The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove (9 page)

I
know
what lies ahead—an event not to be overly pondered. So I strike sparks off my past, wondering why I did this thing or that thing. I think of a particular event and wonder what it
really
meant when it happened. Now that I have time to think about them, I recall places in my life where I turned a corner when I did not even realize I had done so, or how I could have saved myself great trouble if only I had only done a certain thing. There are the lovely memories, too, of young infatuation, a good bottle of wine, many moments and realizations in art, an éclat amongst the trees in our woods, a fine book, a walk with Heath, a moment of lovemaking, a vegetable triumph in the garden, a picture, a poem, a dance, some music that illuminated and sustained my life.

At last I have lived enough of my life so that I have some
wisdom
to rely on, knowledge I have accumulated to influence my decisions, some things that could possibly be useful to others, too. But no one really cares or consults with me about anything, and I am given no real decisions to make. It seems that things have already been decided
for
me. No wisdom is required in the face of this reality—nor, it seems to me, is wisdom much valued.

No one comes to see me in the home. Heath and I had been a hermitic twosome over our decades together, had only a few friends, and mostly these are all dead or doomed now. We had a few good neighbors who occasionally looked in on us, but basically we were by ourselves. I have no relatives with whom I am in touch; they all eventually disappeared into my vaporous memories of France across the sea when I was a girl. Heath’s parents had both died suddenly when he was twelve and his only brother passed away a decade ago. Heath and I had our fields, our woods, our work, our house, and each other.

We belonged to no groups or clubs, went to no meetings, rarely dined in the local bars and grills. We did not hunt our land, nor did we permit others to hunt it—and this, too, set us apart from our neighbors.

In late autumn the guns come out in the driftless hills, and the war with animals commences in full. I would begin to hear gunfire and it always conjured up terrifying memories of the war combat in France when I was a child. Heath would be off doing his chores, and I would be frightened that some stray shot might take him down. I was unable to walk in our woods when this bellicose activity was commencing. When we went to town for our groceries there were deer strung up like lynch victims from trees around the houses, and pickups with bloodied animals’ corpses slung onto their beds as if they were firewood. This, too, stirred terrible memories for me and had its deep effect on me particularly, reinforcing our solitude.

Dearest Heath, this was his childhood home and these things had been part of his growing up, but he changed his customs for me as an act of love, knowing that hunting bewildered and appalled me. If he saw hunters straying onto our land he would emphatically order them to leave.

The caregivers in this home are professional and dedicated, but they are challenged and sometimes annoyed with their work. Like most people who labor in institutions that serve particular types of human beings—teachers, prison guards, ward nurses, military officers—they sometimes become impatient, especially when residents become querulous. Elders might be quiet people, but we are diverse; our one common denominator is that we are all moving now with varying speeds toward an inevitable conclusion, and our attitudes about this vary as we wobble toward our respective ends. At times we become overdemanding of our caregivers and impatient with each other, creating situations that are not productive.

Even though I dislike being here in this crowded, odiferous place, I have taken a personal vow: I swear I will be cooperative and patient with fellow residents and show gratitude to my caregivers. Otherwise I will become a living misery.

I
HAVE
met a new resident—or I guess I should say an old resident—who apparently has returned to the home after what must have been a very serious episode in the hospital. He had been injured in some terrible way, perhaps not by fire—but by ice; an odd man who looks like a partially unwrapped mummy with his bandages. I feel concern for him, and he interests me because his mind is active. He asked me a strange, obscure question when he sat beside me at lunch, to which—by some wild chance—I was able to give him a full response. He was so astounded and apparently delighted by my answer to his question that he suddenly proposed marriage.

Of course, I ignored his proposal, but I must, however, advise him later to be more careful about such frivolities. Old women can be very dangerous—in ways different than younger ones.

C
HAPTER
7

Cyril

H
ere I am—a seventy-nine-year-old mossback who’s never had a date.

There she is—a woman like no other I’ve ever seen. And she actually pays attention to me. Is she just being kind to me? Her name is Louise. I want to know her better. I am attracted to her. How the hell do I do this?

Is this the beginning of love? Is that what this feeling I am feeling is? How would I know? What do I do now? Maybe I could invite her to sneak out for a beer with me. I’ve got to do this right. If she turns me down now I may never come out of my room again.

It’s time for lunch in the dining room. I oil my boots, slather on Lilac Vegetal after cutting myself while shaving. I’ve got to remember to pull the bloody patch of toilet paper off my chin before I leave the room. I keep slicking down my few gray hairs and looking in the mirror.

What I see is not good. No, not good at all. I look like a lump of suet with Band-Aids on it.
Why
did I wait this long in my life to try and make a date with a woman?

I get out my best shirt, a blue and red plaid flannel that might catch her eye. If I had a car I’d invite her out to the Readstown Inn for brats and fried cheese curds. Maybe she would like that. I wonder if she likes beer? I’ve got to be careful with this kind of thing. I don’t want to put her off, or make her think I am some kind of country goof.

She said she had been born in France and her name is Louise. That’s pretty swishy, it seems to me.
Don’t screw it up, Cyril!
Go slow. Think what Adolphe Menjou would do. Maybe I should grow a moustache so I could twirl it. Adolphe always moved slowly and was very elegant. I remember him in
The Sheik
, and he was in
One Hundred Men and a Girl
when he played Deanna Durbin’s old man. He was cool and courtly, never pushed it.

Cyril, you don’t want to make any fast moves! Nice and easy for old folks. Don’t be talking with your mouth full—and make sure your fly is zipped.
Cultivated
. That’s the word. Cover your mouth when you sneeze, and don’t say “ain’t.”

