Christmas Tree Island

Christmas Tree Island

       By Douglastrodome Reimer

Duties skedaddle

Back in the saddle

Riding the fictional range

A plane drifted east over the lake and left a wake behind so white in the blue you’d think the dome of heaven had fallen in. Jonathan stood still for a moment looking up at it and then resumed his trek across the frozen surface toward Christmas Tree Island. His trail would take him past Highpoint, Limmel Island, Trout Narrows, Gooseneck Island and Scotch Rapids, and then through a long winding passage into the Big Northwest Bay. At the end of this bay, still some eight miles distance, lay Christmas Tree Island and the cabin of the mysterious man who had called him on his battery telephone late the previous evening.

       “Iss dis, ah, ah, iss diss Mr. Ofalbecken?” a throaty voice had asked when he’d answered. The ringing had startled him. The phone never rang. He kept it working for emergencies. He kept it working for the entertainment of the thing. If he felt like it he could dial someone. This made life fuller. It brought society or culture or urbanity into his otherwise wilderness world.

       He paused. “Yes. Who is this?” He did not know what to say to anyone over the phone anymore. He never had. He had never known what to say to anyone over the phone. He had got his wife to answer. Actually, he had left the answering up to her because she liked to answer it and already ran from wherever she was to get it. If she was ironing in the basement, she would begin to run up the stairs. If she was in the back yard gardening, or lounging, she would begin to run at the first sound of the ringing. That suited him fine.

       He was following the long north shore of High Point with its great visual barrier of red pine, crowning the mile long granite arch with a forest of towering conifers as fine as diamond tiepins and as matched in height as hair in a brush cut. A moose track came suddenly out of the trees and crossed the lake before him. It headed toward a southern  promontory where he had seldom been himself. Maybe that would be a good place to go hunting, he thought to himself. He was always on the look out for a new place to try for game. Winter supplies went quickly. A man living off the land had to make sure of three things well in advance of winter--lots of black tea, lots of sugar, and meat in the tree cairn.

       He thought the line had gone dead. “Hello?” he had said, and then the man had answered. The man seemed no more accustomed to the telephone than he was. A dog barked and the line crackled. Where was his voice coming from, he had wondered.

       “Can you come over right avay?” the voice said. What the heck! he thought. What does he mean, come over? Is he near here? Maybe he has the wrong number.

       “Where?” he had said. At first there had been no response. The man must have thought he would know where. From the long silence that followed, he concluded that this was a wrong number. He waited, looking about him for a piece of firewood to add to the stove. He put in a slab of birch and the door screeched and ground.

       “Christmas Tree Island,” the voice said and then the line went dead. The man had hung up or it had quit working. He had held the receiver in his hand for quite some time before he realized that he was doing so. He approached Limmel Island. From this distance, about half a mile away, it stood low to the horizon and had little shelter on it if he would ever need to take cover there. But he had done so once before. Once, when he’d come back from a hunt near Longjohn Rapids, a storm had driven him onto it and there, in the moment of danger, he had discovered a den, a bear’s den, beneath a ledge. He’d crawled in and lain down next to the hibernating animal, happy to be kept so fortunately alive. He kept on. Eventually, he found himself in the Big Northwest Bay and the temperature hovering near forty below, snow starting to swirl around him. He knew that he must make it across this notorious open stretch quickly. He would not want to be caught here in a strong wind.

       He went as quickly as he could on snowshoes. Christmas Tree Island finally loomed up ahead like a bear in the mist. He approached. He rounded its western tip. Wind blew at him and chilled him through and through. He felt suddenly tired and very cold. He would not have been able to go much longer. The cabin, he knew, lay just ahead. With his last energy he got to the shore below it, called out to warn the dogs and the man inside, and climbed unsteadily up the embankment. He stood by the door and knocked. No answer. No dogs barking. He hit the door with his fist. No one. He felt a surge of panic. What if . . ., he wondered, but then a figure materialized from the woods to his left and stood a distance away looking at him as if unbelieving.

       “Tank you!” the voice said. “Tank you for comink so qvickly! My vife iss dead. She died last night. The new baby iss livink, but she needs food and milk. We must try to get some from Sioux Narrows!”

       I stood there, and then sat down on the porch. He approached and took my hand. “Thank you!” he said again.           

