Sickness Of The Young (2)
"Sir, I trampled some of your corn." "Really? What did you do, run a truck over it?" "Sir, I don’t even know how to drive." Daryl paused a moment. He looked over my head at the low-lying skyline that hovered only slightly above the flat, brown prairie landscape. "Well I guess that’s true," he finally replied, even though I had ridden with him in the cab of his combine a couple of times during the fall season. He would work until late at night by turning on the combine’s searchlights. Then he would drop me at the edge of his cornfield, right next to our back yard. I would run up to the back porch steps and inside of the farmhouse. The combine always stayed still until I had gone inside. I would wave back at him from the kitchen window, but I was always pretty sure that he could not see me. My mother always had some warm food left from supper. I stood there, waiting and still. "Do you know what is at the end of the road, son?" I was uncertain how to answer, so I just remained silent for what seemed a very long time. I already knew sometimes Daryl would tell stories about the Korean War and I thought this might be one of those times. Usually, his war stories were very real and I did not like to listen to them much. Finally, Daryl stared me straight into my eyes. I did not want to look back, but his gaze forced me to. Then he said, "Death." By Mila Strictzer Fifth in order of composition I should have graduated high school at 17, but I was held back my last year because I slipped a little too far back in my chair while daydreaming in my classes. So, I was allowed to finish up in vocational school. If I did, then I would graduate. That was a hard year but the most important year of my life. That year I conquered the demons of my past. We all have to win at something in life, even if it is only once. Our small class studied a textbook for several weeks, before moving into the shop. It was necessary complete a major project, in order to graduate. There was an old tractor engine in the back of the shop, hoisted up by wire chains, just hanging there, above the shop floor. It had once been painted yellow, but was now badly rusted. The engine seemed to be intact, however, and as I studied it from the other side of the shop, as the teacher gave his small class a safety orientation, I began to wonder just how intact it might be. The more I studied the engine, raised above the concrete floor, the more it beaconed me. The first thing we learned was welding: arc, mig, brazing with copper, and how to use an oxy-acetylene blowtorch, which is really breaking things apart. I discovered that with the mig, the wire just came out too fast to manage. If I could not keep up, it was not easy and I did not like that lack of control. Brazing seemed like a big mess with little return. The best was arc welding, where all it took was a little concentration and focus. I only had to slowly ease the white rod along in small, concentric circles, after an initial slap to get it going, and then after completion and cooling for a minute, chop the cover off and the bead was either good or bad, right before my eyes. There is no stopping after starting a bead. There is no middle ground with arc welding; the bead is right or ruined, possibly along with the entire structure. And for me, it was always good. So I cut up some old pieces of metal with a hacksaw and welded them back together in a frame for my tractor engine to rest in. I drilled holes into the frame and bolted up the whole structure securely in place. Then I spray-painted the frame a light color blue, hoisted the tractor engine up with a lift, laid it back down into the frame, and welded it there. Then I started to work on my engine. I wheeled the frame outside to the sand blaster and sand-blasted the exterior so that its iron surface was smooth and brilliant once again. I removed the head and glass-beaded it so that its surface was shiny steel again. I cut a new head gasket. I ground down every one of the valves and cleaned out the springs and the cams. I worked on every part of my engine: pistons, rings, and anything else I could find. I set the timing with a timing light, took out the points and set them too, with a feeler gauge. I replaced the spark plugs. Then I greased the gasket and replaced the head, dead-setting it, as I followed along every step with an old manual for that year of farm engine. It wasn't even the right make and model, but it was close enough. I took the ancient tractor manual home every night and studied it in my room until I would go to sleep. When I was done, I made sure everything was tightened back up and then painted my engine the same color light blue as its frame. I worked myself into a fervor. I knew my engine well. The other students would make fun of me, or at least try to. I ignored them so blindly I do not think that I could even hear them speak. They could say anything they want, I did not care. If they got in my way, then that would be different, but they never did. I was picked to go to a national championship and placed eight out of eighteen. I can still remember the teacher announcing to our small class that I had placed nationally. But all the while, I was only thinking about my light blue engine. One day, toward the end of the semester, as I was setting the pistons to top dead center, the instructor came over and kneeled down beside my engine. I kneeled down with him, even though it hurt my knees to do so. He grimaced at me and said, "What’s the name of this thing?" I was a little surprised because I did not have a name for it. "I don’t know," I answered. The teacher looked at my engine. "How about…The Tigress?" He asked. "Okay." "Are you going to start it?" The teacher asked, and then he turned to look at my face again. He knew I had never had the first thought about starting it. "Start it?" "Well…yes, that is generally what you do with engines, you start them." "Oh." I did not know what to do. Something held me back. It was the past, I think. Not just my own past, but the engine’s past, too. How had this tractor