She must have lived in the driftless hills to be staying in this care home, but I’ve never seen her around town. I would have noticed her. I’ll get to the dining hall early and watch to see where she sits, then slip in at her table. How should I start talking to her again? I’ve never done this before.

I’ve listened to many lines over the years in Burkhum’s Tap: “Weren’t you in my high school class?” or “Haven’t I seen you around Walmart’s?” or “Hello, sugar, would you please pass the popcorn?” I don’t think any of these would work with Louise. Adolphe Menjou would take her hand, kiss it, and say, “
Madame, enchanté
.” I don’t think I could pull off that sort of thing either.

I watch her come into the dining room and she picks a table where no one is sitting. I’m a little shaky, but I suck it up, go over and sit down next to her. I’m nervous as hell, start playing with the silverware, and gaze off across the room as if I’m thinking about something important.

They’re serving wieners and beans and slaw in the dining room. She nibbles at her slaw. I am trying to look cool as I cut a hotdog with my table knife, rather than use my fork. But I haven’t a clue what to say to her.

The singing woman who entertains is offering “A Tree In the Meadow” today for our lunchtime pleasure. She’s still way off-key, but I pretend to listen. Kate Smith used to sing that song. She was a big gal, from Duluth I think, and her manager was Ted something, and sometimes she would sing the national anthem before World Series games, but I’m so nervous I can’t get anything straight right now. I go on poking at my beans in silence.

Louise takes the heat off me: “They should serve wine with these meals,” she says with a chuckle. “It might make them more edible.”

I know she’s kidding, but I don’t know how to respond to this and my mouth is full of hotdog. She’s so trim and beautiful, she has that little French accent, and now she wants wine with her food. This mention of alcohol gives me, I think, a possible lead-in. My voice goes up three decibels as I ask her, “Do you like Leinenkugel?”

Damn it! Cyril, you stupid fossil, what a dumb thing to ask her! I wish I could swallow the whole sentence back like a cartoon character might swallow his balloon back. I can’t believe I said it! I’m so ashamed my whole body starts itching,

But the lady is kind; she takes it up immediately without blinking an eye. “Well, my husband used to drink a bottle of Leinenkugel when he came in from the fields. I sometimes tasted his. It’s not bad, as these things go, but I have to admit I haven’t yet learned to favor beer very much.” She even gives me a little smile. “But I could try.”

I am a gone coon. I’m gulping. I am
sailing
!

Finally I manage to calm myself a bit. We sit and chat, the two of us, until the servers start clearing things away. I consider giving her a few lives, but have the good sense to keep off that. I don’t want to scare her, so we talk about the home, the weather, the food and other stuff. Finally they are wiping off the table in front of us, so we have to leave. I say, “Can I walk you back to your room?”

“That would be nice,” she says. Both of us use our canes as we trundle through the halls. When we reach her door I don’t pull a Menjou
enchanté
act—but I at least have the presence to say, “I sure enjoyed talking to you.”

“And I, too,” she says, and smiles so sweetly again I almost fall down on the hall carpet. She goes into her room, and shuts the door. I’m ready to dance a jig on my frostbitten legs. I’m glittering—old busted, bandaged Cyril—all the way back to my room.

Was that a date? I did it okay. Cyril, you
really
did it. Casanova, Warren Beatty, Rudolph Valentino, Lord Byron, move over! Cyril is moving onto the scene.

When I get back in my room I step into the john to take a pee and see in the mirror that the blood-spotted patch of toilet paper is still stuck to my chin. I am going to have to work very hard to improve myself.

C
HAPTER
8

Louise

T
he man with the bandages is recovering from nearly freezing to death—I found this out from some of the residents. Apparently he was abducted by some rogue and left for dead on a roadside in a driving blizzard. He must be very willful and strong to have endured such a crisis. He seems to enjoy talking to me. He is an odd combination of countryman and scholar, a serious collector of obscure facts about the lives of people.

I have taken several after-dinner strolls with him now and, though he is very shy, I find him to be more intriguing than other people I’ve met in the home, who seem overwhelmed by age and physical problems. But Cyril—that is his name, he told me—despite his grievous injuries, is still outgoing and ongoing, and determined to recover. He is still interested in things. I like his innocence and sanguinity. It is a rarity in this atmosphere.

And he says such odd things. The other day he told me that I looked like Thomas Hardy’s second wife, Florence. Now
where
in heaven’s name do you suppose he conjured that one? He says I have a round face like hers and remain essentially unsmiling, but that I seem to be a devoted person, as Florence Hardy was—and that I have visions.

My face is not round. I might be a sleepy-looking old woman, but I have no visions. Besides, Florence Hardy was an intelligent, constant woman. Her only ambition was for Thomas and his literary career. Cyril must be thinking of W. B. Yeats’s wife, Georgie, who helped spark William’s poetry with her spirit writing. I would not want to do spirit writing. I would not favor meeting a ghost, and my hand is not driven by shades.

But how odd and interesting to encounter a man in the quiet farm countryside of Wisconsin who knows these things and tries to apply such configurations. This seems to be his art, and he appears to have practiced it all of his life. But now that he grows old, his sources seem to sometimes run together like watercolors. I wonder who he communicated with all his years in this preoccupied, insular dairy country? I suspect he’s spent a good deal of time talking to himself. I’ve never met anyone quite like him.

Yesterday he asked me if I knew who Felix “Doc” Blanchard was. Was he testing my sanity? I had no
idea
who Felix Blanchard was! It seems he was the star fullback for the army military academy football team in the middle 1940s. According to Cyril, he was perhaps the most powerful runner who ever played the game. Cyril knew that he had scored three touchdowns against the navy team in 1946 and had a total of nineteen for the season. His jersey number was 35, and if he ever ran into you, you would go “oof” and never forget number 35.