Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| not only one … but two –– different women’s breast biopsy operations!–– during which procedures he was supposed to have been present! right there alongside the surgery table to perform and to analyze for the surgeons, as malignant or not, frozen sections on tissues just taken! This was daMan who had not only brushed off those two DEhumans’ days, futures and families by utterly dissing and ditching the importance of them altogether –– their very lives –– but who had also kept hidden from me and from my Truemaier Boys in October 1987, back when I was dusting off his pornography – purveying den on Othello Drive the Kansas City White Law Firm’s equivalent of a pink slip … sanctioned and sent from Lawyer White to Herry by his Missouri – based employer, Downshim Laboratories –– for his, daMan’s, doing so! For Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s … gross incompetence … as a medical doctor!
Nah! I so did not need to worry about unluckily waltzing into Herry at that hour; there was no way that that particular physician would be walking the hallways of Fairvale City Hospital on his way to important shit or something. So. I bopped right in the front rotating, round door and boogied on over to the very nearest women’s restroom –– clearly marked as such and quite easy to locate. Something else I noticed while in there was whether or not the facility had an electric socket … to accommodate a blow dryer or curling rod. This one did; I was to learn that many, many public bathrooms do not. Done and back down to the car with not even one security guard in sight, I breakfasted on leftover snack food from the previous day’s journey: peanuts, raisins, a banana and water. And prepared to walk from that spot to the rental car agency figuring it to open up around 8:00 a.m. One would never have known that the 45 – year – old Dr. Legion True was such a credit card – using greenhorn –– my having only inaugurated the new plastic on its very first voyage out of my jeans pocket just the day before within Milford, Ohio! It took approximately half an hour to arrive at my destination and another 30 minutes or so to get fixed up with the World’s most stunted and puniest vehicle, I declare! It was no small wonder as to why –– when she handed me the keys to its ignition –– the Ford Motor Company had named this milky white fleck, now with West Virginia license plates on it, an “Aspire.” Hell, this itty – bitty metallic bump on four tires was trying so hard to grow up to be a real goddamn …car, for chris’sake! But I didn’t care; it was what I could afford, and I had it for a week, no mother – fucking questions asked. Only queries asked of me were ones on which I could legitimately and truthfully answer, and I was in it and driving back over to the Fairvale City Hospital parking lot to exchange into it the items which I wanted from out of now safely parked and static Ol’ Black. Then I was off to Grubtrop and, at last, … to my Truemaier Boys! Headed back down south on I – 79 the same way that I’d come up to Fairvale the night before, it never even crossed my mind –– in the very same manner that the thought hadn’t entered the brains of Grace or Frieda or Cyan Song, of Linda or László either –– that Mirzah, Zane or Jesse, when I found them, would tell Herry or Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive or even Mary Jane as a matter of fact, that I had come to West Virginia. And, now, with my provisional acquisition of this little, amorphous cardboard pedal – box called Aspire … The Plan was beginning to gel. The difference, however, on this particular 13 – mile stretch over to Grubtrop from the one on it of just the evening before was that now I, on this bright, beautifully clear Saturday morning in April, was tooling ass into Herry’s town inside this tiniest of tooshes dressed as Sam, the concrete truck – driving man. My Iowa driver’s license which the rental agent, of course, needed to see had on it the picture of a caucasian, saffron – coiffed woman and showed a birth date of the Winter Solstice in 1947, and that is exactly who had just rented a week’s worth of use on their two – door Ford. While no cement truck was Aspire and no man was this particular Sam, there was some amount of irony in the whole subterfuge –– in that daMan, Herry, before I’d ever known him and, back then, quite the imbiber of all beverages brewed, had once hired on to an Iowa road construction crew during the hot summers between his undergraduate years in college and, there, drove nearly the exact same type of truck as was now slapped onto my covering’s lapel. As a ‘man’ I hauled in from out of town defiance and mockery of Herry Edinsmaier and of his and daJudge’s’ “laws” inside itty – bitty Aspire. And Herry, inside his typical passive aggression and narcissism with laissez – faire / lazy – ass attitude, had hauled in not only that as his waxed version of fathering but also as a drunk man … driving … concrete in for the paving of highways similar to the ones which had just ferried me there into Grubtrop. The jacket in one of my favorite hues of all time, chocolate brown, had on its nylon windbreaker fabric on my left chest not only the name “Sam” in black stitching but also the picture of a white concrete truck and in white letters on its back the title of Sam’s company, “Weldon Ready Mix,” apparently one situated in a town with no state printed at all and whose letters were too small to readily read from the distances I intended to keep from Herry, from Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and from anyone else whom I saw quite fit to distrust! Cotton twill workpants of the hardy type day laborers don in the same brown color also came from Ames’ Salvation Army Store. I had a matching, two – piece outfit but not only in the cloth items into which I had changed before leaving Fairvale. A few other of this androcentric countenance’s accoutrements for the role and expression of Sam came out of Ol’ Black and into Aspire as well. Des Moines has a wondrous collection house called The Theatrical Shoppe. There, I had obtained a salt and pepper wig in the loveliest of Sam Elliott – lengths of waviness along with a similarly speckled piece to adorn my upper lip mustachioed there as it was with its own special glue. Even Mr. Elliott, I am thinking, would have perceived this likeness to his own as … pretty damn close. On my cinder path strolls into the Forestry Department from stashing Ol’ Black in the Brookside Forest in order to save on the University’s parking fee, it occurred to me that I could hide my peaches – and – cream complexion, the only one thing of colossal worth which I had, indeed, inherited from Mehitable, with shards of charcoal lightly rubbed onto my cheeks … in order to simulate Sam’s five – o’clock shadow. Dark glasses with tortoiseshell frames and a simple white baseball cap sans any decoration whatsoever completed Dr. Legion True’s ensemble. The one feature for which I had no cover – up were my hands. I had brought along a pair of chocolate brown, cotton flannel chore gloves made in the genre of which AmTaham and we other farmers, for years and years and years, always have multiple pairs; but I truly thought it already too warm outside to wear them without appearing really weird. Fingernails clipped as short as possible, unpainted of course and with all rings removed, I resolved to keep attention away from my hands by engaging others’ eyeballs directly while passing them cash or other objects and when receiving back change or groceries or other purchases. I drove on into Grubtrop and, perchance, immediately passed by the port’s police station on my left in the northwest corner of the burg … as I did so. I so dubiously doubt, all pun intended, that anyone, flipped and reversed as a Mrs. Doubtfire – like individual, would