Dear Mr. You (16 page)

When your pond freezes over we bundle up and the kids put on skates. Your son teaches them hockey with you lying down on the ice in front of the net to catch the puck. We make a bonfire in the tepee that smokes so furiously your wife and I can’t stay in there without tearing up. The kids roast marshmallows and stay up too late. When I go in later to make sure they are sleeping soundly, one of them will have a stripe of marshmallow still spackled across their chin.

“They won’t ever forget these times,” you say, and I know you’re right. Sometimes I worry we are like the bees you tell me
about. The kids are always swarming around you, a constant drone of “When can you tie the sleds to the four-wheeler and pull us?” or “Will you jump in the pond?”

You make gallons of wild honey each year and collect it yourself, despite being allergic to bees. “Aw, I just wear a suit,” you say. The wild hives that you track are a whole process. It can take days, with you baiting and following the worker twenty feet at a time.

“Once I track the hive they lead me to, I find the queen. She’s easy to spot, because she’s tall like you, and moves to different music. It’s like she’s listening to jazz while the workers are on their heavy metal.” You laugh and shake your head. “Pretty dumb, right? I don’t know, they been doin’ it for thousands of years though, and that’s why they say ‘a beeline,’ that’s where that comes from.”

“So you find the tree with the hive and then what do you do?” I ask. “Chop it down?”

“Aw no, I just mark it,” you mime carving your initials in a tree, “and then it’s mine.” You shrug again.

“And that’s it?” I wonder how you keep track of all your trees.

“That’s it. I don’t do nothin’ with it. It’s just I had the patience to go that distance. The honey stays. This is just so, I don’t know. I can find quiet, and follow through with something. Me and the trees, you know.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to imagine myself spending that kind of time to find something, only to leave it with a mark. To carve that moment into a length of bark that someone might run their fingers over one day, wondering who I was.

•  •  •

When my friends come to visit, they are mystified. They love that your friends just wander in and out, like Uncle Charlie with his many stories, who is not your uncle, and Papa Bob with his endless energy, who is not your papa.

“Jesus,” said my friend Debra, “it’s so familial. Maybe you can be cousin Zsa Zsa.” She ran her hand over the wall of your root cellar and marveled at the fact that you built it yourself from scraps of metal and brick you saved from a worksite. No one can believe that you make everything and share it with people you’ve just met. When you come in to say hello, you give her bottles of maple syrup and little bags of garlic from the garden. It’s always Christmas, you say.

Later on I’m puttering around making cookies and I almost don’t hear you knock. When I go to the front screen door I see you on the other side of it, holding up a six-foot black snake.

“Look who I found,” you say, lifting the snake by the neck. “I was coming up your front steps and he was on his way right to you.”

I shriek. You caught my snake, or actually, you caught the one I saw and now you have him captive.

“You’re a snake charmer too?” I ask him.

“Oh, stop,” you shoo me away, but like any man, you are happy to be the one who caught something he was chasing, and like certain women, I am happy for a man to find something that was about to hurt me and grab it by the neck.

I step out and touch the snake. He is so black that he shines green in the light. Coming closer I see he has bits of yellow. “Isn’t he a beauty?” you say.

“That’s the one,” I say. “How did you know he was coming for us?” Yesterday the babysitter called you because we saw him in the driveway. She turned white as a sheet and body-blocked me from going to take his picture. I wanted to see if it was listed in the poisonous category, but she’d screamed like a lunatic and pulled at me, stuttering that “They fly, some of them! No, really, I’m so for sure some fly! Like, into your face, fly!”

You were over in two seconds on your four-wheeler with a rifle. Ready to slay the flying snake that I think the babysitter had confused with the cartoon of the squirrel, because as you pointed out, they don’t fly. You couldn’t find the snake but came back the next day because, well, you weren’t sure why, but there he was. You must have been tuned in to that frequency that doesn’t display on my XM.

“Sometimes I just get a feeling,” you say, shrugging, which turns out to be an adorable gesture when one is holding a six-foot snake. It occurs to me that you’ve been through enough in your life to not be daunted by a serpent. Losing your two-year-old son to a drowning accident you said put you low enough to shake the devil’s hand, and you won’t be venturing that way again. That kind of grief must make a snake look silly.

“Is he poisonous?” I ask. Rendered powerless, its attack face looked a little desperate, like it would be willing to cut a deal.

