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Two stories from Sarah's newly completed Vacationland - sixteen connected stories linking various characters to the same remote resort. Approximation PDF Version Recommended Northeast of town, Route 77 cuts through a deep ridge of Precambrian rock that once separated remote from isolated. When lumber barons needed to get at the trees on the other side, a road was dynamited through, leaving walls of greenstone embossed with old bore marks so that it appears stiff snakes had cleaved the rock. Beyond this corridor the road ribbons toward the border. After a few miles the vista grows nearly narcotic – dusty spruce and jackpine poke from scabs of sphagnum and stone erupts from the crust in a dozen stone shades. A patch of orange lichen might provide an occasional thrill, and in the few stands of old growth pine that escaped logging, holy-postcard sunlight stabs through as if blessing any cars traveling farther north. Ten miles into the Boreal dim the road makes a drunken swale around glacial boulders, then levels where the forest thins and parts to reveal Lahti’s Hobby like a startling pop-up page in a children’s book. Vans loaded with campers slow at the Hobby casting canoe-shaped shadows as drivers do double takes. SUV’s crawl with passengers wondering if it is a mini-golf course, if the trees are real. As odd a sight as it is, few stop to examine the Hobby or to photograph it – those headed into the wilderness are road-weary and itching to get on with their solitude, and those on their way out are hell-bent for soap showers and flush toilets. To locals, Lahti’s Hobby is merely a break in a monotonous drive, a mile-marker for the ’98 washout and a trout stream kept secret from tourists. When directions are given to various trails and put-ins, one is sent either south of Lahti’s Hobby, or north of it. Alpo Lahti doesn’t think much about the Hobby himself. It began as a pastime and over the years has become a daily routine of trimming and shearing that occupies him when he’s not fishing. Spring is busiest, when he prunes and shapes and plants, and each autumn Alpo will introduce a few young trees, maybe a yew or an arborvitae to add texture. When one of his trees falls victim to diplodia or blister rust, he is watchful of the others, spraying with emulsions or washing them with botanical detergents. If a tree doesn’t rebound in his care, he cuts and burns it, grubs the stump, ridding all traces of it. The Hobby began after Rose passed, soon after Alpo’s daughter Kelly convinced him to attend a grief support group at the community center. He went once, thinking he’d stick his head in so that he could say he’d gone without lying, but duty pressed him forward. He’d been the only male, the only widower, and the last and largest person in the door, too conspicuous to sidle away. Soon enough he was clutching a Styrofoam cup and a bear claw, surrounded by a dozen expectant faces. The widows urged Alpo to tell Rose’s story from the beginning, from diagnosis onward. As soon as he began, they began interrupting – asking how this felt or how that felt, how hearing the word cancer felt, how the next five months felt, and then, afterward, how he felt. Alpo sighed. Things had to be done, Rose had to be taken care of. It was ovarian. At the plant he asked for all his vacation days and third shift. Rose’s sister Sharon came from Wisconsin, parked her Winnebago near the pond and tended Rose while he worked. Toward the end they both learned how to inject, and a hospice nurse came three times a week. The kids came when they could, but Pete was in St. Paul at veterinary school, and Kelly was married with two babies. Hoping honesty was what they wanted, Alpo admitted to the widows that he hadn’t felt much of anything when she went. He wove his fingers into a hammock and told them it was only after, when the bed and oxygen trolley were cleared away, when it seemed something might collapse into the empty space where his wife had been. When there were no tasks to fill his hands. As if grief was a problem to be solved, the widows faced Alpo much like a herd and offered the same solution twelve different ways. What he needed was a pastime, a hobby. “Maybe so,” he pretended to agree, “But what?” Anything! They offered whittling, cabinet-making, model planes, bluebird houses, Adirondack chairs, Diamond Willow walking sticks. Marquetry. Their suggestions were proffered in wistful or relieved tones, as if hearing echoes of their departed husbands putzing and hammering out of sight in so many basements or garages. Caught in the small-eyed glare of Ruth Witti, an unchristian observation ticked though Alpo’s thoughts – that even though Guy Witti’s body or ice-house were never recovered, he maybe was in a better place. He cleared his throat to lie, “Those are all fine ideas.” After working indoors all day with tools in the machine shop, none of their suggestions appealed in the least. Mrs. Huttala pointed her aluminum cane. “You should read!” she shouted, “The Bible!” Alpo left in a lighter mood, knowing there was no need to return. If it was only a matter of a hobby, he’d find one. And though it was already there in his yard, months would pass before he realized. In the front garden stood the blue spruce Sharon and the kids had planted in memory of Rose. When it set out its first new growth, Alpo thought it looked slightly shaggy, so he clipped away the new soft buds, careful to prune each just a quarter inch from its scaly source. The mindless repetition and rhythm of pruning was pleasant in a mindless sort of way. When he finished, the ground was covered with delicate buds, so tender he was moved to bite into one – if nothing else to see why the deer were so crazy about them. When the sun started to slide, Alpo looked at his watch to realize he’d been at it for hours. Squinting and chewing blue needles, Alpo raised a hand sticky with pitch to shield his eyes, and felt better, for the first time since. The spruce looked a bit bereft centered in so much yard, so he planted a Mugho pine and a Prince of Wales juniper nearby. He ordered a few different types of fertilizers and pesticides, and recalling the taste of new spruce, surrounded his two acres with wire fence of an un-leapable height. When his cousin Gil drove over from Blackduck to take him out for fishing opener, Alpo was busy with a fledgling cedar he was planting for Mother’s Day and a little put out at being interrupted, and annoyed by the marks Gil’s boat trailer was pressing into his clover. “Lemme just finish this, Gil, then I’ll put new test on my reel and we’re good to go.” Gil leaned against the cab, “Only God can make a tree, Alpo, but only you would prune one with barber shears and calipers.” Alpo made no excuses for being precise – as lead machinist on his team, he had to be. If one cog on a piece of equipment his crew fabricated was a fraction of a centimeter off, it could mean an OSHA nightmare. Nobody wants dead miners on their conscience. He customized a few garden tools, welding a pocket level to a