have given this crazily cogged confluence of cop and con nearly the contempt that I myself, the newest “Sam Elliott” actor, attributed to it! Off I – 79 South then, I took the exit east into Grubtrop proper for the first time in my entire life –– although certainly not my last. A squatty little place, it is probably, having never seen it from the air and just guessing after my having been there now a number of times, west to east far shorter than in its north to south direction and is aligned much of that longitudinal stretch right alongside I – 79. Within moments then I was at the far east end of Grubtrop and, in getting there, again back to using the highway which was Federal Route #50 from the day before –– when I had first entered the west side of Montclank. Aspire needed to be turned around so I did not wind up leaving the city’s limits entirely … so he and I came back west to the first of only two intersections in Grubtrop at which stoplights exist on Route #50 … and took a right, up north –– for the hell of it. Learning the lay of this land was my first priority, especially to discover as I had just done, easy exits the fuck out of town –– in the case that I ever found myself needing any! This bearing to the right or north took me into the very hilly and, as I was later to know, … newer parts of Grubtrop, West Virginia: –– the community’s recreational center consisting of a very small swimming pool and concession stand with a couple of tennis courts and an outdoor basketball arena, a shopping center with just a huge number of stores and miles of parking lot and, overall, more massive than any Ames has ever had with yet another smaller mall or maybe its extension just across a highway divide as well as an extremely tiny park with only one shelter, a walking path and no playground equipment in it at all. And ... to one of the three Boys’ two schools for that academic year, that is, to Zane’s high school. After Herry’s late October 1991, heinous and secret flight out of Iowa where Mirzah Truemaier had just become a new middleschooler rehearsing for his Mock Trials’ regionals, my youngest Child, to finish out his sixth grade year, was taken aback and put into an elementary school inside Grubtrop, one built in 1909, which today sports on its website … little American Indian – looking children with feathers stuck in the beaded headbands of their black hair. Now, in April 1993, Mirzah was a seventh grader and stuck inside Grubtrop’s big, boxy structure on its south side which was designated as The Middle School –– along, as well, with Jesse who was finishing his eighth grade year there. That particular middle school building has subsequently been shut down, its age unknown to me but, to be sure, one at least as old as Grubtrop’s … and Mirzah’s former … elementary school. Here, however, up north was Zane’s high school, put up in 1963, with a severely bland and ochreish color upon its exterior, not at all a hue of the lovely saffron – blondeness of Zane himself. This place was at where my Truemaier Teenager labored at finishing out his sophomore year and, thus swung heavily as well, into springtime baseball practice –– while, after seventh – and eighth – grade classes dismissed for the day, both Mirzah and Jesse for their particular workouts took a schoolbus ride up and over to the cinder arenas near Zane’s ball diamonds as the two of them trained in track and field. Their dark red brick middle school was, as I had found true of many of the buildings in Fairvale too, built atop a tall hill, not really a mountain, but with no other facilities about it –– not even having what appeared to me to be much in the way of staff and teacher parking except on steep, side street inclines. I left its presence quickly –– having seen all I needed to see and returned to the area of Zane’s high school … not far at all, I figured out, from an I – 79 exit headed back up north to Fairvale … and my Hotel Ol’ Black. Realizing that after dismissal, Jesse and Mirzah would be coming to the outdoor areas of the high school for track practice, I decided to concentrate on learning all that I could about various folks’ comings and goings to this tract of Grubtrop property. Then, there was the external evidence all over the region that the symbol of this “educatory” place was an American Indian chieftain: headdress, feathers, distinct savage profile and all –– including the phrase repeated on concession signs and fencing backdrops in several spots of … the Grubtrop Indians. Today, after a decade and more of other communities grappling with the same racist blatancy as this school’s not – so – charismatic portrayal, when one surveys its high school’s several web pages and citations, no outright reference to the town’s actual honoring of any real, residential Grubtrop Indian, past or present, is anywhere online –– only an upper left – hand corner pictorial … displaying a generic chieftain which alludes, of course, to the school’s team name and, thereby, … its “native arrowhead” representation. Recalling Ames’ loveliest of school networks, Herry – Daddee’s affidavit – LIE to the Aggrandizier that “all Truemaier Boys would finish out their secondary educations in Ames” with its mascot, a wee, black tornado … The Blonde, also victimized, maligned … choked hard. And continued with my local explorations of this xenophobic land. Sam Elliott talked to nearly no one, the Aspire’s tank full when I had initially left the rental agency so its driver need not gas up but only … carefully … get in to use those stations’ restrooms for bodily elimination. Other good such venues came to be the local Wal – Mart store’s bathroom and the Grubtrop Hardee’s and its McDonald’s as well. The Wal – Mart women, who were its only clerks of course, seemed to love to open up to Sam about everything going on up at the high school –– right down to the fact that Spring Break was ending that very weekend with “Easter an’ all” and if it weren’t for “wonnerful, wonnerful” baseball, why then the kids’d “be left with just school to go back to.” Apparently baseball was king in Grubtrop … literally. Like most places everywhere, only the boys participated, that is –– with its girls either in track or stompin’ and a – hollerin’ from up in the bleachers and, thereby, so “whooping” on their favorite team of “warrior” ballplayers, these “Indians” somewhat bigger and taller apparently than the bigoted town’s elementary ones. By late that very Saturday afternoon of the 10th, I had pretty much gotten the entire grasp of the full feel for Grubtrop, West Virginia –– especially for those places where 13 – , 14 – and 16 – year – old Boys might hang out or spend time of any sort … all of its four schools with two of them elementary and each having some semblance of playground equipment in their yards, the public library crazily cramped with books –– even stacked up helter – skelter on every one of its windowsills, the few town parks tiny for the most part and absent nearly any structures for kiddos to play on at all save for one in the southwest part of town with a rather lovely pond in which I thought perhaps Zane and Jesse might try to fish. This specific park spread itself out not very far at all from the town’s main post office –– at exactly where King Herod with his trusty Nottingham Sheriff McLive had, again, fucked me over … nearly right away shutting down that rented postal service mailbox which I had from such a long, long distance leased for the Truemaier Boys’ receipt of Dr. Legion True’s letters and packages. I now knew of, too, almost all of Grubtrop’s individual stores, gasoline stations, grocery outlets and supermarkets –– a whole passel of these it seemed, its fast – food joints and pay phones … most easily accessible from Aspire’s narrowly opened driver’s side car window, its small municipal airport onto which