The Frozen Mallard
As the cold weather has laid his hand upon the Midwest, ghosts of memories have started to creep into the empty spaces of my mind. Tickled by the smells I had lost over time and images that were cradled in the head of my child self. Slowly, these thing have been awakened by a frozen lake that I see through my bedroom window each morning.
There is a certain smell the rides the air on a frozen body of water. For a short time the liquid is able to seal it's skin away from what ever the world has to offer. Protecting itself. Creating a wall that is both awake and dead. Lucky son of a bitch.
Death is master of us all. Really one of life's only guarantees.
Unpredictable, insatiable, self-sustaining and ever present. Death is lucky because he gets to be transparent. No one ever says, "You know, that asshole death really pulled the wool over my eyes. I didn't see that one coming."
I was 5 the first time I really saw what death was. Stillness. Quiet. Hard.
While growing up for the first 6 years of my life I lived in the small town of Lathrop. A lot of my family lived there as well, as that is sort of just what you do in a small town. You stay.
My dad's parents also lived there. Mam-maw and Pap-paw were sort of an anomaly doing a bit of everything in what ever form they felt. They spent months traveling each year in an RV but maintained there subterranean home on the outskirts of town. Each Christmas they gave us gifts from their travels. Mexican blankets, silver jewelry, hand sewn dresses, Budweiser Beer Steins, always something unexpected and something I had never seen or had before.
They owned a minimart marked by an old model T on the exterior of the building. It was called Shade Tree Inn. Pap-paw smoked meat in a barrel drum style smoker out front. They sold trucker hats and candy, cigarettes, cold beer and sodas, lottery tickets and dollar toys. His brother Pete was also there. They liked to sit out front and smoke, holding down the ground in folding lawn chairs of green and white stripes. Uncle Pete liked to wear hats with bad language and fake pony tails attached to them. He was never shy with affection and always only called me TammyMae. He slipped me candy when my parents eyes were turned and had a laugh that was hardy and loud. I always secretly thought he was Santa.
Mam-maw and Pap-paw also had a bar call the Oak Street Inn. It had pinball machines and a pool table. They served burgers and fries...and beer. I had an endless supply of change to entertain me every Saturday morning. This was used to quicken life into a spring that bounced silver balls, darting and knocking about as I left sticky finger prints from honey buns all over the glass. I was never reprimanded, only complimented on my lack luster score or my shiny strawberry blond hair, or my new tennis shoes. There was a comfort there that has since escaped me. As a child, trailing my fingers along the glossy shellacked bar top, stacking black ashtrays into towers, and occasionally finger painting bar coasters with blue and green pool cue chalk.
this is the old Oak Street Inn building
spirit as this is the Oak Street Inn back bar refinished by
my Aunt Carol...she left the cigarette burns
These are memories that are exclusive to me, yet often they were shared with my cousin Alan. His mom and my dad were siblings. He was a bit older than I, though also found himself spending each weekend trailing our parents or wandering the endless adventures that bloom from imagination and limited years.
The story of the mallard is one such occasion.
Every winter the Midwest gets cold. Sometime a harsh, still cold, that comes sudden and calm, laying a bitter cast to the land. Nothing moves, there is no wind or breath. Everything is just caught. When I was 5 this happened. My cousin Alan and I were spending the afternoon at Mam-maw and Pap-paw's place. We were wrapped head to toe in layer upon layer of the tans and yellows and blues that were so popular in the 70's and early 80's. We both were wearing over sized snow boots, mittens and scarves and each with our own rolled up stocking cap adorned with a fuzzy ball atop. We had decided to traipse through the side property amongst the dried frozen brambles and hardened mud of the creek. Climbing our way out of the gully and warming ourselves in the sagging ancient barn that was supposed to be off limits.
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this is the actual barn.
the pond has long since been filled in and the house is gone.
but the barn defies the years.
I remember the birds shuffling in the rafters stretching their wings and causing a stir of dust in otherwise empty silent air. Then Alan had an idea. We could check the pond. Maybe it would be solid. Maybe we could skate for a while.
We struggled to stand as only coat laden children do and trekked to the edge of the silent glass. There just a couple feet from land was a mallard. He was on his side so only one eye could peer at us from his frozen prison. The green iridescence of his neck and brow seemed perfect. He body trapped under the ice with his head lying to the side of his wing.
"Is he awake", I asked.
"I don't know. We should get Pap-paw."
So Alan and I clutched our mitten hands tight and took on the futile rescue mission of the frozen bird.