small hedge trimmer, and since there would be no more turkeys, refitted the electric knife with a thirty-foot cord. He cut extra notches into the teeth of his handsaws to make smoother passes, less stress to the trees. Shrubs and trees trickled in, some ordered from nurseries, others received as gifts, like the twin Scotch pines and the Frazier fir. The height of the trees was conditional – none grew beyond the sum of Alpo’s height plus that of his favorite ladder – a sturdy eight-footer he saw no reason to replace. A second mine closure meant more layoffs among Alpo’s crew. Three years after that, the plant was acquired by a West Virginia outfit and moved out of state. Alpo took forced retirement with a pension cut and suddenly had nothing but time for the neat forest growing outside his window. He jerry-rigged an old woodchipper with a pliable tube to make a mobile fertilizer spreader – the fish offal, bones and ash that went in emerged out the nozzle end as nutritious, gross ooze the color of braunschweigert. When complimented on his green thumb, Alpo would point to his gore-crusted machine, “Bullhead smoothies, nothing special.” Alpo didn’t realize what he did had a name until Section Three road just south of his driveway was surveyed and renamed. He walked down to the blacktop to watch as the sign was bolted to its post – green and white stamped letters, making it official. Lahti’s Hobby. He tended his trees in the early mornings before driving to town. Around ten-thirty he’d stop at the post office and then settle in at Pavola’s to have his second round of coffee and read the mail and newspapers. He might stay for lunch with Chim or Ray, he might not. He’d idly listen to the shock-jocks on the boombox shaking the glass pie case, but left the fist-shaking and backtalk to the others. When they weren’t slamming plates or pouring refills, Sissy and Laurie kept customers up on local gossip and actual news. They were over forty, but didn’t seem to mind being called girls, though Sissy took only a certain amount of shit from Chim before threatening to pour the next cup where it would matter, and Laurie refused to serve Big Juri Perla unless he passed her version of a breathalyzer, up on her toes. In May, a full week went by without Alpo showing up at the café. Ray and Chim assumed he was either busy with spring pruning, or down with the flu that was plowing clear so many beds up at the nursing home. When Alpo didn’t make it to Bibb Esko’s retirement party, Chim tried calling, but only got a busy signal. The next morning he drove out to see if Alpo had fallen from a ladder or stroked out. He was kneeling in the mulch under three Loblolly Pine and a black Japanese Globosa. Chim joked to Alpo’s backside, “We thought you might be shacked up out here – that maybe one of them bruisers up at The Klondyke jumped the fence for you. Laurie was all set to pool her tips to buy you a bottle of that Viagra.” “What’s the problem?” “Problem is I don’t know what the problem is.” He moped perspiration from his eyes. “Think Sissy’s cousin down at the library would show me how to use that Internet? I have to look up some blights. There’s nothing in my books.”
Alpo sat among children in the library and learned to push a mouse. A girl who didn’t come up to his shirt pocket showed him how to navigate the web. In a few days he was surfing and emailing without much fumbling. He spent afternoons researching diseases and molds, picking up bits of Latin along the way. Erv from County Extension came out and the two of them lay on their backs aiming flashlights along the trunks. Erv couldn’t guess what might cause them to ooze a thin, odorless brown syrup. “Hell, Alpo, most of these aren’t native species. Probably one of ‘em imported something viral.” Within a week, the needles closest to the trunk of every tree in the Hobby suddenly turned yellow. His trees were failing from the inside out. Kenny Odegaard from the DNR was no help at all, only offered to spray for pine beetles, which there wasn’t a one of. Les Klun the section ranger suggested a Dendrologist. When Alpo finally found one, in Winnipeg, the man refused to speculate over the telephone, only demanded needle and trunk samples. Alpo felled his sickest tree and packed needles and thin rounds of trunk into a Fed Ex mailer. The results could be either a week, the Dendrologist told him, or six. There wasn’t that kind of time. Fearing the worst, Alpo borrowed Ray’s camera and took pictures of the Hobby from several different angles. He wanted a record, at least. But none of the shots were frame-able. Juri Perla took some wobbly video that wasn’t great either. The three of them were on their elbows at Pavola’s when Tom Maki came out of the mens, hitching his belt, “Damn, Alpo, you weren’t this long-faced when Rose was sick.” After a taut second, Ray swiveled. “Shut your trap, Maki, or you’ll be shitting your teeth tomorrow.” Alpo held Ray’s sleeve, “You got a plastic hip and twenty years on him, Ray.” “He insulted you.” “Nah. He’s just got a big mouth and is stupid enough to says what he thinks.” They watched Tom launch out the door to bumble around the woman coming in. Meg Machutova just managed to squeeze past and open the door, shaking her head. Chim sniffed. “That painter lady. Watch now, two bits says she don’t say boo.” She waved her dollar at Laurie, set it on the till and reached under the counter to get her Chicago Tribune. Joe Pavola special-ordered city newspapers for summer people and for Meg, who was almost a local, in hopes he’d sell them breakfast as long as they were in the café. A few stuck around for a meal, but most only bought a coffee to go. Those fetching the New York Times did neither. Joe blamed his own regulars, sometimes coming out from behind the grille to shake his cleaver, “Jesus, can’t you be a little friendly? Staring just scares folks.” Just as she was leaving, Meg nodded at Alpo, saying, “Hey.” Alpo nodded back, watched the door shut, turned to grin at Chim and held out his palm, “You owe me.” “For ‘Hey’?” Chim set his Zippo on the counter and swept most of the tip meant for Sissy toward Alpo, who pushed the coins back with a disgusted sigh. “Hell,” Juri offered from his corner, “…she was a downright friendly today. You know her much, Al?” “Not really. I knew the old man a little. Pete went out with her one of those summers he worked at Naledi. Never brought her out to the house though.” Ray leaned, “How’s he doing?” “Pete?” Alpo was watching out the window as Meg crossed the street. He hadn’t thought of his son in weeks. "Couldn’t say. Maybe drinking, maybe not.” He was waiting near her vehicle when she came out of the bank. He pointed to the left rear tire. “Could use a few pounds in that.” “Oh, I could. Thanks, Mr. Lahti.” "Alpo.” Meg nodded, “Thanks Alpo.” “I saw that article they did on you – the one with the pictures. And I read that you’re living out at the resort now.” Meg stepped form foot to foot. “Uh huh. What’s left of it.” “Well, the lodge is solid enough…shame, though. You know my Rose passed not long after your granddad