Within Close Range - The Youngest

We watch the station wagon back out of the driveway.

Mom waving through the open window before slowly pulling away.

It's just a few errands.

But Mark is inconsolable.

Tries to follow her.

Chris sweeps him up.

But he squirms with all of his might and wins the fight.

Just as Mom drives out of sight.

He falls to his knees and on to all fours.

Then the youngest of five laments the loss.

By slamming his soft head on the hard blacktop.

Speechless and helpless, I run to the sidewalk and look down the street.

Hoping Mom will somehow see me and circle back to the unhappy scene.

But I watch the wagon’s taillights disappear as Mom turns the corner.

So I turn back toward the house and Mark, in Chris’s arms.

His forehead swollen, bleeding and pockmarked from the pavement.

His tears subsiding, but his eyes still hopeless.

Restless.

Motherless.

And I feel helpless.

The Wind and the Owl

When the central highland winds howl through the valley and rattle the windows of our house on the hill, shaking and bending the juniper and pinion trees I see beyond the shuddering panes, my body and mind still brace for the only thing that comes of such blustery warnings to the Midwestern me.

The menacing advance of a fearsome storm.

Intense and unforgiving.

I feel my body - tense and taut - bracing for the worst with each swollen gust.

Pacing through the house.

Anxious for it to stop.

Or me to move.

So my dogs and I head out for our walk, prepared for a fight against tempests and cold and I’m ever surprised to find the winds far more kind than I imagined.

Mellowed by the sun’s abiding strength.

Layers are shed at the start of our walk and the warm, constant breezes now push me, Frank and Nellie to the chapparal below, where I know the sweeping winds will blow much gentler music across the tall grass. And at my back, urge me forward toward to the far fence line where the pronghorn often graze. 

But downwind today, well warned of our arrival, they’re likely to have scattered; prompting me to turn against the wind and start a circuitous loop back home.

Toward the scrub oak and junipers.

Shelter and shade.

And the shadowy scent of Mountain Lilac blossoming profusely in the wake of generous winter rains. 

The gentle fragrance of this rugged bush, appears and disappears with the shifting winds, lifting my spirits with each sweet return, as I wander up and down the hills with my two, most joyful companions.

The world in their noses turned into the breezes.

Close to home, I see a Great Horned Owl take to the air just a few feet ahead. 

I hear one, grand flap of his wings. And then nothing.

A familiar shadow among the neighborhood trees, I track his flight and see him perch again in a pine, up the hill and up ahead, and I follow with glee.

Silently.

Deliberately.

From tree to tree. 

Hidden among the dark, green boughs of an old, domed Juniper, heavy with pollen, the owl waits. But just as we near, off he goes, higher up the hill and closer to home, past the scattered remains of a long dead tree which lay like a skeleton, gray and sunbleached, exactly where it fell.

Pursuing him again to yet another tree, it’s as if the owl is hunting me. For, there, in a clearing of branches, the great hunter sits.

Quietly watching us move up the hill.

Allowing me the perfect view of this very perfect predator.

Staring still, my eyes meet his, until he decides we’ve come close enough.

And that is that.

He spreads his wings and disappears, without a sound, among the pinion near the old pit mine.

I try to reconnect at a fourth tree ahead, but instead, meet a noisy grackle balanced at the top of the tree where I hoped the Great Horned Owl would be. But he has already continued on his way, up the hill, over a fenceline, and out of my sight. 

Certain we’re not out of his, I scan the trees on the hill in vain. 

Unleashing the dogs, Nellie’s off in a dash in her fruitless pursuit of chasing small reptile.

Zigging and zagging, but never succeeding.

I think she’s just teasing.

My call for her cuts through the wind and the white-noised silence.

Unsettling me.

Until the music of the wild winds in the scrub oaks and the pines, in the final footsteps home, help me find my peace and place again.

Within Close Range: When Opposites Teach -- in Two Parts

Part One - The Ill-fitting Suit

Monsieur Neumark is how I knew him - my freshman/sophomore year, high school French teacher.

A small, skinny man with a sparse goatee and dark, frizzy hair with a Bob Ross perm. 

He really got into the whole “French” thing: from his starched, striped shirts with French cuffs, to his far-out, 1970s-wide, Toulouse Letrec ties; which he regularly swapped with an ascot for that truly continental vibe.

But that vibe didn’t jibe - at least not with me - because I found him an odd, little man who wore wool socks.

Around his neck. 

To help his throat during frequent bouts with laryngitis, he once explained — en francais — when I stared at it a little too long while standing at the side of his desk one day.