We walked to the mudroom door to the front of the house greeted by their lady blue. Grinning with one blue eye and one brown, unimpressed by the gravity of our situation, only wanting a pet and a word. We removed our layers of warmth and deposited it next to a bag of dry dog food, gas cans, cases of soda, and bait and tackle, for we knew better than to come into the house with boots on. I could feel the anxiety growing in me. We were calling for Pap-paw before we even had the door opened and were talking atop each other about saving the duck and how we needed a saw or an ax and maybe a hammer.
I remember the feel of his hands on my back as his tried to get us to slow down, ushering us to the couch and telling us to talk one at a time. Taking the lead Alan explained how the mallard had some how fallen asleep and was stuck in the ice. How we needed to free him. Pap-paw listened and nodded and then said, "Well, show me your duck son, and I will see what I can do".
Before I go on I will describe Pap-Paw as it will make so much more sense why we trusted that he could indeed save our duck.
Pap-paw had eyes that flowed from blue to green in lazy way a calm ocean does. They lay under brows with wild hairs that grew too long and crazy. He was not too tall and a bit rotund so he looked safe and strong and he had salt and pepper hair the grew in rolled curls in all directions. He wore overalls and sometimes just his tidy whities while sitting in his chair. He wore t-shirts that were as distant as his travels cross country. His voice hearkened a bit to the rooster Foghorn Leghorn from Loony Toons with a drawl that created long pauses and emphasis on particular syllables that gave his words a rhythm both pleasant and defined. His nose was a bit short and his ears were a bit large and all in all, he was quite the fantastic hero for a couple of grandkids.
We rebundled and headed to pond's edge both grateful and determined that we could save the duck. As Pap-paw stood there staring down at the bird he grew silent. He had known, of coarse, that the mallard was dead before he came out with us, but he had taken it upon himself to teach Alan and I a very hard lesson.
Death.
"I cannot save your bird, kids. It is too late. He is dead", Pap-paw told us. Making eye contact with the both of us waiting for understanding to set in. Alan was quicker than I was to catch on and started to pull me back to the house. "Let's find something else to do" he said, "Ducks are stupid anyways", again with another tug at my hand. But his eyes had started to swell a bit with tears and suddenly I understood. We couldn't save the duck. It was gone.
So instead we two stood there hand in hand with Pap-Paw a bit off to the side while hot tears rolled down our ruddy cheeks. We stared at the ice and no longer wanted to ice skate on the pond.
Pap-paw passed a bit before Halloween in 08. I was living in Florida at the time and was sort-of estranged from my family. My own doing, of coarse. My dad called and told me. It had been a long time since we had talked really. I was broke and working as a barista so there was no way to afford a ticket home to Lathrop to make the funeral. After we hung up the phone I thought about the mallard. My dad called back within 10 minutes offering to pay for my ticket.
It was a weird time as I stood in the rain, Beck, a few months old with me riding my hip after the service staring at a frozen hole in the ground. As I had yet to break the silence with my own family, I held myself away from them and thought about things that I remembered of Pap-Paw. My dad and his siblings and my siblings were under the tent so I couldn't see there faces but Mam-maw was in my line of sight. Her face said it all.
They say Pap-paw had a hard time in the end. Remembering faces and getting angry. Sometimes people have to leave that way.
I lived in Lathrop at the old farmhouse until July of last year. About once a month I would head down to the cemetery to visit. Pap-paws headstone is always adorned with flowers and wreaths and such. My aunts doing, I am sure. Pap-paw is still an excellent listener and waiting patiently for the other person who's name is on his headstone to bounce about the next life with him. Road tripping.
I went the other day with Piper to visit. It was her birthday and she skipped school and rode my memory journey with me, taking pictures of me taking pictures.
I don't know what happens when we die. I would like to think that because we are made of energy that when we die our souls break into a million billion pieces and shoot out in every direction. Racing through the sky, glinting into stars and suns, riding the atmosphere and catching raindrops falling down to earth. Maybe landing in a pond. Maybe being breathed in right now by a million souls. Maybe our energy could keep going. Maybe.
Maybe death is just a way to give new energy to life. Maybe when we die we fly.
revised: these are comments Mam-maw and Uncle Pete and Aunt Susan made and told me I could post>...so Pap-Paw also rode cats on his shoulders and named his cattle....who does that? What a great thing to know. I will continue to revise this post! PLease post in the comments and I will gladly update regularly!
revised
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