BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 87

EARLY NOVEMBER 2012

DAVID AND KALI

The foot powder at the Pingree store has an expiration date of four years prior. I chuckle, am tempted to take an inventory of like goods that cling to the shelves. Symbols of promise and hope, viewed one way, symbols of desolation viewed from another.

I have taken to a random ten o'clock coffee at the Post Office, the regulars being gone by then. From one spot I can see the mural and I sit there, an object for my vacant gaze at the ready. Oleva asked me about my Coos Bay job earlier and I realized I shouldn't throw my unopened mail in the trash bin outside her window—it's obviously fair game. I wonder how many of my medical reports she's read, quickly inventory past conversations to detect any nuances that might indicate that she has inside knowledge.

Enough of a dilettante to have an opinion without authority, I scrutinize the mural, taking whatever first strikes me to its conceptual limit. Color, brush stroke, orientation—the selected aspect of any particular day leads me from my own thoughts and thankfully into others'. Today I've noticed that the artist created a hidden map of sort, his identifiers in tiny letters: Tilden, Flagtown, Campbellville, Taber, Cerro Grande, Rochelle—places he knew as already defunct, I am guessing, and wanted to keep record of. Of the towns, only Taber really has common status even in memory now. It's an area, not a place, in the communal mind.

Where the two main canals of the south half of the county diverge he's marked 'First Terminus', with the railroad tracks crossing the United just above it. A particularly poignant place in my memory now after my lapse in judgment—what an odd thing to do, conflate Kali and Mormonism, attack them as one. I try to shake the memory off. It won't go away, but I've made so many mistakes at this stage in my life that remorse no longer sets in as it once did. New remorse, in fact, is just a shadow of its old versions imbedded decades ago. They never leave.

If Blackfoot is the mural's head, its two railroad lines are the autopsy scars, splitting west of Moreland with the 1901 leg heading toward the Butte and the 1910 branch toward American Falls—though it only reached Aberdeen. The west reached 90 miles to Mackay but has been pulled up after the Taber station; the south plan was truncated right from the start thanks to settlers refusing to cede their rights-of-way, but that branch still runs once a day a century later, moving beets in the fall and winter. Some days I feel it rumbling by from three miles distant. Between eight and ten in the evening, going southwest, returning northeast somewhat later.

"He returns to the scene of the crime!"

The announcement breaks my discursion. I focus on its source, I don't recognize the speaker, so start filing through possibilities. High school classmate? Someone I worked with? Drank with? He laughs lightly. "I get that blank look a lot," he says. "Even from my wife. Jim. Jim Hogan. I've put on a few."

It takes me a second but I remember. In my incarnation as a drunk I befriended anyone, including Jim. Often I didn't recognize partying friends when I was sober though they recognized me. Self One and Self Two had different memories. Different 'instants'.

I don't know what instant Jim Hogan is working on, but I've churned out a few since last we saw each other. We were drinking buddies, daily, for weeks on end sometimes. Then he got married and disappeared. And now reappeared. As have I.

He's heard about the museum, figured he'd eventually see me here, talk being what it is. He's Catholic now, there's only about 'ten mainstays' in Pingree that attend Mass on Saturdays, which is administered by a Priest they borrow from Aberdeen. All of them are Italians or, like him, a spouse of one, and they get together two weekends every November to make pasta for a pre-Christmas sale. The proceeds go to running the Church and whatever is left goes to the Food Bank. He invites me to help. Or to donate. Or both. He gives me a flyer to hang up at the museum though I don't have a bulletin board to put it on. "We'll catch up while we make pasta," he says as he leaves.

***

I don't know what the Chinese—or Japanese or Indian—word is for the fish-eye in the Taoist yin-yang symbol. It's the opposite inside an opposite and it has always fascinated me. The little bit of feminine inside the masculine—and vice-versa. It's the collateral calamity that comes with any prosperity. This local illustration of that fisheye, the presence of a Catholic culture amidst a Mormon one, the remnants of an Italian one amid Anglos, catches my interest. I was amused the moment I was invited and have been moreso all week, and though normally I wouldn't attend such events I can't miss out on this one.

