Squirrel.

There are too many squirrels. 

 

Our backyard is ringed by big gray oaks and the squirrels jump from limb to limb. They scurry up trunks and frantically dart from tree to tree, gathering acorns and stuffing them in hidey-holes around the mossy bases. Yesterday, I watched as two squirrels collided as they met each other midway up an oak. One going up, one going down, too consumed by their tasks to notice the other. The going-up squirrel was knocked off the tree by going-down squirrel and lay stunned, briefly, on a bed of pokeweed. 

 

I imagined he was looking up at going-down squirrel and thinking, what the hell? He was likely thinking nothing but nuts. I stopped keeping birdseed in the feeders after watching the squirrels eat it all. I bought a BB gun with the intent of shooting squirrels who disturbed the feeders but quickly discovered that I do not have the heart to shoot a squirrel, or the desire to remove a dead squirrel from my yard.  

Sometimes, the tree squirrels are so noisy that I think it must be some larger, more formidable animal lurking in the woods. A possum, maybe, or the family of deer that tiptoe through twice a day. One time, I saw a gray fox lope through the woods, on the hunt for a rabbit. I worry about the fox and the hawk that nests in the oak. I worry that they will see my juicy little dog who looks like a fine snack. I worry that they will try to snatch him only to drop him when they realize that he is too fat to carry far. 

 

Our house sits in the middle of a long road that makes a lazy six mile U. Three miles to the right and it hits the bigger road where there's a Chick-Fil-A and a traffic light and a grocery store. Three miles to the left and it connects a quieter stretch of the same road. If I leave our house and turn left, I can get where I need to go without acknowledging the existence of Chick-Fil-A and traffic lights. Either way, the road is littered with squirrel. 

 

One day, I had to swerve into the other lane to avoid what I could only describe as a squirrel massacre. It was if an entire squirrel family, perhaps on their way to my oaks for a picnic, was hit en masse while crossing the road. I imagine a tiny squirrel police officer standing over the scene, his little police hat held under a chubby arm. They never saw it coming, he says. That's the mercy in it. 

 

By some miracle or just good dumb luck, I've never hit a squirrel. I've come close dozens of times - gripping the wheel and holding my breath and occasionally letting out an ah-ah-ah! Sometimes, I think I've surely hit one. I am so certain that I can imagine the thwap-whump of the squirrel under my tire and up against the wheel well. I search the rearview mirror frantically for a body, but it's never there. Twice, I've stopped to look and make sure that there's not a squirrel stuck under my car. Once, I walked back along the road nearly a quarter of a mile, searching. 

 

What would I have done if I'd actually found a dead or half-dead squirrel? Loaded it in my car and rushed it to the vet at the busy end of the U shaped road? Buried it? Cried over and said prayers that squirrels go to heaven (where, no doubt, there are too many squirrels)? Performed tiny squirrel CPR? Or just stood over it and felt awful and gone home and posted about it on Facebook? Probably that.  

 

I have become so obsessed with the idea - the fear - that I am going to hit a squirrel that I almost want it to happen. I scan the road for movement and hold my breath as they dart across. Occasionally, one will make it halfway and freeze. There is the briefest of moments when our eyes lock and I can see him deciding which way which way and in my own head I am thinking which way which way. Am I turning the steering wheel to avoid him, or to hit him and face my squirrel killer destiny? 

 

It is the waiting for the inevitable that I find so difficult. 

It is the seeing it coming and not knowing when. 

It is the knowing and not knowing. 

It is the remembering that there are too many squirrels, anyway.

 

 

Everything Sucked, and Then Somebody Died

 

Everything sucked, and then somebody went and died. As if things weren’t bad enough already, on top of the virus and riots and elections and virtual schooling and working from home, somebody went and died.

I should stop right there and capitalize Virus. Because it is a capital, isn’t it? A capital pain in the ass. You know what you can’t do during The Virus (article added for emphasis)? Have a big funeral for someone amazing and loved and missed. Somebody who went and died.

What you can do, what you do, is sit around feeling empty and incomplete. Like you walked out of the house without pants on or maybe you forgot to turn off the stove. But you are so numb you say fuck it, I’ll walk around without pants on, or let the house burn down.

Everyone wants to ask you if the person died from The Virus and you want to remind them that people die from things other than viruses. People keep on dying from cancer and heart attacks and strokes. People choke on chicken bones and get hit by buses. People die when they’re old and when they’re young, when they don’t deserve it, because of hate and fear and violence and dumb damned luck. It doesn’t matter how, it never matters how, but we want to assign reason so it seems real. Because by naming it we can explain this process and our feelings and see that one day, we won’t feel like there’s an elephant sitting on our chest.

