Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (7 page)

MOTHER AND DAD dropped us off at Aunt Jinny’s home in the small town of La Cygne, Kansas, population four hundred, where our dad had grown up. Even at the age of ten, I recognized that this place was slightly backward. Although the rambling clapboard house Aunt Jinny lived in had been recently equipped with indoor plumbing, an outhouse still stood in the backyard as a subtle reminder that convenience and sanitation were, for her money, the province of hedonists.

As we pulled into the driveway, Aunt Jinny was just finishing packing her creaky 1958 Plymouth, a two-door monolith with push-button ignition and fins that could impale an aircraft carrier. Jinny was a small but sturdy woman of about sixty, with short, utilitarian gray hair. She was dressed in pedal pushers and combat boots, a fashion choice that aptly reflected her twin personal principles of sensible style and unfortunate taste. Dad jumped out to help her.

“Well, Ray Lee, just look at you!” Jinny barked. “You’re skinny as a lamppost.” She turned to the car, where Mother remained seated in the front seat as though awaiting a royal announcement of her arrival. “Elaine, what are you feeding him?”

Mother smiled a bit frostily and waved, then picked up her
Time
magazine and returned to her story on the Tricia Nixon wedding. Aunt Jinny shook her head and swung open Val’s door. “Hey, kids. Let’s get a move on. Gotta get the tent up before dark!”

Val dropped her
Tiger Beat
magazine.

“
We
have to do it? Aren’t there park rangers for that?”

 

 

THE MID-JULY DAY had already begun to heat up as we headed down the interstate. We had never driven anywhere with Aunt Jinny, so though her car had no air-conditioning, we were too terrified to be uncomfortable, since she was doing ninety miles an hour and merrily took curves (on two wheels) at eighty-five. The car crossed the line into oncoming traffic with such regularity that I began to mentally assemble a list of bequests.

Midway through the three-hour drive, as our fingers began to ache from clutching the door handles in a death grip, Aunt Jinny bellowed, “Who wants a tenderloin sandwich?”

“We do!” Val and I shrieked with all the ferocity of sub-Saharan famine victims, although we really just wanted out of the car. She careened into a Stuckey’s for a pit stop, blissfully unaware of the station wagon full of screaming Sunflower Girls she had nearly taken out.

As we gratefully soaked up the restaurant air-conditioning and wolfed down chicken-fried steak on white bread, Aunt Jinny performed the requisite conversational task of inquiring about our lives, since it did not occur to Val and me to actually show interest in hers.

“So, how are things at home?”

This was an opening we couldn’t pass up. Val and I began listing our grievances enthusiastically, thrilled to have an audience for our inventory of Mother’s persecutions and deprivations. We covered each complaint ponderously, pausing to allow the full weight of our suffering to settle across the table.

“Well,” Aunt Jinny murmured thoughtfully, “she is a handful.” Val and I exchanged self-satisfied smiles. She was obviously impressed. “Does she hit you?”

“What?” I replied, glancing at Val, somewhat confused by her question. “Well . . . no.”

Why, after this exhaustive recounting, was she focusing on one of the very few areas of Mother’s innocence?

“Does she tell you she’s ashamed of you?”

“No,” Val replied, a bit more deflated. “But—”

“And she works, right?”

“Yeah. But—”

“Every day?”

“Uh-huh,” we answered.

“So let’s see . . . she cleans the house, works all day, takes care of you kids and more or less lets you know that she’s proud of you.”

“Well, okay, yeah,” Val mumbled. “
But—
”

“So what exactly are you complaining about, again?”

 

 

IT WAS APPROXIMATELY seven thousand degrees as we skidded to a halt at a scenic spot overlooking the Roaring River. The lovely setting was somewhat obscured by a swarm of bugs that appeared to be hovering outside the car as we opened the door. The mosquito population of southern Missouri had apparently been having a summer-long drunken orgy. It was one thing seeing these swarms splattered across the car windshield as we had flown down the highway; it was quite another being attacked like a walking umbrella drink.

