Tales From the Burning Prairie

Louise never intended to be a Liar. It was one of those things that just seems to happen, to take on a life of its own. It all started with her husband, the one she should never have married.

Growing up during the Depression was a hardship for everyone, at least everyone she ever met. Her family lived in the rolling hills in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, not far from Joplin or Galena, depending on which road you took. They never took those roads. Instead, when speaking of “going to town”, they meant Miami. The little town seemed so cosmopolitan to them, with its stores and the Coleman Movie Theater.

Louise and her brothers and sisters (2 brothers, 3 sisters) had their share of fun growing up. There were animals to play with, they even had a goat-cart. Not many toys to be had, but the whole countryside was their playground. They did what odd jobs came their way, on top of their regular chores (for which they didn’t receive one dime), they gathered berries in season and sold them to the general store. The nickels and dimes and even pennies would buy them double-features and popcorn at the Coleman. The boys did things boys did in those days, tipping outhouses and sneaking a cow into the doctor’s office. How they got it up those rickety stairs, Louise could never figure out.

As for Louise, she was the oldest and had recently discovered new pastimes. Likely boys would come calling and spend their own nickels and dimes on the movies and popcorn; Louise now saved hers for fabric and buttons and fancy hats. She was the beauty of the family, tall and athletic. Her long legs and shiny black hair drew admiring looks wherever she went, much to the chagrin of her father. He didn’t think too much of his oldest daughter, he didn’t care that she was the smartest student in the tiny school, she wasn’t a son. Not being male was sin enough for him, and he punished her appropriately. Her love of tennis especially infuriated him, the immodesty of the outfits were an affront to his rigid sense of decency.

The last time he took a switch to her, she was 16 and a big, strong girl. She broke free and pushed him to the floor. Then she informed him that if he ever raised his hand to her again she would kill him. She meant it and he believed her. Knowing she needed to leave soon, she married, perhaps unwisely.

Her new husband had been the oldest of her suitors; her logic led her to believe that alone made him the best choice. Louise was wrong, but the rigid, stubborn streak she inherited from her father would not allow her to admit it. So she tolerated his drinking and infidelities, but it was his disdain for honest work that she couldn’t abide.

The Depression ended and the War started. Her brothers enlisted right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor (one would die in the middle of the ocean and one would see his fellow soldiers’ blood stain the water and land of Normandy but survive himself), as did all of her old swains. She dragged her no-good lout of a husband to Joplin to enlist. He was relieved and she enraged when they wouldn’t take him. The army sited his sole support of his dependents as the reason. Louise laughed a harsh and bitter laugh upon hearing this. She took in laundry and ironing and sewed dresses for other women’s children to support them and their two children.

Some time passed and she heard that Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa was hiring anyone that could do the job. She left her children in her mother’s care when she and her husband Harold went to Tulsa. Louise was competent and still strong and got work assembling bombers. Harold wasted most of his time in bars, spending the money Louise forgot to hide. She finally reached her limit, took all her money, put it in the bank and told Harold to get his own money if he wanted to drink.

When she got back to their rooming house after her shift, he was gone. It wasn’t like all the nights when he was at the bar down the street, this felt emptier, freer somehow. His clothes were gone and his shaving kit, too. She found a letter on the dresser. Just like the yellow dog to leave a letter instead of telling me outright, she thought. The letter said he never wanted a family and he was leaving with someone named Mildred. Some barfly floozy, no doubt.

That was when she gave birth to The Lie. It was easy, he had no living family so she sent a letter to her mother saying he died and she had him buried in Tulsa. The letters flew back and forth. The kids could stay there, no she didn’t need help, she would decide what to do after the war, no don’t tell anybody else including the kids, she would do it.

