Storymania - The Janke Show by Jack Masters Jack Masters

The Janke Show
Jack Masters Jack Masters

The Janke Show

That morning Janke’s wakefulness fluttered with the sunlight cast around the rustling white curtain. Around fifteen seconds alternated between breeze and stillness, sun and shadow, repetitiously waking Janke with the sun and lulling sleep in shadow. Somewhere near round seven of Janke’s dreamy oscillation, he imagined the compelling coffee aroma and sprang from the bed, snatched the robe from its hook and walked into the kitchen.

Janke rarely spoke to himself aloud, and definitely not before coffee. He opened his laptop at the counter and checked the vitals: stocks, emails, job applications. Nothing. Janke wondered what today would bring. This was his first thought of the morning.

The newspaper headline read “Inflation Highest in 17 years. Food and Energy Blamed.” The report continued to ultimately mention everything else was actually getting cheaper.
“Wealth is leaving the US,” said Janke aloud to no one. The fact that he spoke aloud clearly indicated this as an important revelation.

Janke’s ancient pickup grumbled to a stop at the small café with Matty and his very expectant wife Carrie behind the counter. In addition to a warm hippy gaiety replete with surf magazines and ski porn strobing on the TV in the corner, they made the best breakfast and lunch in the tiny mountain town where a solitary traffic light flashed simple requisite orderliness at the main intersection. Janke worried she could pop at any second and hoped not before his burritos were finished.

‘Howdy,’ spoke Janke with his practiced, affected western drawl.
‘Hey there. What are you working on today?’ asked Carrie.
‘Phew, let’s see. I can bust concrete for eight hours or spend eight on the phone trying to get a plumber. Can I get two sausage and one veggie?’
‘Yo, when you gonna be done with that place? I heard the main floor is done,’ Matty called over the hissing griddles.
‘Never.’
Matty held his gaze, eliciting an elaboration. ‘I mean it, never. I’m going crazy. The only shit that gets done is when I do it myself. I can’t get an electrician. My third carpenter flaked. It’s fuckin’ nuts.’ Janke rubbed his forehead in pained exasperation.
‘That’s the valley man,’ Matty smiled. Matty was easy because he fixed everything with a smile. If your dog just died, Matty would say, ‘Way more room for a dog to run in heaven. Hey check out the new labs at the pound,’ and grin in a way that made everyone a little less tense. Matty wouldn’t solve your problem but he sure as hell wouldn’t make it worse.
‘I hear the new kitchen and bath are killer,’ Matty offered as console.
‘Actually, yeah, turned out really nice. Two down, a thousand to go. So what’s Fletcher up to these days? Excited for a sister?’ Janke asked Carrie.
‘Oh, he’s excited. He’s not sure what it all means but he thinks he knows. And he’s climbing on everything.’
‘Anchor some top ropes,’ beamed Janke conspiratorially toward Matty.
‘Yeah, man. He’ll be climbing The Grand in about 3 years,” laughed Matty.
Dads always love to talk big about their sons, especially when it comes to climbing or skiing and the dads are ski bums in a mountain town. A six year-old climbing the nearly 14,000 foot sheer craggy granite of the Grand Teton was preposterous and fantastic enough to scare Carrie into thinking Janke an ass for his encouragement. Matty clearly loved the image and wore a massive grin.

‘Here you go,’ said Carrie as she hefted the well oversized burritos onto the counter. Matty took care of Janke. Janke also tipped well. ‘Cheers. I promise we’ll have you over for dinner when it’s done. Fletch may be in college, though. Don’t work too hard Carrie,’ called Janke on his way out the door.

Janke regarded the work in front of him. Several thousand pounds of concrete to be broken by jackhammer. Once a standing wall now dropped flat onto old tires, the thick slab lay awaiting its final crumbling punishment. This would take all day, maybe a day and a half. He double checked the temporary support walls, double checked the refrigerator for something to drink, then double checked his email for a reasonable commutation from the mind and body numbing work ahead. No quarter, no respite for Janke today. Nine hours later concrete dust covered the walls and ceiling and sweaty Janke. He was exhausted and deaf and had no energy for thinking that night.

