the shouldered muse

We’d packed up our vacation in Nashville a few hours ago and been seeing trees and hills since before our hunger began, crossing towards Tennessee’s eastern border, yes, Tennessee, the home of country music, fine stallions, and potato rifles. The charcoal grey Nissan Sentra was packed to the gills. The dulcimer I’d bought at Opryland rested in a case in the rear window and looked like a harbored tommy-gun.

“Do you think there is any place out here to eat?” my girlfriend asked, as we stared at the multitude of evergreens, ash, and black oak amongst countless others along every side of the road. They were sheer beautiful portraits of fortitude, each last one of them … but none spoke of food.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe we should take the next exit and see if there’s a small diner or something.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Where was a firecracker when you needed one?” I thought. If you’ve ever driven across Tennessee, you’d know what I meant. Any proprietor of any good or any service commonly paired up his or her specialty with bangers, except maybe for those, but I won’t swear, labeled “XXX Videos,” and there were quite a few of those, but I gather their industry never fell hard on dry times to need another means of funding. But in the other stores the signs read, “We sell souvenirs and fireworks.” Still others reported, “All natural produce … home grown tomatoes and fireworks,” or “Get the best in furniture … and fireworks.” And how about this? “Gas $1.20 a gallon … and don’t ya’ll forget to get ya some rockets and sparklers while you’re here.” This last one I was more inclined to keep a wider berth than the others. Lost? Don’t check your position by the North Star, just smell for gunpowder and you’ll find civilization.

You know, I wondered what a shrink would do if he ever had a Tennessean in his office?

“Tell me the first word that comes to your mind when I say, ‘Food.’”

“Firecrackers.”

“I see … relationship?”

“Firecrackers.”

“Okay …

“Urinary tract infection with a coronary bypass?”

“Firecrackers.”

“Why yes, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re absolutely normal.”

Of course when the psychiatrist said “absolutely,” it was in the context of believing, with 100% proof, that his client was closely bonded in a relationship with ole Jack Daniels. But if it had ever been divulged that the patient was from dry Moore County, however, the doctor would surely have shrunk-wrapped and stamped that client for admission at the psychiatric hospital where a general store there could be found selling hairbrushes and crayons and Styrofoam hand-puppets … and if located in Tennessee … fireworks as well.

So that’s why I was sure there had to be a down-home-cooking restaurant and explosives under one roof somewhere.

“There’s an exit coming up,” I said, believing what the road sign was telling me. “But what’s up there?”

Ahead, just beyond the descending road that exited from the main drive, was a few automobiles stopped, sandwiched between some state trooper cars with their lights turning like misplaced lighthouses in search of a beach. An officer in a beige uniform flapped his fingers, directing the first in a short line of waiting vehicles to move over to a pillar-like officer in shades. Others of the force were already peeking in front and back windows of preceding cars. “Looks like they’re searching for something,” I said, but it seemed odd in the middle of nowhere, and then enlightenment, maybe their being here was a sign that good digs to eat were just down the exit, hidden behind those lofty sugar maples. “Could be something here,” I said, as I took the departure and watched the drive and the commotion ahead, of state troopers, ascend above me and out of sight. We came around the bend, still only seeing trees, and then the hint of another road that this one would probably hook up with, which appeared to go nowhere other than to a lumberjack’s day labor. “I don’t think there’s anything here,” I said just as a second squad of troopers and their cars appeared on my new horizon, between me and that other road to nowhere. “O-okay.”

“We can ask them if there’s any place around here to eat,” my girlfriend suggested, as I pulled in slowly to a stop at the kneecaps of the officer before me. There was a small crowd of them, all behind dark, reflective sunglasses and neutral expressions, which perhaps if they favored anything, were the captions: “You’re going down,” or “I eat crowbars.”

I rolled down the window. “Uh … hello,” I said. “Is there something wrong?”

The trooper answered my question with another question. “Did you see that inspection up on the highway?”

“Uh … yes I did,” I answered.

“Is there a reason why you exited the road before it … sir?” he asked.

I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but at the same time wished I could see a sign somewhere stating fireworks for sale to substantiate the next thing I was about to say. “We were looking for a place to eat,” I answered.