Just up Sheep Trail road, after crossing the Skeen Canal, is the little Catholic Church, a log cabin erected by the parishioners thirty years ago. I was still around at that time but just finishing up my stint at Joe's, so I don't recall the event, my attention being so fully taken by my habit. A stone monument—polished lava, appropriately enough—stands outside the Church door with the names of those who helped build it, those who have passed away getting an added birth and death date. Valenti. Benini. Rossi. Droghei. Vitale. But a couple non-Italian names, too. I do the math and am impressed by the upper end lifespan average. A lot of these people made it well into their nineties, despite having hard lives both in Italy and here.

I'm not a step inside the door before Jim greets me. He swiftly makes introductions and the scurrying volunteers acknowledge me as if I'm a long lost cousin but at the same time suggest I need to get to work. There might be twelve of us that are adults, eight over eighty years old, plus some kids ranging from late elementary school age to high school. Stations are set up on tables in the one room church, its folding chair pews put away. There are clothes racks to hang and dry the pasta, a table for the pasta rollers, another for the pasta cutters, one for the kneaders, and in the kitchen three mixers are blending flour, eggs and water. Only three minutes have passed and I've been assigned the egg-breaking detail. I am to crack three into a bowl, push it across the counter to the mixer, break three in another bowl. The dough-makers take the eggs, return the bowls, I fill them again. Sixty dozen is the goal today.

Not on drugs, I feel like I'm on a drug. The flurry of little old Italian women, their threads of broken English, Italian and Italian dialect flipping in and out of hearing range, makes for an odd concert with a strange music. The English speakers maintain a constant banter, too, so I listen to this, then to that, getting little information but lots of impressions. Jim comes over from time to time to check on me—he's at a rolling station and when he gets caught up to the assembly line flow he gets up to give his back a break. Nancy, at ninety, is working the dough that comes from the food processors, with hands and wrists that need to be put in the Smithsonian—I tried but couldn't finish one batch of dough, it hurt so bad, and she's done forty or fifty already.

You'd think the wine and coffee would be good, it being an Italian event, but the coffee is cheap and bitter and the wine, so Jim has warned me (not knowing I don't drink), is cheap and bad. Locally made. These are people from a frugal background and while they have particular ways of cooking and distinct preferences they aren't food snobs.

As the morning progresses some volunteers file in and others go out, other tasks and appointments on their agenda—Alden was just in from feeding a herd of cows, LuAnn came from Pocatello, a couple nuns from American Falls drove over to help. Kids and grandkids briefly drop by to say hi, leave a dish for lunch or snacks, promise to come next week for the finishing stint.

Just before lunch I am thirty dozen eggs in. The resident OCD sufferer has cleaned up after me twice, not exactly chastising me but giving me pointers on where not to spill that little bit of egg white that lingers in every shell—here I thought the wall and drawer handles were fair game. I try to obey her direction, not wanting to lose my job and have to take one demanding more skill, like hanging pasta. The door slams and what sounds like three women come in, their voices not melodious together but definitely a harmony, just not one you'd want to replay. I hear their coats go on the rack, their purses land on the bench in the hall. There are greetings and introductions.

And suddenly the fun is gone. I hear Kali's voice.

Manners are imprisoning and I mind mine, so keep to what I am doing in the way I've been doing it. She sees me, is as surprised as I am—I didn't expect Mormons at a Catholic function, but such is the gravity of this Italian community. I don't detect anything other than a sudden glint in her eye that I might be imagining. Luckily, she's assigned a spot rolling out the kneaded dough to be readied for cutting, over on the other side of the Church. Station Four.

Lunchtime is near and I intend to leave but I'm given task after task to ready it. Clean this table off, get the chairs out of the storeroom, put the table cloth out, set out the bread. The napkins. The plates.