Determined, he seemed, to be somebody else.

Someone more interesting, more cosmopolitan.

E tres certainment, un les Francais.

And maybe he was all of these things.

But not to me.

Because all I saw was an odd, little man, struggling to try on someone else’s suit.

Someone else’s life.

But it wasn’t a match, as he squiggled and squirmed in the ill-fitting being in front of the classroom, annoyed when we didn’t grab French-made suits of our own.

And each day I watched him be someone he wasn’t, which made me not listen.

Which made me feel artless and awkward and restless and destined to fail because I just didn’t get it.

Or him.

Monsieur Neumark was like the wool sock around his neck.

Out of place and out of step.

And I did not care to follow.

Part Two:  Mrs. Alleman’s Magic

I once wrote a children’s fairytale in which a funny, little witch named Addie Mostsincere leads the two heroes on an exciting and daring adventure. In the years since, I’d never attributed the character to anyone in particular, until just recently, when I began writing about a beloved high school teacher, Enid Alleman, or Mrs. Alleman.

A teeny, tiny titan of the teaching profession, who I was lucky enough to have for Speech my junior year. 

Like my fairytale character, she had a little magic.

Most kids liked Mrs. Alleman because  Mrs. Alleman was not like most teachers.

She was not like most people.

Hovering somewhere near 5 feet tall, she wore Peter Pan blouses, pedal pushers and ballerina flats. Her dark hair had a pixie cut and you’d never see her without her red, cat-eye glasses, behind which lay a set of mischievous and wise, yet sorrowful eyes.

Her diminuitive size and spritly appearance gave her that Fairy Godmother-like quality, but her immense character, passion and compassion gave her wings.  

Entering her classroom was not like entering other classrooms and it wasn’t all the personal knick-knacks she had filled it with over the years. It was Mrs. Alleman. Who filled it with her penpal-to-prisoners personality.

And evenmoreso, allowed her students to fill it with theirs. 

Unabashed and unreservedly.

I never knew what to expect. No one did. 

Mrs. Alleman liked the idea of finding one’s self and one’s inspiration in the unexpected moment. 

One long overdue, spring day, with the two, immense sash windows of her classroom fully raised to invite in the sweet breezes, my brother stood at the podium, in front of Mrs. Alleman’s 4th period speech class when a sudden gust of wind snatched the paper from the platform and quickly swept it through the enormous windows, into the courtyard, one floor down.

Without hesitation, Jim dashed from the classroom (just ahead of some classmates trying to beat him to it), down the stairs and into the courtyard, where he found his wind swept speech and — with Mrs. Alleman and the remainder of the class leaning from the sills — finished his presentation.

Barely missing a beat.

Mrs. Alleman told students about the incident for years and I don’t think because of the random silliness of it.

Which she wouldn’t deny.

But because of what Jim did with it.

He followed the breezes, instead of fighting them.

And it was musical - even a little magical.

Just as Mrs. Alleman was.

Who, like Addie, urged us heroes to explore the worlds within and without.

To follow the breezes.

Within Close Range: Tubular Bells

Built on a slope, at the end of a cul du sac, down a short, steep drive, everything about the holiday rental house feels dark, narrow, sunken.

And hairy.

The owners of the house on the outskirts of Snowmass, Colorado have several Huskies. Or rather, several Huskies own this house, as can be gathered by the Husky-related photos, ribbons, paintings and pillows.

The neighbors next door also have one of these intrepid snow dogs, who sits on the frozen earth, at the end of a chain by their front door, all day and all night.

Quietly watching us come and go.

Everything about the rental house feels well-loved and lived-in - if not a little too. An ingenious plan (or a happy accident) to be staying in a place where messes and mishaps could easily be forgiven.

Easily hidden.

Where Mom and Dad - determined to enjoy at least some of the family vacation, without the family - can leave us with little worry of expensive damage or extensive injury. 

So, with plans for dinner out with friends, Mom and Dad leave the five of us with several pizza delivery menues, cash, and a warning to be on our best behaviour. 

By the time our rapidly delivered dinner is being noisily digested and discharged in a particularly fierce burping and farting duel between Jim and Mark, we’ve already started getting restless. 

Bored.

But as the moon rises, the explorable world around us shrinks to within the dark rooms and narrow corridors of someone else’s life.

Someone who doesn’t like T.V.

But loves albums.

Which Jim discovers (along with a stereo system) while snooping. 

Leaving him crouched over the turntable, Chris, Mia and I decide to make  a half-hearted attempt to ready for bed - maybe play cards - and head to our shared bedroom.