The trooper raised his head to peer around at the lack of anything other than pine needles, bark, and foliage, as if to put an exclamation point on his visual response, which I’d read clearly, but with his eyes hidden behind two mirrors, I wasn’t sure if he’d actually looked away from me. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was hoping that he’d fool me into making a move or into giving him any excuse to drop me then and there. My peripheral vision out of the back of my head told me there was another officer peering in through the passenger side window. Still a third hovered outside, over what occupied my rear window and looked so much like a machine gun case from an old gangster movie. If I had anything to hide, I would have been scared, but honestly I was finding this all too amusing. I mean these troopers really believed they’d caught a dirt bag … and what a laugh … I was the dirt bag. But I thought it in my best interest not to laugh. I didn’t know the fine line I might be walking on … fifty years in some boondock prison for having chuckled at a trooper, and why not? They could have treated it like foreign contraband, because I was sure none of them even knew what humor was. The lot of them was Vulcan cyborgs minus the ear tips.

“We’re not from here,” I said, and I was sure one of the officers at that had checked my Vermont license plate.

“Vermont.”

I was right.

“You on vacation?” the first officer asked. Our car was brimming with luggage and numerous picked-up-along-the-way articles.

“Yes … that’s a dulcimer,” I said, and thumbed at the leather case. I didn’t want to get shot for that misunderstanding. It wasn’t even tuned, regardless of it not being loaded. “Are you looking for something?”

“Did you know this is major drug trafficking route?” the officer asked.

Was I going to be stupid enough to say, “Oh sure … sure, sure.”? No, I refrained from that.

“Right up to Vermont,” he added.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me?” I thought to myself, because I didn’t dare say that out loud.

“Do you mind if we check your car?” he asked, with his buddies appearing to have narrowed the perimeter around us.

“Hell no I don’t want you looking in my car. It took forever to pack it. Well, goodbye and thank you … and oh yeah, where can you get a bite?” If only it could be that easy. My mother didn’t raise an imbecile. I knew the question was answered parallel to it being asked. If I said no, I realized I could very easily be face-down in the dirt with a knee in my back, a gun at my head, and me eating dirt. Well … I was hungry … but no I didn’t do that. I said, “Sure … uh … go ahead.”

“Could you please step out of the car?” He was polite enough if he wasn’t friendly. I have to say that about him. The others? I don’t know. They didn’t speak. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe all they knew how to do was pummel … pummel till the person was unrecognizable. I mean who knows? I’m sure on a hunting day that’s a good way to get rid of the paperwork … get yourself a shovel … dig yourself a ditch … and fill.

My girlfriend and I got out and went over and sat on the guard rail, the only sign of humanity unrelated to law enforcement … and our car, which was presently being violated. Sorry, Nissan. I hoped they didn’t open my dirty laundry. Who knew what crime could come out of that? The trunk was open, zippers were being unzipped and I felt like the wizard on the mountain top that knows everything, or at least knows that they aren’t going to find anything that will draw a conviction. Then I thought, “This is too much. No one is ever going to believe this.”

“Ivonne, do you have my camera?” I asked my girlfriend. “I want to take a picture.” She was looking at me as if I had two heads, and shoulders not big enough to hold a Ping-Pong ball.

“What?” she said, “Do you think that’s okay?”

“What, do you think they’ll think this is a gun and shoot me?” I said. I didn’t think they were stupid, though everything they were doing was a mistake. She handed me my camera, and eventually surrendered some poignant grins when I asked her to smile, capturing her and the interrogation of my car in the background. At this point I think I might have been quietly laughing out loud. I really thought it all very funny. The faces of the troopers remained neutral, but no more “You’re going down” or “I eat crowbars” than before.

Not believing for a moment that the officers had had a change of heart due to my photo shoot, they must have concluded only by having searched and found nothing that we’d been telling the truth about our initial hunt for food all along. To firmly install that outcome, once back, seated in my car, I asked if they knew of a place we could eat. The officer appeared kinder, and his shaded glasses a little lower under his eyes, and he gave us directions to a diner, a truck stop he knew of, which wasn’t half bad. We thanked him and waved goodbye, and he almost inconspicuously raised a finger in a reciprocated response.

