Rock, Paper, Schisms: A Mike Dodge Adventure

Me and Nature, we got an understanding. I take only photos, leave only footprints, and pick up a T-shirt on my way out if Nature doesn’t f***ing maul me or pitch me off a rock ledge.

I love the Planet. I’m just not ready to take it to the next step and risk coming away with a scorching case of rabies or Lyme’s. Pardon the whore-y analogy — Nature’s more like a freewheeling hippie chick, full of energy and lush beauty and innocence and promise and lethal, swarming critters. No raw dogging for me — I’ll take mine roasted over a firepit, packed with sodium and the nuanced volatile compounds released by garbage kindling.

The menu today was ribs crafted in a pricey green ceramic egg and firepit s’mores. Ella’d had a challenging week at school , and a bit of grandmotherly nurturing and grandfatherly BS seemed called for, along with a half-rack of smoked meat.

Melanie and Kenny actually lived amid the cornfields of DeKalb County, with a chicken coop necessitated and a massive Morton Building with finished loft rationalized by county zoning codes. Both the equipment “shed” and the chicken compound were state-of-the-art — Kenny was an ex-fireman and master electrician who’d built an impressive clientele, especially in Wildhaven. Quoth the website:

“Our 2000 acres of gated woodlands, lakes, and grasslands provide a breathtaking environment for camping, fishing, hiking, or simply escaping the stress of everyday life. With two pools, a beach, a nature education center, and structured year-round recreational activities, Wildhaven offers the perfect secure weekend or retirement getaway.”

In short, Wildhaven is wild, but not obnoxiously so. It’s a haven for folks who want controlled outdoorsiness in a non-judgmental  day-drinkin’ environment. It’s a haven for Melanie and Ella and Kenny because their cabin lot had been secured by Kenny’s previous divorce settlement, and because moneyed suburbanites, Lakeshore condo-dwellers, and weekend cowboys abhor DIY that might burn the haven down and cut into the day-drinkin’.

Wildhaven was a labyrinth of grandfathered park models and amputated trailers classed up with concrete beasts and mascots, cabins like Melanie and Kenny’s self-constructed shangri-la, and a growing contingent of rustically elegant, expertly landscaped faux-homes that redefined “roughing it” as losing the DISH signal in the middle of The Bachelor. The labyrinth, which seemed to morph and reflow every time Sarah and I visited, was to be traversed at a breathtaking 15 miles an hour.

After Melanie’d guided us to their planked doorstep via Iphone, I distributed my affections equally between Ella’s siblings Lucky and Digger and reviewed Ella’s latest gymnastic moves, spelling scores, trampoline technique, Lego acquisitions, and assorted Nature injuries before being installed in a splintery Adirondack chair by the dormant pit with a red Solo of carbonated aspartame. The “girls” bailed for the pool, Kenny schlepped off to fix a junction box botched by a Geneva optician with too much YouTube access, Lucky settled by my feet, Digger licked his groin for entirely too long, and I settled in for a taste of Wildhaven life – or as I call it, Nature Lite.

The first rock thumped off the arm of the chair to my right, ricocheting into the pit and drawing Digger’s brindled head from his hindquarters. The second bounced off the my skull. I yelped and dived behind the chair, checking my scalp for leakage, as stones continued to fly. I came away clean, but remained in a manly crouch as Lucky and Digger galloped toward the road.

The “boys” continued to yowl at some invisible point to the east until they spotted a still-viable pig ear and tussled over the grimy treat as Grandpa’s would-be killer made his escape..

**

They were seated in a ring around a dead firepit two lots to the east, beside a neatly kept park model with a wooden sign proclaiming “The Kaminskis.” As I crunched up the drive, I realized each of the five women had an identical hardback in her lap. I could make out the name “Jackson” on one of the spines.

“Hello?” A tall, white-haired woman in L.L. Bean and no-shit black frames stood with a room-temp smile that had more to do with “breeding” than with Wildhaven’s spirit of pickled bonhomie. “Might we help you?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” I smiled back, keying off the warily annoyed vibe of the pack. “I’m visiting a few doors down, and I almost got brained with a rock. Did anyone notice somebody running this way, maybe five minutes ago?”