Weeks later the early sunlight again danced in the curtain and fluttered into Janke’s sleep just like the time before. In the intervening month since he broke the concrete, he awoke daily before sunrise to load batches of concrete into the small old truck and cart it off to the county landfill. The days when the landfill wasn’t open, Janke still woke at the same time and took a leisurely bike ride down the country roads until he became hungry for breakfast and work. Wild and uneven sleep schedules brought Janke confusion and bodily sickness, so these became alarm clock days when the piercing shrieks must be stopped immediately and no chance of sleep remained. But last night a friend’s birthday party went late and Janke was trying to sleep off a hangover by resting a hand on the snooze button. The fluttering persisted until ‘bing’! Permits due today! No wait, that’s next Tuesday. Back to sleep. Then ‘bing!’ Coffee! Janke lept from bed.

Janke was at a work standstill that required no leaping. He’d just finished wiring the lighting and he wouldn’t see a plumber for two weeks and an electrician for three. The drywall crew came the week after that. His summa cum laude masters in procrastination allowed easy dismissal of many small projects, so Janke walked the property and the yonder wildness where sentry willows tilted across the small creeks and springs gurgled and the beaver ponds sat tranquil. Janke had his first thought that day. He wanted a beaver.

He turned back toward the cabin moated on two sides by small streams and followed each one through the dense brush the distance to the country road. One stream paused and pooled between a small grove of quaking aspen and several large willows. Now in the dry mid-summer it was a low marshy, muddy spot but Janke saw a good beaver pond.

Janke awoke the next morning and his thought was already there. He and Deb needed something to engage in together. Since leaving New York City and Ivy League friends at properly intellectual dinner parties, divergent expectations began straining a once peaceful marriage. Theirs was a plan of investment and pause before the children would arrive and require suitable East Coast education. Deb considered a vacation home as a tolerable place to put money and slake Janke’s wanderlust. Janke’s suit and tie tightened and choked and reminded him of failed office politics and memorandums to nowhere. He needed a return to Emmersonian self-reliance, clean air, mountains to climb and steep passes to bike. Janke saw the next several years as an opportunity to refresh, to self-direct and build wealth. Deb saw backwardness, Janke’s lack of a weekly paycheck, waning control and understanding of Janke’s daily schedule, and construction timeline that didn’t fit her honed conceptions of efficiency.

She tryingly grasped at some affection for life under the majestic Tetons. She loved to plan the flowerbeds and to plant the bulbs and to watch the crocus and daffodils herald spring’s all clear to the other wildflowers. She loved having fresh basil and tomatoes off the vine for her cabresi salad, fresh peppers and crisp beans and the sense of orderly creation. So Janke drove to the nursery and loaded up on seeds, mulch, spades, gloves, fertilizer and anything else the salesman could show him. He would clear rocks and yank thistles while she’d gently place each bulb in its preordained spot. He knew working next to each other would be good. For two days they dug and planted, turned soil and spread mulch, mostly laughing and enjoying the focus on the garden under clear blue skies and towering peaks. He thoughtfully agreed with her every idea disguised in question form regarding the exact location, spacing, and depth of every bulb and seed. ‘I think it’s perfect,’ he’d say again and again. This was her garden to control and plan. She deigned Janke to witness each query as testament to her powers of thorough organization.

When spring came, the crocus and daffodil slept. Some basil showed a weary head and the tomato plants just crinkled. Deb was convinced Janke thought her an idiot and fully culpable for the miserable garden and the dead plants.
‘Should’ve got a sprinkler going much earlier,’ said Janke, feeling guilty at ruining her garden.
‘We don’t even own a sprinkler,’ snorted Deb bitterly.
‘I’ll pick one up today.’ Janke was dejected and felt her disdain upon him.
‘Lot of good that’ll do now,’ she said turning away.