Remember back before The Virus when somebody went and died and you could just be consumed with your own personal grief? When you didn’t have to walk around feeling discounted because you’re just really fucking sad? What about the people who’ve lost their job or business or are essential workers AND somebody they love went and died? What do we give to the winners of the Grief Olympics? Vaccines?

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your pain and your loss and the fact that you can’t be surrounded by people who loved the person you loved. I’m sorry you can’t have a funeral feast because tater tot casserole is a balm unto the soul. I’m sorry the world keeps turning when we really could stand for it to just stop a minute so we can catch our collective breath. I’m sorry somebody went and died.

June, Three

When she arrived home on this afternoon, all was quiet at the Peterson’s. The dog saw her coming up the sidewalk, and she barely got the door open before he was on her. “Hello, Sampson! Hello, my sweet boy!” Sampson was all of twelve pounds, a silky black pekingese that June had rescued from the shelter five years before. He had been the runt of the litter, clumsy and sweet with a prominent underbite and chronic gas. He was, next to Owen, June’s best friend.

“Can you believe it, Sampson? Can you believe they didn’t have any Miracle Whip?” She was resigned to it now, but had every confidence the situation would be rectified before she had to make her first turkey and dressing sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. She knew the folks in town thought she was terribly ill tempered, but if she didn’t keep them in line, who would? The Mrs. Right Reverend Spurgeon Swicegood, in between quaffing her booze and throwing it back up?

She wanted more than anything to sit in her chair with Sampson on her lap and watch that lovely young woman from near the coast on PBS. The young woman was always visiting farmers and buying fresh food like June had eaten when she was young - turnips and runups and sweet potatoes, pigs just butchered and rabbit just caught - and taking it into her kitchen and making things June could only imagine in her wildest dreams. “Lordy,” she’d say to Sampson as they watched, “Who would have even thought of that?” But Thanksgiving was thirty-nine hours away, and June had to get into her own kitchen today.

She peeled onions and washed the celery, rough thumbs rubbing grit from the stalks. She sliced thin skin ribbons from the carrots, then chopped everything fine and cooked it soft in a mound of butter in her cast iron skillet. June broke apart pans of cornbread and diced cubes of crusty bread and put it all in the giant crockery bowl that had been her grandmother’s. She added bits of good sausage and an apple to the vegetables, and when the smell was just right - sweet and spicy and warm - she added them all to the crock. Fresh chicken stock and liberal amounts of salt and pepper, and then the sage. She rolled the leaves tightly and sliced carefully, and was taken back to her grandmother’s kitchen by the scent. Sage was fall and leaves and fireside and family and Thanksgiving, all rolled into one. She added a handful to the bowl and, after a brief consideration, another one for good measure.  She covered the bowl and put it in the icebox, where it would wait patiently to become dressing.

She had just turned her attention to pies when she heard the knock at the door. It was a grim faced Blue, gripping a measuring cup like it was going to run away from her. “Well,” said June, “Are you delivering a terrible message, or does your Mama just need some sugar?”

“Sugar,” Blue replied.

“Come on in, then. ” June turned sideways and let Blue slip past her. Blue had never been inside the house but it was, mostly, as she imagined it would be. Very neat, very outdated, and very, very full. From the oversized furniture to the countless knick knacks to the family pictures on the walls, there was hardly an inch of the house that had not been decorated. It smelled like cinnamon and apples and something deep and woodsy that Blue couldn’t name. The whole house was like a big, warm blanket that Blue wanted to wrap up in, forever. If only June wasn’t there.

June watched the girl stand in the middle of the living room, staring openly at everything around her. She was suddenly aware of the threadbare carpet and the shabby furniture, of all bits and pieces of her parents she’d kept after they’d died. She felt old and frumpy in the presence of this young person, with her blue hair and black lips and skin you could bounce a quarter off of.

“Sugar,” June echoed, and shooed Blue into the kitchen. “I know I have sugar.” Blue stopped short in the doorway, and pointed to a row of jars on the kitchen table. “Is that...cranberry sauce?” She was nearly breathless, and sounded so comical that June almost laughed, until she realized the girl was completely serious.

“Yes, I make a pile of it every Thanksgiving and Christmas as gifts for my family,” she said.

“Can I...can I just taste it?” Blue said, and June was so taken by the innocence of the request that she moved immediately for a spoon. When Blue put the spoon to her mouth, she made a face like someone remembering a memory they didn’t know they had. “It tastes like Christmas!” she said, and June did laugh this time.

“Honey, have you never had cranberry sauce?” she asked, incredulous.

