Digital Potlatch time again! Tonight that means another chapter from BUFFALO LIGHTS. This one is about what happened to me when the fact of our moving from Maryland to New Mexico after 25 years in the same place finally sank in. It was also intended as a message to all those we were leaving behind. I don’t know how I did it, frankly, but I did.
This is a longish one, so I had to split it. Be sure to click through to read the whole thing! To access preceding chapters and the introduction, just visit the Buffalo Lights category page. You can read the full synopsis here.
Part II: New Mexico Project
Chapter 3: A Little Farther Out of Town
I was beginning to understand. The question was, what was I going to do about it?
All along I’d thought it was something else, if I had any inkling at all. There I was in the beginning stages of a serious adventure, staggering around in a paranoid funk: They were all out to get me! This would not do, neither the getting, if true, nor the fearing of it. I was sure the tension was sending terrible messages to my body.
A few days before, in preparation for a visit from the septic tank service, I’d gone outside and done some actual physical work for the first time in quite a while. For at least a year I’d been in a state of extended rebellion against grounds keeping and house repairs, and now that we were actually getting ready to leave, I was even less inclined to worry about a few rotten windowsills. Out in the country the landscape was always in need of a whack, trim, cut, or burn. The chores were never-ending — from that perspective, the multi-flora really was out to get me. My response to this had evolved to the point where I no longer made fun of old men sitting in the shade on homesteads with weedy rings around whatever had been left in the yard last fall. Instead, I envied them.
But the septic tank was of a different order. If it were damaged through neglect, we’d be hit with expensive repairs or forced to crap in the woods. If there was a problem, the house might never sell. Pumping out the tank was then a category unto itself, part of an immutable two-year cycle requiring the removal of sod from the immense cast concrete lid. They would have done it for me, the friendly septic tank guy and his burly helper with the Harley-Davidson tattoos, done it in a minute and not even minded. You had to be awfully humble to do that kind of work in the first place, and these were local men, sons of the soil, who knew all about shovels and shit. Knowing this made it the manly thing to do to dig up the lawn and uncover the lid to make it easier on them. That way, the sooner their foul-smelling truck would be gone, too — and going was the theme of the moment.
After I’d used a sturdy long-handled shovel to cut and lift away the sod and uncover the lid, I put the shovel back in the garage and went inside to clean up. But coming through the back door into the kitchen, I had a singular experience: I felt taller, properly aligned and proportioned. I felt good. There was a bright blue light coursing through my neck, shoulders, and upper arms. My God, my shoulders were high! That’s the only way to describe it. I felt like I was seven feet tall and my jeans were loose, like I could have wrestled an elk and won. Instead, all I did was wash my hands, thoroughly.
Later that evening I mentioned the episode to my wife. She wasn’t at all surprised that doing some actual shoveling had done me some good. And she was glad to confirm my improved posture: “Yes, you’ve been going around pretty stove-in for about a week.” I couldn’t afford any negative body messages, especially since I’d passed the point where everything snapped automatically back into place. So what was doing the stoving? I’d always been a sensitive soul and a consummate worrywart. I could out-worry anyone, anywhere. Maybe that was the reason.
Worrying about the septic tank going bad before we sold the house was solved by giving the septic tank man $175 and trying to answer his questions about computers and trucks. He needed a new truck, you see. He probably tuned the one he had by turning a screw on the carburetor, the lucky bastard. But it was old, really old. A Volvo dealer in Virginia had shown him one that sounded like the Starship Enterprise: “Why, it even has a computer in it that warns you before it’s about to break down, and it tells you how many miles you can go before she quits on you,” he marveled. He wasn’t sure he trusted that and wanted to know what I thought of mating a truck to a computer. Wanting him to go away happy, I lied and said it sounded like a good idea. This made me feel guilty, so I added the reassuring comment that unlike me, he and his partner had job security for life. “They can’t pump shit on the Internet, ” I offered, knowing full well this was not the case, but my audience appreciated the joke.
After they left I rearranged the chunks of sod and covered the lid, pondering my lot. I could feel my shoulders caving in again. What was I denying or failing to see? I should be happy. The homestead was up for sale, we were going to move to the land of rocks and sagebrush (less yard work), meet new people, and — Jesus, that was it!
Suddenly it felt like my chest was impaled on a red-hot spear. Was I really going to leave friends I’d known for over 20 years, people I complained I never got to see enough of, the ones who never heard the ends of my stories because their kids were crying or because someone was telling a joke on the other side of the room, people I loved but somehow thought I could survive without? My growing-up years as an Air Force brat had been one long succession of good-byes to best friends. I’d always been reluctant to leave the solidarity of the group, yet proud that I could do so. But over the last twenty years I’d been in one place. This was different — these were people I was totally comfortable with. Their sadness about my leaving was palpable, though surprising at first. What was the matter with them, I wondered? Why couldn’t they be happy for me on the eve of the greatest adventure of my life?
Oh Lord. I hadn’t realized.
The Air Force brat was long gone, and a grown man with a quarter-century’s worth of fabulously rich experiences and deep emotional connections had taken his place. I was one interwoven son-of-a-bitch. The wonder wasn’t that I was a wreck, but that I was still alive at all. I loved these people, but I wanted to go play cowboy and nobody else did — nobody except the brave, adventure-hungry love of my life, that is. I always enjoyed the way she looked after a few days on vacation in the West, tanned and beaming, full of love for the mountains and open spaces. If this was a good thing to do, why did it hurt so much?
Never again would I look down on anyone who out of love or stubbornness refused the urge to stray from his old hometown. Apparently I’d learned more about such places than I ever imagined, and now I had to admit the hurt and take responsibility for it. I struggled to create a conceptual framework, a healing metaphor: I would not rip these people out of my life, I would carry them with me. I would say to myself and to them, “I’m not leaving, we’re just moving a little farther out of town.”
Most of them had the means and could be persuaded to take a trip out West once in a while, I told myself, unable to visualize a future without their faces. We’d find a place with room for company, I vowed. I was tired of fighting mildew and weeds. I wanted to move to the mountains, but felt like I was dropping off the face of the earth. The mix of joy and terror churned in my gut. We’d make it all work somehow, I told myself. We’d make it to the mountains, and when we got there our old friends would have a place to visit and meet whatever new friends we’d found. Why wouldn’t they? We’d only be a little farther out of town. I’d finally get around to finishing those stories or have new ones to tell. A little farther out of town, that was all.
The wound in my heart still ached but the spear had cooled a little. A temporary balm was better than none, I realized, and for the time being, that would have to do.
Related posts:
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 1, “Imprinting”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 5, “Dreamwatch”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part II, Chapter 1, “Betrayal”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part I, Chapter 3, “Missing Links”
- BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part II, Chapter 2, “The Grownup Manual”
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