Eight in Three Weeks

Seems like it rained fire ants all afternoon that day. They dripped from the gutters on the old cedar-shingled house and drizzled from the leaves of the sycamore that stood a little farther up the mossy rise. Sometimes they just seemed to fall from the clear Missouri sky itself.

I was seven — eight in three weeks, I was eager to inform anyone who asked — and we were halfway from Denver to Pittsburgh in The Beast. That’s what my father called the hulking Chevy Impala we were driving east on an improvised roadtrip to see my great Uncle Walter. Walter was not doing so well, and my father felt some obligation to, as they said, pay his respects. But I gathered that old Walt wasn’t in imminent danger of kicking the bucket so, weighing the expense of flying, my father figured he’d use the drive as an opportunity to take care of some business along the way. My father was all about opportunities to “take care of some business.”

“Any chance you’d be willing to take Paul?” My mother was also alert to opportunities, and apparently I’d been enough underfoot that summer that she was eager to have me out of the house. I don’t suppose I could have blamed her — seven-going-on-eight and fueled by Pepsi, beef jerky and Roadrunner cartoons might make a boy tiresome after a while.

My first taste of Interstate 70 eastbound was a near-religious experience, with straight line roads leading off to infinity under an impossibly big sky. Summer trips had always been to the west, into the mountains at Estes Park, and the revelation that the world could be so large and wide open kept my face plastered to the passenger side window halfway through Kansas. We stopped every couple of hours, filling up on gas when we needed a bathroom break and buying burgers, milkshakes and fries whenever my dad saw a White Castle. “You know, you can’t get these back in Denver,” he’d say, and hold one of the steam-cooked little squares aloft like he was eyeing a precious gem in the sun.

We pressed on to Sedalia that first day, arriving after dark at a Super 8 Motel on the west side of town. My father set me on the bed in front of the TV and told me he “had some business to attend to,” but that he’d be back before too long, and I should stay out of trouble. I flipped through the channels — CBS, ABC, NBC and a ghost of some local program coming in from Kansas City, then gave up and turned my attention to the Silver Surfer comic I’d negotiated for at a Sinclair station in Topeka.

I have a vague recollection of being gently lifted from where I lay sleeping and tucked into bed that night. I must have gone in face down, because my comic book was wrinkled and smeared in the morning, and my left cheek bore incriminating blue and yellow ink splotches matching the ruined page where Calizuma had pinned Norin Radd in a crystal energy sphere.

But whatever business my father had attended to must have gone well: he was whistling up a storm as we pulled from US 65 onto the wide open Interstate that morning. “We’ve got an easy day ahead of us, Paulie — an easy day,” he said, drumming the steering wheel. I didn’t respond — I was preoccupied with figuring how I might puppydog that good mood into a new Daredevil comic at the next rest stop. But my father said we didn’t have far to go and we had all day to get there. There was more business that evening in St. Louis, only a three hour drive away. And between here and there, he said, lived an old friend of his, an old friend he was looking forward to introducing me to.

It close to noon when we pulled up a dirt road that matched the hand-drawn map my father had scrawled on a White Castle napkin some time the previous day. The road snaked a short way into the woods, then dissipated into a clearing at the river’s edge, revealing a tired gray homestead balanced on uneven land. The old house was missing so many shingles that it looked like a giant punch card, lumber poked through a gaping hole in a derelict barn, and what would have passed for a lawn was a thick carpet of moss that grew mounded in places, leaving hints of engine blocks, car tires and yard machinery that had been left too long in one spot. Behind the house, a stone’s throw up the rise, stood a magnificent sycamore that cast the yard beneath it in seemingly perpetual shadow.

“Stumpy? Stumpy — is that you?” A broad-shouldered hulk of a man slapped the screen door away and stamped, heavy-footed, out onto the narrow porch and down the steps to meet us. I was puzzled at first — I’d never heard anyone call my father “Stumpy”; I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone call him anything but “Steve”, or “Dad” or — in the case of my mother, “Dearest”. But my father swung out of the car and embraced the enormous stranger, his head barely clearing the man’s shoulders; I’d never seen him look so small by comparison.

