The Mayhews didn’t attend the Rathbun gig. Jack was anxious to mow the yards and yards of yards before a baler was required (their two lots, the inlaws’ spread across 2nd Street, and Betz Langdon’s yard that he volunteered to trim for beer), then hit three-corner pond for some fishen’ with his girls, afterwards, on this late spring Saturday.
He didn’t yet know many of the high school teachers—that wouldn’t come for another five years when Angie would attend the Castle, and Julia was not a rah-rah student (although she was an eighth grade cheerleader—fun, she thought, until she realized it required practice). Mostly bored and uninspired, she sneak-read Stephen King novels in English class while the rest were studying Steinbeck. She fared little better in her other studies and was not in band. The very last thing she wanted to do today was hobnob with the prison guards who tortured her for four long years inside the stonewalled DCHS gulag.
Betz was thankful for the mows, friendship and the assistance around the house, especially since her own kids rarely helped out with such things. Jack scooped her sidewalk and brought in her mail on heavy snow days which caused Fatboy to miss work because the roads to Quincy had drifted shut, which allowed him to enjoy drunken blizzard afternoons of laughs, cheap vodka, and game shows with his retired friend; Julia often sent over hot, home-cooked meals. She was almost Angie’s second grandmother, plying her with candy the way she plied Jack with alcohol.
He knocked out their own yard first, and when he pushed on to mow the small strip of grass that grew alongside Betz’s garage, he froze—what the hell? Mostly immobilized by a too-short log chain was a beast with a head of a bowling ball; a drooling monster that seemed much larger than its little shack of a dog house. No way Jack was going to be mauled, killed, and eaten by her new pet Rottweiler. Not for curb appeal.
When he finished mowing her front and side yards, it was, of course, beer-thirty and break time. “Hey, Betz, when’d ya get the bear?” he joked as they sat under the shade of her linden tree. He drained half a can and grabbed another 12 frothy fluid ounces from the cooler.
“Oh, that’s Boomer, grandson Billy’s dog. Daughter Janey tossed the kid out of her house, so he needed a place to stay until he can get his shit together. Him and Boomer are staying here a few months. Billy’s a good kid, so maybe I can help straighten him out a little. It will be nice to have company, anyway, even if I can’t reform him.” Her cackle made the yellow butterfly that was exploring the back of Jack’s hand flutter off.
2
Methihkgreedgreed
It’s widely regarded that regional malls and big box stores killed small town mom-and-pop shops all across America. Their business model is to dominate market share; that is, they grow mostly at the expense of existing competitors, many of them locally owned independent businesses. With their massive advertising budgets, ability to squeeze suppliers on wholesale prices, and use of devices such as “loss leaders″ and end-cap specials (those catchy deals at the ends of aisles), the chains have the ability to undercut smaller retailers. Mom-and-pops could not compete.
By the mid-1980s, such shopping centers became economic icons of urban sprawl as well as killers. Since they require large footprints, they were rarely built in central urban locations, opting instead to locate in suburbs and exurbs, furthering the movement of economic activity away from the urban cores. With their massive parking lots and big-road access systems, they are often inaccessible or poorly accessible by public transportation. Now folks in small towns had to drive an hour round-trip just to get even a few staples.
Furthermore, large conglomerates are notorious for offering low wages, part-time hours, and lack of health insurance and pension benefits to their “associates.” The only exception are those grocery chains that are unionized, but most other big-box behemoths aggressively fight union organizing efforts. Making money is the bottom line —it’s ALWAYS the bottom line.
In almost every region across the country, the plague of over-built retail is evident. The director of the National Trust’s Main Street Center once testified that cities with too much retail space suffer all kinds of hidden costs. When just one Main Street store, with two floors of 2,000 square feet, goes from being occupied and busy to being vacant, the total cost to the local economy is almost $250,000 a year, she reported. That includes losses in property taxes, wages, bank deposits and loans, rent, sales and profits.
Big-box usually flunks the definition of “economic development” because it packs such a lousy bang for the buck compared to almost any other economic activity. To measure the ripple effects of a new business, you look “upstream” to see how many supplier jobs the region would gain, and then you look “downstream” to see how many jobs would be created by the buying power of the people who work at the business. The upstream of a big-box store creates very few jobs for the local economy (i.e., Made in China), and the downstream ripple effects are terrible because retail jobs are overwhelmingly part-time and poverty-wage, with no health care. That means most retail workers have very small disposable incomes: after paying for bare necessities, they have little left with which to stimulate the local economy. (Good Jobs First - Tracking Subsidies, Promoting Accountability in Economic Development)
Jack witnessed this economic attrition first-hand. B & B’s Market, owned since 1963 by Bob and Bonnie Nickols, was the last still-open grocery store in town, and it was on its very last wobbly shopping-cart legs. Half-stocked shelves of food items that were ten times fresher and half the cost a half-hour away, sat lightly powdered in dust. Although the Mayhews didn’t shop here much, only making quick dashes for a loaf of (days-old) bread, a dozen eggs, or their home-made ham salad.