engine come to be? What men, working in an assembly line, had put its metal pieces together? Who had first bought it to use on his fields? I strained my mind to conjure up an image of that person working on his farm. The closer I got to the owner of my engine, the further he slipped away from me, like looking into the sun. Had the owner of my light blue engine fought in WWI? Did he have to leave his wife, maybe before they had children, to go fight in France? He might have even died in some muddy bunker somewhere, as his brigade charged the enemy lines along those barren fields lined with barbed wire, and had taken a bullet in the brain and had never come back home to his wife. He would have died quickly, some pain certainly, but quick, in a decent death befitting a warrior. There is some glory in death then, after all. At the precise instant of his death, his wife would have had no idea. Maybe she was sleeping with another man right then. A woman has her own needs too, after all. Her husband had been gone years, even if he was a soldier fighting for his country in a war in a foreign land. Could it have been right at the instant that he died, she had her legs wide open and some man was giving her all the loving she needed? No one would know, not her husband, not his family-no one. It was just that simple. Too bad if she met him at work, he was nice. She had to work and make a living, too. What if there was a child? Cross that bridge when we get there. Probably no child, though. Not all men have kids easily. Maybe there is something to be said about the ones that stay behind. Just to be a little melodramatic, his body would have come home to the states in a casket covered with an American flag, and then be buried in Arlington, Virginia. His wife, father and mother would make the journey via train to the National Cemetery, maybe take in the sights in Washington, D.C. for a couple of days, and then go to the funeral. A black horse would have pulled the casket, resting in the back of a trailer with big, wooden wheels and long spokes, as a soldier played taps from a shiny brass trumpet. The words: Day is done Gone the sun From the lakes And the hills And the sky All is well Safely rest God is nigh. The soldier would then have gently placed the American flag that had draped his casket in the hands of his mother, not his wife, all to say thanks from a country. His wife would cry because all women cry sometimes, and then she would wipe her tears away and be okay, because after all, now she had someone to help her with it all. There would be thousands just like that, whose names are forever engraved in our town square monuments all across America. Or maybe the owner of my light blue engine did not go to war because he had flat feet. Maybe he had a wife and children and he got to stay home and watch carefully over his family. Their house was not full of turmoil because a father was home. He could only work in the factory but he did his part, a noble part for the war effort. There were just so many women home… Now I was confronting his life, or at least a small piece of his life, before me. "I don’t know how to start it." "You have to hand-crank it like an old airplane. There should be a hand-crank over there somewhere where the engine was." So I went to the back of the shop and dug around in the drawers for a few minutes and produced the hand-crank. I spent the rest of the day spray-painting the hand-crank the same color light blue as my engine, purposefully going slowly. Then I went home and dreamed about my engine, and even suddenly woke in the night, covered in a cold sweat, when my dream reached a point where I was confronted with the reality of starting my engine. The next day, when I came to class, all of the other students, and the instructor, were gathered around my engine as I walked into the shop. Not saying even one word, I stepped up to my engine and took out the crank from my backpack. See, I had taken it home the previous night, and now I eased the crank’s teeth into my engine and pressed firmly against the handle, holding it in place. Then I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the class. They were all watching me with wide eyes. I was about to become a man, a thought suddenly flashed in my head. So I pushed down as hard as I could on the hand-crank, and slowly it moved downward, and then I pulled back up with all my might to bring the crank around, and now the rod greased a little and I could feel the crank start to flow a little more smoothly in my hands. I was making an obnoxious, adolescent grimace as I strained with all my might. The teacher was smiling to himself. Then the hand-crank started to move slowly against my grip. The past had decided to not let go, after all. The past was just too painful and too beautiful to let go of and I was suddenly not sure if I even could let go. But I still fought on. And just then, when one of the big pistons hit TDC, it slipped back down the casing a couple of inches, and the hand-crank flew forward in my grasp and I almost lost my hold on it, but I quickly re-secured my hands and pressed on through the temporary bump in my road to freedom with renewed vigor. And then, just like that, the crank started to do my bidding. I turned it around with all my teenage might, around as fast as I could until, to my amazement and delight, my light blue engine that I had spent all those past months building suddenly took over the job for me. The hand-crank flew out of its teeth, nearly hitting me as it flew by and then slid across the concrete floor of the machine shop to the other side of the room and hit the wall with a thud. And then, "Boom! Boom!" The Tigress began to roar and the sound filled the room so loud that the other students and even the instructor had to cover their ears with the palms of their hands. I did not cover my ears because I was standing in awe. "Boom! Boom! Ra-boom!" My engine began to roar and the big pistons whirled around with vengeance. The sounds of its deep bellows filled my chest. Thick, dark smog poured out the exhaust