“My mother doesn’t like it, so she’s never let me try. She thinks it’s gross.” Blue raised and eyebrow and when June laughed again, she decided to push it a little farther. “Can you believe that shit?” With that, June doubled over with a giant guffaw that shook her whole body and turned her face red. Blue started laughing, too, and when they finally stopped, June wiped her eyes with her apron and turned serious.

“Young lady,” she asked, “Has your mama taught you how to cook?”

June, Two

“GOOD GOD, Sarah Jane. Get your nose out of your damned Bible and watch where you’re going!” Sarah Jane had not, in fact, been reading her Bible, but couldn’t decide whether she felt insulted that June had spoken to her so sharply, or guilty for not reading her Bible while walking down the sidewalk.

“Hello, Miss June,” Sarah Jane enunciated “miss” like it was an affront that any woman over 30 should have never married. “I suppose you’re out shopping for your famous Thanksgiving feast.”

“I am,” replied June, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Of course, the Reverend and I will be serving our usual meal to the less fortunates in town on Thanksgiving Day.”

June’s eyes rolled up so far in her head she swore she could see her brains. She knew two things about Sarah Jane and the Right Reverend Spurgeon Swicegood: One, they both had terrible taste as they were married to each other and two, after serving a modest meal of Stove Top Stuffing, dry as ass turkey slices, and stale rolls to the “less fortunate”, those two jokers high tailed it up to the country club dining room where they ate like pigs and drank two bottles of pinot grigio. June’s niece, who was a waitress at the country club, saw Sarah Jane throw up in her wine glass one Thanksgiving and then blame it on ‘suspect cranberry sauce’. In her wine glass!

“Too bad you ain’t invited to my house,” June mumbled and pounded down the sidewalk. Ten paces away, she felt especially evil and called over her shoulder, “Watch out for the cranberry sauce!”

June’s house was situated on a corner lot, where the business end of town met the living end of town. It was a neat house, built with care in the 1937 by her father’s own hand. June kept the lawn mowed and planted pansies in spring, petunias in summer, and mums in the fall. She painted the clapboard siding every seven years and replaced the roof every twelve, whether it needed it or not. She had a solid heating and air man, a reliable plumber, an honest electrician, and a handyman who would fill in when the others couldn’t. She was a firm believer in the importance of regularly scheduled maintenance, and kept marble covered composition books filled with notes on the upkeep of the house. Only once, when faced with a sudden termite infestation, had she panicked. Since then, she employed a man known around town as Leon the Bug Guy. Leon chain smoked Camel cigarettes and carried an arsenal of chemicals in the back of his lime green pick up truck. She hadn’t had a problem with bugs since.

Across the street to the left was the drug store, and June could sit on her porch and watch the teenage boys share a single cigarette like it was gold. On Tuesday afternoons, she’d watch Lucy Harper pick up her birth control pills wearing a ridiculous sunhat and movie star sunglasses, like everyone in town didn’t know it was her. Directly in front of June’s house sat a blessedly empty lot. A few years ago, a group of folks had tried to start a community garden, but no one wanted to tend the plants they’d planted. June did her part to keep it up, but before long it became overgrown and forgotten, squash and tomatoes dripping from vines and rotting on the ground. It made June boiling mad for a solid three months, until the frost hit and leaves fell and covered it all.

Behind her house was a fallow field that stretched almost further than you could see, until it gave way to scrubby pines that leaned into one another in the sandy soil. To the right lived her one true neighbor and source of great consternation, Joanna Peterson. Joanna lived with her six dogs, four cats, the occasional boyfriend, and her 16 year old daughter, a perpetually sullen, raven haired girl called Blue. While Joanna never missed an opportunity to speak to June (“Juney!” she’d call from her ramshackle porch, “Isn’t this just a magnificent morning?”), Blue had only spoken once. It had been late at night the summer before, and June had woken with a start, drenched in sweat. She walked out into the back yard in a futile attempt to escape the furnace inside of her and seen Blue and a group of half a dozen teenagers huddled in a circle, passing a small object around. She watched them put it to their mouths and saw the glowing ember and realized with a shock that they were smoking marijuana.

Blue looked up and saw her standing there. The girl’s face registered surprise, then shame and embarrassment. She half smiled and raised her hand as if to wave, and that’s when the boy standing next to her noticed June. “Hey Blue, should we ask your friend to the party?” The group laughed and Blue’s face turned hard. Her wave turned into fist from which she extended one pale, middle finger. “Screw you, old lady!” she yelled, and they erupted into cheers. For perhaps the first time in her life, June had nothing to say. After she went inside, she laid in bed for a good long while, staring at the ceiling and wondering if she had been that angry when she was a teenager.

She felt certain she had.