I look for a corner to crouch in where siblings’ spying eyes can’t see me in my undies.

“Oh, Anne, I used to bathe you for God’s sake!”

Chris’s words offer the opposite of comfort, so I find a spot between the window and bed where I shiver and squiggle into my nightgown.

Just outside the window, I hear a mournful howl that makes all the hairs, on all of my goosebumps, stand at attention. 

Peeking around the curtains and rubbing away enough frost on the glass to spy out, there, in the shadows of the bright moon, sits the Husky next door, baying into the starry night.

Receiving no reply to his woeful song.

He howls again and I linger at the window, hoping to hear an answer to this haunting moonlight serenade, but hear, instead, strange noises from within.

Jim is up to something… 

We all sense it.

But before Chris, Mia and I even have a chance to share our concerns…

… the entire house goes completely dark.

Crap.

The Husky howls again, filling the dark room with his sorrowful song.

“Jim!!!!”

Silence.

“Don’t be an idiot, Jim,” Chris shouts through the closed and now locked bedroom door into the unknown. “Turn the lights back on!”

No reply.

There’s a tap on the door. 

Mia, Chris and I look at each other, but say nothing.

There’s another tap.

Mark whispers meekly from the other side, “Come on you guys… Let me in…”

Now, Mark has been Jim’s loyal minion many times before, so we know opening that door might mean the intended ambush is upon us. But Mark is a lousy liar and an even lousier actor and his frightened pleas are a little too real. So, we move en masse to the door, open it only slightly, and grabbing for Mark’s skinny arm in the dark, Chris yanks the youngest our our clan through.

Rubbing his manhandled limb, he pleads innocence as we pepper him with questions. He soon convinces us that he has no idea where Jim is, or what he’s up to.

Before long, we have our answer.

From out of the pitch black, the rise and fall of fluttering notes on a piano (which had become very familiar to us since the day Jim returned home with the album, Tubular Bells), can be heard coming from the living room.

Forever to be fused with the cult horror film, “The Exorcist”,  this simple series of horrificly hypnotic notes is currently sending shivers up millions of theater-going spines.

Including those of us not old enough to see Linda Blair’s head spin.

Legendary tales of the movie’s shocking scenes (and cursed actors) have been playground fodder for months. 

It’s clear, Jim is out to scare the daylights out of each and every one of us.

He’s spent nearly an hour trying to figure out the house’s electrical panel so he can turn off all the house lights, but leave the stereo playing.

He is truly committed.

Or perhaps, should be.

As the terror-inspiring piano solo plays on, I feel trapped, huddled there in the small bedroom.

Defenseless.

Directionless.

Do I laugh?

Do I cry?

Pee my pants?

The longer we stay holed up behind a locked bedroom door, the longer Jim has to think of ways to scare us even worse.

It’s decided. We have to act. 

We have to head into the dark.

Face the music.

Find Jim.

Or let him find us.

Only guessing at each other’s expressions in the dark and in our whispers, Chris quietly unlocks the bedroom door and cracks it open slightly to see what she can see.

Which is nothing.

She opens it a little wider.

Still more black.

Tubular Bells is now flooding the room.

He’s out there, somewhere.

In the dark.

Ready to pounce.

Without so much as a warning, Mark is unceremoniously shoved out the door first. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I watch his small, shirtless frame stall in the center of the hallway, not knowing which way to turn.

“Do you see anything?” Chris whispers.

If Mark replies, none of us hear it over the growing musical crescendo.

He swivels right and begins to head further down the hallway toward the other bedrooms. A daring, devil-may-care move away from all known exits.

We feel obliged to follow, but as soon as the three of us step into the hall and turn toward Mark (who is already nearing the end of it), a dark, bellowing-mass-of-a-figure pounces from a hallway storage closet toward our tiny, hapless human sacrifice.

All I see before scrambling over Chris and Mia in a frenzied retreat, is Mark’s body suddenly stiffen and spring a foot off the ground before collapsing into a heap on the hairy carpeting, in the center of the dark, narrow hall.

Chris, Mia and I scramble over each other to get to the bedroom, then slam and lock the door.

Leaving Mark.

In the dark.

To fend for himself.

When all is quiet again, we crack open the door to see if he’s still there.

But he’s nowhere to be seen.

They’re nowhere to be seen.

Mark’s defection to the other side is neither unexpected, nor unwarranted.

Yet it’s also unsettling.

In the still, dark bedroom of the still, dark house, all I hear is Chris and Mia breathing.

And the Husky howling.

Long and sorrowfully.