Republic of Dirt (5 page)

L
ittle Sara was in the middle of one of her farming lessons, only this time it was mule training, which sounded a hell of a lot more dangerous than building a chicken coop or training a chicken to be a runway model or attempting to shear half a nearly catatonic sheep or any of the other things she’s made us do.

She started with a barrage of depressing facts about dead war mules and then started making us take turns being mule and mule trainer. I shit you not. Normally, I’d expect Prudence to get us back on track, but she seemed dazed, and when I gave Earl the old “what the hell?” look, he shot me a look like fifty thunder clouds.

One of us had to close our eyes while our partner put the rope around our wrists and then led us around the pasture. The idea, apparently, was that we’d learn how it felt to have pressure exerted on us and how it was natural to resist that pressure and how the person doing the leading has to immediately let go of the pressure to reward the “mule” for taking a step forward. Only the exercise was flawed because
(a)
our partners weren’t mules;
(b)
Lucky is not currently
visually impaired, although he might end up like that guy in King Lear if he bolts into my mother’s yard again, thanks to all the abandoned twig furniture; and
(c)
as a group we don’t trust each other’s competence. At all.

So in that way, it was sort of a genius exercise because our lack of trust immediately became clear.

Sara made me be the blind mule first and she gave my leash to Earl. He yanked on it like he was trying out for the Bulgarian strongman tire pull competition in the over-seventy division. I was like, fuck this. I’m not getting pulled over onto my face by Earl, even if he is world famous on the banjo. I dug in my high tops and he yanked again. “Dude! You’re going to dislocate my shoulder. I’ve got recovery articles to type,” I said.

Sara told me I had to keep my eyes closed and that mules don’t understand English.

I was forced to admit that if I was a blind mule I wouldn’t go one step with Earl. Interestingly, Earl didn’t get mad when Sara told him he’d need to be “more sensitive” when leading me or our actual mule.

When Sara let me open my eyes, I saw that Lucky and Bertie, who are now bosom buddies, presumably because they’re both trying to survive life on Beat Down Farm, were watching us through the fence with the livestock equivalent of bug eyes.

I wanted to give our beasts of burden confidence, so I shut my eyes again and when Earl jerked my rope, I took a step forward. But he didn’t let up. He just kept pulling. It was bullshit, the way he pulled, so I kind of pulled back and we were getting into a bit of tug-of-war, nothing too serious, but Sara broke it up.

She said she’d demonstrate on Prudence. Which wasn’t fair because of how Prudence is such a hopeless perfectionist. She’d be
the best blind mule in the history of pointless blind mule–leading lessons. At least, that’s what I assumed before she crashed over onto her face.

I
don’t know what the hell’s gotten into Prudence. She might make food that would make a hippie want McDonald’s, and be bossy as all get out, but she never used to be snappish. She was always cheerful as the sun is yellow, but as soon as Sara hooked her up to that lead rope, Prudence’s jaw set and I had a premeditation that things weren’t going to go good.

Sara said for Prudence to close her eyes, and as soon as she did, Prudence started swaying on her feet, like she’d turned herself around in one too many circles.

I told Sara to hang on and asked Prudence if she was okay. But Sara had a hold of the book and the lead rope and was doing too many things at once. She pulled on that rope and Prudence walked a few steps and then stopped. Sara pulled on the rope again and Prudence swayed for a minute and then she came down with a crash, like a tree tied to a tractor.

Seth started jumping around the way he does and cursing up
a storm. Good goddamned thing he’s not a paramedical or people would be dying left and right.

Sara just stood there with her eyes wide, looking like she was going to cry.

I went to pick Prudence up but she was already scrambling to her feet and dusting off her skirt and trying to act like nothing happened.

But you fell down! said Sara.

And Prudence said that she tripped because she was so busy. Never heard the like of it. She said it wasn’t Sara’s fault and that me and Seth should have been paying more attention. That didn’t make an iona of sense and I said so. Prudence said that everyone needed to remember that she was in charge and to stop interfering with her ability to do her job. That had a rat’s ass all to do with her keeling over, but I let it go. Prudence said that she was very busy and then she told Sara that it had been a very good lesson but that perhaps, in future, mule-leading practice should happen later in the evening, when the day’s work had been done.