“Nah, he’s afraid of you. Sure he’ll attack, but only if threatened. He’s important ’round here though. Kills the mice. Listen, though, you might want to think about cutting this maple down. If there’s a storm it’s gonna fall on your roof.”

I look at the tree. It doesn’t yield much syrup anymore but I still hate to fall it.

“Are we tapping on Valentine’s Day this year?” I ask.

“Yes indeed,” you said. “Are you still my assistant?”

I nod. “I live to hang those buckets,” I say. The sound of syrup doing its
plunk-plunk
and
plinkity-ploink
is an orchestral drumbeat that brings me a kind of quiet. It’s like a bizarre meditation to sit and listen. The first day you taught me to hang a bucket and drill into a maple, you waited until you’d found the perfect spot and made me sit there, eyes closed. I was surrounded by the sound of sweet draining from trees and falling on century-old tin.

“That’s a music you don’t hear in the city,” you told me. I opened my eyes after a few minutes and gave you the thumbs-up. The sun moved out from behind the clouds and you looked up. “Now do like this,” you’d said, taking my chin and turning it into the sunlight, saying, “Close your eyes again,” and I did and you asked, “You feel that? You feel that warmth on your face?” I said I did, and you said

That’s the hand of God there, touching you

We will probably hang a couple hundred buckets this winter. Last year I spent too much time making lunch for everyone and trying to get the kids’ snow boots on and off. This year I don’t want to miss it. We ride around in your pickup and tap trees for folks who have maples on their property but can’t tap themselves. We ride with the windows open listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM while the buckets slap against the side of your truck. I come home worn out and feeling like a regular pioneer, someone who could churn butter.

Right now I watch you climb back into your truck. You wave and shout over the engine. Thanking me for the morning, you say

I learn so much when you are listening, thank you

I wave and go onto my porch. I look across the creek where my new barn will be. I count the sugar maples in my yard and watch you grow smaller as you leave slowly down the hill, driving with your one free hand while out the open truck window the long black snake hangs, swaying.

Your goat-face is such a map of sweetness. When you chew on my son’s shirt or look at me through the pen window that perma-smile is so Christ-like that I have to fall to my knees and hug your neck. I pat your giant hairy belly with little slaps, releasing clouds of dust from your gray coat. When you were little I could hold you in my arms but now it takes both my daughter and I pushing with all our might to shove you back into the barn.

You have to know that it is entirely because of my loyalty to you that I was willing to castrate another goat.

This wasn’t a mutiny on gonads. My readiness to hack off Bully’s testes was my instinct to protect you and I was ready to get after it.

I want to be clear: Bully was only doing what biology asks of him. When a goat wakes to discover his scrotum coursing with blood, he starts butting into trees, silos, and the UPS woman. Bully had not been dehorned and he sported a set that could do
real harm, not to mention that he was a breeder. Shortly after bringing him into the pack we had three baby goats. I know you had no hand in that, Gem, since you have neither horns nor a nut-sack situation that makes you seek quality time with Peaches or Melissa. Bully may as well have moved into the pen with an open bar and a Commodores cover band playing twenty-four/seven. He strutted around bleating to himself. He took long naps during which he let forth farts that were just to the left of geothermal. His vibe was equal parts entitled and misunderstood, leaving a pen of ravaged lady goats that huddled together and licked their privates. The gals appeared both sated and needy, like they wanted to open up but needed therapy. It was hard to watch. I’d open the pen to find them panting, looking like they’d give up their feed ration for a tube of Vagisil.

Bully, I speak to you directly now. I saw you bang those lady goats from here to Xanadu and sometimes you weren’t even in the mood. As you hammered away at Diana Ross, I’d see you distracted by a chipmunk. I’d see you looking around like

Is this really all there is?

Gem, you know it was your needs I was addressing in having to unsex your friend Bully. He came with massive swinging balls and pointy horns. He used those horns on you, Gem, gentleman goat, and that is where I drew the line.

I won’t forget the sight of you, Gemini, as you rounded the corner that morning while I exited the pen after collecting eggs. To see your face bloodied and cut by the horns of your goat-bro
was too much. When Bully trotted up moments later, I was still wiping blood from your beard and his eyes were cold and dead.

He rolled up like Caligula, mid-assassination.

Bloody skin tissue dripped off his horns and onto a nearby chicken, who tried to flee by frantically jumping into the pen with the piglets. This created a gruesome, live horror showcase of
Babe: Pig in the City.
I ran to my neighbor gesturing wildly for him to turn off his table saw, and he looked stricken when I told him about the attack on you, Gem. He marched into his barn and got the castrating pliers and we stopped to get his handyman Louis to help us.

