Republic of Dirt (16 page)

I
was stunned when Seth ran upstairs to report that Mr. Spratt had just driven up. Seth was shirtless and carrying some sort of vacuum cleaner wrapped in a plastic bag. I’d been fast asleep, so it took me a moment to decide what to react to first.

“Sara’s dad!” cried Seth from the doorway.

“He’s here! What do I do?” He saw me looking at the compact vacuum cleaner and hid it behind him.

“What’s he doing?” I asked, trying to clear my head. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m under a lot of stress right now,” said Seth. “I think I better leave the Angriest Man in Cedar for you to deal with. I’ve got to shower. A few times.”

Then he disappeared.

I pushed myself out of bed and tried to get some saliva into my mouth, which felt and tasted a bit like the bottom of a rabbit’s cage. That was another side effect of the Hashimoto’s, or perhaps of Dr. Bachmeier’s remedies.

Fortunately, I’d been too tired to get undressed after my long, slow walk home from Hemer Park, and so all I had to do was pull on a big sweater and find my slippers. I opened the door and found Mr. Spratt standing at the foot of the stairs.

He wore the same outfit he’d had on early that morning when he drove me to Hemer Park to pretend to look at the swans.

“Where’s the halter and lead rope?” he asked, dispensing with greetings, when I stepped outside onto the porch. It occurred to me that it would be an interesting experiment to seat Earl and Mr. Spratt beside each other at a dinner party to record what, if any, conversation occurred.

I pointed at the gatepost where the halter hung from a large nail.

“Should keep that out of the rain. Going to rust,” he said.

It was more likely to rust from disuse because, post-incident at the school, we were no longer able to catch our mule, but I didn’t mention that. Each of us had tried and given up after nearly getting kicked. I hadn’t mentioned this fact to Eustace, either.

Before I could let Dean Spratt know about Lucky’s reluctance to be caught, his kicking, his biting or his tendency to bolt at loud noises, Mr. Spratt had let himself into the pasture. I stood on the porch, hugging myself in the chill of the afternoon and watched Sara’s father walk right up to our mule.

Lucky watched him come with interest, big red ears swiveling like scanners. The afternoon sky was a light blue wash and I was glad to be out of bed. I was reminded how handsome our mule was when he craned his head around to get a better look as Mr. Spratt walked right up to him, slipped the rope around his neck, slid the halter over his nose and buckled it up.

The scene was tremendously affecting and Hashimoto’s can cause
emotional volatility, which is probably why I found myself verklempt. When Mr. Spratt led Lucky to the hitching post, Bertie following them like a lumpy gray pilot fish, my hand went to my heart. Not only had I succeeded in making a connection with Mr. Spratt, I may have found us a mule trainer!

I couldn’t savor the moment because Seth swept outside in his Volbeat bathrobe, feet clad in dollar-store plastic slip-ons. He’d purchased the dressing gown on Etsy. It was gunmetal gray and the arms were printed with what looked like full-sleeve tattoos. Random Volbeat lyrics ran down the back, and the band’s name ran down the front in bold letters. The garment was clearly the work of a disturbed fan and has upset my stomach many a morning, and not just because of all the copyright violations it represents. If Seth hadn’t spent so much of his money on a heavy metal dressing gown, he might have had the funds for new underpants. The ones he leaves lying around our only bathroom are in desperate need of replacing.

Seth held the phone receiver out to me.

“For you,” he said.

“Is it one of the Sandhus?” Anoop and his mom keep in touch quite regularly. She checked on my relationship status and told me about her family farm back in India. She understood the heartache of the agricultural life. Anoop checked on my relationship status and talked about how hard it was to be an elite gamer in a family that didn’t understand gaming. I’d begun to think of them as good friends of the farm and, in my more coherent moments, I considered what I could do to help Anoop find a path that would make his mother happy. The answer hadn’t yet come to me, but I knew one would.

“I don’t think so.” Seth pressed the receiver into his bare chest and I made a note to clean it before I put it near my face again.

“She’s called about six times. I’m really busy. The hot water keeps running out for my shower. Either you need to take it or I will have to unplug the phone.”

“What if someone calls in an order?” I said. “For greens. Or gourds?”

“What if James Hetfield calls to get my advice on how to invest his money?” said Seth.

“Who’s James Hetfield?”

Seth sighed. “Metallica. Anyway, I think it’s Sara’s mom,” he added. “Sounds depressed enough to be her.”