‘Yo Cruise!’ shouted Janke as the big black Labrador trotted down his drive. Cruiser weighed into his legs as Janke drummed his side and scratched his ears. ‘Mr. Cruise is a good boy! Yes he is!’ cooed Janke to the wagging, basking lab.
‘Animal, what is up?’ Janke slowly pronounced each word to convey an easy formality and deferential respect. Animal was an old nickname harkening to a time when youth conferred indiscretions and the occasional barfight.
‘Thought we might finish those closets today,’ said Doug in a deep growl. His voice could scare a convict, until acquainted with its genteel owner.
‘Aaah, you are the man,’ responded Janke with great relief that some plan was made for him today.
‘Unless you had something else going on,’ Doug hedged his offer while motioning his eyes to the large rocks in the mudhole twenty yards away.
‘Uh that. Yeah, I’m building a waterfall. I like to hear the gurgling at night. Helps me sleep. You wanna know what else? When I’m done I’m getting a beaver in here.’

Each of the rocks Janke had carried into the mudhole weighed at least 100 pounds. They had come from the top of the mountain pass miles away where Janke would pull over and load them either into the rickety pickup or, to the absolute rage of his wife, into her new station wagon. Janke had moved nearly thirty golden geometric boulders by the time Doug arrived.

To Doug, most things were easy to understand because he preferred it that way. Doug, therefore, was easy to understand because he preferred it that way. If you judge an owner by his dog, then Cruiser’s owner was a decent, respectable man. He was in his mid-forties and looking both youthful and distinguished. A flare of gray graced his dark beard when it escaped a scheduled trim, framing a perpetually laughing smile and kind eyes. A steady diet of coffee, frozen pizza and years of running a chain saw made Doug wiry and powerful. Compassionate consideration and sagacious advice well-forged his honesty, conferring upon him a trustworthiness reserved for doctors and some clergy. A storyteller with benevolent charm lent unthreatening humor and soft deprecation upon his subjects. His were the tales everyone quietly yearned to share but didn’t, mostly fearful of revealing their own self-abasement or inadequacy. He never pushed too hard or hit the raw nerve. Doug’s kindhearted mastery made one feel as if oneself had just told the delightfully funny recount of his own bumbling fallibility. Especially Janke. Doug made Janke laugh at himself better than Janke could laugh at himself. Doug made everyone laugh and he preferred it that way.

‘Beaver huh? Maybe you should get some bears, too, and maybe a few mountain lions. Then you’ll be just like Jack Hanna,’ Doug found Janke’s morning geological activities curious and odd.
‘And of course a few bighorn,’ Janke mused.
‘Yeah, yeah, you could charge admission until someone got eaten,’ Doug added mirthfully.
‘Have you ever felt a shorn beaver? I have and it’s delightful, I highly recommend it,’ Janke poorly paraphrased a movie line he vaguely remembered.
‘Shorn beaver? Aren’t you supposed to keep those in the bedroom?’ quipped Doug and they both laughed.

Janke needed Doug around. Doug knew everything about building and Janke just knew the things he imagined. Doug saw the energetic Janke, the sweaty effort when Janke toiled, when he ran the stairs for tools instead of a walked and carried big logs on his shoulders instead of waiting for a partner’s help. Doug saw the eager student of every lesson and the endearingly feeble results of well-intentioned projects Janke tackled himself. Doug allowed himself amused by Janke’s flitty concoctions and improbable designs, by his wondering, creative, fruitionless dreaming. And Doug gently teased him, imparting the understanding that dreams are ok just to be dreams.

As the two finished the closet, Janke kept to his beaver fantasy. One could definitely come live there. The pond would be big enough and stable, no damming to be done. I could even build it’s house and lure it with some, uh, what? He continued dreaming and cut the closet bar too short for use. Doug looked upon Janke with the soft resignation of a parent when the toddler launches a sippy cup from the high chair.
‘Hey Doug, how can I lure a beaver? Cheese?’ Cheese sounded funny to Janke.
‘I’d say sausage.’ The innuendo made both laugh deeply.

Over dinner Janke and Deb discussed investments. Janke was trying to convince Deb that they should buy land to build upon in the future.
‘The valley is growing so fast. This is it, this is the time. Money is cheap, generational low interest rates. Twin deficits are inflationary. Prices haven’t gone beyond fundamental values here and the population is swelling. Demand is coming faster every year, driven largely by telecommuters and baby boomers, and will only grow stronger. This is the first time in human history of the rural-urban migration reversing. The office is now irrelevant, therefore the city is becoming less relevant.’ Janke passionately presented unassailable financial evidence with ties to social demographics, environmental quality, technological changes, and even security concerns into a comprehensive thesis for Deb’s consideration.