The food is on before I know it, the processing crew is already eating while the rest of the assembly line finishes up, the earliest stations hanging their aprons as they run out of product. Velia is cleaning up 'malfati', the pieces of pasta that have fallen onto the drop cloths, for later use at home. Nothing is thrown away. Ansi made me a plate of food so my departure is prevented, now I sit across from Jim and Kali sits with her two friends at the other end of the table. She asks Jim how he knew me and he says, "This guy, he was my undoing. Party, party, party."

"That's not the way I remember it," I say, feigning camaraderie.

"And you?" Jim asks.

"He didn't drink when I met him," she says diplomatically. I am grateful she says no more.

The talk starts down paths of its own, veering this way and that in such a manner that I pick some up and lose the gist at other times. Other conversations take place at the opposite end of the table, occasionally a connection reaching to me—someone knows Wulf and asks about him, someone offers condolences regarding my mom. Oleva has shown up, despite her being a Mormon, and teases me. I wonder if she makes the connection between Kali and the letters I get. I hope not, foreseeing an awkward moment.

Kali and Jim talk like old friends, easy with banter. He skied with her husband back in high school. Ansi and Nancy speak in dialect, their hands aflutter as they eat. It comes to me that my mother could have easily befriended these people, outcasts like herself, but likely she thought she was better than them. Or, she felt meager before them. She could, I fully understand, have suffered both of those afflictions.

A pattern develops, part of it a set of loose connections that I follow from my own years growing up in the area, part of it a new network of relatives and acquaintances that I never knew, and I see a community here that I never had, that I could have had, that I might really appreciate but am now too old to undertake. This is a judgment only, there is no emotion involved. I am still trying to extricate myself from the rest of the moment, that part dealing with me. Kali.

Already the processors are getting their machines ready so I should be first in the process to restart. The eggs, after all, come first, they have to be there as the flour goes in. "I'm going to get another bit of rhubarb custard," I say, excusing myself. I take the plate into the kitchen, then ease my way into the hall, grab my coat, quietly open the door and leave.

I do not run to my truck but I do walk fast. But Kali is out the door running after me and catches up. "Don't leave because of me," she apologizes.

I don't look at her, just say, "I have things to do."

"Stop it!" she screams. "Just stop it!" She starts crying. "I loved you too!" Her voice hits so shrill that it breaks. She stands before me, weak, poised to fall to her knees but reaching, too. "For fuck's sake, I don't know what happened. I don't know why it happened. I wish it hadn't have happened. But it did! It happened!"

I know I shouldn't, but instinct takes over. I put a hand at her collarbone. She leans into me, her body wracked, pulsing. My first thoughts are "is anyone watching?" but when I look about no one is in the yard. It's cold, the wind is biting, there is the slightest bit of snow cutting across the parking lot. "I can't fix it," I say. I don't know if my voice is cold, flat, or one that offers aid. But it isn't quavering.

"I know. I know," she manages to say. "I know."

We hold each other in silence. I would say something if I knew what to say, but I am dead. I am truly dead, I know. I have been living this way for decades, enduring. I cannot pick up the person I was, it would just be a puppet and I the puppet master. Still dead.

She doesn't speak either but she calms. She releases her hold first. "I'm sorry," she at last says. "I am so sorry. So, so so so sorry." Her words drift off until she sounds dead, too. She starts crying again, only more softly. Steadily, which only makes it seem worse.

I touch her cheek with one finger, lift her chin with my thumb. "I am sorry, too," I admit.

We hug again. Maybe she waits for me to say something profound. I wait for her, but not expectantly, anticipating not a joyous resolution but another slashing bout of pain. It doesn't come. That, in itself, is a relief. Then, she does speak. "Let's at least help these people finish up. They need us."

I grab her hand and we go inside, where I sense questions that are not voiced, that are lost in the hubbub.

Kali and I do not speak again through the afternoon, though from time to time we brush past one another and our eyes meet in a different way than they have of recent.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston