HUNTER LAKE 11/100 COFFEE WITH JUNE

HUNTER LAKE 11/100 COFFEE WITH JUNE

June sat across the table at the restaurant, the same one she and Mabel sat at the day before, but this time Henry sat across from her.

June was on a roll, Henry couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“Was there ever a chance that we could reclaim our heritage, or find a way to live with friends and neighbors? Recently the city council gave their final approval to the creation of a self-sustaining Orchard. The concept speaks to the soul of a city. What is self-sustaining? Is there a way to repeat these efforts in our daily lives?

The concept works when the community is involved, using their best talents to create an image of life and beauty. The valley that its namesake occupies, Valley View, has the potential to imagine the best of all of the local talents.

Take The Coffee Shop, for example. The building with a history, bricks and mortar put together years ago, represents history brought into the present. 

Over the years, from what I have read, the state watched as its population declined, instead of looking at the pattern, it reacted. When the potential for royalties from oil presented itself, it seemed like a solution, as though there was no other answer except the monetary one. The effect of a monetary solution to a population problem is evident in the image from the NY article showing the pipes if they had been built on top of the prairie instead of underneath its land.”

“Look at it Henry, it’s unbelievable.”

“I, uh, yup, see it.” He watched June, she was almost jumping out of the booth.

“Yet when you looks at the numbers of people who are involved and stay, people with an interest in ND beyond the one of having an income and then ditching the place; it seems like this answer fits the naive one this country was built upon. At first expansion and money production seemed like an answer, but it was built on the ingenuity of the people who migrated here. These people had ideas, hope, imagination, and wanted to create a future.”

“Hey, how’s the leg?” Henry tried to get June grounded before she floated away in her monologue.

“Uh, fine, but let me focus on the word imagination. The ideas that come out of us, and I include myself because I have seen that pattern, only occur when there is time to reflect. That one great idea, the book, the invention, all came from people who were encouraged either because they had the time or the support to do that. If we are all working 2 or 3 jobs, just to pay for stuff, or overspending and calling it "American", we won't have that kind of time.”

“Don’t disagree here, but, I didn’t see you limp.” Henry’s eyes squinted.

“Uh, yeh but so, "time" is not only on our side, it is our only side, the only thing we have that we can reclaim and allow for all that is human in us to develop. It is our heritage, the only one we own, and what we do with it, in our lives, our families, our towns and lands, is the real wealth that we can develop.”

“So, you write this down? Sounds like an essay.” Henry sat forward in the chair, he saw that wandering look in her eyes.

“We, yeh, I kind of did already. I’m just thinking of all the great minds that continue to populate this state......not the ones that maliciously name their dumps in a way that represents fear and anger.”

Henry nodded as she spoke, mumbled a few hmmhmms whenever there was a pause, and with June there was rarely a pause. “Hey, wait a minute, that was just a weird social media thing, never happened.”

“That’s a relief.” She leaned back in the chair.

“Uh, where’s your cane?”

“I don’t know, I started thinking about this when you got back and I don’t know, hip doesn’t hurt, haven’t fallen, so must be ok I guess.”

“Alma said you had something to say.”

“Just did!” June looked at Henry quizzically.

“The envelope.” Henry smiled.

“Right, here it is, you know who gave it to me, right?”

“My boy.”

“You ok with that?”

“Of course, want to know him, looks like maybe,” said Henry, usual clipped sentences and no ends to sentences.

“Alma?”

“Keeps inviting him over, but his mom, well.”

“She ok?”

“This new guy, kind of strict, makes him say “Dad” and not supposed to say my name.”

“Problem?”

“He’s in that family’s business, all engineers.”

“Heard his stepdad is a problem to work for.”

“Everyone in town knows.”

“They like my boy though.”

“Can’t help but.”

HUNTER LAKE 10/100 COFFEE AND ALMA

HUNTER LAKE 10/100 COFFEE AND ALMA

“Henry where did you go?” Alma had her phone on her shoulder and she leaned into it to answer.