Well, we found the eatery that had been suggested, and sat down at a small wooden table, and if it wasn’t a few minutes later, that same trooper came walking into the place. We caught his attention, though I think we had it before we tried, and waved. This time he actually smiled and added four more fingers to his response.

I leaned over the table to my girlfriend. “I think he was checking up on us,” I said.

“You think?” she replied.

“Oh yeah … and I think he’s happy to have found us here too,” I said … and so … even if it was for just the smallest amount of time … I’d been considered an outlaw … not something for the resume, but definitely a tale to be told and retold.

Real: What happened and …

Potato Guns, they’re real

Not Real: I actually realized we’d come out of Tennessee and were actually in North Carolina at this point.

Roger McManus

My wife asked if I could drive them. Usually she takes my son to school and I pick him up, but we’d had car trouble and it was at the mechanic’s. In our Ford’s stead we had a substitute, which had been kindly lent us by the dealership. My wife hadn’t driven it yet and felt more comfortable if I drove the borrowed car that morning while she got to know it.

So, as commonly as almost every morning we have, we were running late … not late late, but not with time to spare. My son had not yet obtained the concept pertaining to the passage of time and was daydreamingly floundering. I truly believe that he believes that when he slows down, everything else slows down too. I have to admit there is something very deeply philosophical about that, along the lines of taking time to smell the roses … and at moments when I’ve been impatient I’ve really considered following his demeanor … but … not on a school morning when he of all people will be the first upset at being late. So, I grabbed the new car key that hung alone with its cardboard tag stating the car’s make, model, year, and color, which the dealership had attached to displace any confusion that might arise from any other keys, and any other cars than the one, which belonged to this.

We jumped into the new car, a Kia, Amunti … black, in case you were wondering, at about ten to eight. My son strapped himself into his car seat, which I had moved to this one from the Ford, and we headed out. The blower was blowing, but the car was not warmed up yet, so it was a nice breeze of cold air for a colder winter’s morn, which my wife was fonder of shutting off. Anyhow, in two minutes we were there. The school buses were pulling out of the school’s drive when we arrived, which was a sign that the time was nearly at hand. I pulled in in front of the village office and kissed my son goodbye, wished him a good day, and watched him and my wife walk across the street and down the path to the school entrance.

“Oh,” I thought. “I’d forgotten to tell him to smile.” Today the school kids were having their pictures taken with Santa. “Well that’s too bad,” I thought as my wife came back.

My son had been given quarters, nickels, and pennies for a school coin drop to raise money for the local food pantry. My wife had told him the previous day, at least three times, where the coins were when they were placed in the outside pocket of his knapsack, but he’d failed to find them and claimed later that she’d never told him. Well, today was the second attempt. After she’d repeated where the coins were a couple of times, my son’s head finally came out of the clouds and a spark suddenly lit as he said, “Oh, that pocket.” before disappearing into the school.

Well, I shook my head as my wife recounted this to me. Sometimes he’s just in his own world I thought as we drove home, which was only a matter of about a quarter mile before we pulled into the driveway. I shut off the blower, which I’d turned back on when it was heated, and got out of the car. I held the key in my hand with the cardboard tag … the car key and a piece of hard paper … and nothing else. My stomach and brain seemed to bend together.

“Uh … do you happen to have the house key?” I asked my wife … hoping. There was a slight delay, only a second, as if she wished she could say yes, but knew she couldn’t, and could not see the point in lying about it either.

“No,” she answered.

“Crap.” I’d done it again. The previous day I’d run back with my son to his school to retrieve his lunch bag he’d forgotten there, and returned home to realize I’d not brought the house key. Fortunately my wife had been home to let us in, but unfortunately now, she was looking blank-eyed with me on the same side of the door … which was not inside but on the deck in 25 degree weather (Fahrenheit).

We always kept the keys together on one ring, so one grab was usually sufficient enough for house and car, well that was until yesterday, not since the dealership key hung alone with its piece of cardboard. I’d grown accustomed to a rhythm of one beat for picking up the keys, which I’d failed to see now needed two. Stuck as a monosyllabic Neanderthal, I’d done it again (Duh?). “I didn’t bring it either,” I said.

“Oh no, what are we going to do?” my wife asked. Either she was being rhetorical (not expecting an answer) … or being kind (not thinking me a total moron and thinking I might possibly have an answer) … or being kinder (not wanting me to know that she sincerely believed me a total moron, and any answer I might give, she’d try hard not to laugh at). Well, I’d already figured out what I was for myself: I was a moron … but I’d fix this … and how would I do this? First and foremost I complained about our having removed the spare key from the garage for moments like this … of course knowing … I … hadn’t removed it.

“It was an old key anyway,” my wife said.

“Oh … right.” That’s right. I’d changed the locks on the doors. Well that killed that waste of time that I could have milked for another three minutes. What the hell was I going to do now to remove that “total” in front of the “moron”? A moron could lift himself out of a hole, but a total moron wouldn’t even know which way was up. At this moment I was finding myself very vertically challenged. For some reason I kept seeing police in my head, as if I had to go to them and get a permit to break into my own house to save from being disgraced at being arrested for burglary and having to plead my case in court on the grounds that it was my own house and shouldn’t count, followed by heavy guffawing from the jury box, judge, and the filled courtroom … or worse, spending two years in jail for a crime I didn’t feel I’d committed. Well with this line of thinking I knew I couldn’t let my wife try to get into the house. Her son would miss her too much.

Wait … my son … that’s right, I’d lifted my small son through one of our windows a few months ago when we’d gone for a family walk and come back to find ourselves in this same situation (My head is shamefully bowed). I juggled the idea for a moment … and then picked it up where I had dropped it. But balderdash, I would have considered my small son as the means to getting out of this situation if we hadn’t just left him at school.

I could only imagine the P.A. system barking through the classrooms and halls of the building, “Will Roger McManus’ son please report to the office so that you can help your father break into your house?” Child welfare would be all over that. Father trains son for a life of crime. No, closets are for keeping family secrets. My imbecilic nature will have to fit into one of them. I’m sorry, but my family will have to suffer this alone.

But the window … yes … yes, the window, I could try that same one. It might open again. It could. Before my mind lapsed to something less conventional, I hustled around the house, without saying anything of my plan, less it fail. My credibility was already suffering. I was hoping the neighbors weren’t watching. This had to remain a hidden blot on the family name. I got to the window and pushed, and banged it with my palms … better chance of not breaking the glass … even better chance of not being heard by anyone. I kept this up for about thirty seconds, even though I reminded myself that I’d secure this window from the inside after that last instance, but I had no other window I could think of … and more importantly I was hidden behind the rhododendron bush where no one else could see me. I was quite foolishly content there, prolonging my stay from humiliation.

“How about that window?” my wife said, having snuck up on me. “I’d had problems closing that one. It might be less solid.”

O-o-okay … I hadn’t actually solved this problem that I really wanted to, to mend my stupidity to something better … but I had to weigh it compassionately, she would already suffer from my stupidity unless a divorce was in the works, so I didn’t see it right for her to suffer the cold too. I mean, it was only humane I thought.

“This window?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Decided, my palms went to work again, knocking on this new window frame … and, glory be, it budged on one side. The images of policemen and courtrooms suddenly vanished. Child welfare wouldn’t be taking my child away … and there was still a good chance the neighbors wouldn’t come out of their houses, pointing at me, saying, “There’s the idiot.”

“Thank you, God.” I pushed once more on the window … and it folded down and in. The blinds were caught under it though, a television was preventing it from going beyond thirty three degrees also, but it was open.

“T.V.’s in the way,” I said. “The window won’t go all the way down. I don’t know if I can fit through.”

“Let me,” she said. “I can fit.”

“Wh-what?” I thought. No, no, she’d found the window, my only act of redemption lay in me climbing up and falling through this window. Of course if I broke the television during my tumble, my purgatorial redemption would find itself transferred to hell. I had to weigh it: a total moron … or … a complete total moron? I’d aim for the complete total moron and hope for the better.