“Mott — what the hell?!? What’s Molly been feeding you?”

The man coaxed an unkempt handful of black hair back from his unshaven face and corralled it with a Wilson Feeds baseball cap. He gave a small snort.

“Nah, Molly’s been gone almost a year. Houston, with some artsy-ass writer.”

“The bitch!”

I’d never heard my father swear, and in the shock of it I failed to clear the Impala’s door as I swung it shut — the lower rail caught my knee and took me down like a rag doll.

“No, no — Molly’s a good woman. She did right. Just never did learn that she can’t change a man.”

But my sudden disappearance behind the car had caught Mott’s attention. “That’s right — you said you were bringing your boy with you! Jesus — a little Stumper — who’d have thought?” And he paused in his conversation to peer across the car’s roof, to where I was trying to recover my dignity. “You okay, little guy?”

My father introduced me, Paul Slocum, seven years old — “Eight in three weeks,” I corrected him — and his ostensible pride and joy. I stood as straight as I could and held out my palm to shake hands with the giant.

“Paulie — this is Mott. He saved my life a couple of times when we were younger. Bravest, kindest, craziest man you’ll ever meet.”

Mott rocked his head from side to side as he stooped to engulf my hand in his. “Your dad’s being overly kind there, young man. But that’s his way, as you know.” I didn’t, not particularly, but thought better of asking for clarification.

“So Paulie — you okay with ‘Paulie’? Or do you prefer ‘Paul’?” I nodded yes, then no as he went on. “You eaten yet? I was about fix up some lunch.”

I gaped at the sheer scale of the man as we followed him up the porch and into the kitchen. I pictured him a walking tree, an ancient colossal scarecrow made of redwood trunks with shoulders draped in old checkered flannel on which pteranodons could perch unnoticed, like finches. In the imperfect camera of my mind, I remember moss hanging from his arms.

But it was with light and practiced feet that he stepped over and between the cardboard boxes, empty jars and broken appliances that littered the kitchen floor. “Stumpy — you grab a couple three plates from the sink and rinse ’em up? I got some Ozark honey a friend brought me a week or two back. We can use for sandwiches.”

I didn’t have the words for it, but I could tell that my father’s relationship with this man was something I’d never seen before. Mott’s words had the sound of a suggestion but the weight of an order — a polite order, amiably given, but an order nonetheless — and there was a curious eagerness with which my father complied. When I’d seen him follow orders before it was always with the sullen defiance of a beaten man — orders from the man at the agency, from the lawyer, from the policeman. This was something different, and it fascinated me how my father fell into the habit of following Mott as easily as Mott fell into the habit of leading him.

That day was the first I’d heard of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and the smell of warm honey still brings me back to the way the light slanted through those dirty kitchen windows. But my attention waned once the sandwiches were eaten and my second tall glass of lemonade finished; Mott seemed to understand this and gave me leave to explore the property while he and my father caught up. My father threw a perfunctory “Don’t you get into any trouble, Paulie,” warning after me as I trotted down the decaying porch steps, and Mott’s voice followed his indistinctly, the only discernable part being “fire ants”.

I found the anthill in question a little beyond the end of the dirt driveway. I’d heard of fire ants, and as a naturally curious almost-eight-year-old, I sought out a stick with which to poke the colony. The ants responded vigorously enough to convince me to drop the stick, and I watched a littler longer from a safe distance before retreating to the car for my Silver Surfer — the Esso station we’d stopped at in Jonesburg had had no comics to speak of.

But the afternoon sun had made the Impala’s vinyl bench seat unbearable, and after trying and discarding a few other locations (under the sycamore — too scratchy, against the barn — spiders), I settled in on the porch steps, where snatches of conversation from inside came through the screen door.

“…And you’ll never guess…” “No shit? Is she still all or nothing?” “Seeing as I told him twice that dog won’t hunt.…”

I found myself drawn in, forgetting my comic book and trying to follow the stories being swapped inside the kitchen. Here, for the first time, I had a window into a forbidden world, a world of men unfettered by the niceties and constraints of family life. Their voices felt authentic — honest and unguarded, not like the stilted exchanges of adults when they knew there were children nearby, or the impossibly-contrived TV conversations of Mary Tyler Moore, or All in the Family. No, this, I understood, was how men really talked.