So she worked hard and saved her money. After the war, she went back home to work so her mother could continue to help her raise her children. No one could understand why she wouldn’t take any of the help available to widows. Nor would she entertain the notion of remarrying. Even if that coward had had the courage to face her and give her a divorce, she would never be tied to a man again. Her fortunes, and those of her children, would be hers and hers alone. She’d filed her divorce papers in Tulsa, but he couldn’t be found to sign them. So even if she wanted to, she couldn’t remarry. And her pride. Her pride had conceived the lie in the first place and now it kept it going. Louise would not be the abandoned wife and her children would not be abandoned, either. People were so cruel, much better to pretend forever that he was dead.

She scrimped and saved for years, making their clothes, growing vegetables in the yard, making do. Then one day she did something that single mothers rarely did in that day, she bought a house. And she paid cash for it, no mortgage for her. It was small, but it was clean and decent and close to the kids’ schools. Her oldest had a glimmering of understanding and worked at any job he could find to buy extras for himself. But her youngest, she complained bitterly at not having all the things her friends had. Louise did her best, but it was never enough.

To her credit, Louise hated The Lie. She tried to be truthful in all else, but that was difficult. The Lie engendered other lies, spreading its tentacles to all areas of her life. It would’ve been so much easier to delude herself into believing The Lie was true. She tried to, but that pride of hers wouldn’t let her accept The Lie as reality no matter how bitter a cup was the Truth. She got very good at redirection, changing the subject, clouding the issue. Louise thought she would get away clean, that her children most of all would never find out.

Almost, she almost got away with it. Her oldest was grown and gone, with a wife of his own and her youngest was just graduating high school. She had plans to go to secretarial school and get a job in the Big City. Which big city? She didn’t know. Louise was just starting to relax with her last chick getting ready to fly their cozy nest for the hazards of Life. Until.

Until he showed up, practically at her front door. The daughter arrived home from school one spring day, scared to death of a strange man that had followed her home. Louise looked out the window and instantly recognized the shabby figure sitting on the curb. It was her husband. Instructing her frightened daughter to stay put “or else”, she went to talk to him.

“Harold. What do you want?” She put her hands on her hips and waited for him to answer.

“Can’t a man come to see his wife and kids?” He squinted his yellowing eyes up at her, his worn-out face begging for a ‘yes’.

“Not if he’s been gone for 15 years. Not if he left for some drunken floozy. Not…”she cut herself off because she realized that her voice was growing louder and causing a scene was not her way. “Well, you look clean enough, smell a little boozy though. Come inside the house, somehow I’ll deal with this too.”

“You always were a direct woman.”

Her daughter was in a state of panic as she led the man into the house. ‘Aflutter’ Louise’s mother would’ve called it. Grabbing her daughter’s shoulders to stop her, she said, “Suzy, I have to tell you something, well a lot of things, it’s not going to be easy for you to understand.” The girl stopped moving and looked right at the man.

“Mother, who is that?”

“That, my dear, is your father.”

It took the better part of an hour to help both of them understand why she Lied. That she was not just protecting herself, but also her children. That had she admitted her mistake in marrying him, maybe they would think they were mistakes as well. “And, Honey, you were never a mistake.” At the end, she said, “Well, we’d better call Frank and tell him about your father.”

“He knows,” said Harold in a sad, eroded voice. “I went to see him day before yesterday.” He said that he was dying, soon. Years of drink and poverty were claiming their bounty. He needed to make his peace before he died. Louise shook her head and looked at her arms crossed over her chest. Fifteen years may have passed, but Harold’s first, last, only thought was for himself, no matter who else was hurt.

The Lie was over and the truth was out. She called her son, and apologized for Lying all these many years. Each of the three offered to continue The Lie with her, but she refused. The truth had set her free. With a maturity her mother didn’t know she possessed, Suzy told her that everyone else should be told, too.

It didn’t take long for the truth to filter through their little town. Most people had always admired Louise for her strength and competence, and the truth didn’t lessen that admiration one whit. In fact, most of her friends thought they might also make up a more dignified story when faced with such an awful situation.

She had never loved him, but she had liked him once upon a long time ago and her anger had burned itself out many years before. He had helped her get out of her childhood home and in gratitude for that, and since he was still her husband, she moved him into Frank’s old room. He was right, he did die soon, but he got to know his children first, and Louise was glad that she didn’t rob a sick, old man of his last happiness.

His funeral was small, he hadn’t made a single friend in fifteen years, but his wife and children were there and even a handful of her friends. And so The Lie became Truth, finally. And she found that now, no longer a Liar, she could move on with her life. Her daughter left for the Big City (she decided on Chicago), her son had a son, and she remarried. He was a farmer, he never drank, and she loved him.

Sometimes the boundaries between city and country are difficult to determine. The city outgrows its original limits, in fits and spurts, in bits and pieces. A neighborhood attached to town on one end will project out into what used to be pasture. Not so bucolic, these projections. They stick out awkwardly, like gangly arms from too-short sleeves and bony ankles peeking under high-water pants. I grew up in one such neighborhood.

When we moved in it looked typical of its ilk. Sod yards, no real trees. Not trees for climbing anyway, only sad, scrawny things held up by lengths of garden hose-covered rope. They seemed inadequate to the task of surviving in Tornado Alley. And indeed, the first real storm season took most of these pathetic specimens right out of the ground. And all the houses looked the same, which has probably been a common complaint since people moved out of caves. I can just hear early hut-dwelling housewives complaining about the hut her poor husband built out of mud, sticks, and hard-won pelts. How their hut looked just like every other hut in the village. That was my mom’s chief complaint, not her only one, mind you, but the one she trotted out most often.

I didn’t mind, there were lots of kids to play with and a Mom-and-Pop store at the end of the next street over. There were also woods on two sides of our neighborhood. We were very close to the river, not close enough to flood but close enough to smell the mossy, fishy smell of it if the wind blew just right.

Those woods, the woods they carved our neighborhood out of, were reportedly haunted or cursed. No one could pin down exactly which one, but either haunted or cursed, we didn’t venture into those woods. None of the stories, about Indian Burial Grounds or escaped lunatics, were likely true. But we weren’t taking any chances.

Until one day, in the summer I turned eleven, when a group of us decided to stare in the face of death, and walk through the woods.

Six of us, including me, set out that day. Me, of course, Francie, Lucky, Wade, and the twins Mitzy and Jo, intrepid warriors all. We had heard the latest rumor: there was a bear in those woods. He had escaped from the zoo or a circus, or was someone’s pet that got too big too handle. One of the boys, probably Lucky (that was his honest-to-Pete birth certificate name), had a bag with stuff we thought we should take with us. We took food, in case we got lost and hungry (no water of course), a flashlight, a length of rope totally unsuited to securing a bear, and Wade’s little pea-shooter .22.

Parking our bikes in front of the barbed wire fence at the edge of the woods (so people searching for us would know where to start), we went in. Looking back, having seen a real forest or two since then, I can say that it wasn’t much of a woods, more overgrown than anything. But to six small to middling kids, it seemed like the Black Forest, dark and forbidding all on its own. The twins held hands, but the rest of us were desperately trying to prove how fearless we were, so we walked spread out. We were scared half-out of our pants, so it should come as no surprise that we huddled together like sheep at the first odd sound.

“It was just the wind,” somebody said. But there was no wind. Nothing penetrated those trees, not wind, not sun, we couldn’t even hear any bird calls, just the growing sound of the river, sluggishly picking its way through the land. Oh, and the smell. At first we thought it was the river, stinkier than usual. But the river didn’t have that rotten meat smell, that skunky smell. The smell got stronger and stronger the further in we walked. Then we began to see them, the animals, or what was left of them. They were mostly small animals-rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels. Then we found a dog, and then another. At least we thought it was a dog, it was hard to tell because there wasn’t any fur on it.