Then she went stomping into the house. When I went into the main house half an hour later, I could swear Prudence was in bed. I’m talking about a girl who works from five in the goddamned morning until pitch dark every night. It’s not right. Not right at all.

W
hen Prudence fell over I wonder if she might have hit her head. She said she fell because she was so busy but that can’t be right, because then she’d probably fall over about twelve times a day. Prudence is a
very
busy person. Also, she said mule lessons should be held in the evening and it WAS the evening. I mean, it was nearly five and that’s not afternoon anymore—at least I don’t think it is.

I was disappointed that the lesson didn’t go better. No one around here can lead anyone and I think that’s a problem. I have special leadership training from Jr. Poultry Fancier’s Club and even I can’t make people follow me.

I hope that Prudence’s head injury doesn’t stop her from going to my parent-teacher interview next week. Miss Singer asked me again who would be coming to talk to her. She was trying to be nice, but she was asking too many questions. There are other people in my class who have divorces. Target Barton has three dads and not in a gay way. Someone at school said his mom’s on the junk and his old man’s in the can. I had to look those things up. Being on the junk means that
either his mom eats really bad food
or
is on drugs
or
has a big bum. Being in the can means being on the toilet or in jail. I think it might also mean that he works in Alberta. I feel especially bad for Target because of his older brother, Charles, who is in eleventh grade and wears a long black coat. Charles walks Target to and from school and the heels of his black boots are all worn down because he barely picks up his feet when he walks. He just slides them across the pavement. Someone said that Charles and Target have been in and out of foster care since they were born and it’s given Charles psychology problems and so he has to take medication.

Poor Target. I barely like having one father, never mind three. I might invite Target to visit the farm. Seth keeps asking if I have any friends my own age. If Target comes to see me, maybe then Seth will stop asking. I guess if Target visits, Charles will probably have to come too. He seems like he might be a good friend for Seth, even though Charles is in eleventh grade and Seth is twenty-one. Seth is very young for his age.

The only problem is that if I start inviting people over, I’ll have less time for researching mule training and caring for my birds and helping out around the farm. No one has done anything with Lucky since we got him out of the trampoline. He’s tried to kick everyone at least once and he used his nose to shove Earl on the behind when Earl turned his back on him. The books say that mules are very smart and that if they get away with bad behavior, they will repeat that bad behavior forever. We may have a problem mule on our hands if we’re not careful.

I can’t be responsible for all the animal training around here. I have school. And I have to visit my parents.

I
had a lot of free-floating anxiety after the mule lesson. First, there was my concern that Sara’s parents are going to find out the full extent of our incompetence and pull the plug on letting her live here. There was Prudence’s bizarre, unmotivated behavior. Then there was the growing concern that I will never meet a woman and never have sex. That’s right. I’ve never had proper sex with another person. Let’s not read too much into that. I had all sorts of near-sex when I was in high school, but I had it with a teacher. So that’s more like child abuse than sex, I suppose. Though, to be fair, I was into it at the time.

My anxiety, which is probably the major feature of my personality other than loving heavy metal and the Internet, gave me the idea for a new Half Measures column. I think my editor, Tamara, is going to dig it. I’m going to call it “Double Qualifiers” and it will be about being in recovery for your substance abuse issues as well as being highly codependent with other people. That means that you can’t be happy because of other people and your worries about them. To be
honest, unless you’re one of those people who gets wound up about shit you can do nothing about, such as trophy hunting or global warming or whatever, I’m not sure what there is to worry about other than your own problems and other people.