unaccompanied Mirzah, Jesse and then – vomiting Zane had landed after the mother – fucking fiasco with Mehitable … upon our all burying Grandpa AmTaham just the very April before and out of which, I came to later know, Fairy – Pixie Herry nearly every Saturday morning sucked up bookoo time and many, many dollars just flying around for fun almost always alone but also with Mirzah alongside a couple of times. Loathing shopping at all as much as I do, I had by this late hour even scoped out Grubtrop’s four –– count ‘em … four! malls as well as its one old banking structure and its one colossal catholic church done up in newly appearing white stone slab with a mighty saintly sounding name on its sign. City hall, the police station, the firehouse –– and, quite importantly, safe and quick routes out of town … including even the railroad crossings and how and where the train tracks ran through parts of Grubtrop. The favorite spot I located was the east end cemetery –– almost within shouting distance of the Edinsmaier residence. O JYeah, by now, I knew where that was situated, too, also inside a nice – looking neighborhood, one without adult trees yet of course, of that upper north side of really, really red rose – brick, ranch styles –– all of them trimmed in white. It arose out of one of several newer residential sections of Grubtrop although quite a step less in grandiosity than the one – story with its so frozen, unstable and utterly unusable basement back in Ames but, like Aspire in the vehicle genre, this current house of Dr. Edinsmaier’s from its exterior at least appeared as if also “trying to grow up” to become as the Slacker’s former bachelor pad back at 5221 Othello Drive, his fucker which had abutted itself upside the Brookside Forest near 13th Street! The Good and Wonderful Doctor’s residence now, like many in Grubtrop, also sat propped on top of a bulge leading as it did to a very, very fine, skinny line of a paved street out in front which dropped straightaway down from its precipitous perch way up there. Narrow avenues meandered everywhere throughout this entire town. One traversing in a vehicle was required to stop all of the time in order to just go on down the street. Needed to stop in order to allow others with the right – of – way or at least the appearance of that right to pass me by, and then it was my turn to proceed forward. With cars parked on either side of the streets, there was in most places then and almost all of the time that I could see, only one lane open to motorists. The Grubtrop graveyard rolled itself out on the very east edge of daMan’s neighborhood as well as that of the whole community and simply bore the town’s name as its own, Grubtrop Cemetery . It was sparse in tall trees, too, though not in hilltop headstones and monuments of course, but did have some strategically situated stands upon its two, far mountainsides that afforded not only cover and privacy but also cool concrete benches constructed just for my visiting and reading and meditating and, I suppose, others’ crying or lamenting, too. Of all of the locales researched so far in Grubtrop, I thoroughly liked this entire space and resolved, aprovechar – fashion, because of its proximity to my Babies to use it that springtime to my fullest advantage. But it was Saturday night, darkening now around 9:30ish and with my already losing an entire day of my planned eight, there was one thing about this odd West Virginia community which was truly, truly weirding me out: noooo kiddos anywhere. I had seen hardly a child out and about in this town anywhere where I had thus far studied. It was a christian holiday weekend, that was true; but still, Jury, almost no one around after their Spring Break week just ending? Another fact was so also: the very few playgrounds I had encountered did not have much in the way of interesting, colorful or strenuously and physically challenging equipment inside them all –– over which children could romp. Mirzah loved to swim but it was April, and its pool had not yet opened; still no one was even down at the tennis or basketball courts that lay out alongside the pool. A few children accompanied adults inside the Wal – Mart Store, the shopping malls and the supermarkets which I had investigated, but uncannily it appeared to me to be a town of very few kids –– outside, at least. The necropolis where my day so far was ending and turning into nighttime seemed far less eerie than the sites I thought should have shown little spirits breathing –– and running around and screaming and laughing and … being! On this particular weekend of the year I’d seen plenty of commercial evidence of easter inside all of those stores yet not one dyed egg hunt nor a bonny bonnet nor yellow chick or pink bunny in sight outside anywhere. The patriarchy’s horror house of things catholically magical, mythical and soooo unreasonable … at where Grubtrop’s newest, pillared Good and Wonderful Doctor now weekly genuflected … splayed itself out, appropriately enough, at the very bottom of Horrid Herod’s hummocky hillock. His constricted street tumbled and rippled south down from his double driveway about nine or eleven shortened blocks’ worth or more past older homes, mostly wooden two – stories, almost all painted white and built I guessed around the 1920s and 30s and 40s and, at its end finally, rather t – boned right there with the entrance into the church’s parking lot. The perpendicular throughway east and west past this churchliness then is Grubtrop’s Main Street –– simultaneously stretching latitudinally … as that federal highway thoroughfare also known as … U.S. Route #50. Even around that large asphalt area with narrow strips of grassiness and some low – growing, dark evergreen shrubbery planted right up around the minister’s massive narthex, not one child scampered here or there grappling for a blue – or an orange – colored egg. I parked Aspire compassed due north toward where I perceived my Boys to most likely be … inside Herry’s house. The wispy white car was stopped on the west side midway up from the t – intersection along daMan’s street, still probably five to seven blocks away from the actual Edinsmaier domicile, however. The sky was now completely dark, its only illumination coming up the street to me from a yard lamp hovering high over and probably protecting the property of that catholic church; and at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, Sam was trying to admit to myself that while the day had been most productive in that I had certainly learned a lot, it was time now to close down this week for good, drive back on up to Fairvale and Ol’ Black, turn in at my mobile motel there in its hospital’s parking lot and get some sleep. Heavy – hearted, I was so disappointed. But not crying. I was not crying. Dr. Legion True had made the deal with myself the evening before whilst crossing the state line into this land of “poverty with a view” that though a man I was not, while Sam was in the King’s current Kingdom –– this West Virginia territory, perhaps I should become there, as necessary for the time being and the Operation BWB project at hand, as hard – hearted as the inglorious one who occupied the manor grouted with maroon mortar on his mount. I swallowed that throat lump again arising and put my right hand to the key in the ignition … catching sight, as I did so, of a sashaying silhouette in the rearview mirror. The entirely blackish person backdropped by that pole light towering beside the church had to still be a good 300 yards, maybe four football fields away, and was just turning into the street off of Route #50 but definitely ambling up the roadway in my direction. I adjusted the mirror in the middle of Aspire’s front windshield so as to keep in my view a fuller back – directed vista of this person as the walker drew nearer, straightening my wig and checking the positioning of the matching moustache and baseball cap as well. When the figure actually got close enough to pass by the car, I intended to point my covered head downward as if studying something in my lap in front of me; and of course, both of its doors were already locked. “O, m’good goddess. Dare it be?! O, O, O my. My, my … my, my, my. That’s pretty much about how tall he’d be. Truly! An’, and, even more than that, that just simply has to be him! That is his gait. I know it. I just know it is. Only my Zane carries his shoulders and his trunk thataway. Truly it just might be him. Alone? 