“My goodness,” the group’s apparent leader breathed. “We were rather absorbed, but after we heard dogs barking, we looked up. Anyone see anything unusual?”

The assembled shrugged, feigned deep reflection, silently consulted each other.

“Sorry. Do we need to call anyone?”

“Just a head wound –no harm.” I grinned. She smiled politely back. “Sooo, you guys having a book club or something?”

The smile gained a kilowatt or two. “Winnie, Winnie Kaminski. You might say we’re beer widows. Or sports widows. Or DIY widows. Once they get out of the city, their pent-up testosterone kicks in and they begin to meander and sniff like a pack of rescues without an alpha.”

“Jay just texted me -- they’re at our place,” reported a feline-slender blonde either 10 years her junior or just surgically upgraded, “‘helping’ the electrician he hired after nearly charbroiling half the Haven.” Kenny would be in fine form tonight.

“Great,” breathed a plump young woman who ran more to Target’s Active Collection. “All we need is some frigging (sic) contractor getting pissed. Tell him to remind Numb-Nuts not to blow off practice.”

Winnie popped an eyebrow at me – point made. “So while the men are away, a little fresh air book talk, prosecco, and Off seems a good way to wile away the widowed weekend. But I ramble. Are you visiting the couple with that absolutely darling little girl?”

Never saw Ella in full-throttle grade school angst-ing, I guess. “Guess I better head back – may be the only guy here today trying NOT get stoned.”

Tough crowd. They watched me off the property, almost as one. I picked up my steps.

**

Ella was curious and then obsessive about the pile of roughly softball-sized rocks on the pit border wall. Seventeen in all. I confided about the afternoon’s events, and like any nine-year-old, she immediately made it a huge federal deal.

Next thing you know, Rural Route 5-O was on the doorstep. Metaphorically -- for some reason, my daughter didn’t want Officer Rodney on the porch, though he seemed solicitous enough. If not necessarily industrious – I pointedly ignored the open bag of Flamin’ Cheetos and the dog-eared paperback on the passenger’s seat when we preemptively met him at his “unit.”

“Man, that’s a first,” Rodney frowned. “You think it was kids? We get some…some rowdier families here from time to time.”

“If so, they were pretty stealthy,” I said. “I talked to the women across the road, and they didn’t see a thing, just the dogs—“ Melanie shot me a perplexingly warning glare. “Just the dogs barking their heads off at the, um, stoner.” Melanie rolled her eyes.

“Which women?” the burly young sentry inquired.

“At the Kaminski place.” Rodney nodded and glanced over, scraping the gravel loudly as he shifted.

“You want to see the rocks?” Sarah asked. Off. Rodney saw no potential leads there, and demurred. Unless a hippie van with a Great Dane popped up, I did not see any solution forthcoming. Rodney climbed into his car, and Melanie and Sarah pivoted back toward the cabin to prep sides.

“Popi, Mom told me you need to take it easy for a while,” Ella informed me. I smiled down, and she took my hand. “I’ll show you my new floor exercise for next Saturday. You ever heard ‘Roar’?”  

“Not nearly enough, I guess.”

**

Kenny returned an hour after our originally scheduled departure, and decanted our ribs under a bruised sky. Within a half-hour, I was elbow deep in bones and Sweet Baby Ray’s, as Nature had intended.

“So I hear you had some little helpers on the job today,” I teased, tamping down pork with some mac and cheese.

Kenny selected another bone. “Thank God, no. I told that dumbass Carl I don’t need any damned peanut gallery while I’m trying to fix his buddy’s screw-ups. Why, somebody say different?”

Yikes. “One of the women a few lots down. Blonde Botox type, husband named Jay?”

“Was this at the Kaminskis?” Melanie asked, no longer ticked about my ratting out the dogs to the pigs. “I’d want to get away from that snooty bunch, too.” She turned to Sarah. “Winnie is always B-I-T-C-H-I-N-G to the Association about ‘infractions,’ ‘violations,’ ‘lot standards.’ She went after the frog pond a few months back, then had the nerve to invite me to her weird little ‘book club.’”

“I spell, you know,” Ella huffed.

“Hush. I think maybe Kaminski’s even writing  the letters.”

“WHAT letters?” Kenny growled. Digger quietly withdrew.

Melanie merely rolled her eyes. “I didn’t tell you ‘cause I knew you’d just go off. Wait.” She shoved her stylistically whittled chair back and retreated to the kitchen. She returned with a neatly creased trifold sheet of heavy stock. Lavender.

“‘Awesome hot tub,’” Melanie recited. “‘I’m sure the county would love to know how you got that deck so neat and level without any necessary permits.’”

Kenny’s bald scalp went magenta. “The hell are they talking about? The Chief talked to the building commissioner, and he said there was no need for approval.”

“Good you’re not going off,” Melanie muttered. “It was in the screen door when I came up last week. Theresa found one on Carl’s Jeep – she didn’t give me details. She said some…jerk’s been leaving them all over the place. She wasn’t worried – a lot of them are just gossipy bull-malarkey. Everybody makes improvements without the paperwork. They rat us out, they’ll have everybody out for blood.”

My hand paused over the rib platter. “So they’re all on colored paper, like this?”

“Yeah,” my daughter drawled. “That’s why I think it might be Winnie or her group. She’s put up flyers for wine-tastings and charity bake sales and other crap at the activity center and the pools. Why you ask?”

My fingers dipped into the carnage and came out with a lovely end piece. “Strong sense of community.”

**

As the girls set up for our newly arranged sleepover and Kenny commenced to making fire, I took a constitutional. The stars glared eerily through a night sky free of greenhouse emissions. I didn’t know what might breach Wildhaven’s state-of-the-art defenses and how health-conscious it might be, and I was jogging as I reached the Kaminski lot.

This time, the pit was live, inhabited by a solitary man whose Eddie Bauer trappings seemed to indicate Winnie’s mate. He glanced up, a book open on his lap.

“Mr. Kaminski?”

“I AM,” the man said. “And my guess is you are the victim of this afternoon’s attempted lapidation.”

“They succeeded pretty good,” I suggested.

“If they had, you wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. Please, sit.”

“Is Mrs. Kaminski home?”

“One of her grad assistants called her back to the city on some presumably significant development, so I’m stranded here until tomorrow.” He tapped the thick volume now resting on his corduroyed thighs. I noted the neatly creased sunflower bookmark inserted roughly halfway through. “So how might we assist you?”

“Something hit me, no pun intended. Stoning seems a really primitive way of, uh, venting? Why not just break a window or vandalize the mailbox? And if you ARE trying to inflict physical harm, aren’t there more practical methods?”

“Both the Torah and Talmud prescribe stoning as punishment for some offenses, and although stoning isn’t mentioned in the Quran, Islamic lawgivers once imposed it as a penalty primarily for illicit intercourse. Pardon me – social psychology’s my specialty at Northwestern, and I tend to lecture even around the campfire. I have a suspicion where you’re going with this, and it’s more within my avocational bailiwick.” Kaminski displayed his reading material. Psychosocial Significance and Resonance in the American Gothic Novel. By Joel Kaminski.

“Saw the movie on Netflix.”

“It can be rough going. You are, what, early 60s? So chances are, you probably studied, what, Orwell, Vonnegut, Conrad in your high school lit courses? Maybe some short works by Bradbury or Shirley Jackson? ‘The Lottery,’ perhaps?”

“You were expecting me.”

“Well, Ms. Jackson’s dystopic 1948 masterpiece provides a modern context for lapidation as social contract. Now, alone, in this age of Fifty Shades and ‘chick lit,’ that might seem a stretch, but, well, let’s see if you can’t earn some extra credit.”

I shifted closer to the fire. “I also read ‘The Possibility of Evil’ in Mrs. Halloran’s sophomore English. The sweet old biddy who sends poison pen letters to her neighbors. On colored stationery.” I tried not to stare at Kaminski’s yellow bookmark, then gave up. “What’s YOURS say?”

Kaminski examined the fire for a moment. “When we first bought this lot, I didn’t always bring Winnie. Eventually, I got counseling rather than a stoning. Yours’, or I assume your daughter’s?”

“A questionable permitting shortcut.”