Sexless

Sexless

       By Douglas the Bull

A Eunuch sat by a fence underneath a bilibob tree eating what remained of his coocoo bird. He sang a song about the animal that had provided him with his day’s sustenance. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief with which to wipe his lips. Then he rose and started toward the town that lay at some five trumpets’ distance. When he reached the first houses he knocked on one and asked for water. At the service station two blocks further along he made use of the telephone. A truck idled in the carwash bay with the driver inside the station buying something. The eunuch got in and drove away. This was better. Walking irritated him.

       A beggar at the side of the road took the ride he offered him. He halted at a roadside truck stop and they entered. Here he purchased that worthy two nips and two large plates of French fries. Both of these disappeared down the hungry man’s gullet. Then he ordered beers and they drank these outside in the hot sun but under the canopy provided by the management.

       “Where do you hale from?” asked the eunuch.

       “I was raised on the other side of the island in the desert,” the beggar replied. He chewed peanuts and swallowed beer. His nodding told the eunuch that he much appreciated all this fine food. He looked about him as if searching for more to eat, but then rose and borrowed a paper napkin from a neighboring table with which to wipe his mouth. He didn’t acknowledge the young woman sitting there. Now he sat back down and resumed work on the contents of his mug.

       “My father ranched there. He did not do well, though he drank a great deal. My mother left him and us when I was fourteen. My father did not know anything about caring for children.” He paused and a silence ensued.

       “Have you read Heart of Darkness?” the eunuch asked, speaking finally. After a lengthy silence, the beggar replied that he had not had that pleasure but would take it at the first opportunity. Pipes were produced. Tobacco was lit and inhaled. A few languid sips of beer followed. The day was exceedingly hot, even for the area around Brisbane, and both men perspired.

       “I am glad to be here under this canopy instead of under the sun,” said the beggar at last. “The worst is the heat. The next worst is the dust. I abhor dust from passing vehicles.” He did not expand. The eunuch nodded his agreement and looked about him to see what else might be nearby to excite his interest. His watch was an old one and no longer reliable. He seldom consulted it. It itched him now. Sweat did that. The girl at the table near theirs had her back to them and he saw her shoulders calmly moving now and then as if she were turning the pages of a novel. She read quickly, that he could tell.

       “Nice truck!” the beggar spoke. The eunuch agreed and asked if he would like to have it. The beggar looked at him for a few minutes in silence. Then he laughed and winked. But the eunuch reached the keys across to him and asked if he knew how to drive.

       “Of course I know how! I grew up on a farm! He laughed again as he fiddled with the keys. Then he rose and doglegged toward the vehicle. He stopped to look at the eunuch’s face and then climbed into the cab. The eunuch watched him drive away. The beggar had trouble with the gears but soon disappeared out of sight. The eunuch finished the beer before him. Walking, he thought. I detest it. He nodded at the girl as he passed her table. She smiled and her black hair shook.      