Most of the other businesses in Dallas City had shuttered their doors for good by the early ’90s with the exception of two convenience store/gas station chains, famous for their pizzas and overpriced incidentals, and the epitome of death and taxes: the funeral home and the bank. If not for the two downtown taverns and a few other lingering businesses on life-support, Oak Street would have been deserted. It was sad for Jack to see all the boarded-up, empty businesses after seeing the glitz and tinsel of LA boutiques.
3
The embarrassing window fiasco at the open house a month before was but the opening refrain of troubles with the Rathbuns’ new house. Calls to the contractor (and hearing his flimsy excuses) became routine: doors were opening and slamming shut on their own (forgot to balance them when they were screwed to the stiles); the flooring in the kitchen started to rise and bubble (it was faulty tile, said contractor; tile was fine, it was the cheap adhesive the contractor used to lay it down with, blamed the tile company); the stench of death wafted from their master bedroom (a possum had gotten wedged between two panels of drywall and died—lots more wildlife up here then in town, doncha know).
On this already sultry 4th of July morning, Eugene was already getting hotter and hotter underneath his buttoned-down collar. His percolating anger had started at the breakfast table when Winnie asked him if he could finish his crossword puzzle in the other room so she could clean up a little.
“I finish it here every morning. It’s routine,” he replied half-listening, pondering answers for 33 Down: Prestidigitating Johnson. “There are three reasons for this, dear: one, the eastern-facing windows bring in the bursting morning light; two, the pastoral view is relaxing to look at while mulling letters that might fit into the empty squares; and three, the coffee maker is close for refills,” he explained with more acid in his voice than was in his grapefruit.
“Please?” she pleaded, “I just want to get some housework done.”
“Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo to you, too! Goddamn it woman, what the hell! Don’t you have anything else to do today but yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap—then yap, yap, yap some more?” he erupted suddenly after being dormant all these years, like Mount Saint Helens. He grabbed his newspaper, pen and mug, and stomped off to the sofa.
Winnie was shocked and stabbed by his ugly outburst. Never in their decades of marriage had he ever even once raised his voice to her. Eugene was meek and mild; not one to pick a fight, always agreeable. Had he kept this rage bottled up inside him all these years? Was this malignant outburst just a one time thing? Was it because now they were together 24/7/365? The onset of dementia? She finished cleaning up the kitchen through blurry eyes.
Eugene finished the puzzle. “Mmmmmm...the answer to 33 Down is M-A-G-I-C; sorry, not a sports fan,” he mumbled to nobody, drained his coffee and made sure Winnie saw him load the mug into the dishwasher. “Don’t want to overburden you, you old nag,” he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear.
She faced the bay window as the waterworks returned. She had hoped, had assumed, that he would have cooled down by now and apologized because completing the newspaper puzzle usually brought a great sense of accomplishment to him, but no, “I’m sorry” came forth. Was it him? Her? Them?
After letting the dishwasher door slam shut on purpose, her husband stamped outside and was immediately slapped in the face with the wet dishrag effect of Mississippi River Valley summer humidity. What was happening to him? Are these the “golden years″ the commercials promised?
Headaches, pounding away like the always off-rhythm drum section, have been bothering him lately, as have bouts of depression (the e-flat minors, he called them whenever he felt down and low). Without purpose, Eugene felt left out as the world spun without him, and useless. The increasing frequency of tinnitus in both ears also seemed to be exacerbating. He will get his hearing tested, Todd, but he needs quiet right now--magnificent silence--away from a bitch of a wife and a lifetime of loud and sour “music” produced by unruly brats, most of whom only took band because they needed the credits to graduate from Hicktown High.
What a fool he had been to think people in town actually cared about him! He putzed through the garage, outside, to his refuge, out back. Hell, most of them only came to the open house for the free food, anyway. Why would they give a shit about a shitty music teacher? Shit.