But mostly we found bones, lots and lots of bones. Scattered or piled, there were little bones all around us, they crunched underfoot as we walked. The tiny bones were clean and dry and bright white. Wade began to pick some up, but the rest of us didn’t want to touch them. The rest of the girls and I started to complain of the heat. It might not have been the thickest woods, but the trees wouldn’t let even a stray breeze pass. It was shady, but it just made the August heat darker. We had just about had all the creepy we could take and were all turning back towards home, when we heard something, footsteps maybe. There was a rustling caused by something we couldn’t see, but the sound was getting louder. And the smell was getting stronger. From the heat or the smell or fear, I don’t know, but Francie threw up on her shoes.

Then the sounds stopped. Francie began to run back to her bike, making retching noises all the way. The rest of us looked at each other and followed in Francie’s gruesome wake. I don’t remember climbing through the fence on my way out, maybe I vaulted it. I got on my bike and rode across the field until I got to the spot where my street ended. As the rest of the kids pedaled furiously away, I stopped and looked back. And I saw the bear, only it wasn’t a bear.

The thing was shaped like a man, a very large man, covered in black hair. Even an acre away, I could tell it was huge; it was nearly as tall as the trees at the edge of the woods. Those trees were easily three times my height. The wind picked up a little and blew a whiff of that awful odor right in my face. It looked like it was shaking its fist at me, like an irate neighbor. ‘You kids get off of my lawn!’ It could have chased me down, even then, and added my bones to its collection but it didn’t move.

Seeing him and smelling him will live in my memory forever, but not a single day passes that I don’t remember my last moment with the monster. He raised one foot and slammed it on the earth so hard that I could feel a tremor an acre away. And then he screamed.

We moved away not too long after that. I was relieved to leave that cookie-cutter house behind, even gladder to get so far away from the woods and the monster that lived there. Nobody else saw him that day and I learned to never tell what I had seen. I couldn’t escape my memories, though, so I took him with me everywhere I went. And sometimes, deep in the night, deep in dreams, I can still hear him screaming.

Some people believe in reincarnation; some people believe that we only get one shot, one try at getting it right. What if we don’t get it right this time but if given one or two extra tries, we would? Are we out of luck?

The phrase “old soul” has always resonated for me; hearing it applied to some people, I think, Yes, that’s just exactly, precisely it. And there have to be “new souls” to balance; people who bring a sense of wonderment and child-like joy to even the smallest, most mundane things.

Each viewpoint can present its own problems. The once-around, go-for-broke tradition can be rather nihilistic. People don’t care about this world, because they are too busy “laying up treasures in heaven”. Why bother to care for the physical well-being of your fellow man when you are living only to die. To go home, to see Jesus, to receive whatever heavenly rewards you think you deserve. Or this viewpoint can inspire a hedonistic attitude of abandon. This is it, live for today for tomorrow you may die.

From personal experience, I have come to believe that the most destructive of these one-shot belief systems is the modern cult of The Book of Revelations. Think you’ve never heard of this cult? Yes you have, they refer to themselves as Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians, but since they tend to ignore the words of Christ and focus on doomsday, I would term them Rapturists. And their message can be dangerous. Here’s how: take an impressionable but normal teenager, coursing with hormones and God-given urges, tell them sex is evil except within the tightly controlled bonds of matrimony, then tell them the world is doomed and the rapture is imminent. More than likely, one of two things will happen. (1) Teenager rushes into a sexual relationship before mature enough to handle it, not wanting to miss out on getting lucky before he or she shuffles off this mortal coil or, worse, (2) Teenager (or young twenties) rushes into ill-conceived marriage, thereby ruining two lives with the possibility of ruining more. Then there are all manner of worldly pleasures to be sampled RIGHT NOW before it’s too late. This false sense of urgency doesn’t engender a lot of rational thought but can lead to a lot of heartache.