I inched closer to the door, trying to hear better, but the creaking timbers gave me away.

“Paulie — is that you? You find them ants?”

I stood and presented myself at the door, trying unconvincingly to look like I had just come up the stairs that moment, but Mott waved me in like an old friend newly come to the party, and my father did not object. I realized that I’d left Mott’s second question unanswered and piped in a hearty “Yes, sir.” I don’t know where the “sir” came from — I’m not sure I’d ever used that word before. But there was something I heard in my father’s voice, something that made it the only natural way to address this improbable man.

“Yup, I’ve been meaning to fix them for a couple of times now. Came up this spring, and you can’t poison them out and you can’t drown them out. Pretty much all you can do is burn them out — fight fire with fire, like they say.”

“That’s what I hear.” This was my father.

“But this one, I’ve already tried burning them. Most of a gallon of gas down that hole and lit it up. Burnt for something like 15 minutes, it did, and you could feel heat on the ground ten feet away. But they were back, I don’t know, less than a month later, right same spot.”

My father whispered, “Damn.”

“So here’s what I figure: those bastards built such a maze of tunnels that you can’t never smoke them out. It’s like Cu Chi all over again — hell, they’re even red, just like the Cong.”

My presence seemed to have been forgotten by this point, and the two men were lost in their communion.

Mott drew himself up in the seat. “But we’ve faced this before, haven’t we, Corporal Stumpy? And what do you do if you can’t smoke a tunnel?”

My father looked dubious. “You gonna crimp them? With what — fire crackers?”

The smile on Mott’s face grew slowly, deliberately, like he was waiting to deliver the punch line of a joke. “Come with me — yeah, we should do this right now. Oh Paulie, you’ll like this.” The big man rolled forward onto his feet and stood, rising so suddenly that it felt as though he had just materialized there, then turned and trotted out the screen door without waiting to see if we would follow.

…

“Dynamite? Jesus, Mott — you just keep this lying around?”

My father cradled the greasy brown paper cylinder the way one might hold a newly caught fish — delicately, to avoid crushing it, but firmly enough to prevent it from getting away if it should try to jump.

“Oh, we’ve got plenty interesting things from down the quarry. They always give you five sticks for a job you can do with three, and there’s no point in wasting, is there? This ain’t the good stuff, though, but it’ll pack right, I reckon.”

I was transfixed. For any boy whose Saturday mornings had been filled with Looney Tunes, dynamite was as mythical a creation as Bugs Bunny and Road Runner, existing only in the colorful world of a glowing cathode ray tube. It was the bright red bundle with a sputtering fuse that served as the inevitable punchline for any of Wile E. Coyote’s doomed schemes. And yet, here it was, impossibly mundane, resting in my father’s visibly quivering hands.

Mott read my fascination approvingly. “Go on, Paulie — you can touch it. If your father says it’s okay. And don’t you worry — it’s not all that bad. Not unless you let it get old, and the nitro sweats out. Then you get the crystals, and you can’t even fish with it.”

“You fish with this stuff?”

“Main reason to keep it around. I mean, it’s not sporting, but sometimes you get the end of a bad day and you need something to show for dinner, right?”

“Jesus.”

I could tell that Mott was enjoying this. “Go on, Paulie. You don’t mind, do you, Slocum? Just hold it there so your boy can touch it.” My father wasn’t sure whether he did mind or not, but Mott had done that thing with his voice again — the order that didn’t sound like an order — and my father turned to let me approach the magical, terrible artifact. His own voice was paternal and supportive, but flushed with uncertainty.

“Okay, here you go. Just two fingers, gently, right there on top. Yes, just like that.”

“Two fingers” was how we’d been taught to pet rabbits, or to feel the grain on an expensive piece of furniture my parents wanted us to appreciate.