“No, I can do it,” I said, and quickly stuck my hand in and pushed the T.V. back a bit so that the window cleared it … and after removing the blinds that were stuck on it, was able to lower the window sufficiently enough. “Yes.” I hoisted myself up onto the sill, seeing the end nearly there, but still concerned with winding up on the floor impaled by the shattered window. The window wasn’t shattered, but I had this knack of foreseeing the future and avoiding it, which some would say was an incredible talent while others, being most, would say was the wandering of a ranting mind.

Well anywho, I carefully leaned on the dresser inside and managed to step over the window, which was now dropped parallel to the floor. My back foot caught on the ledge, but I was able to shake it loose. “Huh,” I thought as I found myself finally safe inside with not only the bushes, but a wall between me and prying eyes, “the neighbors still don’t know I’m a moron … good.” I could hear the grass crunching behind me outside. My wife was heading back to the door for me to let her in.

Once inside and our coats off, my wife had her breakfast and I began washing some dishes.

“You know, I’m … I’m used to grabbing the keys and having them all together,” I said, looking for an excuse that would work and look less the fool. “That’s why I didn’t even think about it.”

“We’re creatures of habit,” my wife said. That was a kind thing to say I thought … she’d said, “We’re.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m a creature of stupidity. I did the same thing yesterday.”

She laughed, but didn’t agree … which was also good. “Maybe you should put the keys together,” she said … and after what we’d gone through … I heartily agreed.

I walked around the counter to where the keys hung on little hooks … and found one hook empty … and a set of keys missing. “Oh … no,” I thought to myself as my bottom lip hung like a wet snail. I was going to need another closet for my shame. I went over to my coat hanging on the back of the chair, and checked its pocket … and jiggled something.

“That sounds like change,” my wife said. She was obviously really rooting for less of a moron in her husband … and fortunately for both of us; it was change as she had said … just some coins.

Well I have to say I was relieved I hadn’t found them … but then I thought, and the thought entered my mind the way termites get into wood, “How about the other side?” That side of the coat, especially the pocket flap, seemed to be holding back, as if on the verge of erupting due to hilarity. I ambivalently put my hand in and suddenly felt a dunce cap emerge onto the top of my head like a permanent horn. No wonder my son couldn’t remember what pocket the coins for the coin drop were in; I was genetically to blame for that. There in my coat pocket, the same coat I’d been wearing, the same bloody coat I’d had on my back as I climbed through that window were the house keys.

My wife stared at me in disbelief. “You had the keys all along?”

I was understandably mute, but held them up as proof of my foolishness … and not able to sink any lower, at least I thought that at that moment, attached them to the car keys with no guarantee that this wouldn’t happen again.

“Yesterday when you couldn’t get in … did you have the keys then too?” my wife asked as if it had dawned on her how even more ridiculous it all was … if it was.

“God have mercy on the cognitive invalid,” I muttered as I ran through yesterday like a movie reel in my head … and … heaven help me … it was true. I’d had that stupid key with me then too. Keys aren’t stupid, I know, but I didn’t want to be stupid alone. I had done what was not thought possible. I had sunk even lower than before as my wife inflated my stupidity. My wife laughed, but she was kind about it, I mean how could she not laugh? All she could say was, “Roger?”

“I guess it’s like that saying,” I said, “‘Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.’ I was asking for something to write about. I … I think God heard me.”

Light bulb.

With that enlightened thought, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t stood a chance … and if I hadn’t stood a chance, then I couldn’t have been a moron. There was divine intervention I’d been put up against. Anyone better would have fallen just the same. If anything, I considered, I was intelligent. That’s right. I was intelligent. I was intelligent enough to recognize a good story when it was put in front of me and grab those reins … even though in most likelihood they were glued into my hands already regardless … but give me a break; I had to climb through a window … some sympathy, huh?

Wh-what? You’re all out of sympathy? Oh … oh, I see. You gave it all to my wife.

Well ………. that’s all right.

Real: Yes … yes!!!

Not Real: Wasn’t a real light bulb, you know it was metaphorical

Roger McManus