I even talked about codependence at the meeting I went to that afternoon. I rode my bike there, which is some hardcore willingness of the kind that probably deserves its own story in the Big Book. The title of my inspiring story will be “He Wanted Sobriety So Bad He Rode a Bike to a Meeting.” I’ll describe how the farm’s piece-of-crap bike got its hundredth flat tire when I was right across from the high school and how I nearly went face-first into the ditch when the wheel started to wobble and make a screeching noise due to there being no air between the rubber and the rim. Having a transportation meltdown across the street from the site of the worst humiliation ever visited on any eleventh-grade male was just what my self-esteem didn’t need. In my Big Book story, which will probably be put into the section about the people who have lost it all rather than the section about people who have only lost half, I might even talk about what happened during the opening night of the school production of
Jesus Christ Superstar
thanks to my sordid affair with the drama teacher, who was the person with whom I was having near-sex/abuse.

I had to get off and push the bike the rest of the way to the meeting. That’s why I came in late, which the chairperson, a guy named Sid, noted with a snide little “The meeting starts at six, Seth.” Dick. I bet he didn’t have to walk a flat-tired bike to a meeting. AA’s founders, Bill and Dr. Bob, probably never even went to lengths like that to get to a meeting. I think that my efforts that afternoon made me the soberest guy in Cedar, if not all of the mid-Island, if effort counts for
anything. But anyway, I was chosen last to speak as punishment for coming in late. I said that I was glad to be at a meeting, because things were hard on the farm, and that I was becoming more aware of my codependence issues and did anyone else have codependence issues causing them anxiety.

“No cross-talk, Seth,” said Snide Sid, the chair-Nazi. “You’d realize that if you’d been here for the readings at the beginning.”

So immediately all my willingness was replaced with blazing resentment. How dare Snide Sid scold me in front of everyone else? It was such bullshit. The guy had over three years of sobriety, too. He should be more compassionate.

Eustace is always telling me that I’m hypersensitive and that I am too easily enraged at other people. Yeah, well, no shit. AA is not supposed to be organized, but it should have
some
rules. People who chair meetings should not be allowed to shame people who are just trying to grow, especially people who had to walk a bike with a flat tire to the meeting.

After the meeting, this old dude came over to me and said my talk about codependence belonged in a different kind of meeting. I believe his specific words were “Save it for your women’s meeting, kid.”

Fucking sexist.

I was standing in the potholed church parking lot and deciding whether or not to leave the bike behind, when this girl who’d also been in the meeting came up to me.

“Hey,” she said.

She’d passed when it was her turn to share, and I’d been sorry because she was good-looking and I love hearing good-looking or even average-looking women share.

“Hey,” I replied, with undeniable wit and intelligence.

“I liked what you had to say,” she said. “I’m codependent too. That chair guy was rude.”

I shrugged and even though I sorely wanted to shit talk the guy, the girl had put up her hand when the chair asked if anyone was coming back, meaning she’d just had a relapse. She probably wasn’t feeling so great. Like me, she needed to be in meetings, even ones with substandard chairs.

“Ah, he’s okay,” I said. “How about you? How are you doing?”

She shrugged. She had long, limp brown hair and big brown eyes. Now that she was close to me, I could see that she had the shakes and the distinctive scent of self-destruction was emanating off her like heat off the Florida tarmac. Her relapse might not be quite over.

“Do you have people to talk to?” I asked.

She looked at me, half skeptical, half hopeful. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Other women, I mean.” I realized with a twinge of regret that I was not the kind of guy who was going to go all predatory on her. I was apparently the dude who not only walked his bike to meetings but also referred vulnerable and attractive newcomer/relapsers to other women.

I pointed at a woman who was taking some garbage out to the old dumpster behind the church. “Her name is Heather. She’s super nice. You should introduce yourself.”

The girl, the kind of twenty-two-year-old who might not make it to twenty-three, made a face and I realized she was probably shy. So like President of the Willing People Who Also Carry the Message of AA, I walked her over to Heather, whom I barely know but who does seem very nice, and introduced the two of them. Heather took it from there, and when I walked my bike out of the church parking lot, they
were deep in conversation and I felt good, especially when a couple of other people who’d been at the meeting nodded at me and said, “Nice to see you, Seth,” and “See you soon, Seth,” and I knew they’d seen me doing my selfless work. Even the Snide Sid nodded reluctantly and I resented him a little bit less.

So yeah, it was a pretty good meeting and a good day overall, especially considering how codependent I am.