10:30 at night? Out in the late dark like this all alone!? O Jeesh!” Any mother I know, and have recounted this episode to since, likewise thoroughly thus knows her kiddos –– even the ones whom she has not actually even seen for, well, … by this mid April 1993, we four were traipsing into our 18th month … physically separated from each other. Except for the hurried – up grief, the irritable bowel and gastroenteritis – type sicknesses, Silly Sister – Ardys’s refutation and Sterling’s and Mehitable’s outright screaming rejection that had all been the true character of their dying and death ceremonies for Righteous Ancestor AmTaham, not since the flop of the Agnes and P.M. Flunk evening in Ames on the Monday night of 28 October 1991, when Jesse’d run away and those weeks just prior to that whole Herod Edinsmaier – generated and – visited – down – upon – us gutting and carnage … had the Truemaier Boys and I spent hours of close – up time with each other. Still, a mama just does not forget. In my back – ass envisioning I could not make a thing out about this person other than the height and the carriage, so blackened was every other bit of the creature –– yet all of that obscurity notwithstanding, I refused to lower my head as I’d earlier planned to do and, instead, as the person was upon Aspire and me and approximately seven or eight feet parallel to the car’s frame, my eyeballs gazed straight onto his profile through the passenger window’s glass. The lock was up, the driver’s door flung open and the left sneaker planted out onto the concrete with my right still on the floorboard in what must have been an instant, “It is you! Zane, it is you!” No caution whatsoever on my part did I now demonstrate, that was for sure! Sixteen – year – old Zane Truemaier was probably ten feet onward northerly beyond the right front end of Aspire when he heard the unlatching car door’s – and – my words’, almost simultaneous noisiness. His torso spun around an imaginary axis on his left side to, in the solid blackness of this nighttime, face Sam square on, yet with my right foot inside on the car’s floor. In so, so typical teenage – ese, Zane dropped his jaw and, with both arms and palms splayed out from their sides, exclaimed, “Wha’th’FUUUCK!? Mom! What?! Wow!” “Zane, you can tell it’s me?!? Shit, you should be running off as fast as possible the other way,” Zane was walking back toward me now and over onto the driver’s left side of Aspire. “I taught you, didn’t I, to run away from strangers! Ya’ know, from strangers acting like they know you or are coming toward ya’! Not to stick around and certainly not to talk to ‘em! Right off you could tell it was me, could you?!?” “Hell YES, I can, Mom!” “Shii – iit! I thought this was a better disguise than it’s turning out to be, Darling!” We hugged and hugged and hugged. I kissed his neck and both of his cheeks and breathed him in as deeply as a mother possibly could … the scent, the all – ‘round aroma of her own son. I just could not let go of him. Sooo fortunately for us, … there occurred not another spirit in sight on that Saturday night street! To this hour, knowing from such the faraway distance that that total yardage must have been after my first just catching a glimpse of him in the mirror like I had, knowing then that this silhouetted stature was most likely my child, well, … I count the serendipity of that night and all of my Ames friends and those two car mechanics in Ohio who had been my supporters along the way to that very point as having eventually also led on up to my very own … restoration. “Mom … Mom, stop for a sec! What’s with the man – getup?! Ya’ think Herry won’t find out you’re here?! Ya’ think this’ll stop him an’ Fannie from knowing you’ve come out here to Grubtrop?” “Well, aaah yeah, I’m wanting exactly that actually, Z. O, O god, you look wonderful, Babe! How are you? O, just get in the car. We’ll go off somewhere behind a mountain and talk.” “I can’t. I can’t.” “Ya’ can’t? O. Aaaah … Okaaay.” “Well, it’s jus’, um, it’s just that I, ah, I’m out after, um, aaah, … after curfew, Mom!” Zane really wasn’t too, too worried, I could tell, about what would be my take on this specific behavior of his –– let alone, about my telling anyone, that was for damned sure. His hesitation in telling me this, I am thinking, was merely because teens are supposed to be reticent about admitting such activity to any parent! Plus, furthermore, the two of us in particular –– as parent and adolescent youth –– hadn’t actually interacted for 18 months or more! “OOOO! Jeesh! Curfew?!?” “Yeeeeah, Ma, this town has a 10:30 curfew!” “Whoa! No! No, I certainly didn’t know that, Zane! Of all I now know about Grubtrop, I did not know about its curfew!” I was smiling and shaking my head and trying to hide from him, not so well I am certain, my mirth at his resourcefulness actually! It … reminding me of my own now and also way back then, too –– when I had been 14, 15, 16, 17 and …, as a female with a tyrannical and puritanical parent within the likes of Mehitable, even so much older than 18! … that male – identified woman’s condemning judgment and controlling manipulation loooong into my DEhuman’s adulthood.
I gotta go.” Hug, hug, kiss, kiss, quick, quick –– and off he dashed sprinting uphill north into the complete darkness. “O I love you, too, Zane!” He glanced back around at me one time and then continued his swift departure and promising evasion from Herry’s detection. From inside Aspire I just watched my loveliest, eldest Son fade off until I couldn’t make him out any longer. All of this encounter had left me breathless yet utterly calm and buoyantly brimming. I sighed, “Mission accomplishing! Mission BWB is actually happening! Whoa! Just when I was thinking I’d up and lost another day to just searching and searching for Zane and for Jesse and for Mirzah, I haven’t! I found ‘em! At last, I’ve found them all! O, it’s early in Iowa, only about 10 p.m. there. Love that Central Time Zone!” Still a darkened and deserted street, still with no one venturing out upon it anywhere and certainly, right then, not Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, nor Herry and Fannie together, home from the theaters just yet, on its narrowness I pulled a three – point, 180 – degree turnabout and straightaway headed for the payphone one could use from inside a vehicle, a telephone which I had spotted at the corner convenience store on Grubtrop’s Main Street, its Route #50. While I may have looked somewhat manly to some, the less Dr. Legion True was fully exposed the safer I felt –– plus it was nearing 11 p.m., and I truly did not know the flavor and tenor of this town specifically with regard to unaccompanied females out alone long after darktime –– and I was not about to risk this wondrous upcoming week with my Boys by putting myself into settings from where I couldn’t escape safely enough. I would work to take back my nights from their endangering and evil thieves … later on. For now, I was just content to tell Grace and Linda and Cyan Song and László my so, so happy tidings. After all, for all of their planning and support and endeavors on my and the Truemaier Boys behalves, they, too, deserved this particularly fabulous news –– that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane had all been found! And that, fortuitously, I had not been –– that is, that I had not been found … out about! So far –– soooo, so good! * * * * Back at the far bottom corner of the Fairvale Hospital’s visitors’ lot, Ol’ Black and I reconnected –– or rather, the cushioned bed in its “back room” and I did! It was midnight local time. What a fulfilling day’s worth I had had –– and probably one of those changing moments in a person’s life when she or he begins to thoroughly take in the tremendous value that one fulfilled day within her or his lifetime truly, truly has! On 11 April 1993, others’ day of irrationality, unreasonableness, bunny – chicken egg non – science and, specifically, dead man – (and, most certainly, not dead woman – ) rising – back – to – breathing magic, and nearly at high noon … my breath was again taken away. I purposefully left off Sam’s accoutrements and in the back seat of Aspire, at hand if quickly necessary; but I did not want in the light of our first daytime in months together to frighten Jesse or Mirzah or even waste visiting time trying to explain to them the necessity of why the costume –– although, with those specific two, explanation wouldn’t at all have taken up much in the way of time. I was atop the second, long hillock on the backside of Grubtrop Cemetery ––probably a distance to the east of another four football fields or more from the town’s last north – south traversing street. That one was three streets east of and about ten blocks south of Herry’s house, and, after knowing the path and neighborhood now, I estimate in walking time maybe a strong 20 to 25 minutes’ trek from daMan’s doorway to the concrete bench I was occupying. Of course, this day would be an easy one in the cemetery; it was a holiday and not Memorial Day so folks would not be disturbing there the peace of their dead nor, for that matter, that of me, its latest Phantom of the Graveyard, because most all would be enjoying family time together in backyard barbecues or sumptuous sit – down ham dinners. Arriving early and in the broadest of beautiful sunshine, I stood up on this knoll and gazed and gazed and searched and searched –– watching particularly another t – boning intersection, the one where that last avenue of the town ran past a west – east street which I thought might be the one the Truemaier Boys would take to come to me. They did. I gasped. Again –– at that great of a distance, three entirely familiar figures finally emerged, the only three people out and about! Upon any of the streets that, from that superb, skyscraping spot, I could surveil. And, again, like the night before when I could just tell by the height and the gait of the mystery person at such a stretch of street when it was Zane solo, I could also, with these three people, immediately just tell they were, indeed … my Boys! I have – since that first sighting of all three of them that far away –– often, often pondered how we mothers do it. How do we do it: how do we stand this? How do we stand for this, Jury, –– this forced isolation and invisibility to each other? If, as it most surely is, war is the leaving behind of every child, then “civil” family court in custody battles is the leaving behind of every mother who has ever stood up and finally said something which daMan and daJudge did not want to hear, certainly did not want to be held accountable for and absolutely with what neither man wanted to –– justly –– deal! Not exactly Gettysburg and, indeed for us struggling but immutable mothers and women most certainly not 1863, this particular Cemetery Hill, the Grubtrop one in the Union’s breakaway state of West Virginia where two years earlier in that mid 19th Century one could be certain that a total of zero of its legislative delegates were mothers because none of them were female, afforded the passionate four Iowa Yanks of Jesse, Zane, Mirzah and Legion then, the most ghostly of secret yet stalwart strongholds in our ongoing battle against … being kept apart. Against the bloodying and conquering, divisive troops maintaining the Virginian manner of mindlessness –– that is, of secession between children and mother maneuvered by King Herod and all of his judges, Shyster Shindy Scheisser, Nottingham Sheriff Fannie Issicran McLive, even that corralling daughter of hers, Mary Jane. Over its periphery’s four foot – high wall of mortared stones in different colors of mauve and gray and slate and charcoal all three of the Boys scaled and now inside the confines of the graveyard grounds per se, they made this bright, bright sunshiny holiday their sauntering promenade around similarly hued headstone and monument after headstone in full view of all of the partying townspeople apparently totally self – involved and, most helpfully, … indoors. And up the hill on its far side. To me. To me, their ma! The “property rights” of ownership and sole access to these children by only Father Herod Edinsmaier, the Exalted Sperm – Donating Biodaddee –– be itself … fucked. As the Boys advanced toward me, I couldn’t then think on the untold numbers of exhibitionism incidents, the frotteurism with indecent liberties and outright groping perpetrated on Grace Portia at my and her sons’ youth basketball game and gawd knows upon who else –– including possibly deep inside that damned pornography – purveying den on Othello Drive upon my very own children, Herry Edinsmaier’s scripted admission of the bestial acts which he executed into cows, dogs, pigs and chickens, the innumerable forms of and daMan’s long – term consumption of pornography and voyeuristic actions, his visits to strip bars that included for those same years and years and years King Herod’s absolute abhorrence of my nearly always being able to actually find him, the Boys’ biodaddee, when he was gone off alone to all of those out – of – state medical meetings, Herry’s similar span of time –– conservatively, at least 14 years’ worth –– spent spewing malignant and pernicious, everyday language mostly at me … around the many measures of geography we had called our homes. And all of these sexual addiction behaviors, particularly at sexologist and psychotherapist Dr. Patrick Carnes’s Level Two denotation of them in his work, Out of the Shadows, were not to even begin to address, let alone, just mention, how many actual … “such encounters” with “other women” there have been –– while “bound in legal union” to me or to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. Nor those Shameful Eight Pages’ disclosures: the proof of daMan’s prurient proclivities from directly under Herry Edinsmaier’s own hand. Nor the non – existence, the absolute absence actually, … of any emotional components to any of Herry’s relationships … sexual or otherwise! I just could not think, right then at any rate, on all of the years’ worth of holocaustic destruction which Herry, as the Truemaier Boys’ custodial daddee with his ongoing behaviors, had wrought down upon my children –– especially now in their adolescences … this mother – fucking. Thoroughly sanctioned, as it so is, over and over by family court judges … about whom my obstetrically beleaguered and harassed, 28 – year – old girlfriend and discriminated – against mama – also – without – custody, Rachel, is known to have so wisely observed … and advised me, “And, ya’ know Legion, there’s no judge who himself doesn’t surf porn!”