The small stand of cottonwoods and white oaks behind the house that had escaped execution by chainsaw was Eugene’s usual “man-grove” for cooling shade, quiet, and birdwatching. “Oh, dear redbirds, your songs so sweet/the kids could never play as fair as thee,” he lamented as two cardinals whistled a flirt from distant perches. “I guess the blame for that falls on me,” he sighed, his inner peace floating away like the cottonwood seeds on their little silky parachutes. “I was a lousy teacher. Not much impact on anybody. Oh well,” he shrugged and hiked back to the house, dripping sauna-style. “In retrospect, I guess our lives are not as significant as we imagined them to be at the time we were living them.”
Now crossing the growing tangle of weeds and crabgrass that was supposed to be a gently rolling side yard of blue fescue by now, Eugene again became agitated. Last April the landscaper leveled, tilled, and sowed residential grass where the natural flora had thrived for millenia. Although nurtured by nice spring rains, chemical fertilizers and warm temperatures, the soil remained fallow, as bald of grass as its new neighbor, the concrete patio. “Musta been bad seed,” the landscaper told him and shrugged, soccer-balling a dirt clod between his boots.
“I was rather hoping for a lush green lawn next month,” came Eugene’s disappointed reply. “Well, shoot. I guess we’ll just have to reseed it then, but too late for our open house,” he sighed.
“Well . . . there is another solution. We can roll in sod and you guys will have a perfect, ready-made lawn for your big hellabaloo.” After chattering via two-way radio from his truck, the landscaper promised, “We can lay it down on May 25th.”
“That’d be great!” Eugene was enthusiastic -- thrilled—until the outlay of a couple more thousand dollars was nothing but a torn up, muddy mess of tire tracks and footprints left by guests after the storm subsided. The rest of the grass not stomped to death was gone a couple weeks later.
Winnie stood at the kitchen sink and watched her husband pace his not-so-fertile lawn of dust. He seemed worked up. Agitated. She grabbed a glass and her pillbox that separated the rxs by days, contemplating different hobbies that he might engage in. “I’ve got to find him something to do. For his sanity, and for mine,” she said out loud, turning the tap.
She felt another flash of “now-what’s-broke” anxiety as she heard the pvb pipe connected through the floor gurgle and groan, the cold water knob stuttered in her hand with nothing coming out except a hiss of warm, foul air--at first; that was followed by more groaning, and one quick spurt of iced-tea looking water, followed by a short ooze of “pipe pudding” that quarter-filled the glass before the faucet moaned a death rattle and stopped flowing completely. “Now what?” She recoiled and gagged, grossed out.
As Eugene paced his earthy desolation, upset, his nose caught a foul scent in the air, one hinting at rotten eggs. “What in the fucking name of Peter, Paul, and Mary is going on now?” He whiffed and coughed, the malodorous odor coming from the ground growing stronger and more noxious. Now he noticed the iced-tea-colored water that began seeping through the cracks, irrigating the hardened soil. “Well... this isn’t good,″ he said, looking puzzled.
Winnie ran out to the patio and was hit by the outdoor wall of stink. “Gene, what in the world?” she quivered, accentuated with another round of blubbering.
“Go back inside; that’s where I’m headed! To call the septic tank guy! If this ain’t a shithouse full of shit!”
His eyes began to burn and sting from the vapors; his nose, a sense organ he wished he didn’t have right now, overpowered. Seeking relief, Eugene started for the house, but was soon stopped short a second time.
Now a brown, greasy spring of semi-liquid sludge began bubbling up through the ground, spreading out far and wide and fast, and with force–just like the concrete pour he thought looked like cow poop when they laid the goddamn foundation of this goddamn farce of a goddamn house. Eugene moved as fast as his old knees could carry him, but hundreds of gallons of spewing leaking fecal matter moved faster. Each step was choreographed, although waste material splattered his clothes no matter how carefully he trod. The initial puddle was flooding into a pond and he hadn’t yet escaped Ground Zero.
Mucking himself carefully towards sanctuary, he only needed to make it down the little rolling slope that was landscaped to drain rainwater away from the house, a length of about 20-25 feet, and then maneuver about the same length of flatness and he would be home free--“this goddamn house has been anything but home free!” he yelled to the sky, focussing on each next careful step. His best strategy to keep upright, he decided, was the “pigeon-toed” style of walking, with shoes turned inward. A half-dozen careful scissors-steps down and he was keeping his balance just fine.
Sometimes exercising caution works wonders; sometimes the very act of intense concentration on one thing can lead to a lapse in other areas, as in Eugene Rathbun’s case in this situation. He focused on his feet when it was his outback sun hat that sent him down, skidding down a slip-and-slide of shit and grease and tangled hairballs. The hat stayed on, sure, because of the chinstrap, but it was the little wooden adjuster tick-tocking on the end of it that had distracted him just enough to make that one fatal miscalculation of the next (failed) step.