‘I don’t know. Where? How much?’ asked Deb.
‘That’s not critical yet. Do you share the analysis?’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Deb. ‘The phone company here sucks.’
‘The phone company? Are you serious?’ asked Janke in some disbelief at the critical minutiae relative to major world sea change.
‘Yeah, who’s going to move here if they can’t get internet?’ Deb posed rhetorically.
‘Um, well, where to begin,” as slight annoyance crept into his voice. ‘First, there are about a dozen ways to get internet here now, and that will only improve quickly given today’s rate of technological change. Second, there’s…wha…’ he paused. ‘Is the internet your concern?
‘Well fine, no it’s not.’
‘What then?’
‘You’re always talking about this. I just wish we could talk about something else for a change.’

Deb wasn’t sure how to respond to Janke anymore. She thought, Who talks about comparative wealth effect and currency fluctuation anyway? It was easier when he went to work and came home at night with a salary. There were dishes and laundry to be done and Janke sounded like garbled auctioneer to her. ‘I hear 45%, can I get fifty? fifty? Who’ll give me 6% fixed, 30 year?’ She laughed to herself. Even though Janke would have loved it, Deb didn’t think he’d appreciate the auctioneer joke. Janke would either feel wounded she wasn’t listening to his brilliant essay or say she wasn’t trying to understand, his polite code for stupid. He would call me stupid no matter what I said, she thought, and that angered her.

‘When is the downstairs bathroom going to be done?’ she asked with a new, sharply charged tone of irritation.
‘Plumber needs to come first, that’s two weeks.’ Janke felt the coming tempest and answered flatly.
‘And then?’ Deb asked with her hands on her hips now and elbows thrusting forward.
‘Then the inspector inspects. The following week.’
‘The following week? Yeesh. Whatever. What about the sink and shower, are you going to put those in?’
‘Put them in?’
‘Yeah, don’t you have to hook up all that?
‘Yes, the plumber will return after the drywall. Three weeks.’
‘Three weeks! Wow you’d think.”
“You would? Think what?”
‘That it wouldn’t have to drag out like this if it was scheduled properly. Why does it take so long between each visit from the plumber?’
‘Because I have to put in the tile, and the grout, and seal all of it. And build a case for the tub. And fit the vanity and sink in place. And that was his next appointment available.’ Janke dreamt an airplane would suddenly hit the house and stop her haranguing.
‘What about the toilet? snapped Deb. She was heating while he numbly answered the fusillade.
‘The toilet?’ asked Janke slowly.
‘Yeah the toi…”
‘The toilet.’ Janke shot in. ‘Yes, a toilet. In the bathroom. A toilet in the bathroom. I plan to install a toilet just in case one of our guests goes into the bathroom looking for a toilet. Just in case someone NEEDS TO SHIT!’ His last three words growled loudly through clenched teeth.
‘What the fuck is your problem?’ said Deb, aghast at his unjustifiable rage.
‘Nothing. Sorry, I’ll get it done.’

Janke walked toward the low marshy spot where the 30 geometric boulders made a waterfall jigsaw with dignified order. Where the stonewall gapped, leaks sprung into small pools each with its own tiny song. A larger spout near the structure’s center arced silently onto a flat stone where the water spread evenly and sheeted from the stone’s edge, curtaining a miniature grotto underneath. Janke liked this spot, this waterfall, the rocks, the beaver that he knew would never come. He rested upon a perfectly rhomboidal boulder and gazed at each little fountain. The rains of late summer were filling this mudhole. In fact, it wasn’t a muhole any longer. How big is a pond anyway? Janke asked himself. This was his first thought, followed by his second, ‘Why does she fight me so?’

Janke’s two, perhaps three thoughts per day were usually the limit. One could barely qualify the other brain activity as anything resembling concerted thought. He openly discussed most of his thoughts, like the beaver pond. Or the magnetic jets with the aquafoils.