did.” “Yes. I was very sorry to hear that.” “Yeah, well, it’s coming up on twenty years now, so…” Alpo saw she was anxious and only being polite, so he got to the point. “Listen. You’re a painter, and I need a picture.” “You do?” “A commission. You do those?” “Ah, depends.” She sounded doubtful. “What is it you want painted?” “My yard. The Hobby, I guess people call it.” Meg nodded. “I’ve driven by.” “And I’ve only seen a few of your paintings, but what I’m looking for is more like an actual picture.” He pulled out a battered field guide and opened it to Common Juniper. “This is what I need, something realistic that looks real.” “Representative?” “Sure. Thing is, I need it quick. I’ve got some sort of blight, so I don’t know how long…” “You want me to paint your trees?” He shrugged. “Yeah.” Meg looked at Alpo’s vest like she was counting the quilted squares. She nodded across a dozen or so before answering. “All right. I’ll drive up and take a look.” Alpo watched from his kitchen window as Meg meandered figure eights around his trees, standing back, tapping her chin. She clipped across the road where her old Cruiser tipped into the ditch and he thought, Fine then, go. But she only climbed up the rock shelf and stood staring at the Hobby from there. He poured a cup of coffee and walked it out to her, easing down the ditch and up the scrabble, careful of his knee. She crouched to take it, “I’d say you’re rather an artist yourself, Alpo.” “What?” “I’m serious. Come take a look from here.” She offered a hand, but Alpo hoisted himself. Standing on the ledge, he realized he’d never seen the place from this angle, how the Hobby was set just so, surrounded by the real forest. “I’d paint it from here. Not just your perfect trees, but how they’re framed by the others.” She grinned at Alpo, “If this was out East, it’d be on the cover of ArtForum.” Meg backed her vehicle across the ditch. Once they got her easel up and leveled, she clamped on a huge drawing pad, set up a golf umbrella and squinted at Alpo’s trees. “They seem healthy enough. I mean, they look fine from here.” He shouldered the tailgate shut. “Rose looked fine too, damn near to the end.” Meg went in once for the bathroom, but otherwise kept to the ledge with her dog. At five o’clock she knocked to say she was done sketching, and would come back Tuesday with a canvas. She could finish the painting over the next few weeks or so, depending on weather and the light. The Winnipeg man sent his inconclusive report, a half of which Alpo could not make out, along with a bill for three hundred dollars. Alpo couldn’t fathom how a painting could take more than a few days. His trees were in stasis, not getting any better, not getting worse. Tired of waiting, he packed his pickup with a cooler and fly rods and told Meg the house didn’t have a lock. “So, anytime you need the john or fridge or whatever…” He drove on back roads, heading for streams along the big lake. After several days of getting skunked on the Temperance and Little Manitou, he wound further north. In a nameless stream near the border he caught a rainbow trout that nearly snapped his rod. By the time he’d reeled it in, his shoulder burned and his waders were half-filled. He was barely able to slosh back to the bank. He settled the fish into a tiny pool with a sand bottom and leaned back to catch his breath. It was a specimen, plump and bright, not a nick on it. Alpo knelt to examine its iridescent scales, knowing the color would begin to fade soon enough – would go dull once he’d thwacked it - he watched as it swim circles, pulling along its ribbons of color. When he could no longer ignore the jabbing in his knees, Alpo hefted his trophy of a fish – eleven, maybe twelve pounds – not quite a record, but certainly taxidermy-worthy. It wriggled in his grip as he held it aloft, turning it this way then that. A beaut. Then as if watching someone else’s hands doing the next thing, he eased the trout just below the surface of the river and let it slip from his hands into the current. After he’d cleared his campsite, he backed the pickup around and rattled over the washboard toward the two-lane, aiming west and home. Back in the Hobby, he found his trees had declined no further, just the usual brown weeping. The only sign of Meg was a one-word note left on the table; Finished. Drying now. A week passed and still nothing died. The brown weeping baffled him. That it kept coming. When Meg called to say the painting was dry and varnished, he asked her to bring it to Pavola’s after lunch on Monday, just before the café closed. He knew about art openings, that there was food and definitely drink involved, so he asked Ray to pick up the beer and a few gallons of wine. Joe offered to make his little pizzas and a tray of rye and herring. When Alpo got to the café, he was a little embarrassed by the fuss made. Streamers hung from the fluorescents. Sissy had made tree-shaped cookies and deviled eggs. Folks from places up and down Main Street stood around drinking beer or sipping Dixie Cups of wine. The painting was propped on two chairs. Alpo barely glanced, standing just offside, listening carefully to everyone’s comments, hoping they might inspire his own when it came his turn. Pretty, the women repeated, predictably. Just like a photograph. It does the Hobby justice, etc. In lieu of an apology, Tom Maki sheepishly told Alpo he thought it was a good painting. Bertie and Sam left their squad parked with its lights twirling and came in to joke that there must be trouble, since the café door was still open past 1:59. Bertie said his aunt was a talented painter too, but couldn’t paint like that. “It’s nice…” Laurie mused in a whisper, “…that she could paint some actual place for a change.” Hal from the bait shop made everyone laugh by giving it a two-thumbs up, holding his good thumb up twice. The party was nearly over before he really looked for himself. It was exactly what he had asked for. More, in fact. The artistic license Meg had employed – touches of bright colors and deeper shadows, made it look as if you could step right into the Hobby. Alpo dug the checkbook from his coat and motioned Meg to an empty booth. “I know this isn’t gonna be cheap, so don’t think you’re gonna shock me.” He had Googled Meg weeks back, when links to galleries in Chicago and London led him to lists with breathtaking prices. “So, what’s the damage?” Meg shook her head. “Nothing.” She was joking, so he joked back. “I might not be from the city, but I know nothing is no price.” Meg pressed the checkbook aside. He was reminded of her granddad – that look he’d had, she got. When Vac Machutova was roused to say something, it was usually worth listening to. “It’s only a painting.” Meg said. “C’mon here, Meg I don’t-.” She stopped him cold by laying her hand over his. “Pete told me what you did for Vac.” “Did? What?” “After Doc Klun put him in the hospital for good.” Alpo was blinking at her hand, “I didn’t do anything.” “Yes, you did. You got him in your truck and drove him to Naledi for a last look. You took him fishing.” A