pipe. The roar of The Tigress was purifying, almost magical somehow. The instructor had to come over and cut the fuel supply off by flipping the switch to make The Tigress slowly cough to a stop. I stood there, only a few feet way, amazed, speechless. I did graduate high school, thanks to my light blue engine. I never started it again. I spent the rest of the year in the classroom reading, leaning down in my chair, and daydreaming about something, not really following along any of the words in the textbook. By Mila Strictzer Fourteenth in order of composition Not too long ago, in the cinematic countryside of Upstate New York, a very dramatic event occurred. Flowerman Bronson, the leader of the commune Seekers of the Father of Uranus, found himself at a crossroads. His hands tied behind his back, he was forced into making a decision. Flowerman Bronson was a very charismatic man, as might be expected of a person leading, or otherwise directing, the lives of some two hundred people on faith alone. He was a tall man, about six foot four, but rather thin, almost gaunt, perhaps due to his vegetarian diet. For much of his life, he had been a stout, athletic man, who made sure he ate extra helpings of beef at every meal. He had even been an all-pro linebacker at Penn State in 1964. His long locks of blonde hair flowed gracefully behind him, reaching to the bottom of his back. His skin was pale, which contrasted his strikingly clear, blue, piercing eyes. They were eyes, with which whomever made contact, would surely feel as if Flowerman Bronson were reaching into their very soul. Needless to mention, Flowerman Bronson was keenly aware of the power that his charisma wielded over other people. Flowerman’s name came from one of many, many rules governing his commune, similar to Plato’s Laws of the Republic, which for a time governed the "perfect state" on the Island of Crete, centuries ago. The rule regarding names instructed that a person shall retain their surname upon joining the commune, but another member of the commune will provide the new inductee with their first name(s). So it was, Red Herring Turning Leaf Johnson gave Flowerman Bronson his first name. "Red Leaf," as she was called, was a very beautiful woman with soft skin the color of cream and striking black hair, almost as long as Flowermans’. When the twain overseers strolled across the commune property, they might just as easily be mistaken as God and Goddess, walking hand in hand. Indeed, this was somewhat their fantasy. The commune itself covered some one hundred acres in the Finger Lakes part of Upstate New York. In the wintertime, life could be harsh and the members of the commune hunkered down inside of their self-constructed log cabins. However, from the spring to the fall, life was pleasant and relatively easy. The deep waters of the Finger Lakes, bordering the commune at several different places, particularly, were clear and beautiful. Some commune members skilled in the craft of woodworking, had even built a water purification system, made entirely of all natural parts, such as filters of carbon and magnetite rocks, in order to be able to drink right from the pristine waters surrounding their lands. The crops the members grew such as corn or bean, all manner of vegetables, and even some fruit, all grew on the commune property with success. Since the members could not eat meat or even fish, they had to grow a significant amount of vegetables and grain, which they stored for the long winter, in order to survive on this sustenance. Because of all this, in the summer, there was never a shortage of work to do. Therefore, alcohol was illegal in the laws. Initially, there was some discontent with this law, in particular (one of the most recently passed), but after time everyone made adjustments and, although the commune lost a few key members who could not tolerate the rule, ultimately, everyone was better off for it. Marijuana, and even on some occasions peyote and magic mushrooms, were all completely legal, however. In fact, the entire commune partook of an evening smoke in the Great House every night, without fail. The Great House was a shadily built, structurally questionable, large, long, wooden structure where a fire burnt every night, after all the work was finished. During high winds, the structure would sway dramatically. The lighting from the burning fire was a beacon for everyone to gather, before turning in. ‘If they ain’t a suckling, let ‘em be a toking,’ was the official saying. And that love of the communes’ for the taste of marijuana is how Flowerman Bronson came to be faced with a major decision regarding the welfare, perhaps even the very survival, of the entire commune. Flowerman Bronson did not rule outright. He had a council of elders. These were not elders in the sense of being old, but members hand-chosen by Flowerman for their wisdom, sense of love, or overall harmony with nature. To his credit, Flowerman did indeed choose some of his council with harmonies that ran discordant to his. There were five members of Flowerman’s council, not counting Red Leaf, who operated as an advisor to him. Their names were: Buffalo Pigtail Magpie Smith, Feather Rise Beesting Planski, Long Salmon Sunrise "Lamar" Grimes ("Lamar" unofficially kept his middle name, though technically he was not allowed to do so), Large Mouth Bass Owl McClellan, and finally, Turniphole Stagecoach Coyote Rodriquez, who came from out west somewhere (and given his borderline, non-conformist attitude, was not expected to last for long). The council always gathered after the evening smoke in the Great House, after every other member had turned in for the night. Flowerman always spoke first, convening the meeting with the following sacred canto: "Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner planets. Their father is Jupiter. His brothers are Neptune and Pluto, whose ferryman is Charon. The father of Jupiter is Saturn. The father of Saturn is Uranus. Whom is the father of Uranus?"
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Copyright © 2002 Mila Strictzer |