In case you missed it: Family tree
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“Give ‘em Hell, Molly!” Randy yelled. I revved the engine of the four wheeler and barreled deep into the woods of Bedford, Iowa, along the suggestion of a trail we were supposed to be fixing that day. Our shovels and big Roy clattered in the back. Of the two “vehicles” at our disposal that summer, this was the only one I could safely abuse when I was supposed to be working. The other was a biodiesel truck that ran off french fry grease. It emitted a cloud of hot bad restaurant wherever we went.
My second favorite thing after joyriding through the mud was blasting it off at the end of the day with a power washer. If you haven’t power washed, you must. It mimics the joy of cleaning a nonstick pan after making one egg, but more powerful, like you’re a god. With barely any effort, just the pull of a trigger, that shit flies right off. If only life were always this easy.
They taught us how to use a chainsaw, but whenever a downed tree needed cutting up, the job always fell to Rick or Roy or Tray, guys who never didn’t know how to use a chainsaw. I didn’t mind, as I had no interest in trying not to cut into my femoral artery.
I willingly learned to identify a number of plants. I could spot poison ivy, and the jewelweed to rub on your skin as a salve after a poison ivy run-in. I learned what poison parsnip was too, but only after I walked past it and got a rash. Their little yellow flowers foreshadowed the little yellow buds that sprouted on my forearms. I had to poke them with a needle (which was not disinfected - I lived like an animal) to relieve the pain, and used a paper towel to clean it up.
Bodies are disgusting and I’m sad I have one. I wish I was just a mind, but one that could still eat stuff.
The native prairie grasses, like switchgrass, big bluestem, and northern sea oats were always a pleasure to wander through, the swish-swishing sound a welcome reprieve whenever “Pretty Good At Drinkin’ Beer” came on the jobsite radio.
There were animals, too. Croaking frogs, flirty little deer, and chip-addicted raccoons. I once walked into a bathroom stall and saw a toad sitting on the toilet seat. “Oops, sorry!” I cried out, shamefully pulling the door closed, like I was tipsy at brunch and walked in on another girl, immediately spiraling into was it her fault or mine?
When it rained so bad that the trails would flood, we’d drive to the Casey’s gas station and fill up on cinnamon rolls and cheese breadsticks at the pizza buffet. Back in my cooler at the campsite, I had organic turkey and whole wheat bread that I’d bought with Americorps sanctioned food stamps. But a government sandwich proved second-class to pepperoni pizza languishing under a heat lamp - food from the Real America. It was so greasy that it was hard to grip a quarter to play scratch-off lotto tickets and try to win $1.25 for a cold Gatorade.
One July evening, there was a tornado warning and a nice old couple invited me to spend the night in their RV. I politely declined with the it won’t be that bad mentality that I’d picked up from Tray, who’d been to Iraq, and Roy, who’d been divorced three times. But it was that bad. Lightning flashed so close to my tent that momentarily all I could see was red. I wasn’t wearing clothes because of the heat, but as the wind blew harder, branches cracking like microwave popcorn, I put them back on. I didn’t want to be found naked if I died.
I unzipped my tent the next morning to see a tree yards away completely split in half. The old couple was sitting outside in their camping chairs, slowly sipping coffee. I smiled at them as I tiptoed around fallen branches to the bathroom, where I washed my face in sulfurous water and flicked a spider off my toothbrush. Just another day at the office.
On some weekends I’d drive to my friend Katie’s in Des Moines. She’d inflate an air mattress for me and we’d go to sleep second-hand smoking with her neighbor and laughing to the sound of mice running in the walls. We watched TV and ate pints of strawberries on her college stained Lovesac. It felt like the Four Seasons. But on Monday at 4 AM, I’d dump a bag of ice into my cooler (is there no sound more criminal after just awakening?) and drive the 2.5 hours in the dark back to Bedford.
One week in August we got to go to an Americorps conference in another small town. We were all thrilled for the change of scenery and the opportunity to not eat hot dogs. The last thing you want after weeks of eating hot dogs is hot dogs. But what did they serve? Hot dogs. Not grilled hot dogs, which are good but we’d tired of, but boiled hot dogs. A boiled hot dog is a depressed hot dog. A grill or a fire is what gives a hot dog the will to live, to please. Boiling water renders a hot dog lifeless, gray, unable to enjoy hobbies it usually enjoys.
Loaded on weenies, we headed to a dive bar in our gray Americorps t-shirts. We drank Shiner Bock and played pool while chatting up the locals. A tiny but fat little man in his 70s approached us and asked if we wanted to try some of his moonshine. Like a magician, he pulled a Snapple bottle half full of a brown liquid out of the air. It was decidedly more sinister than peach iced tea. “You know you can go blind from that right?” huffed lazy, “Miss Country” Rebecca. I took a sip and saw the light.
At the end of August, after sandbagging for a storm that never came, I drove the eight hours home to pack for a week of vacation. My family was already at the beach, waiting for me and the first tan of my life to arrive.
The campsite bathroom was dirty and its patrons (toads, spiders, zombie tampons) didn’t take care of it, so I showered, how you say, not a lot. I showered more than the men, which was the only metric I cared about.
Before my vacation I hadn’t washed my hair for two weeks. Knowing I’d see my mother, who insisted on khakis for mass and ironed pillowcases, it seemed like an appropriate occasion to not be a white person with dreadlocks.
So there I was in my parent’s bathroom, home alone except for the Medusa-like tragedy atop my head. I grabbed a comb and went in, but when I pulled down the comb didn’t go. I pulled harder. My flight left in two hours. I pulled with the strength I’d developed that summer, like I was back on the trail wrenching invasive garlic mustard from the sun-hard soil, and my arm popped out of its socket. Half of the comb was in my hair. The other half was in my hand, at the bottom of my arm that lay dangling, lifeless, between my breasts. Without thought, I thrust my arm back into its socket. I marveled at the manageable amount of pain and at my courage brought only by a deep fear of embarrassment. I didn’t want to be found naked if I died.
Months later, I went to an orthopedic doctor for lingering soreness.
“What brings you in,” he asked?
I shook my head with clean, combed hair. “I should have used a power washer.”