“The stoning seems to be a separate act. You know it’s not the first time, right? A teen was attacked on his illicit hover board in June, treated for a minor concussion. What did YOU do?”

“Wha--?” I hate it when the table turns on me first.

“What behavior might have instigated your attempted stoning?”

“Gee, I dunno. We drove straight from the gate to the cabin, at a crawl. You guys really need to look at that 15-mile-an-hour limit – I practically had to ride the brakes.”

“Did you, though?”

“Maybe a couple of times, I topped at 16 or 17.” I stopped as if I’d hit a pothole that might be a kitten or a tricycle, and recalculated. “Your wife is kind of a stickler for the rules, isn’t she? And the stoning and anonymous notes? It’s a huge coincidence, given that little Shirley Jackson fan club she runs.”

Kaminski blinked in confusion, then something dawned. He jumped from his chair and disappeared into the park model. He emerged with the same book Winnie and her crew had been contemplating. Kaminski held the volume before my eyes.

“LISA Jackson,” he said gently. “Winnie actually IS a professor of American literature, and when she sheds her academic shackles, she enjoys ripe, juicy, pot-boiling suspense. The book club was her way to connect with a cadre of Wildhaven wives dragooned into leaving the city each Saturday. Or who are stuck here year-round. Or who must monitor an errant spouse. You think Carl and the gang really want to hang with an adjunct academic? Look, how would you use to describe Miss Strangeworth, the protagonist of ‘The Possibility of Evil’?”

“I dunno. Sanctimonious? Passive-aggressive?”

Joel Kaminski nodded, and leaned back. “Got a few minutes for a campfire story?”

**

At 9:30, the trailer lights were on and shadows moved behind the blinds. Kenny was suggestible, especially when it came to retribution, but I persuaded him to stay in the truck.

The Cheetos were  gone, but the paperback was still on the passenger seat. The Lottery and Other Stories. The pages were bowed from the elements and dedicated study — dense yellow highlighter detailed a redaction of rationality. Shirley’s cautionary fiction was Rodney’s perverse bible. With Ayn Rand a darling of the Right and Anne Frank kindling for a literal Confederacy of dunces, my surprise threshold required a new Lay’s flavor.

Kaminski’s campfire tale — about an eager but susceptible undergrad who’d taken, then audited, then crashed Fiction and Friction: Mid-Century Authors and Social Dissonance — had grouted my already formative theory. After an emotional break his junior year compounded by a technical academic violation, he’d returned home with a literary bent and a bent view of rulebreakers and miscreants.

“Whatcha up to, Chief?” Officer Rodney said, delivering the world’s lamest burn unconvincingly. The white Hefty bag in his right fist undermined the menace.

“Hey,” I greeted with equally false bravado. “Two miles over, Bro? Seventeen miles, 17 stones — that’s some Old Testament overkill.”

“So you KNOW what you were doing?” Rodney challenged.

“Too fast, too furious,” I shrugged. “But I did wonder how YOU knew. One of Winnie Kaminski’s Lit 101 buddies was afraid you might alienate  a contractor. Why worry about that, unless her husband was staff?

“Then she mentioned you having a very important practice scheduled. My guess is you coach the ‘camp’ kids. I don’t imagine they supply you a police-issue radar gun, but I’m betting you got one of those baseball speed radar setups in the trunk along with the backup Cheetos? You live kind of on the ass end of things, so what, you wear your cleats on patrol to save time? The noise they made on the rock at the cabin was a giveaway. You know you left some serious scratches on my kid’s porch?”

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Don’t stone yourself about it — sending a kid to the hospital, now… I get it, sorta — this place has a pretty high douchebag ratio, but geez. What ‘s with the letters? I know you got an unlimited supply of Wildhaven flyer stock — did you know every printer leaves a distinct signature?” I think.

“People think the rules don’t exist out here. I remind them they aren’t as safe as they think. Maybe a few don’t come back.”

“You might add that to the website.”

Rodney was silent, clearly considering. Then, suddenly, Kenny was in his face, a tire iron in his paw.

“Don’t even think about it, dumbass,” my son-in-law snarled.

“What you gonna do about it, Dickweed?”

Jesus, I communed with Nature.