vague memory clicked. “Jeez, that?” It had been right after Rose first fell ill – when there was too many reasons to be around the hospital for too many hours at a stretch, hanging around the halls waiting for the results of this test or that scan. Taking the old man for a ride had been selfish lark, an excuse to escape the green tile. Pete had helped, anyway. They’d only been making small talk in the hall, Vac pulling his wheelchair along with a slippered foot, Alpo asking him about how the pike had been since the winter kill the year before. And then he looked over the old man’s head at Pete and they seemed to have got the same idea at the same time. At the resort, he’d carried Vac down the hill while Pete managed the chair. He hadn’t weighed much by then, bony as a zipper. They wheeled him to the end of the dock. Actually Alpo had a lot on his mind that day, it was hard to keep everything about those days straight, but yes, maybe Pete did put a fishing pole in the Vac’s hand, and maybe they did sit there awhile… It had been a pretty afternoon, he remembers that much. One of those blue and gold September days. Vac seemed glad enough to be home, if only for a couple hours. Pete got some beers from the lady staying in the lodge. They wet their lines and caught a few crappies. But that was it. When Vac started nodding Alpo worried maybe they’d worn him out. Back at the hospital they’d snuck him through the side entrance to avoid catching grief from the nurses… “Hell, Meg, it wasn’t anything. Anybody woulda done the same.” “But nobody else did.” Meg’s gaze swept from the swag of streamers to the empty Gallo jugs and trays where triangles of cheese had begun to curl. “This was nice…” she stood. He supposed it was. After she’d gone, he stayed in the booth until the party was just himself and Juri, Chim, Ray and Joe. With the door locked, they sat and drank up the rest of the bottles so Juri could take the empties for the deposit. It hung where he could see it, above the TV next to the picture window that looked out over the real Hobby. But it did not make Alpo feel the way he thought it might. It was pretty and worth a lot of money, but like she’d said, it was only a painting. Only an approximation. Outside, the real trees of the Hobby had begun to rally. Within a month, whatever was wrong with them stopped being wrong. After they’d been examined and reexamined, Alpo stood in the middle of the Hobby turning slow circles with his arms hanging, knowing he should feel relieved. Over the autumn, Alpo began fly-tying classes at the bait shop. Under Hal’s guidance, he hunched over his tying table with scraps of fur and feather and clamped tiny hooks into his vice. By spring he’d mastered the Damsel Nymph and Irresistible Adams. He could tie Woolly Worms in his sleep, and even made up a few flies of his own. He ordered a monocle made in Switzerland. The yellow inner needles of the trees had shed over the winter, and in spring they were replaced by plump, green growth. Not many noticed that new buds on the trees went unclipped that spring, few remarked on the Hobby’s perfection growing less perfect – that the trees seemed a little fuzzy around the edges, in need of a shave. Several more seasons passed with Lahti’s Hobby growing unrestrained. By the time Alpo tore down the deer fencing, the yard was so shaggy not a head turned or a finger pointed from the vehicles barreling north. The trees shot up quickly – or maybe it just seemed quickly to Alpo when he compared the view out the east window to the painting hanging near it. Eventually his trees began brushing unruly branches against one another – reaching up and outward, inching toward the property line and over, where wild trees grow every which way. Assimilation A Vacationland story, Assimilation appeared in Milkweed Editions Fall '08 anthology, Fiction On A Stick PDF Version Recommended Veshko screws his ear closer to the television as the excited talk show guest erupts in phrases that are obviously offensive and perhaps even obscene. Veshko looks from Tyrone, excited guest, to Jerry Springer, wondering when Jerry might take matters in hand, but he only stands mute in the aisle with his arms crossed, cradling his microphone the way some men cradle a bottle. Jimmy, the brother of Tyrone, shrugs at the camera, basking in the attention as the crowd hisses and shouts. There is some trouble having to do with the fat woman seated between the brothers, but Veshko can find neither bonin’ nor ho in the Webster’s pried open on his knee. While watching television has only slightly improved Veshko’s English, an abstract sense of his new country is clipping into focus. Much livelier than those on Ellen, certainly more so than those on Oprah – many of Jerry’s guests are distraught, angry, and often related. They argue using words Veshko cannot look up fast enough – full sentences slip past his ear as if greased. Now they are trying to hit each other, these two brothers who have dressed in matching shirts for the occasion, but bald men in jackets emblazoned SECURITY press them back to their chairs. Tyrone and Jimmy glare at each other over the head of the woman, whose name is Anita. Anita is the colour of a sacher torte, with great painted lips and metallic moons of eye shadow that shimmer like her outfit. Nowhere in his new home of Squaw Inlet, Minnesota, has Veshko seen women wear such abbreviated clothing. Anita’s cleavage forms a holster of flesh deep enough to conceal a weapon. Ethnic Americans sometimes carry guns, Veshko knows, although the characters he has met on The Cosby Show would never. Or should he say would not? There are no black people this small Minnesota resort community, which makes Veshko suspect they must live in other places, like Chicago, where many talk shows are taped – a place he visited for several hours during his last layover at the airport of O’Hare, where he saw many different sorts of people, many colors. Still, America seems less like the melting pot he’d imagined it would be, and more like his own country, where people settle near their own and stick to their own. In America, immigrant groups even have villages tucked inside cities, such as the Chinese. This he has seen on cable reruns of The Streets of San Francisco, the program about two detectives, one handsome and young, and the other grandfatherly with a nose resembling a penis. Veshko is amused by this program’s portrayal of uncorrupt police. Flipping pages he is pleased to recognize ska, a musical term he knows in English. Then his finger lands on what he is looking for, skank, which amid the many bleeps is the word Tyrone repeatedly shouts at the woman. He reads the entry and sighs, “Of course. A whore – a kurva.” He puts the book down and rises from the sofa, crossing through the dining room into the kitchen, where his footsteps land on linoleum squares in sync in with the chant, Jer-ry, Jer-ry. Yellow-green, yellow-green. He opens the fridge and lifts a can of Budweiser from the door – a beverage that somehow shares an identity with the real Budweiser. The beer is as pale and subtle as the people of his new home. He heaps cold meatballs and potato dumplings onto a plate, leftovers from his dinner at the Tuomala’s. Since coming to Squaw Inlet, Veshko has dinner each Sunday with a different family, alternating between the two churches that sponsor him. St. Heikki’s tiny congregation did not have the resources to get their own refugee, so they teamed with St. Birgitta’s to pay Veshko’s airfare and provide him a home. One Sunday Veshko has dinner with a family of Finns, the following week he is fed by Swedes. Oddly, the parishioners of both churches are so similar-looking he can barely tell them apart. They seem to make no distinctions themselves and greet each other mildly, as if any history between them is forgotten, though they are only a few generations removed from brutality. Veshko has observed that in America the past can be just water under some bridge, as they say. Squaw Inlet’s citizens mingle peacefully and have many bumper-sticker sentiments in common – many are pro-life and pro-war. They share other similarities; the housewives, for example, seem to have an aversion to spice yet embrace salt. He reaches for the paprika just as the microwave beeps. Veshko fiddles with the rabbit ears, but no color emerges. Assuming there must be some problem with the dish, he climbs to the second floor, then takes the rickety steps to the attic where he forces open a dormer window. The satellite dish is anchored next to the chimney. He climbs out, clinging to the window sash and immediately experiences a wave of vertigo that tugs from diaphragm to scrotum. He attempts to get better footing, and once secure, hunkers down, breathes and looks out over the town. Spread before him is quite a view of the north part of the town. He can count seventy-seven houses, five bars, and three churches. There are two canoe outfitters, a bait shop, the IGA supermarket, three motels, the food coop, post office, and a windowless library that looks like a power station. A new Pump&Munch sits directly across from the Holiday Station on the piney road that leads south to the interstate that leads to the rest of America. Just as the freeway sign promises, much of what a person needs in life can be found in Squaw Inlet – Gas Food Lodging. But if Veshko wanted to buy a parakeet, or see an ophthalmologist, he would have to travel thirty-seven miles to the first large town. He looks down to the T of the clothesline pole where the red bicycle leans, his only form of transportation. Many roofs in Squaw Inlet have satellite dishes. Many yards have dogs, but the owners are either inside or gone, so that the animals pace yards fenced with metal mesh, or lay in hard hollows of dirt. The house next door has no dog, no dish, and a closed air, though Veshko knows his neighbor Pete is home because the back end of his Suburban sticks out from the garage not deep enough to house it. Pete works long days, and when he’s not out tending sled dogs, inseminating cows, or stitching up one or the other after a wolf tears them, he sits in what he calls his rumpus room, reading Larry McMurtry novels and drinking Dewer's from a coffee mug that says # 1 Dad. Pete is divorced, and dislikes two things, one is his job. When Veshko politely asks how was his day, Pete sometimes makes a certain gesture, wriggling his fingers and saying, “Up to my elbows in cow, buddy, up to my elbows.” Often he repeats himself for Veshko’s benefit. After a particularly harsh day he might say, “Mud, shit and blood, pal, that is how was my day. Mud, shit and blood.” If Veshko peers past the trailer park and its slope of spangled poplars, he can squint across the expanse of the lake and the horizon of water, where, if he had binoculars, he might glimpse the Province of Ontario. Balancing on his heels, Veshko feels the house shift minutely under him. Wind from the north scours his ears. He has taken in the highlights of Squaw Inlet, but has nearly forgotten his mission to check the satellite dish. The wires are connected and nothing appears to be broken, so he eases back through the window, shivering. Downstairs he watches the screen as black and white switches abruptly to color the moment The Andy Griffith Show breaks for a commercial. “I understand,” he says, understanding. After the commercial, a new episode begins. Now not only is Aunt Bea afflicted with some brand of anguish, so too is Floyd the barber. Ready to begin his practice, Veshko kneels near the coffee table, shrugs deeply and shakes his arms like a swimmer before a competition. He rhythmically shakes his wrists and quickly rubs and squeezes each finger before setting his hands on the torso lying on the coffee table. He presses his palms to the sternum and begins. He would prefer a living body, of course, but Jessica will have to do. It is no good for a masseur to let his hands to forget their trade. Soon after Veshko moved into the tall yellow house, he and his good neighbor Pete made the Jessica together. As they sewed and stuffed her, Pete pointed to the crotch and jokingly growled, “Est ist verboten!” and they discovered they had a language in common. While Pete’s German is an old dialect learned from his grandmother, it is adequate. Veshko is shamed by his own poor English, in spite of Pete’s encouragement. Besides German and his own language, Veshko can speak a few Serb and Croat dialects, Italian, and some Polish. Pete knows some Finnish from his father, and teaches Veshko words that are hills of vowels interrupted by the occasional brusque consonant. He learns a few unsavory phrases, mostly regarding sexual intercourse with ones mother or sister. The German conversations become more fluent as empty Bud cans accumulate on the carpet of Mrs. Kubich. Mrs. Kubich had abruptly passed the week before Veshko came to Squaw Inlet. Stroked out, he was told, but since both church committees had planned he would live with her, the family offered the use of the house until they could settle the estate and sell. On the day of Veshko’s arrival the old woman’s belongings were as they had been when she was removed by the ambulance – a load of delicates in the dryer and a saucepan in the sink. Veshko gently moved the support hose and cardigans and lavender sachets from enough drawers to put away his own things, then shut the doors of several rooms and settled in to live under the watchful stares of Mrs. Kubich’s people. They gaze from gilt frames hung high on walls or set on bookshelves that hold no books – dozens of sepia eyes watch over as he practices his massage, eats, and sleeps. They are Slavic faces with wide cheekbones and high foreheads, and he doesn’t much mind them, even feels an odd kinship, sometimes acknowledging them in no particular language at all. Veshko has not placed any of his own family photographs out for display, assuming they would only elicit curiosity from his few well-meaning visitors. He works over Jessica, kneading outward from imaginary ribs, his concentration breaking only when commercials blare and blast colour into the dim room. The dummy, which Pete