I took the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Is this Prudence?”

“Yes. Is this Mrs. Spratt?”

“Call me Sally. I’m sorry to keep calling like this, but I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

What had I said? People don’t realize how devastating a thyroid condition can be. Those of us with underactive thyroid glands don’t get enough nutrients to our brains. For some people, Hashimoto’s is just the first skirmish in a terrifying onslaught of autoimmune problems. Rheumatoid arthritis. Lupus. Diabetes. That’s the reason I’ve chosen to get serious about underlying causes.

I tried to remember my conversation with Mrs. Spratt. I could recall the revolting hot dogs, the rude skateboarders and absolutely nothing else.

“I think I’d like to do what you suggested,” she said.

What had I suggested? I didn’t want her to think I hadn’t been paying attention. That was how we’d lost Sara in the first place.

“Great,” I replied, still having no clue what we were talking about.

Then I was seized by the sight of her husband, the man with the least charming personality in all of Cedar and perhaps the world, achieving some sort of spiritual communion with our recalcitrant mule. Mr. Spratt had tied Lucky up and groomed him and was cleaning his feet. Lucky was not only tolerating it but seemed to be basking in the attention. His long ears had relaxed out to the sides of his head and the expression on his face was one of bliss. I thought back to the spring when Earl and Seth had attempted to tend Bertie’s hooves. There’d been bits of hoof, hunks of sheep’s wool and splatters of blood as far as the eye could see. None of us had even considered touching Lucky’s feet.

I shook my head and stared around the porch. No, I had not been transported to an alternate dimension in which everything was upside down. I returned my attention to the phone and Mrs. Spratt.

“So would that be okay?” she said.

“Of course,” I replied.

“Thank you.”

A pause.

“Thank
you
,” I said, because it seemed the only thing I could safely say.

“And I’ll pass along your greetings to Sara. Thank you for looking after her birds. See you then,” said Mrs. Spratt.

“Right,” I agreed. “See you then.”

She hung up and I wondered when I’d see her and for what. I sank onto the porch swing to rest before heading back to bed.

W
hen she came dragging back into the house, phone in hand, to ask me if there was anything on the agenda this week, I realized she’d officially lost it. For one thing, thanks to her list-making obsession there are always at least twenty things “on the agenda” at all times. For another thing, only a seriously ill person wouldn’t realize that I had the air of a guy with too much on his mind already. For a third thing, she looked almost as out of it as she had the day we lost Sara. My heart sank.

Prudence was so groggy, she didn’t say anything about the fact that I was applying antibacterial gel over my arms. She did, however, notice the odor.

She stopped on her slow shuffle to the staircase, sniffed, and a whiff of her old alertness came into her face. “Seth. Are you drinking again? It stinks like a distillery in here.”

“No.”

“Well, you
smell
like you’re drinking.”

“It’s this,” I said, squirting alcohol and antibacterial solution onto my hand and smearing it onto my bare chest.

“You are killing all of your good bacteria when you do that,” she said, with very little conviction.

“No such thing as good bacteria,” I told her. “And I don’t know about any agenda other than the to-do list you gave us.”

“I need to lie down again,” she said. Then she trudged slowly upstairs.

It was hard to see her like that. So unlike herself. So unable to right our sinking ship.

At risk of sounding like a Stark, winter is coming and there’s a good chance I have seasonal affective disorder as well as resentments, irritability, sexual obsession, bedbug phobia, codependence and barely restrained alcoholism. Maybe I
should
go see Prudence’s naturopath. I may need more than just undershirts to survive this season, especially if we remain Sara-less.

Fuck, I am sad. I need to take a break.

Okay. I’m back.

Here’s what I did. I went to a meeting. Of course, Eustace, King of All Women, All Animals and All AA, was there. He said he was glad to see me getting myself to a meeting on my own steam for once. Which was bullshit and majorly unfair because I got myself to a meeting not that long ago.

“I had to walk,” I said. “Truck’s broken and the bike tires are flat and it looks like it might rain.”

“That’s very upsetting,” he said, in an uncaring, busy professional voice.

His tone made me mad, so I didn’t talk to him during the meeting. Which is probably just as well, because he hates it when I talk to him during meetings. He thinks it’s rude. He also hates it when I check my phone. He’s like Prudence that way. They are a pair of courtesy fascists.