I was surprised at how shabby the stick looked, thinking that at least someone could have used better paper to wrap it. There were old, stained numbers printed on the side, the words “DANGER” and “MFG. BITMAG CRP.” in faded gray, and improbably, an American flag. I rubbed my fingers together after touching it, fascinated with the oily residue the paper had left on them.

“Ahyup, that’s the nitro just starting to sweat. It’s no harm, not like that. But that’s why we’re using this one ‘stead of the others. Anyhow — let’s set that down and go dig ourselves a hole, right?”

In the time it took my father to gingerly replace the dynamite back in its burlap-lined crate, Mott had gone around the back of the barn and returned with a post hole digger.

“A‘course, we need to discourage them bothering us while we dig. Paulie — you go fetch me the can of hairspray above the sink, will you?” I ran to comply, wondering what a man like this would be doing with hair spray.

When I returned with the unlikely can of “Afro Sheen”, Mott and my father were surveying the fire ants from a distance of about five feet. Mott shook the can, aimed it at the mound and casually flicked the lighter he’d produced from his back pocket. A curtain of flame erupted from the spray cap and bathed the ground, singeing the grass in its path and producing an acrid black smoke.

“There, that ought to get us started. Stumpy, you’re on flamethrower duty. Keep your fire on the metal part of the digger — rather not have them coming out to fight. Paulie? You might just stand back a touch.” I needed no more encouragement to back further away.

My father took the Afro Sheen and lighter and, following Mott’s direction, concentrated its fire on the center of the mound for the time it took Mott to plant the twin scoops of the digger and wrench out a foot-long cylindrical section of earth.

“That looks good. Paulie — you want to go fetch the dynamite?”

I didn’t know if that was a test, and if it was, whether his purpose was to test me or my father, but my father answered first. “I’ll get it, Paulie — you stay here with Mott.”

He returned, swinging the stick — but gently — in one hand as he walked, trying with minimal success to exude an air of casual comfort. Mott took it and eyeballed the hole, which was now teeming with angry fire ants.

“I guess I didn’t figure this one all the way to the end, gentlemen. I was counting on being able to set this and plug it, but we’re not going to be able to do that without your dad keeping them under the fire. Which I don’t reckon is the best circumstance for working with dynamite.” He sank to the ground in a squat, fingers combing the stubble on his chin. After a few seconds he rose with new determination.

“Okay, here’s what we’re doing. Stumpy, you clear that hole with the spray, then back off. I’ll put the stick in and we’ll tamp it with the plug I pulled. Paulie? You might best step back a bit further.” But I was frozen in fascination, mesmerized by the atmosphere of danger and the story playing out before my eyes. I could see this man in the jungles of Vietnam, under fire, giving orders to his troops. They needed a plan, and Sergeant Mott was going to come up with one. And now, I saw my father there too — brave in a way I’d never imagined, trusting, and willing to do what needed to be done.

“Paulie?”

“Yes sir?”

“You heard what the man said. Best back off a little ways.”

I complied and retreated to a spot behind the sycamore, where I peered out sideways, like a small child playing hide-and-seek.

“You ready, Stumpy?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, light ‘er up and sweep it a little.”

Flame erupted again from the can, and I could feel its warmth on my face.

“Okay — that’s good. Flame off, I’m coming in with the charge.”

Mott advanced with the greasy stick of dynamite, placed it upright in the hole with one deliberate action and turned to fetch the plug of earth from the post hole digger.

My best guess is that it was an ember of burnt grass that hadn’t quite gone out, but Mott was two steps away when my father’s voice rang out with an urgency that still remains with me.

“Jesus — fire in the hole! Live charge!”

Mott didn’t even turn to look — he took off running in the direction he was facing. My father was running too, toward me and the protection of the sycamore. He rounded the corner in five steps and pulled me — still gawking stupidly at the smoldering hold — beside him against the lee side of the trunk. Then there was a sound like timber splitting, and the sky turned dark with the brown Missouri dirt.

(This is an old favorite from a year or so ago. Note that “Paul” in this story is unrelated to the Paul in Coalinga, Northbound. Pure coincidence that they ended up with the same name…)