All of these things I just could not think on … right now … as Mirzah, Zane and Jesse Truemaier, at this moment, wound their very paths through this burial ground. I only thanked my newly flowering inner strength, truly flourishing for the very first time in all of my life there inside my 45½ – year – old core, and the support and the faith of my fabulous friends from back in the one place where it all initially went down –– or, more appropriately worded, came crashing down –– and in which place I then had steadfastly, these many long, long months which had by now melded into years of suffering, also determined to live out the rest of my days –– Ames, Iowa. Not a one of the Boys even looked back around themselves in fear of some others following after them! They just came straight … at me! “Mom … Mooo - om! Hi! Hi! You’re here! Wow! Zane said you were here –– and you … you are! You’re here!” 13½ – year – old Mirzah hugged and hugged and hugged my neck, and I was so trying not to cry in front of them all. This was the person whom I had remembered as … the kindest one to ever walk the World. What a smile Mirzah has always had! Of course, nearly right off, judiciously practical and orderly Jesse Truemaier wanted to see Sam’s costume –– all parts of it and to get from me the skinny on just exactly how all of that disguise was working out for me so far! And what were my plans to be for it and the three of them, with it, in the very next, upcoming days? Were they to call me “Mom” or were they supposed to call me “Sam” –– even right there on this sacred soil when no one appeared to be around us? We four sat on the stone bench and the grassiness out just in front of it and talked and talked and talked and talked. Completely hidden from and oblivious to the rest of … West Virginia and just exactly who the hell else resided there. O, they were so … well, so big! All of them teenagers! I’d brought along plenty of beverages and snacks, enough for days’ worth of legendary bottomless pits. Three hours passed by in catching up. Every single one of the three required an update on every single one of their friends back in Ames and extending down to DeAndré Taylor in Urbandale … and whether or not I knew anything of the other one of Jesse’s compadres there who’d aided him, now 14½ years old, in running away into the forested, urban fort that late October night … nearly now some 18 months ago. Peer – reviewed research, since, specifically on “relocating” parents clearly shows the destruction done to children by fathers who isolate and keep away the mother from the children by their vengeance – waging, moveaway strategies. And, as specifically, not the other way around! That is, there is not only no damage done to the children if mama moves them far, far away from biodaddee, but the kiddos actually thrive! Children do best when not moved away from either parent (defined as “beyond an hour’s drive”); but when it happens, which is more frequent than not, then the children do best –– in all parameters studied –– when moved away by only their mothers. So astounding are the scientifically collected and gathered data now –– results that any mom just about anywhere in the World even without the science and merely basing her instincts in this matter upon Nature, the World Order of Things and Women’s Ways of Knowing alone could’ve told us –– … so astounding are the data now that Fathers’ Rights groups have had to back way the hell off on their manipulation of this “excuse”, one which they had so been contriving … in order to promote it to their aprovechar advantage. Trying to hide the fact that the majority of fathers’ moveaways are, indeed, revenge – taking, plain and pure, “We have to gut the bitch in the belly … but it will get you, Daddee, what ya’ want: the Crazy Pussy … mother – fucked!” This revenge – taking is accomplished by the biodaddees’ using the “excuse” that these resettlements are “needed” or are “necessary for job placement or career advancement,” … matters which happen to be, actually, quite true for mothers who work outside of the home! The Fathers’ Rightsters seek to stop custodial moms from moving away while, at the very same time, stating that relocating is, “without a doubt,” “a necessity for custodial dads,” … for themselves! Activists and advocates for justice and for children’s health, from http://angelfury.wordpress.com, http://www.thelizlibrary.org and http://www.nnflp.org to http://www.nnflp.org/press/030630-1-braver-study.html, http://www.nnflp.org/press/030630-2-braver-study.html and http://dastardlydads.blogspot.com from all around the country then –– have had to long and loudly expose the Fathers’ Rights’ factions on this massive matter of custody after divorce and these groups’ trickery in deploying the word “parents” in these studies’ results and conclusions now … instead of the Truth which is that children do better when they stay and live with their mothers –– wherever she is! What fathers rights’ groups had really wanted from the research data in their aprovechar abuse of the children as their own property and as their pawns is to exact revenge against the children’s mothers by either preventing her, if she had physical custody, from leaving the territory to better herself or, if biodaddee was the decreed custodian as in the case of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier with Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, by stealing her kiddos far, far away, thus for a poor woman, to enormously effect the stoppage of all contact with her … thereby successfully crafting and rendering mother invisible to the children –– and, likewise and most intentionally, them to her. While it was nice to finally now have the official, scientific research results that demonstrated and bore out this fact of children’s welfare and upbringing, women’s ways of just knowing these things about the nurturance of kids, our knowing plus the actual knowledge and information that we do know –– both aspects repeatedly dissed in The Opera by daMan and daJudges –– would have meant nothing to ‘the Court’, nothing to Sol Wacotler Seizor or to Harley Butcher, even if, back that decade and more ago, there had been this official data, let alone, research work performed by … male investigators! What only mattered to all of these men, laws or no laws, research data or no truthful research data, was not being challenged any which way, and definitely not being called to accountability for their respective behaviors and possibly ultimately thwarted in their chosen ‘conduct’, by … a woman. And a gaaaawddamn uppity blondie woman –– at that! “These guys tweak and twist the laws!” Political Science Professor Schmidt had announced about the men of the judiciary –– even before there has been any so – called “evidence” of any kind … presented! I told the Boys all about my job at the Forestry Department. Jesse and Zane, my certified safe Iowa hunters, particularly wanted to know what all of that entailed as well as about the stuff college students learned in that major! They especially liked hearing about its Wild Game Banquet activity! This was most pleasing to me, and I was honored to tell them all, too, of the upcoming Third International Agroforestry Conference and my role in our Department’s hosting of it. It appeared not to concern any one of them whether or not I, now a Grade I, ¾ – time secretary in the Merit echelon, the lowest of the three levels of university employees, who worked evenings and weekends as the breakfast grill cook and pots – and – pans scrubber at the supermarket delicatessen, would ever attain the alleged status and glory or acquire the usual $assets$ of … a practicing animal doc or, particularly, of a veterinary microbiology professor … again. Even eldest Zane was still too naïve to fully understand the impact on that whole section of my life of Gutting – the – Bitch Herry’s vengeance and sabotage. That by way of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier with the androcentric assistance of ‘the Court’ and definitely with the fully cognizant and cooperating Shyster Shindy Scheisser and the matching folie à deuxs of the King’s with both Scheisser and Ms. Male – Identified Fannie Issicran McLive so manipulatively wielding … multiple times … that career – smearing Ames Tribune