Anyway, the topic of the meeting was fear. Most people shared about how they discovered that they had a lot of fear and anxiety when they first sobered up. One woman said she developed a job-related anxiety disorder and had to take a medical leave, which was sort of funny, because she worked alone doing data entry. A young guy who didn’t even look old enough to drink, never mind sober up, said he was scared to talk to everyone except for Jehovah’s Witnesses and he was worried he was leading them on.

When the chairperson, a heavily tattooed biker in her forties, asked me to share, I found myself talking about how I was trying to become a pest control specialist but was going out of my head due to a fear of catching bedbugs. I told the group that my employer thought I was drinking, because I covered myself in antibacterial goo after I tried doing a practice treatment in a room. Instead of everyone in the meeting edging away from me, they started cracking up. I was killing. For real. I was telling them the truth about what was going on inside my brain and they thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard. One guy laughed so hard he cried.

I said that we’d lost a member of our family recently and were sad about that, and the room went silent.

The girl with the brown hair was at the meeting and when she was asked to share, she said she had a sponsor for the first time ever
and she felt like she was really getting somewhere. She was sitting next to Heather and she looked way better than she had the last time I saw her. Steadier hands. Better color. Even her hair had more volume. She said people had been really nice at her most vulnerable time and she looked at me when she said that and I felt fucking great. When the meeting was over, a few of the crustiest old bastards came over and clapped me on the shoulder and told me to keep coming back. Another guy came over and said he thought there was a rat in hiding in his house and he might call me to help get it out when I was done my pest training. All the encouragement made me feel excellent and I wasn’t even mad at Eustace anymore.

When he asked if I wanted to go for coffee, I said yes and ended up telling him about the drama teacher and her pest situation and about feeling like I was ready to get laid, even though I don’t have the requisite amount of sobriety.

“Seth,” said Eustace. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

A bullshit statement of the very highest order. Eustace does nothing BUT tell me what to do and cast doubt on my decision making and pretty much everything else about me. Taking my inventory, which is what it’s called in AA, is his main community service, right up there with having the hots for Prudence and doing a lot of stuff for Prudence. In fact, it was a minor miracle that he wasn’t with Prudence, since he hadn’t been able to visit her for a while. I mentioned it and he said that he’d needed a meeting.

“Plus, I called twice today already and she told me to focus on taking care of myself,” he said.

“Ah,” I said.

“The point is, Seth, that if you think that getting into a sexual relationship with the woman who has already triggered a years-long
bout of agoraphobia in you is worth developing a new phobia, I won’t judge.”

I stared into my coffee. Which was lousy, by the way. Prudence, being a New Yorker, has changed the way I think about coffee. Tim Hortons just doesn’t cut it anymore. Which is too bad, because I can barely afford Timmy’s, never mind some organic, hand-picked, free-trade, shade-grown, rare-bird-turd blend.

“Well, when you put it that way,” I said.

“She’s doing okay?”

“The drama teacher? No, not really.”

“I can guess how your drama teacher is doing from the bits you’ve told me. I mean Prudence. Between losing Sara and her illness, I’m getting really worried about her. You know how she is. She just won’t ask for help and I can’t be there right now. It’s driving me crazy.”

“As you know, Prudence is in bed most of the time, but when she gets out of bed it’s like a very tired cyclone hitting the place. You should feel grateful that you’ve been working nonstop while you deal with strangling horses.”

“Horses with strangles,” he corrected.

“Whatever. You’re busy, so you don’t have to see her in action. It’s so disturbing. Like watching a hummingbird tied to a rock. She’s determined but she’s not getting anywhere.”

Eustace stared into his own cup, which was nearly hidden by his hands. A quick glance around the harshly lit interior of the restaurant told me that he was, as usual, the focus of intense interest. The ladies behind the counter, many of whom were old enough to be his mother, and in some cases his grandmother, cast sly glances his way from under polyester visors. Other customers stared openly.

It occurred to me that under all the handsome, he was just a guy
hurting for his woman. Although he was quite a bit further along the so-called road to happy destiny, he was still a boozehound with issues, just like me. The road to happy destiny, which is what the program promises, sounds kind of lame. I’d be more motivated by the spa of happy destiny or maybe the massage parlor of happy endings. That sounds creepy, so I won’t say any more about it and will instead attempt to focus on someone else’s needs for a change.