“No, there’s no fence Henry, the only place would be on the north side, where he’s doing some grazing.”

“No one asked permission.”

“Come home we’ll talk here, walk it out, we’ll check on it together.”

Ivy called back to her mom as she left the house. “Mom I gotta go to town, the library’s open ‘til 9, Mike’s picking me up.”

“Dottie’s Mike?”

“You two dating?”

“Mom, you’re just as bad as my sisters.” She slammed the door as she left.

A rusty pick up drove up the driveway. The tail pipe held in place with a coat hanger. Alma could see from the white chintz curtains.

Rose walked into the kitchen and stood close to Alma.

“How come Ivy gets a boy friend and I don’t,” said Rose.

“We’ve talked about this.”

“I know.”

“Is there someone you like?”

“well, there’s a lot of boys I don’t like.”

“Mmmmm.” Alma turned back to the kitchen and checked the breads she had rising for the next days meals. The kitchen was warm enough to make it work, but if the door kept opening and closing, it wasn’t going to work.

The sounds of the exhaust pipe from Mark’s car rumbled away. Alma checked the yoghurt, the temp was still 100 F, but looked like it was hovering to 99F. A click to the electric ignition preceded the poof of the gas being lit, and she placed the kettle on the burner and waited. A chill entered as the kitchen door opened. Alma stayed at the stove as Henry entered.

“Let me put this water on the yoghurt.”

“Looks good.”

“Hungry.”

“Chatted with Mike?”

“Was that Dottie’s boy with Ivy?”

“it’s ok, you know Dottie, her boy’s good.”

“She doing ok?”

“Thinking about school, June told me.”

“Nursing?”

“You heard?”

“Mark was a premie right?”

“Tough time in the hospital.”

“Dottie’s good people.”

“ They’re letting her manage at the restaurant.”

“Just finishing her LPN.”

“yup.”

“Working weekends at the clinic right.”

“Mark in trouble?”

“Just a scuffle with the Police Chief.”

“What happened.”

“Had to get to school on his own when Dottie was sick.”

“Drove himself.”

“the Fence.”

“If Ole did it.”

“Back down, it’s just a fence.”

“But did he sent the water guys out too?”

While Alma and Henry chatted, Rose stood at the doorway to the dining room, her long curly red hair spilled onto her shoulders. She loved listening to her parents, and wondered if she could ever find anyone like her dad for herself. At her eleven years, the thought of a boyfriend and dating didn’t appeal to her, but a friend well that was different. School was difficult for her, she had a hard time reading the books and doing the assignments. At first she thought it was because she wasn’t smart enough and she had enough proof of that. She never saw the Grebes dance, or the flocks of geese cross over the fields, she only heard their squacks and when she looked at the prairie grasses she only saw the yellow fields. If something was up close to her she saw it all and smiled. She painted little tiny drawings and landscapes, pictures of fairies and fairy circles, of dancing nymphs and trees with big fern leaves and sparkly crowns. Everyone at home treated her gently, spoke slowly and softly around her, and she approached everyone in the family cautiously. 

“Rose, would you read the instructions on that bread recipe for me,” Alma said.

“Where is it?”

“On top of the cookbooks in the corner.”

Rose squinted and walked cautiously to the other side of the room.

Henry watched her closely. “She always squint like that?”

“Rose, squint?” said Alma

“Look at her.”

Alma distractedly looked up from pouring the water into the water bath where she watched the yoghurt progress through the afternoon.

She swirled the water again and the thermometer read 98F.

“Just a minute.” She poured more of the boiling water into the side and swirled the water around.

“Had her eyes checked?”

“School does that.”

“Did the school check your vision.”

“Yup.”

“When?”

“Fourth grade.”

“Look at her Alma.”

Alma looked up as Rose hesitantly walked across the kitchen to the cookbooks. “You’re right, could explain a lot.”

“I’ll take her in tomorrow.”

“She’s got school, and June’s coming over.”

“I’ll meet June in town.”

“I need a break, let me go in.”

HUNTER LAKE 9/100 THE FENCE

HUNTER LAKE 9/100 THE FENCE

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
― Wendell Berry

Henry went out to check his land, the pastures, the wetlands, the edges to his neighbors, as a Spring time ritual. He felt he had tucked the land in bed for the winter and now that it was waking up it was time to make sure everything was where it should be. The seasons change the land like they do all of us, ice and wind ravage a countryside and sometimes the winter protects it from drought with a thick blanket of snow, to kind of ready it for planting. So he walked the perimeter. His farm wasn’t that large, but represented history and family and the great country he was born in and built a life in for his children and grandchildren and all of that.

Spring comes early, late, wet, sometimes dry, but this one was different somehow, something had changed. The wind bit a little, he could feel it chafe his face, bring tears down, make him squint just like everyone else had for as long as the land held people. The people he was related to moved here over a hundred years ago.

The prairie grasses were springing up from the heavy snow. He loved how resilient they were once the weight had lifted. Just like anyone who lived on the prairie. They lie down flat under the wet snow and soak in everything they can. The land rests and minerals accumulate, perennials like the prairie grass and seeds and roots for flowers gather up enough resources to sprout and leaf once they see the light. Humans do that too. They wait out the Winter, gather with friends, plan for the Spring, take vacations, learn to love themselves and the lives they’ve chosen.

The walk down the driveway took a while, and he checked for new rock outcroppings, as the earth and ice changed and pushed the stones out, to make sure his tall 50 year old tree windbreak hadn’t broken from those 50 below and 50 mile an hour winds and heavy snowfall. They were intact. Only a few rocks had surfaced, some looked like huge boulders.

He went to the edge of the county road and stared both ways, might be a mile to his neighbors, but it wasn’t that bad out. He took out his cell, let his neighbor know what he was up to and started the trek. There wasn’t much of a shoulder, so he had to cross back and forth, dodging trucks every once in a while when other neighbors took the center of the road with their trucks to avoid the weak shoulder structure that had been partially demolished from Mother Nature’s usual revenge. Some of the land had already started to drain into the culverts, just a trickle this time of year. He wondered why it was so important to some. Were they going to start irrigation in hard times? Once the aquifers dried up would they use their back up drought resistant Monsanto grain?

He kept up the pace and kept checking. By the time he got down the road half a mile he saw the beginnings of the one story rambling add-on residence. The house was added onto like dominoes: flat rectangles to fulfill a new function for the growing family. It was clear that things hadn’t changed much. The door to the kitchen opened before he had a chance to knock on the door. He sat down for coffee in the country kitchen. Smells of freshly baked bread, cinnamon and sugary sweet, reminded him of why he returned to the valley.

“Hey I see you got a new fence.” Mark stood shoulders squared, tall as he talked. He poured the coffee from a Mr. Coffee carafe, brown stained. He sat with the chair pulled away from the table and teetered on the back legs. .

“No, what fence?” Henry grabbed for a syrupy roll.

“That one on the other side of your property, runs the full length, nice of you to put it up on your land, helps your neighbor out some, what with his being so trashed and all,” he said.

“I ain’t put up no fence, and you’re joking.”

“Oops,” he said, “shouldn’t have said anything, guess it’s not your fence.”

“But it’s on my property, you say?”

“Well, I was out driving just last week and I could see all these workers trampling on your property, using a post hole digger, and setting up, no really there were a lot of people on your property.”

“Looked like a lot of money I suppose, which you know I don’t have.”

“Hmmm, and you wouldn’t spend it like that, like a favor for your neighbor, to help him out.”

“I got other issues,” Henry said.

“Like your wetlands, and grassland, and keeping things balanced, you mean.”

“You know me!” A hard crack of laughter burst out of both of and then there was kind of a long silence.

“I suppose that guy thinks he can build on my land because I’m not paying attention, well if it’s true, I guess that’s gonna change.” Henry stood up.