has named, is fashioned from a leotard and several pairs of tights filled with flax seed. She has comically large breasts formed by bags of millet, with the knots centered to suggest nipples. As Pete sutured Jessica’s torso, Veshko confessed that Jessica Simpson was not known in his home country. Pete only shrugged and told Veshko his own wife, The Ex, had small breasts. The Ex lives in Duluth with his two children, and her new husband, Needle Dick. On the screen, Floyd the barber is now in full flummox. It turns out he has lost money Aunt Bea had entrusted him with. Aunt Bea won the money playing bingo, and feels guilt about gambling so has vowed to give her winnings to charity before her family finds out. But Floyd is weak and confesses to the men of Mayberry, who rally to help him. Floyd slumps dejectedly near an open cell in the sheriff’s office. The police in this program don’t even close the cell doors – they play checkers with their prisoners and serve them homemade meals with linen napkins. Veshko repeats what the big-eared sheriff says to the troubled barber, "Now, think, Floyd, think. Where’s the money?” “Sink, Flood, sink. Veriz za mawney?” “I uh uh . . .” Floyd hangs his head, “Oh, d-d-darn it, Andy!” The other actors speak in slow drawls he mimics as he massages Jessica’s calves and legs. She has no hands or feet. Veshko has considered filling pairs of Mrs. Kubich’s gloves and socks with flax to make her whole. Seeds in Jessica’s midsection make a faint scritch when he presses with his fists. Aunt Bea’s money is found and there are sly smiles all around, including a rodent-like grin from Aunt Bea herself, who had known all along that her money had been misplaced. When the program is over, Veshko changes the station and flips Jessica face down for her second hour. Her spine is length of plastic chain stitched into the back of the leotard – his hands move upward from imaginary coccyx to imaginary shoulder blades and to the wobbly neck and occipital ridge. Nova has a special on dingoes. At midnight Vesko turns off the lights goes to his bed, where the sheets smell of bleach and dust. Pastor Dan, the Swedish minister, was the first and so far the only person in Squaw Inlet to try to engage Veshko in a political conversation. At the counter of Pavola’s Cafe, Veshko was deep in his textbook, conjugating verbs, and Pastor Dan was reading his newspaper. The pastor rattled his page, then poked it with a finger, asking Veshko, “In your opinion, Veshko, where do you think Slobodan Milosovic should be buried?” Opinion. Almost certain he understood the meaning of the word, Veshko rose from his stool and closed his English book, slowly annunciated each syllable of his response, “I have not an opinion in this matter.” He smiled and left a tip for the young woman who’d brought his eggs and so much bad coffee. Once outside, he glanced back through the window to see Pastor Dan reach into his pocket and push several more coins across the counter to join Veshko’s. In the afternoon he finds a package in his doorway. It’s a video from Mrs. Jorge, the town librarian. There is a note, easy to translate. I haven’t seen this myself, but thought you might like it! The video is Welcome to Sarajevo. The incongruity of the title puzzles him. A travelogue? From before the siege, surely. He will watch it once he's figured out what’s wrong with the VCR. Pete comes after work with a twelve-pack and examines the machine, which turns out to be not broken. He demonstrates to Veshko how he need only switch the input cables, explaining that Mrs. Kubich must have let her grandchildren play Nintendo on the television. Pete begins to describe Nintendo but Veshko excitedly interjects, “I know this Nintendo! My nephews back home has it…had it.” Veshko repeats, “I know this video game.” He forgets Welcome to Sarajevo and goes to rummage through cupboards and closets, searching for the Nintendo, as if a child might leave such a thing behind. On Saturday Pete takes Veshko fishing. On a trailer coupled to the Suburban they pull an aluminum boat far out of town to a closed-up resort called Naledi, where, Pete explains, he once had a girl – in another life. Veshko asks if he believes in … the word takes a minute – reincarnation? He doesn’t. Pete expertly backs his boat trailer down to a narrow beach between two docks. Next to the dock is an old building for boats only, a water garage built on cribs. Pete takes a key hung under an eave and lets himself in. He comes out lugging an outboard motor. “This is not trespassing?” Pete snorts, “Hardly.” With the motor sputtering blue, they zoom from the dock and travel halfway across the lake at full speed. Veshko closes his eyes against the wind and feels his hair part, first one way then another. When the boat stops, it lowers itself like a big animal sitting. Veshko nearly asks Pete to do it again. They reach an island Pete knows, one large enough to have it’s own inlets and bays. Skirting the shore they turn into a narrow channel that leads to a marshy bay. Pete explains the water here will be choked with tall weeds by August, but for now, the bass swim under the boat in the new growth, begging to be caught. He catches two fish, one resisting so wildly he expects some giant by the time it’s pulled to the boat, but it is only a slender pike. Such fight in only an average fish, he marvels, asking Pete, “This is an American fish?” “I guess. You don’t fish back home?” “Sometime, in rivers. Not like this.” Pete catches many perch and three bass too small to bother with. They troll near the reeds for several hours, not saying much. Pete makes a few jokes about Veshko’s fishing hat, borrowed from the closet of Mrs. Kubich, a straw cloche, at least freed of its silk flowers. “I wouldn’t wear that on the street, pal…” Pete advises, “…that faggot down at the B&B might just ask you out dancing.” “Faggot?” “You know.” Pete flops his wrist. “Homo.” “Ah, yes.” Pete offers some history of the area, telling of the fur-toting Voyageurs, tough little bastards who were not always French; some were native Indians, some Russians and Brits and even Bohunks like Veshko. “The lot of them were called Pork-Eaters, manageurs de lard," Pete adds, "...so probably there weren’t many Jew paddlers.” He urges Veshko to guess what the leading cause of death among the Voyageur bastards was. Since Pete has described them paddling rapids and portaging for miles, shouldering loads weighing more than themselves, Veshko guesses drowning, and hernias. “Nope. Constipation.” Since Veshko doesn’t know the word, Pete pantomimes, scooting his bottom over the edge of his seat to grunt and clutch his stomach before falling dead against the oar. By early evening the beers are warm, but taste better. Veshko discovers he can urinate off the bow while still fishing, simply by trapping the rod in his armpit. “You got the hang of it now,” Pete says to his back, “We call that double-poling.” Hoping for one last fish, they troll the entire way back to Naledi. Approaching the land so slowly like this makes it feel like a real voyage. Veshko leans and watches the pines sway above the log cabins, and sees how late sun bounces from the lake to spray the resort windows with gem-coloured reflections, making even the saddest little buildings glow. In English, Veshko sighs, “This is one beautiful country, my friend.” Pete glances to where Veshko is looking and shrugs, “I ‘spose.”