Aunt Jinny appeared unfazed. “Isn’t it spectacular?” She stood, hands on her hips like a petite lumberjack, surveying the beauty of the surroundings as Val and I stumbled out of the car, slapping at our arms and legs like Timothy Leary on a bad acid trip.

“Where’s the Off!?” I shrieked over the buzzing din, as Aunt Jinny began unloading the car.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she snorted, “a few mosquitoes aren’t gonna kill you. Once we get the tent up, I’ll find the bug spray.” She turned to my sister. “That perfume you have on is attracting them. Why don’t you go wash it off.”

“Fine. Where are the restrooms?”

Aunt Jinny chuckled. “Restrooms? This is a campsite.” She handed her a towel and pointed in the direction of the river.

Val and I exchanged horrified glances. She turned back to Aunt Jinny. “There are no
showers
?”

“Of course not.”

“What about toilets?”

“Nope.”

“How is that possible?!” Val demanded, as though all of nature should have been plumbed during the Kennedy Administration.

“It’s a state
park
,” Aunt Jinny replied.

“Well, then, where do we . . . ‘go’?”

“In the woods. Just imagine you’re Bambi—but without the ‘hunters shooting at you’ part.” Our jaws hung slack. Aunt Jinny pulled out a roll of white tissue. “Oh, relax. I brought toilet paper.”

Val stomped off down the path to the river as Aunt Jinny began piling metal rods on the ground surrounding a large camouflage green tarp.

“Here.” She handed me a rod. “Start putting these together. Let’s build us a tent.”

I stood staring at the rods as though they contained plutonium. One of the many traits I had inherited from Mother was a stunning lack of common sense. Slowly, I attempted to insert one into another, to no avail. Round peg, square hole. Although recent IQ tests had placed me close to the genius level, I collapsed into a fetal position on the ground, nearly oblivious to the fact that the T-shirt Mother had starched was getting soiled.

Aunt Jinny had finished setting up the gazebo that would serve as our “kitchen,” a four-by-six open-sided tent that covered the camping stove and cooler.

“What’s the matter?”

“I can’t figure it out!” I moaned, rocking on the ground, poles in hand, as I waited for the mosquitoes to extract the last pint of blood from my body. GIFTED BOY SUCKED TO DEATH. I envisioned the newspaper headline, below which a school photo would be inserted. (Mental note, I thought to myself, use the fourth-grade one, it’s more flattering than the fifth.)

She marched over to me. “Go sit in the car,” she grumbled as she nudged me out of the way. I flew to the Plymouth, slamming the door and rolling up the windows as protection against the flying piranhas.

A few minutes later, Val returned from the river.

“The lake is very pretty.”

She had obviously had an internal pep talk en route and decided to put a brave face on an otherwise dreadful situation. Stiff upper lip firmly in place, she and Aunt Jinny began putting the tent together as I, still wallowing in tragedy, lay in the stifling car, willing to trade the threat of heat exhaustion for the reality of being bug candy.

Time for a pep talk of my own.

I closed my eyes and, mentally enshrouded in my bedspread, began to picture a very different scene: Val, Aunt Jinny and me perched on large, gleaming rocks around a roaring campfire, merrily toasting marshmallows and singing the Partridge Family songbook, accompanied by a family of deer and one irascible but lovable old grizzly bear. I envisioned playing hide-and-seek with a woodchuck named Stubby, so named because his tail had been sheared off in a tragic logging accident. I let him win, my reward his sweet, bucktoothed smile. A sunny afternoon found Val, Aunt Jinny and me rafting down the Roaring River à la Huckleberry Finn, watching the forest glide by as birds sang to us in harmony from the treetops.

I am powerful, I reminded myself. Nature will bend to my will.

 

 

“YOU CAN GET OUT NOW, she found the spray.”

I roused myself and climbed out of the car, yawning. I had fallen asleep while conjuring, and in the interim Val and Aunt Jinny had turned this little corner of hell into our home for the next week—raising the tent, setting up the makeshift kitchen and preparing a campfire for the wild boar I was certain Aunt Jinny would bludgeon and roast over it.