Now, I have held down a girl goat to clip her horns or shave her ladytown privates before birthing. It isn’t easy. You need two sets of hands for that unless you tie them to a post, but holding down Bully was another ball of wax. I had to sit on him. I sat on Bully and thrashed to and fro as my neighbor gripped his horns and Louis lay on the ground with both arms around his hind legs. This part was merely to get him into the pen so we could figure out the next step.

Gem, I may be projecting, but you bleated and Bully seemed to answer you. He slowed to a stop except for the clump of blood and facial ligament tissue swinging from his forehead.

What did you say to him, Gem? Did you say “Bro, you don’t need balls to have balls?” Whatever it was, Bully heard it. He looked at the girl goats on the hay with flies buzzing all around, knowing he was expected to cruise over and bang each and every one. It was a job he was not up for, because he turned back to me with a plaintive expression that said

Lady, I am so ready for you to take this off my plate

My neighbor stopped and we read each other’s mind. He got the other pliers and dehorned Bully. This was the loudest and craziest experience of my adult life, bloody and insane. It left your friend Bully with a few more years of goat love but unable to harm you, Gem. It calmed him down sufficiently.

Last week we had to move Bully to the back pen by the pigs since the ladies are expecting again. You are there, Gem, keeping watch on the mamas-to-be and it’s a job you couldn’t be more right for. Sweet granddaddy goat, that’s more how I see you. You were never meant to be a baby daddy, or a player, and there isn’t a drop of shame to be found in that.

You are nothing yet, in the absolute best way, and I am your eyes since yours haven’t opened. You’ve not even met air! Or purple! Or snow. Or your mother, who is my friend! She is lying here so ready to hatch you. Embarrassment is years away! Ditto candy and kissing. Falcons, punch lines, and regret are even further down the road, with certain agonies that I hope never appear.

I tell you this now before you can speak: strength is a myth. It’s not what it is, when it looks like what it is. It’s usually what it is when it looks like something else. It takes bravery to admit that you’re petrified and keep soldiering on despite it. Oh, and, “easy”? Also a hoax! If it existed it would be sold for the same as what you got it for—nothing! Ha!

Gather perseverance, perspicacity, and Pez. Be wary of guilty pleasures. Best to open the floodgates and let pleasure wash over you until you’re floating in its yummy, with not a wink to guilt.
Try saving guilt for having gossiped or disappointed your children. Be sheepish about not reading Proust or neglecting to offer your car at the right moment, or your kidney. Don’t tell lies. Lying will slowly set your soul on “decay,” unless you really and truly must lie, in which case LIE YOUR EYEBALLS OFF, lie until your nose grows so long it touches the floor when you drop your head in shame, but then go seek forgiveness.

It’s terrifically useful to recognize where you are lacking in relation to others. Accept and even celebrate it because envy will poison, it will give you acid reflux and strange pervasive malodors. I believe you will know, when the time comes, about Colorado, the Beatles, and the high road. About keeping secret your good deeds and giving when you don’t have enough set aside for yourself. I know that you’ll find and be found.

And I know that you are coming! Any second! I’m next to your mother on her birth slab! But Holy Moses what do I hear from yon auxiliary power dock? I recognize this song from its opening notes, and wow. No, I can’t let this happen. I won’t live with myself if this song, which is seeping into your delivery room like atomic sewage, is allowed to continue. I feel conflicted to interrupt this C-section as my dear friend’s uterus is being traded hand to hand like a Frisbee in a game of Ultimate. She lies there beatifically in a blue shower bonnet, unaware, but so help me, the song is still playing and you are about to come out,
into your one life
, and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle before I stand by and let the first music you hear be “XXX is a XX.” I get a sudden image of you hearing it and clutching the umbilical cord, hurriedly zip lining straight back into the womb, traumatized, so I politely but firmly ask the nurse, please, sir, I realize you have
other shrimp to fry but it’s sort of an ethical imperative right now that I have the iPod remote. I’m so sorry but this song is not worthy of the moment so by all means keep sterilizing that thingy but could you please point? Nurse points to it! I’m now diving for the remote, heroically changing it in the nick of time, and great day but if it isn’t Bob Marley! All sunshine and feral joy spinning out, and then . . . Lots of muttering and orders given over there where the doctors are with your mother and then so fast! You are found!