Veshko realizes the networks that broadcast talk shows knowingly exploit personal dramas and anguish to sell commercial slots. Such commercials have expanded his vocabulary to include pattern baldness, incontinence, vaginal dryness, and erectile dysfunction, as well as names of major pharmaceutical companies and the attending cornucopia of alarming side effects. Still, he is drawn to the talk shows and has his favorite hosts. He knows instinctively not to trust small-eyed Doctor Phil, the propagandist, and half of the women on The View. He likes Ellen very much, an open-faced, seemingly humble person who Pete calls a carpet muncher. Pete has suggested Veshko should get out more, away from the idiot box. He invites him along to inseminations and sheep castrations. He politely declines, but takes the advice to heart. Veshko packs lunches and takes long bicycle rides. He recognizes the roads Pete had steered them over to reach Naledi. One day he made it the entire way. Though the bicycle is sturdy enough, the going seems more difficult the closer he got to the resort. When he arrives, finally, Veshko realizes the tires have leaked, one nearly to flatness. Huffing, he shrugs out of his Spiderman backpack and soaked shirt. Down the hill from the lodge is a little beach where Veshko wades in to wash his face and underarms. Splashing in the shallows he looks up at the few old buildings. Perhaps in one of them is a bicycle pump. He takes the key from the eave and opens the boathouse, where there are only boats and oars and cans of gas and a cupboard full of fishing gear. Other buildings also have keys in their eaves – one is a garage with a rusty truck and snow plow. There are a number of tires leaning against a wall, but no pump to fill them. He eventually finds one in the shed nearest the road, hanging from the rafters next to an old red Schwinn with no seat. After inflating his tires, Veshko goes back to the boathouse, where he borrows a rod. The two bass he catches from the dock are enough for a meal. He pierces his fish with long metal stakes that are perhaps from a tent and toasts them over a fire of smoking birch. He settles on the warm sand and closes his eyes, only for a moment. But his sleep is so instant and deep the moment stretches to hours and he wakes to see the sun in a different place, feeling the tight scorch of sunburn across his brow. Now he will have to hurry to get home before The Price is Right, which Pete sometimes comes over to watch with him. He carefully returns the few things he’s used – the rod, and pliers he used to unhook the fish, the tackle jig. In the dark boathouse, he imagines a voice and freezes in mid step. It is only water muttering against the metal walls, speaking in the same caressing tone as water everywhere does. He reluctantly backs out and locks the boathouse door. Once home, he abandons Jessica to massage his own calves and to spread butter across his pink shoulders. Veshko lowers his aching thighs to the couch cushions and is asleep before the anticlimax of the Streets Of San Francisco. He doesn’t hear Pete’s tap on the door or his footsteps retreating. By July, Veshko is stealing away to Naledi several times a week. He sometimes fishes from the dock, but more often will liberate the wooden skiff from its slip in the boathouse and row nearly to the island – never landing, only skirting. Pete ribs him about the new definition in his arms and legs, asks if he’s training for the Tour de France. “Only getting exercise,” he lies. By the end of August he knows the shoreline of Naledi and the islands well. A mile south is the Catholic summer convent, St. Gummarus. The bell that sounds for vespers is Vesho’s cue to row back and pedal home, which places him on Mrs. Kubich's couch ten minutes before his shows start. A Saturday in September is set for the annual Swedish church supper. In the afternoon Veshko shaves and dresses with extra care. When Pete backs his Suburban into the driveway Veshko is waiting with Jessica under one arm and his portable massage table under the other. Pete makes room in the back, moving ropes and harnesses and cylindrical metal coolers that hold semen. They strap the dummy upright into a seat and Pete places mirrored sunglasses on her flat, drawn-on face. Veshko climbs into the cab, still vaguely uneasy in the vehicle which is the height of a military transport. On the way to the church, Pete sings along to Willie Nelson, thumping the steering wheel to the tune of Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. Heads turn when Veshko and Pete enter the church basement. Several young men hoot at the dummy and there is a ripple of laughter when Veshko reaches to readjust her blond wig. They leave Jessica slumped on the stage and line up for the buffet. After pirogues and wild rice hot-dish, Veshko nervously gulps his coffee. While people pour sugar and some sort of powder into their cups, he climbs to the makeshift stage and unfolds his massage table. When he sees Pete nod, Veshko clears his throat and waits for Pastor Dan to join him. After the pastor introduces him, Veshko announces to the crowd that he would like to show the generous people of this good American village what was his profession back home. The demonstration is the idea of Pete and Mrs. Jorge. When he and the Jorge family begin clapping, others join in a trickle. Pete unfolds the massage table. He rubs and kneads while he talks, looking up at the crowd often. There are sniggers from the back of the room where several teens are gathered, but under Pete’s glare those quickly cease. Veshko explains that many male athletes have sports massage, such as the Vikings that play American football for this very state. Veshko eases Jessica from the table and faces the crowd, offering, “I can do this to you. Who would like?” The parishioners grow still. Men at the long tables are faceless in the shadows cast by their billed caps. Since he can read nothing on these male faces, he looks hopefully to the women of Squaw Inlet. As his eyes travel the crowd, girls giggle and women shake their heads or look suddenly to their hands. One old woman points at him and laughs out loud. Only after it is apparent no one will volunteer, Pete steps up and bows brusquely to the crowd. There is relieved laughter as Pete approaches the table, peeling off his jacket. His face is red, as if he's swallowing something too large. Back in his home, Veshko’s spa was adjacent to the national gymnasium and natatorium. There, he’d directed seven masseurs, a hydro-therapist, a physical therapist, and a nurse specializing in sports injury. He thinks of these old colleagues while he identifies Pete’s pressure points for the audience. The nurse, Magda, now teaches