Val—who, like me, had inherited Mother’s enthusiasm for cleanliness—had, according to Aunt Jinny, been a whirling dervish of activity, sweeping the clearing (on her hands and knees) with a whisk broom after Jinny had informed her that there was no vacuum cleaner in the trunk.

I stood in the clearing, my arms outstretched as Aunt Jinny sprayed my body with sticky bug repellent, wondering if this was how Jesus started his career.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Val said proudly. She had obviously drunk the Kool-Aid. She motioned to our surroundings with a sweeping arm gesture à la
Let’s Make a Deal
’s Carol Merrill, as though Door Number 3 was opening to reveal it.

I gazed around. As I began to take in the surroundings for the first time, I had to admit that, although the closest washer and dryer were miles away, the setting was indeed beautiful. Tall, majestic pine trees made a canopy of green that surrounded this perfect, peaceful clearing. Birds chirped. A light breeze rustled through the leaves. The temperature had cooled down to a manageable eighty degrees. It felt as though we were cupped in the hand of God.

“Why don’t we walk down to the river, since Eric hasn’t seen it yet,” Aunt Jinny suggested. As we crossed through the woods and onto the shoreline, the setting sun cast a warm glow across the lake. The water sparkled. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer, Aunt Jinny yanked off her combat boots to wade into the water. She motioned for us to do the same. Val slipped off her sandals and tiptoed in, yelping momentarily at the freezing temperature of the water. Once I had removed my Keds, folded my tube socks and tucked them into each corresponding shoe, and rolled up my jeans with identical one-and-a-half-inch cuffs, I was ready to join them.

We waded through the crystal clear, shallow water, enthralled by the beauty that surrounded us.

“This is where I feel closest to God,” Aunt Jinny said as she gazed at the towering trees lining the river.

The river bottom was rocky, and the sharp stones began to gouge the tender toes of Val and me, whose bare feet rarely touched anything sharper than the shag.

“Well, when you talk to him,” Val said as she and I limped along, yelping, “could you ask him to pave this thing?”

OVER A tasty dinner of campfire-grilled hot dogs, greasy potato chips and Coke, Aunt Jinny grilled us about school.

“So, what are your favorite subjects?”

“I like PE,” Val replied.

Aunt Jinny lit up. “A girl after my own heart. What’s your favorite sport?”

“Oh, I hate sports,” Val replied. “But we get to play right next to the boys.”

“We didn’t get to play sports much when I was your age,” Aunt Jinny said, a bit wistful. “It wasn’t considered lady-like.”

“Well, it isn’t,” Val replied. “We have a word for the girls who like to play field hockey. It’s—”

Aunt Jinny quickly turned to me, interrupting Val. “And how about you?”

“Music,” I replied, rocking back and forth in place, my legs crossed. “I like art, too, but I’m not that good with macaroni.”

“Don’t worry,” she replied, “most of the masters didn’t work in pasta.”

“My art teacher says I’m ‘limited,’ but I think she means ’cause I don’t have the sixty-four box of Crayolas. When you’re missing Burnt Sienna and Cornflower, any picture’s gonna be a little dull.”

“That makes sense,” she replied, patting my hand.

“Oh,” I said enthusiastically, “I also like English.”

“And he wonders why he gets beat up so much,” Val said, rolling her eyes.

I doubled over slightly, clutching my stomach. Aunt Jinny frowned, concerned that Val’s comment had hit me hard. “Are you okay?”

I finally spoke the words I had been dreading all day. Although Val and I could stomach eating over a campfire and possibly sleeping in a tent, bathroom needs were something else altogether.

“I have to go.”

“Oh!” she said, relieved. “The shovel’s by the cooler.”

Aunt Jinny had showed us how to take the small hand shovel and dig a shallow hole in the ground, over which we would squat to relieve ourselves, covering the hole again with dirt after we were finished; but this was, as far as Val and I were concerned, beyond the pale. This was not “roughing it,” this was a measure undertaken only by the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. But I knew that my abdomen was about to explode, and if I didn’t attend to this immediately, the shit would literally hit the fan.