Our whole family moved from St. Paul to Dundas in 2007 in an effort to get out into the country. It ended up (and we should have known this) that we were moving to the “recent country” rather than “current country,” since our house was new construction, part of a development built on what fifteen minutes earlier had been a not-bad soybean field producing beans that were shipped two hundred miles to be turned into hormone- and drug-amended kibble that was shipped the same two hundred miles back to some bioengineered hog-alikes that live within smelling distance of our new two-and-a-half story. Mmm, bionic bacon.
From way up in the aluminum-and-fiberglass cottonwood-replica cell-phone tower just beyond our property line in back, I can sight down on those robo-hogs through the scope of my M40A5 with the scrimshaw full-sleeve antelope-scapula stock-inlays my buddy Keith did for me six or seven years ago. I haven’t let loose on the hogs yet because I’m trying to be a good neighbor but believe me the scope makes their flanks look like I’m eyeball-up with the broad side of the Hoover Dam. Can’t see heads or tails.
Anyway, my first “episode,” as my wife calls them, happened about two months after we moved in, in late August or early September. She had taken the kids to go see her aunt and uncle in Detroit Lakes, and I woke up feeling better than I had ever felt in my whole life. I made myself some toast and eggs, and by the time the moon was going down that night I had finished a very fine wattle-and-daub shell around our whole house by using brush growing down by the riverbank and mud and clay from under the brush. Basically it was like a very smooth dome or Dan Aykroyd’s forehead. It was nice and dark in there. Cool and quiet. Our dog Heifer even liked it. She curled up between the shell and the house and went right to sleep.
When Sunny and the kids got home the next morning I was all excited to show it off, standing out front with a big smile on my face. Sunny didn’t even get out. She just turned the truck around and drove off. Her brother and a bunch of his buddies showed up around six that evening with a radio and a couple cases of beer and took the whole shell apart while I watched. When the phone rang it was Sunny asking me to make a doctor’s appointment for myself. I told her I’d think about it and hung up.
The next time was a few weeks later after school had started. Between breakfast and lunch I had all the sod up and rolled into grassmen (like snowmen) standing in ranks all over the yard, with little stick arms waving hello. When the kids got off the bus they smiled and waved back. But Sunny didn’t even come home from work. She just sent her friend Angie over to pick up the kids. I went inside and made up our bedroom to look like a Mongolian tent, with canvas I unstitched from a bunch of surplus sails and jackets I had in the basement, and big flat cushions made out of the sectional, and lynx pelts (from old hunting trips) on the floor. I even made yogurt. Then I drank some vodka and tried to think like a Mongol.
When the cops showed up I was taking a bath in the river. I don’t think they liked my fur hat.
Sunny and the cops stuck me in a hospital in Burnsville on a 24-hour hold. I thought that was tawdry. You never expect to end up in the bin in a suburb that was still new when you were a kid. Bins ought to be in the middle of the city or on top of a hill in a small town someplace. The suburbs are just undignified.
When I got out Sunny handed me a duffel bag and told me to get myself together. I hitchhiked home and built myself a soddie on the south side of the house facing the Morgans. Sunny and the Morgans didn’t think much of it but the kids liked it and brought me corn stalks and pumpkins and gourds and stuff to decorate with. Heifer split her time between the house and the soddie. I thought that was very fair of her.
When Don Morgan caught me pissing on his back fence (where else was I going to piss?) he hosted an all-neighborhood party with schnapps and chickens he rotisseried on that big stainless grill he has. Partygoers took down the soddie and patched over the lawn, and then stood around drinking and not letting me back in my own yard. That was tough.
I had to wait until mid-December before there was enough snow-pack to build a proper igloo. It was warm in there! The streetlights and the light through the windows from my kids watching TV came through the snow blocks more than I would have thought. It was fun to sleep in a glowing room.
What I should have thought of (and this is why igloos are not a Minnesota thing) was that mud season starts in late February. As far as I could tell, a soddie wouldn’t have been any good in mud season either. I ended up feeling like a mad old saint in a medieval story with no roof over his head and no solid ground under his feet. All I had to do was wait for a miracle.
I got my miracle in mid-April when the ground dried out, the weather turned and crocus came up everywhere! Minnesota never gets a proper spring, so this one must have been just for me! I built myself a platform up a willow overlooking the river. Half the time I sat up there thinking like a heron and half the time I sat down by the river thinking like a frog. The kids came by every day and I tried to help them think like me. I was touched by their loyalty. I’m sure their mother didn’t know.
In June a man moved into my house who I infer must be Sunny’s boyfriend. I guess I can see where she’s coming from. And he’s not too careful about locking the house. So far I’ve managed to get my bible, my gun and a couple months’ worth of canned food. I’m grateful to him as far as it goes: Now I’ve got something to read. I sit up there thinking like Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, and waiting for a sign.
Image CC-BY-NC-SA by Doug Wallick
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