Archives

It is hard to get a single thing accomplished.  I keep meaning to mop the kitchen floor, but each time I go searching for the mop, the phone rings.  I’ve just now gotten off the phone with Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Don’t even ask.  I don’t understand it either.

“I can answer any question you ask me with a line of dialogue from Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Ms. Stowe said.  “Go ahead.  Try me.”

“I’ve of course read your book, Ms. Stowe, but I don’t think I can remember any lines.”

“You leave that to me.  Go ahead, now.  Ask away.”

“Okay.  How about this?  I can’t seem to find my mop.”

“That’s no question, young man.  Were you denied the opportunity of good schooling?”

“I’m sorry.  Where is my mop?”

“Oh, Mr. Symmes! - save me, - do save me, - do hide me!” said Eliza.”

“What?”

“The mop obviously does not want to be found.  You’re a lazy man, aren’t you?”

“I’m actually very busy, Ms. Stowe.  You’d be surprised.”

“Yes, I’m sure I would.  Is there anything else you’d like to know before I hang up?”

“Will I ever get the kitchen mopped?”

“Such a simple boy.  Here’s your answer -

“There was, said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift.”

The line was silent.

“I’m not getting that mopping done, am I?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Oh well.  I am sorry I don’t remember more about your book.”

“I forgive ye, with all my heart!” said Tom faintly,” she said, and then the line went dead.

I probably should have mentioned long before something about the crack under my house.  It’s kind of an important thing, and runs nearly the entire length of the house in sort of an east-west direction, cutting through what is now my writing room and ending somewhere near the laundry room on the other end of the house.  I don’t mean it cuts through those rooms.  I mean, if you’re in the house, you don’t see it.  That’s not right.  I mean it cuts through the ground, underneath the house, in the ground itself.  It’s that kind of crack.

I should have mentioned the crack long ago because just about everything I know came out of that crack.  You see, if you slide off the sheet metal door that hides the opening to the crawl space, and then squeeze in and slide along the crack on your belly, there’s always something to read.  Don’t ask me why, but newspapers of all sorts pour out of that crack in the ground, and just sort of pile up along the edge.  It seemed kind of weird at first, watching them mound up like that, then break loose and slide back into the crack when the pile got too high, but a person gets used to things faster then you’d expect when you’re on your belly under a house trying to keep out of reach of the cobwebs and spiderwebs and who knows what else.  You learn to adjust or you just go nuts. 

Anyway, newspapers from all over the world pour out of that crack, which is a shame, really, to have so many old newspapers go to waste.  I can’t make heads or tails out of most of them, and just toss them back down into the crack.  It bothers me, sure, but they seem to keep pouring back out, so I guess it’s alright.

Oh wait, I almost forgot.  You need to bring a flashlight.  Newspapers pour out of the crack under my house, not sunlight.  That would just be crazy.  Whoever heard of sunlight pouring out of a crack in the ground?  No one I’ve ever talked to, that’s for sure.

So what if we all eventually find out that dying is just another form of moving.  We arrive in Heaven, packed in our coffins, only to discover that the big secret of the funeral home business has nothing to do with embalming, but rather that coffins are filled with packing peanuts when nobody is looking.

Someday I will die and someone will unpack me, and as I look around, I’ll realize that I see no fundamentalists.

“Hey, where are all the fundamentalists?” I ask.

“Oh, they’re not that important, so no one really takes the time to unpack them.”

“Yea, but all that time and energy, packing and moving. Seems like such a waste. I mean, look at all those boxes.  There must be millions of them. Why move them in the first place?”

“It’s God. He’s the obsessive compulsive. Can’t throw away anything.”

“You’re kidding me, right?  What about Hell?”

“Just a myth. Hell’s a storage shed out back. Politicians, school administrators, that sort of thing.”

“Lawyers?”

“I said it was a shed, not a warehouse.”

I like when Imaginary Keith dreams about those days on the lake.  He pulls on that mower rope and walks around in the thin grass, the sandy, rocky soil visible between every blade.  He sits on that swing and walks up and down the stone staircases, circling the house time and again.  Fishing poles are stacked on the lower back porch, the dock always needs painting, the boat house hasn’t been used in years and rots into the lake.  The furnace, tucked into a dark corner of the basement, roars like a dragon as you drop pennies through the large, iron grate above, listening as they bounce off of it’s metal head.  He never hears her coming, and grandma chases him away laughing.  Only a grandmother could protect a dragon from a little boy with nothing but a smile.

But it’s only a dream, after all, and we have work to do.  It’s a big day, so I shake him awake.

“Get up.  You need to make coffee.”

“Why’d you wake me up,” Imaginary Keith complains.  “I was dreaming about . . . “

“I know you were.  I was watching.  Now get up.  I need some coffee.”

“I was looking at the house, talking to some people about . . . “

“I know.  And that house was thinner and taller then it should have been, wasn’t it?  And the front steps weren’t there, were they?  You just walked right in.  I told you I was watching.”

“That’s kind of creepy, you know.  Sitting around, watching someone else dream.  Don’t you have your own dreams?”

“Sure I do.  I dream of you getting out of bed and making me some coffee.  It’s a big day, you know.  Historically significant, one might say.” Imaginary Keith was climbing out of bed.  One thing I can say about him for sure - he’s a good sport.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been paying attention to nothing?  She begins her official move into the other house today.  We move her.  We help her pack, we load things up, and we help her move.  But first, we drink coffee.  Now come on, hurry up, we’re running out of time.  Historical days aren’t any longer then ordinary old days, you know.  To really appreciate them, you have to get an early start.”

“But it’s 4 a.m.”

“My thought exactly.  The day’s slipping away from us already.”

I suppose some might say that historic days are nothing more then dreams that someone took the time to write down, because in the end, they all look pretty much the same.  Given enough time, today will feel like nothing more then another of Imaginary Keith’s dreams.

“Were you dropping pennies down the grate?” I ask.

“I thought you were watching?”

“I was.  I just wanted to hear you tell it.  It’s better hearing it then watching it.”

“Oh, you should have been there.  The grate was so hot we could barely lay there.  The heat was drying out our eyes and then grandma . . . “

“I saw her coming.”

“You should have warned me.”

“No.  It’s better watching her chase you off.  If I warned you, neither one of you would run through the house laughing.”

“Keith?"

“Yes.”

“Do you think they were happy? I mean, we only really knew them when we were just kids.”

“I know.”

“So do you think they were really happy?  I mean, happy when no one else was around.  Just the two of them, there together.  Do you think they were happy then?”

“I don’t know, Imaginary Keith.  I thought about that this summer, as I stared at the graves.  I suppose life was just as hard for them as it is for the rest of us.  Harder, most likely.  But I like to think they were happy.  I like to think that it all meant something.”

“Yea, me too.”

“Maybe they just sat around all day thinking about when we’d show up.”

“Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“I always do, my friend.  I always do.”