Indiana

As soon as the guitar started playing I was thinking of Indiana.

I remembered the cold brown of the corn fields with their trimmed stubble poking up through the gray Indiana ice.

I was climbing a thin swaying evergreen tree. I was high in its limbs, and went to reach for the next branch above me when I saw the Blacksnake coiled around it waiting for a bird. I backed down the tree frantically worried that the snake would get scared, loosen itself from the limb and fall on me.

I lived on a lake and we would swim for hours, doggy paddling with cigarettes clenched between our lips, trying to keep them from getting wet.

In Farmersburg, all the big Oak tree's trunks that lined Main Street had been painted white. It was to fend off a particular bug, they said. It always made me think of Tom Sawyer and his fence.

Teenagers, snorting well-timed bumps of crank, chain smoke in their cars and call out to each other as they drive by one another. The local rock stations refuse to play anything but CCR and Billy Squire, so we all listen to cassette tapes of Alice in Chains over and over.

Jesse and I would hike out to the meadow near my house. There was a little pond in the center of the clearing, looking like a mirrored pupil in a large eye. We'd pour gasoline on the water and then light it with a flick of a cigarette butt so we could see the water burn.

I was thirteen when my brother gave me my first beer. I took minute sips when I thought someone was looking at me, but otherwise focused on trying to get the nasty taste out of my mouth. After an hour, it had gone warm, but still I walked around with it, choking down small swallows here and there.

I was in the seventh grade, and somehow found myself holding hands and walking with Mindy Jackson. I spent the next ten years trying to recapture that feeling.

Cat had heard voices, but I didn't know about it until the sod had already stitched itself together over his grave. We stood around the tombstone talking, drinking. We went home and stood around the garage talking, drinking.

I went back once as an adult. Boys I had once known were now playing pool in the bars I visited. Girls I had once wanted to know didn't recognize me, or if they did, they pretended not to. It was OK, because I saw people that I pretended were strangers too. We drank draft beers and told each other we should do this more often.

Funeral By Numbers

2 Days.
1150 miles.
6 dirty public bathrooms
1 awesome iPod Playlist.
2 breaks to walk dogs, feed dogs, pet dogs, and pee.
1 small cooler filled with
-6 cans Coke Zero (fuelled by diet colas)
-1 ham sandwich
-2 pieces Light String Cheese
-2 Light Yogurt cups

2 boxes Jelly Belly assorted jelly beans.
2 funeral viewings.
7 pairs of wax lips from Farm & Fleet.
8-10 beers.
1 Butt Sex "shooter".
1 crying, laughing, happy, and sad wife.
1 hangover.
17 hours in the driver's seat.
1 numb ass.
1 funeral.
1 graveside service.
1 family luncheon.
1 mother crying as she says good-bye.
1 return home.
4 hours sleep.

Wisconsin Bound

Good news waits until the morning. It's a fact. So, when the phone rang the other night at 1:30 in the morning, I knew it was bad, even through the thick haze of sleep. Jen's grandmother wasn't doing well, and it was Jen's mom on the phone letting us know what's going on.

I'm so tired, that I decide that it's me that should tell Jen what's going on, so I talk to her mother for a bit thinking it would be best for Jen to hear it from me. I don't know why I'd be a better choice than her mother, but at the moment it made sense. Of course, it didn't occur to me until after the call was over that maybe her mom needed to talk to her too, so after I caught Jen up on what was going on, she called her mom so they could talk and cry together a bit.

The next morning, Jen's grandmother passed away. All the things you tell other people to comfort them apply here: She had a long full life, she didn't suffer, and she was a very sweet woman. She's going to be very missed by her family.

So, we head up to Wisconsin first thing Tuesday morning. There will be a viewing that evening, and then services the next morning. Seems like in order to get me to visit, someone has to die. Watch your back. I might be coming to a state near you.