Erratics
From the story “My Stuff”
Time was I could fix anything with my fist or foot. Bamm, the furnace started. Bamm, the refrigerator stopped humming. Cindy didn't like it, but there wasn't much she could say when it worked. Take the time the lawnmower died in the tall, gummy grass where the neighbor's dog unloaded in our yard. A Saturday morning. Hot and humid with bugs flying in my ears and biting my back where the sweaty T-shirt stuck, and this rank odor coming up from all that dog crap. The mower coughed, choked, then stopped. Blue smoke and steam came from underneath. I pulled the starter rope. Nothing. I yanked again and again until I thought my damn arm would fall off, then grabbed the mower by the handle and spun around like a hammer thrower in the Olympics. I grunted, let go. A flying lawnmower. It hit the trunk of the silver maple. Moldy grass, rusty lawnmower parts and maple bark littered the ground. I swore at the son of a bitch, then let it lie there, bleed lubricants, while I went in the house, had a beer, maybe two.
Cindy said, "Look what you've done to the tree, look at the tree," then said that it was too early to drink, and I said I was on daylight savings time, which was pretty clever considering the heat, bug bites, and the mower's not working. I waited awhile, watched cartoons with Jake, then went outside and tried again, pulled the rope. Flames six inches long shot out the exhaust. The engine roared like the Saturn V taking off for the moon. I could have mowed down the lilacs, roses, and rhododendrons if I'd wanted.
Cindy didn't like my swearing either, but I said, "Hey, a man's got to talk."
Ohio summers can be bad, but winters are worse. Snow, cloudy days, fog, the lack of light, the cold wet wind blowing off Lake Erie. Muscles tense from slipping on ice, people get moody, think bad thoughts.
I drive for the county, a snowplow in the winter, an asphalt truck in the summer. Winter of '76, our worst winter ever, I knocked off thirty-two mailboxes. A record. That winter Cindy hit me but it wasn't because of what I did to the mailboxes, although she didn't like that either. I was tired from plowing all night and when I opened the refrigerator door things fell out. It was like food and bottles and bowls attacking me. I put my foot inside and began to stir things around, kick this and kick that, fight back. More things fell out: A-1 Sauce, milk, orange juice, leftover lasagna.
Cindy came out of nowhere, knocked me away, almost knocked me off my feet. She was crying and yelling at me to stop and the chocolate syrup was running out onto the floor, and my foot wouldn't, couldn't, stop kicking.
Later, we cleaned up the mess and fixed the broken refrigerator shelf and wiped the tomato juice off the stove where it splattered, but the red stains on the wall and the way the shelf tilted always reminded us.
Cindy taught fifth grade, made greeting cards, sold them at craft shows. After our problems, after I had moved into this apartment, she sent me a card that had a buckeye leaf—Ohio, the Buckeye State—on the front of it. Inside, the card said, "Be-leaf in yourself."