‘Magnetic jets?’ someone at the party would eventually ask for the group’s sake, repressing mockery ever so slightly.
‘See, it could happen. Laird is surfing giant waves only due to the stability provided by the aquafoil. Add that to a jet, mix in a magnetic landing net for control, and there you have it. The jet can land right on the water. The price of every seafront property and island in this world just tripled.’ Janke was lost in his visionary dreamland, oblivious to sniggers and rolling eyes.
‘Oooh, just like Batman’ quipped another and everyone chuckled in a closing manner. The conversation was thankfully over and all subconsciously felt a bit suspect about Janke’s and these thoughts of his.

Janke’s other brain activity was more similar to coffee spilled next to a stack of papers. The pages on the bottom absorb the most coffee. Then less and less rising through the stack until a couple papers have only a thin brown tinge on the side. To Janke’s brain, the bottom page was life experience. What theory existed on the page previously was no more, only the coffee of reality existed. Toward the top of the stack where the stain was slight, the coffee became part of that page, to be noticed, addressed, incorporated. The pages of Janke’s brain absorbed life’s liquid and placed discoloring droplets everywhere in derelict order. Only Janke kept no paperweight on the stack in his brain so the winds dervished and paper and liquid and stain collided at random. Sometimes the collisions foretold comprehensive macroeconomic theses complete with target currency valuations and arbitrage strategies. Sometimes they produced the contemporary elegant design for the house, the bridge, the guesthouse, the stone terraces sheltering a firepit and hot tub. Or the sculpture hewn from a single gnarled and twisted redwood plucked off a distant mountain that now adorned the front yard. Other times they produced magnetic jets.

The day the semi-trailer stopped on the road with the giant steel beam Janke only had one thought that day, ‘Stay away from that fucker”. The 30’ beam weighed 3000 lbs. and would be inched up with heavy jacks to the ceiling and fit into place where tons of concrete once supported the entire integrity of the cabin. Janke nearly wet himself at one point. The beam, now two feet above his head and balanced upon heavy wooden blocks, decided to dance and shake. An hour later with the beam eventually set and secure, Janke, pants barely still dry, went for a beer.

‘Beam’s in. Scared the shit out of me. Come see it?’ he asked Deb as she walked down the stairs from her office.
‘Not right now. I have an email I need to get out before tomorrow. I see you’re drinking already?’

How long would it have taken her to look, Janke wondered. Three minutes? He wanted her to at least approve, let alone be impressed. He still quivered of fear and adrenaline and ‘stay away from that fucker’ echoed in his mind. Janke longed for her approbation that would never come.

When the phone line faltered, Janke knew the location. Weeks ago, a repairman spliced the line with a temporary connection then went for lunch. He never returned with the permanent fix. Janke wondered exactly where he’d gone for that lunch. With the phone out, internet too, Deb was unable to work and growing intolerably frustrated. Dozens of calls to excavation contractors all followed a similar refrain:

‘I’ve got a downed phone line here. I need an excavator to dig up the line and get a fix.’
‘Well…,’ came a long pause on the other end, ‘we’re tied up for the next 3 weeks, but if you call back then I might be able to get you on the schedule.’
‘You might be able to get me on the schedule if I call in 3 weeks?’ Janke repeated in disbelief rather than clarification. Fucking hell, he thought.

With an obviously untenable schedule, Janke decided to rent an excavator and do the dig himself. Deb had spreadsheets to manage or someone, probably Janke, would need to serve as human sacrifice. Doug called while Janke was in the machine scooping away from the telephone line.
‘Whatcha doing’ came the Harley Davidson rumbling growl.
‘Thought I’d get an excavator and dig up our phone line.’
‘Ever run one before?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well…’
‘Listen, I’m fine, almost finished in fact.’
Five minutes later Janke called.
‘Uh hey. Shit. I was done digging and was crossing the bridge when the planks slipped and the excavator fell in.’
‘Jesus! Alright, I’ll be over in a bit.’

Even Cruiser laughed at the situation. The excavator was nearly on its side. Four feet of wet, sticky clay swallowed the tracks and rose up to the cab.
‘You’ve done it now,’ laughed Doug. ‘Your new nickname is Muddy Waters. I’ve never seen anything stuck worse, never.’
As each method of extraction failed, Doug would ask, ‘What were you thinking?’ Eventually the mud loosed its grip and the beleaguered Janke confessed to never have thought about anything at all.