roadside bomb blast, my calling as a healer of critters and as the teacher of the next generation of us healers was … haltingly, compulsorily, forcibly blown to bits. It was now around 3 or 3:30 p.m., and I became concerned –– as a parent of minor children –– that wouldn’t … also … Daddee – Herry, wouldn’t Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, themselves parents of minor children as well … both be wondering and questioning where the Truemaier Boys all were ... by now? “Hell no, Mom. That’s a laugh!” Zane replied, “although maybe we outta think about getting back. Just cuz all of us’ve been gone at the same time. And, ya’ know, for the exact same amount of time.” “Okay. Well then, aaahh, what’s with tomorrow and school with spring break over now?” “What do ya’ mean, Mom?” asked Mirzah. “O, I mean like with sports’ practices. Ya’ know, like with your and Jesse’s track and Zane’s baseball? I’ll just hang out at the state park east of here till you all get done with school. The one off Route #50? I brought along a ton of things with me to read. And springtime in the woods? Why, it’ll be just like a real vacation at the lake for me, not?! I looked up some about it when I was making my plans to come out here. Say, you all probably know of it: Tygart State Park ?” “Yup! Well, Jesse does. That’s for sure!” Mirzah with that so endearing turned – down, left – sided lip commissure of his grinned at me and at Jesse, like he knew more than he was acknowledging or saying. “’For sure’? By that, Mirzah, you meeeeean …?” I purposefully stretched out the last word and coaxed both him and Jesse with my questioning gaze first to one, then to the other of their two faces. They were both fit to burst, more or less, and it was obvious that they so wanted to tell me –– but, at the very same time, worried that … well, that I myself would be worried –– once they did so! They were right! Those three guys definitely still knew me! I half expected to hear, or not –– depending upon whether they decided to tell me or not –– sordid tales of just barely 14 – year – olds parking together in the backseats of 16 – year – olds’ cars or, worse yet, alcohol and illicit drug use within the confines of Tygart State’s campfire areas or, the worst, the use of handguns or long guns and target – shooting within its public grounds but, say, alone or with other young adolescents but unaccompanied by and not under the watchful eye of their father –– something along those lines. What activity I never even considered was the one ‘behavior’ behind their nervous chuckles and sideways glances to each other. By lifeguards, I have had within my lifetime to be pulled out of deep water on three, separate occasions. Three times! And all of these events occurred because of panicking episodes during swimming excursions within pools, not even one time from out of a calm pond or a placid lake, let alone, from, say, my having been thrown overboard into raging ocean waters! When the Boys, Husband Herry and I all lived in Columbia, Missouri, in the mid 1980s, there had been that nursing student / babysitter, Stacey, with whom Herry had so often loved flirting, only about 20 years old and although studying to be in “the health care – providing” business, not too friggin’ smart at all about providing it herself! One summer afternoon when Herry and I were both at work, she let Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, each without one lifejacket between the three of them, occupy and paddle – kick from the sides of … one, mostly flaccid air mattress … as they, only 8, 6 and 5 years old! ! !, all struggled to swim some 500 yards! ! ! there in deep, state park waters out to an island! When that night I learned of this stupidity, this idiocy, I was simply horror – struck! I wanted to fire the woman on the mother – fucking spot, but no! Herry –– who, no doubt, would’ve whiningly missed his sweet, widdl’, coquettish tête – à – têtes with Stacey, thought I, the children’s mother! should just shut my whacko – crazy fuck up, be quietly grateful and forget about it –– since “nothing happened. Nothing at all!” Fahgettaboudit! ! ! Dr. Legion True did not prevail: this person did remain on as the Boys’ … daily “care”giver! I actually had to not only keep her as the Kiddos’ nanny –– but to also handsomely pay the mother – fucker for “this watch” … to boot! And? And I did have to shut my fuck up about it all! From that point forward! Loving – Husband Herry … thus … commanded! ! ! Now within Tygart State Park right there inside gloriously beautiful central West Virginia it so seemed that, likewise unbeknownst to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier who wouldn’t have cared even if he had known, Jesse and some of his new Grubtrop friends had many, many times visited the 30 – to 40 – foot cliffs above its lake –– and, from atop there, jumped the hell off! “O, m’god!” gasped I. “You what?!” “Told jya’ she’d freak out!” Jesse didn’t hide his disgust with Mirzah’s telling. He had but he hadn’t –– wanted to tell me himself, that is. Jesse was … I could definitely see this … wholly proud of his supposed prowess and wanted me to be, too –– but for a teenager who hadn’t seen nor spoken to his mother in over a year and a half, Jesse was not the slightest bit concerned about his being stopped from continuing those solo flights off the lake’s rock face overhangs. He just didn’t want me thinking he would die –– or worse, paralyze himself –– which is exactly what I was thinking! Jesse knew I couldn’t stop him –– if he wanted to keep doing it. For that matter, Mirzah and Zane knew I couldn’t stop Jesse –– or them either –– from doing anything which they all three might have been “up to” because of, well … because of my lowly level to nonexistent position within their sperm donor’s mind. The only good thing about this standoff of sorts, this impasse, was that, without my ever even having to ask any one of the three Boys –– to be sure, I totally trusted that their tattling to Daddee – Herry or the Next Cunt in His Stash that Dr. Legion True was “around” wasn’t even in their own minds either! Thank goddess that I had given the Boys swimming lessons, though, back in Columbia –– after learning about the Finger Lakes State Park fiasco there. Lessons for which fees I myself slaved and paid out a couple thousand dollars’ worth –– private water safety lessons for all three of them then –– to which Herry, at the least, rubberstamped his patriarchal and paternal sanction … that Stacey should take them! Of course, I knew those lessons of the preceding decade would not protect Jesse against jagged rocks, protruding boulders and other hidden menaces, but he was o – so smart and wise beyond his years and most certainly, beyond those of Stacey’s and even of 17 – year – old, older brother – like, Joy Toy Boy Herry’s, so I simply had to believe that Jesse would take good, vigilant care of himself –– even if he persisted in taking these flying leaps. One other thing: If there is anyone I have ever known who has had a knack for making friends, it is Jesse. He learned this art form from Zane –– and, together, the two of them passed it on over to Mirzah! These men never, never, ever lack for having at their sides admiring and honoring friends who will follow them into whatever adventure is on tap –– even if it is into hellfire itself –– if that is where the action is going on today! Take it from me, that is, take this knowledge and this knack from one who truly knows: for that there is no price equal! We four wrapped up the gathering; and from my distant deportment on that ghostly rise, I watched the three of them till they completely disappeared from view. Again as I stood there alone I wondered, “How do we do this? This’s just got to be the second hardest thing that a woman –– in her lifetime –– ever, ever does … ‘let my