Since Eustace started sponsoring me, last June, he has probably spent forty solid hours listening to me. He listens to me when I call him on the phone, which I do once or twice a day. He listens to me when he drives me to and from meetings. He listens to me when I join him and Prudence on the swing he made for her.

A woman I’ve seen at meetings always says that when we put down the substances, we have to “talk ourselves into being.” At first I didn’t understand what she meant. But the longer I’m sober, the more it makes sense. I’ve been talking nonstop for the past four months and Eustace has listened. And listened. And listened. Maybe it was time for me to return the favor.

“What’s going on with you two? You doing okay? All things considered?” I asked.

Eustace smoothed back his curly hair and considered. The girl wiping the table next to ours sighed.

“She doesn’t want me to help so much. I’m not supposed to ‘overwhelm her with kindness.’ Even now, when things are so fraught. If I wasn’t so busy, I’d just …”

“Ignore her request to respect her boundaries?” I said.

He sighed.

I refrained from saying how fucking stupid he was being. Prudence too. Seriously. The only way to have time in life is to do
the bare minimum. Do the maximum in one area of your life and it will eat all the other areas. For instance, if I were to get too hardcore about looking after our raised beds, I’d end up working on them eight or ten hours a day. I wouldn’t have time to blog or watch YouTube or research my recovery articles or eat or take naps or develop fascinating new phobias and obsessions with women. But I didn’t say any of that. I just nodded. Thoughtful, active listener. That was me.

“I’m not trying to take over her life,” he said. “Or the farm. But things seem sort of dire at the moment. And my hands are tied with my schedule.”

“Of course,” I said.

“If I see things I can do for her, why wouldn’t I do them? It doesn’t mean I don’t think she’s competent,” he said, double negatively.

“Exactly.”

“I respect her independence. Even when she’s sick and making terrible decisions.”

“Hmmmm,” I said, being provocative and open ended, just like the article about active listening in
Psychology Today
had suggested.

“I don’t know if she’s ever going to let me in.”

And right then my sponsor looked like a six-and-a-half-foot-tall seven-year-old.

I nodded sympathetically. Here’s what I wanted to say: Prudence is a maniac and so are you. If you two crazy kids insist on killing yourselves with work from dawn until dusk, go for it. You can start with figuring out how we can get Sara back. Then help me to get rid of the bugs in the drama teacher’s bed so that I can have sex without fear of catching something. Then you and Prudence can drag Earl out of his cabin, and the five of us can kick back in the living room, eat oven
snacks and live the good life. But I didn’t say any of that because I’m respectful and a good listener.

“She said she feels ‘emasculated’ by her illness. She actually used that word.”

Prudence is possibly the least masculine woman I’ve ever seen. Yes, she’s fiercely productive and likes dirt and hard work more than is normal or healthy, but she’s also a wisp of a thing with no real muscles, at least not the kind I associate with women who get concerned about being emasculated.

“I hate talking about this stuff,” he said. “In fact, I hate talking about any stuff.”

At that, I put a forefinger to my lips, as though deep in thoughtful agreement. What I actually thought was: No wonder Prudence hasn’t let you in. You need to talk to her. And you need to get an inner life, for fuck sake.

“I don’t talk about anything very personal and neither does she.”

“Lotta silence,” I said, starting to relish my role as therapist/sponsor.

Eustace sighed and ran his hands down his chiseled face.

“I’d like to build her a farm stand. And the barn. But she wants to do it herself.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I exclaimed, forgetting that I was being a terrific listener. “She’s got Earl trying to track down the contractor who’s supposed to be building the barn, and she’s making me and Earl fix up that playhouse at the end of the driveway.
Me and Earl
, if you can believe it.”

“That thing? Jesus.
That’s
why I want to help out. So she can avoid pointless, time-wasting projects like that.”

“She has this idea it’s going to be cute.”

“It looks like a low-rent whorehouse for tiny Bavarians. Who would want to buy produce out of some kid’s half-rotten playhouse?”

Even though I agreed with him, I also hoped he’d hear himself into being less of a dick about Prudence’s ideas, which were admittedly terrible.

But before all my silence could allow him to experience emotional growth, his cell phone buzzed. He listened, then clicked off.

“The Townsends’ mare is in labor. At least she doesn’t have strangles. Drop you off on my way?”

I agreed and we walked out of the restaurant into the parking lot. I don’t know what it is about listening to other people’s troubles, but I felt calmer about my own life and strangely hopeful.