Boy Are You Lucky

Well, that took a while.

I just finished my June column for Horse Fly. The monthly paper has a Web site, but you really need to see the pages in your hands to get the gist of it. Regardless, here’s the full text of “The Yelling Man,” my contribution for this month. If you’re in the Taos area, pick up a copy of Horse Fly next week. I’m sure the following will read much better while you’re dripping cheeseburger juice in your lap or hanging out at Brodsky’s to bother Rick. He likes that, though:

“HEYOWWW!”

Somewhere in my neighborhood, there’s a man who yells. Yesterday it went on for a couple of hours. It isn’t the kind of yell a guy might make shouting to his buddies, it’s more like the sound you’d make if you were tied to a tree with a grizzly eating your entrails. The paper said there was a stabbing on our road recently, so I guess I should be open to anything.

Some things you aren’t supposed to wonder about, like who’s visiting your friend’s house at 4:00 a.m, but the yelling man doesn’t give me a choice. I mean no disrespect, but I hear the sound of pain, probably emotional. Sometimes arguing and slamming doors echo down the hill, but mostly there are the yells, coming from someone bellowing his guts out in short blasts maybe 25-30 seconds apart:

“YAAAHH! … YAAAHH! … YAAAHH!”

It seems strange to me that this can happen over and over. Why doesn’t someone stop him? And then I remember how everything is family, and how we’re all accepted so long as no one meddles. He could be a mean drunk, a war vet having a flashback, a poor guy having his daily fit, or a deaf weightlifter calling his cat. Anything, really, but as long as no one else is screaming, I’m not calling 911.

“AAAGGHHH!”

(Then again…)

Once many years ago I was in New Hampshire on one of those impossibly fine late summer afternoons where the air feels cool in the shadows and crickets chirp at the edge of the fields. There were a number of us out visiting a particular farm, floating through what was probably a Sunday like dust motes lit up by the slanting sun. The owner of the place had let us fill a paper shopping bag with interesting leaves of which he had rather a large quantity, and being relatively ignorant, we were happy. The most amazing thing about that golden New Hampshire farm, however, was the two-story outhouse in the barn. I’d never seen the like before and probably never will again.

The “crazy old aunt” apartment of which it was a necessary feature may lead to even deeper strangeness. Someone in the olden days, who knows how long ago, had built good-sized rooms over half of the former hayloft and enclosed them behind stout, vertical wooden bars. There was a door frame built into the bars, and a sturdy, lockable door of similar construction. It was like a jail, in other words, only all homemade and crafted with fastidious New England carpentry. Over in the corner was the “outhouse,” or rather in-house, as everything was contained within the barn. Underneath the closet-like privy was an enclosed wooden shaft leading to the pit below. Other than that, nothing on the ground drew attention to what was above. As I remember, there was even a special staircase on the opposite side of the building leading to a wooden catwalk, so that one could get to the apartment without crossing through the main part of the barn.

Almost 40 years later on another Sunday afternoon, I wonder things that didn’t cross my mind that perfect day in old New Hampshire hippie-land. How long did she live there, and did they treat her well? Did anyone outside the family know she was confined, or was there a good Yankee cover story? Did she bother the animals like she obviously discomfited her relatives, or was it something else entirely, especially late at night, with crazy old aunt noises blending with snuffles and murmurs from the warm slumbering beasts below?

I’d like to think so, anyway.

Share this post ↓

No related posts.