His increasing girth--Eugene had gained thirty pounds since retiring--created a big splashdown, bellyflop-style, swallowing a mouthful. His attempt to stop the 20-foot skid by going full spread-eagle only squeegeed the fecal sludge closer towards his body. He might have slid all the way down the bluff if not stopped by a patch of invasive chickweed that was in his path.
This little oasis stopped his momentum, but now even this deep-green ground cover with small, white flowers splattered brown was becoming inundated by the rising cesspool, as low-lying lands are with seawater due to climate change. Eugene was slow to stand--really not the best goddamn time for his arthritis to flare up in the middle of a literal shitstorm--determined to slog to the goddamned house, with only twenty feet of flatness to go!
One step and still wading through shit and piss and sludge up to his ankles--he ditched his previous strategy of walking “pigeon-toed style,” choosing instead to strike out on his good leg, straight ahead. The second step, propelling his bum knee, was less successful. It gave way with a pop, and, with slipping momentum, caused him to tumble forward. He fell with a face plant splat with enough force to knock off his outback sun hat: wonderful! Now my hair is lathered in shit shampoo and my sinuses are clogged with snotty shitballs. Eugene got off the ground as easily as a turtle laying on its shell, looking like a human M & M.
“Oh, Christ!!” he bellowed in disgust, after puking up his coffee, toast and grapefruit. And then while using a small piece of unsoiled shirt for a baby-wipe, he saw Winnie back on the patio, misconstruing her look of terror for one of hilarity; her blubbering for laughter.
How’d you like the roller coaster ride, honey? he thought he heard her mock in a low, weird voice. And through the waves of heat rising off the concrete and through his salty tears of shit and sweat, he saw an older, dark-skinned man wearing a woven headdress standing next to her, phasing in and out, laughing with her. What the fuck? Was this the same guy he saw in the canoe the morning they poured the foundation on this goddamn place?
“Screw you, fucking both!” he raged, still retching and gagging, fireworks exploding before dark. To this, she bawled some more. And now he thought he heard the man beside her crow in delight, “You’re really quite fucked, Mr. Rathbun!” before his image phased out for good just as Eugene reached secure footing on the cement patio.
His face and clothes reeking and soiled, he used the phone in the garage to make the call. “What do you mean you’re closed for the Fourth of July weekend, but will be out first thing Monday morning to dig out and replace the septic tank? Fuck your patriotism!” Eugene shouted, furious. Incredulous.
He scraped human feces--her goddamn shit!--on the rug runner as he was told that this had never happened before--that it must have been a manufacturing flaw that had nothing to do with the way he put her in. “Not my fault, but I’ll replace it for free, of course. In the meantime, just let her drain out. You’re in the boondocks, no one will know,” septic tank guy replied, nonchalantly.
“WHAT KIND OF SHIT IS THIS!” Eugene screamed, slamming down the receiver. “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” An interjection in the literal sense.
He stripped down to his once-tighty-whities that he shit from the outside in, why the fuck didn’t I wear a belt?, tossed his clothes in a trash can, and returned to the house for a very long hot shower to cool down his temper, then back downstairs to the maudlin fare on the tube that Winnie kept on all day for company. Great...have to wallow in more of her excrement, he thought before slumping in the chair furthest from his wife in emotional exhaustion and resignation. At least it was cool here. And non-hazardous.
The television droned on unmercifully, Winnie busy about the house, avoiding her husband at all costs, watching bits and pieces of “real people with real problems” on TV. They’ve got nothing on us, she thought while Eugene cat-napped in the corner. Now his dozing was interrupted, not by another mesothelioma lawsuit commercial, but by a rhythmic drip . . . drip . . . drip. Startled to attention, he watched in anger as the window panels started leaking water again.
“Okay, asshole, this is absolute BULLSHIT!” he roared into the phone to the contractor whose number he had memorized by habitual repetition, including another blowout call about a defective circuit breaker just yesterday. Come up here and fix these leaking motherfuckers right fucking NOW!”
“That’s impossible, Eugene. They can’t be leaking; we made sure they were double-sealed when we fixed ’em last time.”
“Stop with your goddamn excuses, Jesus Christ, man!” he bellowed, watching it Niagara Falls again inside the glass. Winnie watched, shell-shocked, the A-frame’s waterworks reminding her of her own crying jags. It seemed that both her and the house were in despair today.
“Eugene! Eugene! Listen to me!” the contractor pleaded. “ Eugene, the windows can’t be leaking rain! Take a look out your goddamn window, man!—there ain’t one cloud in the damn sky!”
ns 15.158.61.6da2