“Hey, I get it, next time, I’ll check with you.”

“Or Alma, we’re the same.”

“Missed on this one, but you know, I got your back.”

“No problem.” Henry checked his cell and dialed Alma, as his tall figure ambled out the door, a proud outline of a figure that everyone knew.

HUNTER LAKE 8/100 DOTTIE

HUNTER LAKE 8/100

 

Dottie walked out to the back of the Valley View Café, she leaned against the alley wall and took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. She sighed as the smoke curled up in the quiet afternoon sunset. Her phone buzzed, “Mark.” It was her teenage son.

Her lone figure cast a long shadow on the concrete alley that stretched from a railroad to Cemetery Hill, on a dry Spring day of another year in a prairie town that time forgot. She inhaled again and this time felt the burn reach down into her chest to a heart that never forgot.

Her voice melted as she answered “what’s up.”

As she listened she remembered another voice, one filled with promises of escape to a better place, where she could leave the small town that she felt disappear beneath her like quicksand. A man whose eyes held her gaze and eventually consumed her like a fire consumes oxygen. She felt no needs when she was with him, as though all the troubles of the world disappeared with every breath she took. Fifteen years ago to the day, when he walked into the Café. She was only fifteen at the time, the same age as her son, too young to feel consumed by that kind of love and so young there was no other way that love could ever take her.

Here she was, standing in the alley, her home and Mark’s was a small apartment above the little restaurant, furnished with metal cupboards and a metal kitchen table, a pull down bed in the living room and two small closet sized bedrooms and bathroom with a shower. She woke up that morning the same way she had done for the last 15 years, when she decided to keep the baby and commit her life to the life inside of her as a sacred promise to life itself. She would never give the baby up, even though it meant legal emancipation from her family, getting a GED degree on line and working for substandard wages and tips in a place that never seemed to be able to make anything but enough money to keep the doors open.

“Sorry, yes I’m listening, what did you say about Ivy?”

Tears rolled down her face, as she listened she heard thoughts she had never expressed to anyone. He was saying words she had wanted to share with her parents, she wanted them to love her and listen to her, to help her make sense of all of it. “We’ll take the baby but no one can know you’re the mother.” They had said that to her. It wasn’t what Mark was saying, but there was something about his feelings about Ivy that reminded her.

“Listen, I gotta get back, I want to listen, let’s talk it over tonight.”

She pulled out some Binaca and sprayed her mouth and then some spearmint gum, sprayed a little lavender on her black polyester shirt dress and black apron with pockets for change and a green order tablet and pencil. There were too many grease stains to tolerate a pen. She stuffed the pack in her hiding place behind the alley light switch and opened the kitchen door to walk back into the restaurant. Today the cook was gone, so she doubled her work as cook and waitress, making it look like the place was staffed. She grabbed a fresh pot of coffee.

The Bunco group was in the middle of the Gala discussion as she walked back. “Oh, good Dottie’s back, more coffee, and any of your special Sandies, I love your sugar cookies Dottie.”

Suddenly the ladies looked at each other, as though they thought of the same idea at once. The chatter stopped. Dottie poured coffee for each of them, and brought out a full plate of the sugar cinnamon cookies and placed them at the center of the table.

After Dottie went back to the kitchen to check on the stews and soups, Mabel whispered. “Do you think she could cater dessert? She’s not a kid anymore, and she’s so good, did you taste her red velvet cake with white mountain frosting?”

“You know she had a kid out of wedlock.”

“That was fifteen years ago, who cares now.”

“but who’s the dad, someone from here?”

Mabel’s eyebrow raised. “We’ve been over this, gotta be someone from out of town, I would know if it weren’t.”

“It’s a good kid, I mean not the type I want my kids around, but not a trouble maker.”

“Did you see him get the winning home run for the State Baseball Tournament.”

“Well, yes.”

“You all agree?”

“I’ll talk it over with the Mayor tonight.”