Fine Cherry Trees

Fine Cherry Trees

       By Pugelada

My mother used to tell me that it was wrong to kiss a girl before I was married to her. She also told me that God watched what I did and saw that it was either good or bad. She told me on various occasions that she hoped I would obey Jesus and be a blessing to Him. Father agreed with her, as far as I could tell, though he spoke of these matters infrequently, simply put on his reading glasses over his porridge and read passages to us from Our Daily Bread. Mother would redact from these pithy parabolisms to our daily lives in rural Manitoba. Now, we were raised good. We had food on the table; we had coffee at breakfast; we had meat and potatoes at supper. We never, in my memory, went hungry. We were as lucky as children can get. That was a great blessing, was our full stomachs. I remember coming home from school with more than an adolescent boy’s ravenousness about me, and mother trying to put a stop to my whining by telling me to go eat a few carrots in the garden. An hour later, though, she had soup and potatoes on the table for the six of us. Father did not count in this number for he arrived home at nine or ten in the evening six days out of seven. Father had to spank us when he came home on those occasions when mother said we deserved it. He told me later that he disliked that job. Mother got us weeding beets in Horndeen, Plum Coulee, Gretna, Neubergthal, and Rosenfeld. We weeded all our two-month summer holidays away, did we five kids. Father had me mow the lawn and clip the hedges. We had a large number of hedges on the yard and it was my job to be the grounds keeper. I also rototilled the gardens. We had three gardens--a vegetable garden, a fruit garden and a flower garden. They covered half of our two acres in Old Altona. Mother told me years later that she despised grandfather Reimer for having made my older brother distribute evangelical tracts on various occasions, including on a trip to British Columbia when he was only seven. He was required to approach such people as garage mechanics, hand them a tract and witness to them about Jesus. My father reluctantly gave me a quarter each Saturday when I was sixteen and seventeen. I bought two cigars with the money and smoked them that very evening always. Mother made fruit preserves that I purloined, a few at a time, and made into wine. I did this from the age of fifteen to the age of eighteen. When I was nineteen my friend, an artist, got a fifteen year old student of his (he taught a high school course in painting then) to let him body paint her. She wore panties and a bra and let him paint her from forehead to feet. I didn’t see him do it. He said he still got goosebumps when he thought of it even now forty years later. I think of the relative values that our world places on activities. I never saw my father naked. I saw him in long johns and a t-shirt once but found it exceedingly embarrassing. I never saw my mother naked, either. I did not want to. I never saw my brothers or sisters naked, not even once. Unlike an acquaintance of mine, I did not find a chink in the shower room and watch my sisters taking their baths. My first sexual thoughts came with my cousin who lived thirty miles away. We were swimming in a dugout, surrounded by cows grazing. We were twelve. We swam naked. We pulled our penises back between our legs to make them look like vaginas. We caught frogs and tadpoles that same afternoon in the water there. We sat on a little raft that just held us up. I don’t care for nudity. I abhor nakedness. I wish it would all go away, sex and the erotic body. My mother loved to garden. She planted flowers of a hundred varieties, and later in her forties started a greenhouse business that she ran till she and father moved to British Columbia. My father grew tired of being a travelling rural salesman after twenty years. He decided in the late sixties that he had had enough and they sold and moved west in a blinding snowstorm. There, in Abbotsford, he became a real estate agent and died at the young age of seventy-two of cancer. Mother made and sold perogies in their first five years there because they had no money They went hungry for three years not having enough to feed themselves or their frequent prairie guests vacationing in B.C. Mother grew raspberries and father grew apples. By the time he died, my father had created a fine yard, two acres large, with many fine apple, peach, plum and cherry trees on it. And that is my reflection on the state of human depravity. 

The Flighty

The Flighty

      

       By Dr. Do Right

                        Wobble on your way to work

                        Wobble also after

                        Wabble after the lake trout

                        Scramble up the rafter

                        Whisper love to rasta girls

                        Snake  oil men and buttons

                        Sniff the lace on the bodice

                        Fill her life with laughter

Take the ego out of it and it’s good. That is, rest on the seventh day. Let them know you need to sleep. We tend to wish to be in charge of not our reception but the direction of the reception. Telling all is typically not in our intentions. Telling as little as possible and making them figure it all out and come to startling discoveries is more what we do. But, resist. Fall on your knees and pray. Ask for forgiveness. Let the Holy One into your heart. Be civil and kind, not masterful. There are plenty of masters. Be strong, instead. Read Nietzsche, and then discover that Chaucer already knew this. “The Pardoner’s Tale” is seen by most senior scholars and their rivals, recent appointees, alike as a tale of corruption. “The great Chaucer,” they say in effect, and in the theses of their most valiant scholarly efforts, “wrote here a lively and entertaining story with this simple theme: ‘the Catholic church in the middle ages was corrupt and the Pardoner was the most dissipate of the dissipate’.” On the contrary, the Pardoner told us all about himself without hesitation. He hid nothing. All ambition, all “goodness,” all university morality is a “hiding.” Now, when He had suffered them patiently, He went out on a boat and spoke to them from the waters. Use restraint when being secretive. Open up yourselves to those who wish to feed on you. Open up yourselves to those who do not wish to feed on you. Nothing good will come of this. Bad is not likely to come, either, except when those who do not wish to feed on you but to keep you from acting say you are bad. Regulate everything without pausing to ask why. Seldom pause to ask why, just let time develop certain habits in you so that your daughters and sons ten generations from now will have your regulations inscribed on their bodies. Never hurry. Only the weak and manipulative hurry. There is no need to race anywhere. Play hockey and darts. Apologize to none. Don’t wrap yourselves in cellophane and wait by the door. Wrap yourselves in cellophane and wait by the door if you wish. Willing is pleasure. Sex is sadness. Never let anyone see your naked behind. Worse things could happen. Recognize the willingness of students to love you. Do not chill out. Seldom dramatize and overdramatize your kindness and your fineness of sentiment to those who necessarily adore you for your position above them. Hug them instead. Take yourselves seriously. Feed the hand that bites you. Bite your hand. Feed yourselves. Bite and feed at will. Whine to get your way if you must. Leave truth to the big hitters. Do not get involved with the melancholic for they suck. That is, they provide no easy means of escape. Relate seriously to none but the ones who, when they are irritated with you, will kill you and that will be your only escape. Make no friends. Friends will revile you and abhor you for their own sakes. Read Lamentations twice each year. Do not open the Book of Revelations. Glue shut the eyes of the Barbie doll your sister got for Christmas all those years ago. If lost in the woods go in circles until you get home. Do not build a quincy if you find yourselves trapped in the woods in winter and night coming on. Lay down in the snow, cover your body with your parka, and sleep peacefully. If you are right with God you will wake comfortable and refreshed in the morning after a good night’s sleep. On a regular basis, strike out into the woods on snowshoes for many hours until you are too exhausted to return, set up a bivouac, start a fire, make a pot of tea, sleep, wake, go another day’s journey further into the wilderness, rest, sleep, drink tea, and do that again until you are too weary and too lost to find your way home. Reread your favorite two or three books each year but do not bother with any others. The educated read little and think much. Refuse to fritter away your time in newspapers, so take your coffee and bread and butter mornings to a location where the paper is not laid out for you to pick up. Wear the clothes to bed in which you worked that day. Change your socks Christmas, Easter, July 1^st, and Labor Day. Do not wear underwear unless you have the need to enhance your profile and improve your stature. Gift your wife to others, as Luther did. Above all, write much, revise little. Your mind always already knows what it wishes to say. Act now.    

Even His Wife

Even His Wife

       By Big Drinker Doug (Tipple) Reimer

Mongomann served excellent repasts and then gave each conferencee a small glass of Bunjee liquor exquisite on the tongue. As red as beet juice, not quite clear, rough and salty when first imbibed, it quickly turned to silkiness of flavor and aftertaste. When each had sipped, Mongomann announced his retirement and stood up to go. Each gasped, each struck with the new information. None had expected him to leave his post before he turned seventy-five. The war had troubled him, he explained, more than he had anticipated. His wife, too, working long hours at her job as president, recently requested that he step down. When he hesitated she said that she understood but he found her predictably persistent in the days following. He did not deserve to stay longer, he said in his closing remarks, appearing to his recovered guests to have grown smaller of late. Once a man of great stature, who had led the Chechnyan forces in their famed attempt at the Gruvkohvianja post sitting astride his small steed with assurance and firm resolve, now he appeared to those listening to be too frail to get on a horse, let alone ride one. Mongomann drank his liqueur, and in the secret rite of his ancestors threw the glass with all his might into the fireplace, crying something unintelligible at the top of his lungs while at the same time lifting one leg high in the air above his head and clutching convulsively at his privates. All the guests’ glasses followed with an immediate massive agitation of bellowing, leg lifting and clawing of testicles. He stepped away from his seat, slipped out through a curtain and was gone. His successor, a youthful man of forty-five, in prime of health and physique, black-haired, muscular, strong-jawed, Emmet Krukshjakc, smiled, for he of all those there had known of his imminent rise in fortune. Now, soon, the kitchens would be at his disposal. None there would ever be in a position to declare to him what needed doing, for he would be holding over them the decision of salary or no salary. From butler to maid, all would show him their respect. The butler would be eager to bring him fine food and wine at every opportunity. The maids would appear before him in secret when no one was looking and offer him to help himself to whatever took his fancy. Yes, things were going well. His wife would be pleased, too, but still he would need to be discreet. She had a way of sniffing out competition. And, too think that he had once been a simple scullery boy in this household! Now he held its most important station. Now he was king!
  

  

Please pardon the authorial intrusion. I'm building a new cabin at the lake and it keeps me from being regular; regular, that is, in the publishing of new material. I shall remedy that in November. Till then I will publish when I can. I'll include a pic or two or three of the progress of the project.