next chapters. He had his writer’s loft, accessible only by ladder, a place of pride complete with typewriter, his writing library and reference books, and a bed where he evidently got all his best ideas for plots. His description of it had the same flavor of excitement that my younger brothers used when describing their treehouses or forts in the hayloft. It was his hideaway, where he went when his wife was out milking the cows or weeding the garden.

“I’ve got some ideas for this chapter. Come and see what you think.” he would say. Right, I thought. Your kids are in school, your wife has taken a second job to support the farm, and you want me to join you in your hideout… No, just not going to happen, in the interest of maintaining good neighborly relationships. Mind you, Bruce would have been horrified to know I had second thoughts about joining him to work on the next twist in his novel, and I would have been embarrassed telling him. There was just a faint creepiness about the whole thing.

And as it turned out, I never had to tell him. But that’s another story.

These writing exercises are part of the April A to Z Blogging Challenge. Can I write a post for every day of the month except Sundays? I don’t know, but this is my 10th year (kind of a special landmark), so I have to give it a try.

A to Z Challenge: A for Alice

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real characters, like us.

She knew she tended to overthink things. What a contrast now that she had trouble thinking at all. She watched the cat eat leaves off her favorite house plant, again. She wasn’t jumping up and chasing it away anymore. It hadn’t died yet and was possibly getting some nutrient it needed. Have to like a proactive cat.

And then there was her husband, who lay nearly comatose 90% of the time, making no decisions, proactive or otherwise. She had been deciding everything for him for the last four months since he had come home from the hospital and into Hospice care, in their living room. They weren’t all hard decisions. Medication schedules, toileting, when to give tube feedings – all that could be evaluated and changed if it needed to be and she had practice making those decision for previous patients. Sometimes the combined weight of them did make a difference in her energy level or kept her from sleeping well at night. But they were, after all, the easier things to decide.

What she struggled with was the fact that they had decided, after the stroke, to intervene. By “they”, she meant “he”, because it was still his choice. Ever since his earlier diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, he had been waiting for God to heal him. He didn’t want to take himself out of the game before God got around to it. She was pretty sure he had made the decisions for the ventilator, the feeding tube, and rehab, even though it had already begun to feel like she was making them.

But now, it was pretty clear that decisions were on her. She was deciding to take really good care of him, and thereby prolonging considerable misery. The misery was more hers than his. Watching his decline was not fun, but he seemed unaware of his condition. Just that morning she had been orienting him to where he was, where he had been and how long he had been ill.

“Can I spit on the ground?” he asked.

“You better not because we’re in the house. You don’t want to spit on the floor.”

“But I can open the car door and spit on the ground, can’t I?”

“Yes, if we were ever in the car. But that hasn’t been happening for months. The only way you’ve gone anywhere lately is by ambulance. We stay home all the time now. You haven’t been in the car for nearly a year.”

“What a boring lifestyle”, he said in his weak, barely intelligible voice. He was grinning and looking at her for approval, like he had done all their married life. This time, instead of rolling her eyes, she laughed with him and wondered if it would be the last time he tried to tell her a joke.

She believed there was a kind way to explain to him that he might actually be dying. So far, her attempts had not been successful.

There were times when she felt she wasn’t taking good care of him too. She would get lost in a jigsaw puzzle and forget his feeding time. She would turn down the noise in the monitor in order to get another hour of much needed sleep. All those guilt producing moments. But, she was sensible enough to know that she had to take care of herself in order to take care of him. Everybody told her that, and it helped to hear it from others, even though they didn’t really know how that worked out.

Was she depressed? Not really. Sad, for sure, and tired. Tired enough to pray that it be over soon. And even though she had all kinds of questions about God’s timing, she was, ultimately, content with him calling the shots.

Winter Talks Back

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Rage, winter, all you want. The sun is on its way out.

You don’t have to be a person to have a personality. No, you don’t.

Winter saw me buying seeds at Walmart this week and decided to throw a fit. I was awake numerous times last night, listening to the wind howling outside, coming down the fireplace chimney. Sure enough, this morning there was new snow, and drifts everywhere. Window screens were flocked with wind driven whiteness. Hungry birds and squirrels were trying to find the sunflower seeds they knew were there yesterday. It would be another day of shoveling and plowing in our community.

I got this far before the handle on the shovel broke.

I feel sorry for the geese I’ve seen flying around, looking for nesting places in the marsh. I’m a little sorry I had the car washed this week. I’d like to see green out the windows instead of white. But I am not at all dismayed by this fury. I know that the fight often intensifies because someone or something knows it’s going to lose.

Apparently winter also knows its days are numbered and wants to get in as many punches as possible before wandering off to a different hemisphere. I’m hopeful that nature is giving us a metaphor for the craziness in our world – it could be. The natural world is God’s spokesman and his creation. He came up with the plan for seasons and they’ve been happening ever since, in nature and in the history of man.

“Blessed be the name of God, forever and ever.
He knows all, does all:
He changes the seasons and guides history,
He raises up kings and also brings them down, he provides both intelligence and discernment,
He opens up the depths, tells secrets, sees in the dark – light spills out of him.”

Daniel chapter 2, The Holy Bible

So today, I am walking in snow, but also planting some seeds and putting the pots in a south facing window. I intend to wait winter out, and I think I’ll win.

Every step brings us closer to spring.