peoples goooo – ooo’ … ” And, of course, there in literally a land of the spirits the answer ethereally wafted from AmTaham True’s secreting of it back to me –– for then, for right then: splitting. I just split. This specific spell Legion True split off back … into ‘safe’ Sam … who got into ‘his’ Aspire and drove on out of the cemetery. And … off. * * * * I was correct. Not a soul did any of the three tell. No one. No one, that is, capable of exacting untoward consequence from me or from the Boys. The entire week I came by the cinder track oval or stood alone and in back – fence, right – field solitude at the ballpark –– always as the Non – Edinsmaier, Sam, and quite a ways away from any set of bleachers where a couple of times that particular week I did happen to sight Herry Edinsmaier among all of the other players’ parents and friends who were actually watching Zane’s games. Only Narcissist Dr. Edinsmaier, as antisocial as had been repeatedly assessed within Dr. Shark’s four performance reviews of daMan’s mingling during his Hershey work in medicine, continued there in Grubtrop what Daddee – Herry’d always, always done back in Ames at the diamonds inside Brookside Forest for the Little Minors’ and the Little Majors’ baseball games: pretend to be present. Instead of actually ‘watching’ Zane, his teammates and their opponent players interact, Herry read –– the local day’s newspaper or his favorite book of the month or something else –– and rarely, if ever, did the man even look up. And, for certain, Herry Edinsmaier never glanced over in Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s direction either … because the Next Cunt in His Stash? Why, she was never even in attendance at any of these Truemaier Boys’ events anyhow! We went out for burgers and fries, not the four of us together, just one and me, and then to a Hardee’s over into neighboring Montclank so as not to be seen together at the one in downtown Grubtrop. Mostly we just sat at picnic tables in the town’s tiny city parks and talked or on the far sides of that one Grubtrop Cemetery. I never moved Ol’ Black one time, and it appeared to me that setting there in his lowdown, graveled parking space on the very bottom rung of the Fairvale Hospital visitors’ lot, he hadn’t been –– that I could see –– tampered with in any way whatsoever. For myself at Gabe’s Discount inside one of those four shopping malls of Grubtrop, I purchased a navy, white and yellow baseball jersey, my favorite color combination, and a pair of completely white sneakers considering these … the obligatory souvenirs of the place –– along with a silvery baseball cap from a local musket and archery shop right on Route #50. Dr. Joplin scored a pewter wind chime of John Deere tractors and for Rosalind Franklin, my immediate boss, and all of my other friends I purchased candles at the gift shop of a local artisan who lived above her store. She thought it “sensitive” –– and pleasingly told Sam so –– for a man to be buying his co – workers candles! I sewed –– patches and rips, tears and buttons, things for which mending, with the three jobs, I had had absolutely no time … so’d brought these tasks along. I telephoned friends daily with reports and updates –– and always to let someone back in Ames know every 24 hours or so that I was okay, and even at times … ecstatic. And I read. O, did I ever read! Best, uninterrupted span of reading for pleasure –– since my teenaged youth! But constantly I am so slow, a reader for three decades utterly accustomed to perusing only matters of scientific endeavors who still has to friggin’ study every damned nuance and phrasing to make certain that I’ve … got it! –– the curse, I have learned from several professors at Iowa State with whom I have since discussed this illogicality, … … of many a scientist. Time there even was to teach old Sam a new trick –– that of taking showers at commercial trucking concerns’ rest – stops! My friends, Grace, Linda, Cyan Song and I, with our midwinter plans previously, had not forgotten to make special note of how I could handle my hygienic measures for the ten days when I was, more or less, to be on the road. And I had learned about how, with even a credit card, to buy the service and use of a truckstop’s bathing or showering facilities. Besides having my long, blonde hair shampooed and all over getting squeaky clean myself, the mighty finest thing about this whole undertaking was, though, that this woman did not have to, for the three showerings which I bought there over that total time span, … I did not have to one time feign myself off as Sam. Up Interstate 79 and just outside Fairvale sat a small and surprisingly scoured and bright – appearing combination gas station and greasy spoon with a game room space, television, washing machines and four showers on its second, loft – like level. From my friends’ prior planning and with the further aid of the most current Rand McNally Road Atlas, why, I found it lickety – split, no trouble at all. Sashayed on in with a tapestried bag containing bath soap, shampoo, wide – toothed hair pick and blow dryer, whipped out the old, (well, … the really, really new!) gold MasterCard and, at a rather tiny, glassed – in countertop harboring on its inside casing just a couple of big, heavy, dusty silver belt buckles with raised emblems of encrusted Peterbilts and as many round snuff cans of Red Man and Top Mill alongside a few rectangular tins of Altoids peppermints, I asked to purchase a hot shower. Not even a batted eyelash nor five minutes’ time later Dr. Legion True was climbing the staircase to this establishment’s loft, Jury, with the truckstop’s provided and freshly laundered and loaned Barry – cloth towel and washcloth included in its rental price … to Shower Closet Three or Four or whichever numbered one, each enclosure very well – lit and not only with electrical outlets but also secure locks from the inside, … to whichever one of these four happened to be vacant! All for only four bucks and two bits a splish – splash! As I glanced down through the clear glass while retrieving back my credit card receipts, I was glaringly reminded every single one of the three times when I showered there of Mehitable True’s newspaper clipping which she had mailed me earlier –– specifically warning of the dangers of West Virginia’s male children chewing tobacco, that under the age of ten years, the article blurb had announced, six out of every ten of this state’s boys … for a total of at least 60 percent of these kiddos (not to mention, its ‘adult’ … good ol’ ‘boys’) … chewed or sniffed or sucked or plugged smokeless tobacco. Of all of the activities I did there, alone, in and around Grubtrop, Montclank and Fairvale, … and excepting the taking of my noontime leave of West Virginia altogether upon the very midday of my furtive visit’s second Saturday there, the 17th day of April, … the most heartrending were Sam’s two sittings through Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster of the time –– up at their largest mall’s theater complex … Schindler's List! The scene with all of the little children scurrying up into the backend of the Nazis’ stock truck I have already written of: the one where the mothers hear their laughing, singing kids and see their antics but then, way, way too late, suddenly come to realize their babies’ fates! The tot in the little red waistcoat: the littlest, yellow – haired girl in all of that black and white. The small child who ran and hid, also like Jesse, by jumping –– only the hideout spew into which the little Hebrew boy quietly sunk himself was human excrement and waste –– and not at all clear Tygart – Lake liquid. I cried and cried and cried. Tissue after tissue after tissue. Felt sickened. Literally. “How do we do this? How do we mothers do this? How dare we, Jury, … ever, ever … be made to do this?” |