Concurrent with this is the notion that the Second Coming means never having to be sorry for what you do this planet. And there are as many interpretations of Revelations as there are people reading it. And each person is just as deadly sure that he is right and everyone else is doomed. Oh, yes, not everyone will be saved, and lots of people don’t even deserve to be saved. And since not everyone will be saved, it’s O.K. to hate them. When the focus is on Judgment Day only, condemnation replaces compassion as chief among “virtues”. Dangerous.

Reincarnation poses problems as well. How many times does a person have to go through the process to attain enough enlightenment to go on to whatever is next. I’m treading on pretty shaky ground here, as I don’t know much about Eastern Traditions. But some people I’ve known, some things I’ve experienced, make me wonder if there is not at least a type of truth in this.

I believe in karma, I’ve seen karma in action. Even the Bible talks about karma: cast your bread upon the waters, do unto others, turn the other cheek, love your neighbor. But something confuses me, do we drag our karma from one life to the next? Don’t you think babies should get a totally fresh start, a clean slate? Starting out with a balance of good karma sounds nice, but how terrible to be saddled with bad karma, carried over from the last go-round, from birth onward.

However, that would explain some people I have known. I think that everyone has that one friend, that one lost soul, how was born damaged. Not physically or mentally, nothing chromosomal here, just damaged in the soul or spirit or heart. This person probably was born with every advantage: caring parents with adequate resources, stable home life, loving friends. There might be a gilded path laid out before them, but they eschew the path and take to the woods instead, making their way as difficult and dangerous as possible. It’s hard to understand how a person from a nurturing, supportive environment would turn his back on a civilized life to become the Wild Boy of Avignon. What is the thinking here, “Curses on you, why oh why did you have to be so loving and kind? I shall destroy my life because you wouldn’t do it for me!”?

The only way I can understand such a mindset is if such a person keeps hauling around bad karma from existence to existence, like an over-due library book and the fines just keep piling up. Until one day, they find that they owe $14,ooo for Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret.

I have, or had, one such friend and will never get over worrying about him. For what, in some amorphous past life, is he doing penance? Is he doomed for all this life to walk the darkest forest, brambles tearing at his feet and hands, branches whipping his face?

Or are we all born with a portion each of damage and joy, and it is up to us to decide which portion will better serve us, here on Earth and Beyond.

It rained today; a soft, forgiving rain. I walked out in it, not to stand in its cool mist, but sadly to get from one place to another place. Only after it had stopped did I fully appreciate how beautiful it was. Dinner over, family winding down after the day, a spare moment at loose ends. And how did I spend this rare, precious thing? This fragile gift of time? Taking out the trash, naturally. What an ordinary, necessary task. But this silly, utterly utilitarian job put me outside in that time of day called “gloaming”, when the sun has officially set, but there is still light to see. I”m not much of a daytime girl; sun, sand, lake, never attracted me, never struck me as fun. Stormy days, rainy days like today, always hold sway over me. There is a quality to the light, a clarity in its dimness, that charms me every time. This twilight graced my neighborhood and lent a painterly quality to the driveways and shrubbery, the shade trees and trashcans, the cars and telephone poles. The houses were just beginning to be lit from inside, but children were still playing noisy games outside. Two frogs sang back and forth to each other, sometimes in unison, but slightly off-pitch. The rain-slicked road reflected the trees and the remnants of the sunset. Standing there, watching the day give up the ghost, enjoying my first moment of complete peace for the day, I was put in mind of a saying from Buddhism. “Before enlightenment, there is chopping wood and carrying water, after enlightenment there is chopping wood and carrying water.” Apparently, after enlightenment, there is also dumping rainwater out of trashcans, dragging them back up the driveway, and ridding the house and myself of the day’’s detritus. Clutter in the house is easy to see but sometimes hard to remedy. Clutter in the spirit is impossible to see and sometimes impossible to cure. Maybe we should deal with spiritual mess the same way we deal with household mess–take it out everyday, so the job doesn”t become too large. So everyday, in the gloaming, I”ll slip away from my funny, noisy family and our chaos-house, and stand outside and throw away the mess.