land-mine victims to balance on artificial legs and hold spoons in their hooks. One masseur, Goran, lives in Sarasota with a distant relative. Paper casings for straws shoot across the tables where younger people are seated, and some women stand and begin to clear away dishes. The fates of three of his coworkers – his friends – he does not know, and the rest are dead. Stepan. Vanja. Zdenek, Carl. He is glad they will never know of this moment. Pete coughs and turns his head away from the audience, “Hey, Buddy. Not so hard.” Veshko eases his thumb from under Pete’s scapula. The crowd is the color of lake reeds, moving as stiffly, craning their necks in unison. Pete’s name is wrapped in words of joking encouragement as Veshko finishes his upper back. When he kneads his way down either side of Pete’s spine to his sacrum, guffaws ring. Veshko shakes his head and mutters so only Pete can hear, “Fuck you people.” “Yeah…” Pete whispers in agreement, “…fuck ‘em.” He suddenly hates each face in the church basement. Hates these people who have been so kind and giving to him. “Fuck you as well.”Veshko says to Pete. He backs quickly away from the massage table to face the parish, takes a short bow and smiles, saying in his own language, “You are not my people.” He heads for home on foot. After fleeing Sarajevo Veshko spent a year looking after his brother’s children in the country at the farm, the majur of his uncle. His days there were purposeful, taken up with finding fuel and growing enough food. At night he attended his orphaned nephews, whose dreams were perforated with city memories; bursts of smoke and people scurrying under the weight of water jugs, trying to avoid snipers. To add to the boys’ confusion, they had been told that those lying in the streets were asleep. Veshko had been more forthright. Often he woke to cries from their beds, wet with urine and sweat. He would cradle their small skulls and rub their temples and foreheads, hoping to lull them to a sleep with better dreams. Veshko traded vegetables and well water for enough gasoline to run a small generator so that Gregor and Milan could have Nintendo. They could play a few hours each day, happily exiled into the screen. Just when it seemed they might all go back, that things had settled in the city, he was contacted by the family of Veshko’s dead sister-in-law. The nephews were taken from the farm with only a few days notice so that good family might promptly adopt them. He’d returned to the city alone, but there was nothing left for him. The couple who’d taken his nephews emigrated to Canada, but Veshko was unable to determine what town or even what province they had gone to. He applied for emigration himself. Now he is here, in the United States of America. Just as he arrives at the tall yellow house, Pete is pulling into his driveway. When Veshko opens the porch door, Pete calls out, his voice gruff, “Hey!” pointing to the dummy sitting upright in the back seat. Veshko shakes his head. “You made her. You keep.” He places the six-pack of Bud within reach, opens a can and crosses his ankles on the coffee table Jessica once occupied. He watches Jerry Springer. By the commercial he has gleaned the theme of the hour – mother-daughter team strippers. There is more breast-shaking and cat-calling than he is comfortable with, and he’s about to turn the television off when he spies the boxed videotape fallen wedged next to the console. He slips Welcome to Sarajevo into the machine, thinking he will be viewing tourist sights and vistas of that city as it was. Instead, it is a drama about foreign journalists who come to report on the siege. There are a few British and an American, holed up in a damaged hotel lobby, arguing and drinking between missions out to gather stories. The drama unfolds into a moral dilemma about whether or not one of them should rescue a young orphan from her current hell. Laced through the film are bits of actual news footage, some he recognizes. One he does not shows a victim being helped from a bombed storefront – an elderly woman carried by two men whose arms form a chair under her bottom. She is in shock, looking down to where her foot sways loosely from bone and mangled flesh, the ankle destroyed. Veshko stops the tape, re-winds it and watches the bloody dance of the woman’s foot in slow motion. He looks at her face. He plays the scene over. The only light in the house glows blue from the screen. More news footage shows heads of state and politicians making speeches about The Problem. When the face of Milosovic appears on the screen, Veshko launches forward so that his knees burn upon meeting the carpet. He ejects the video tape and reaches around the set. The cord is yanked with such force the television moves several inches. “Opinion,”he says, breathing hard. Opinion. “Yes. I know this word.” There are no lights on in the hall, so he moves by feel along the paneling to the foyer. Climbing, he counts the stairs to the second floor, and then to the attic, taking one breath for each riser. There are forty-two – his own number of years. Once in the attic, he pries at the window, stubborn and swelled from a recent rain. He digs at the casement with his fingernails. Suddenly it is urgent he escape the stale air. He slams the video cassette at the glass until the pane shatters. He reaches through and tugs the sash from the outside until it gives. Alight comes on in Pete’s kitchen. A curtain lifts, then drops. The light snaps off. Vaguely aware of the blood running between his fingers, Veshko sits hard on the rough shingles. Welcome to Sarajevo is still in his hand, the cassette now cracked to expose its guts. He opens the plastic case like a book and brown tape loops to pool in his lap. Veshko pulls metre after metre of the tape, offering fistfuls to the wind. Tape billows and he watches it flicker and reflect streaks of moonlight, fluttering farther lakeward – farther north – with each gust. North. He thinks of Naledi – the quiet of the boathouse, where he will often sit in the rowboat that is neither red nor orange but somehow both – where light floats in on ripples and pricks through the corrugated tin skirting that is rusted like brown lace at the hem. When he closes his eyes he can imagine the slight motion of the boat and the lapping echo of water softly patting the hull. There is a small door on the lake side which offers Veshko the view of the outdoors as if it is a room – a ceiling painted in blue daylight and clouds, and walls papered in trees. Like some Magritte painting, The room is carpeted with water. The end of the videotape requires a firm tug. Freed from the reel it sails up and away – he cannot tell how far in the darkness. Surely it will tangle on a tree branch or fall to some road or yard, but Veshko chooses to imagine gravity defeated; that the tape might be carried high over Squaw Inlet, over the bays and winking whitecaps to Naledi – perhaps even farther – beyond the shore of the Province of Ontario, where begins yet another country. [end] |
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