Hashes & Bashes

By PJ Colando

An outsider visits Jackie and Steve Breeden's family farm, claiming to be kin...and Hashes & Bashes begin. Carl Edwards' high-spirited presence rocks the entire community, especially when he gets rich quick. Will this charismatic outsider earn his way into their hearts?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483579115

Book preview

partners-in-time

The Past as Prologue

I know them well; watched them grow up alongside me. Grow up, grow weary, grow gray, growth hastened by escapades between those commas.

Jackie and Steve Breeden live on a small farm, the vintage dream of the American Midwest. The vast fields surrounding their home have long been held by Steve’s family, but are cash rented to a neighbor with fresh burnished resolve, buttressed by a longer line of bank credit and buffered by younger bones.

The couple had earned a contented life. Their gravel lane undulates a rise, and their farmhouse noses between two cheek-like hills under the eyes of God. Robert Frost would have composed a poem just for them, if he lived in their time.

To earn is as integral to farm life as corn and cows. It is the color of integrity and calm. It is a pervasive green, unattached to envy, no arena for frailty or failure. Neither green grass nor green cash emerge without effort in these parts.

My name is Fran Blackstone, and I’ve just retired as principal of the high school. Not the one I attended with Jackie and Steve—that was downgraded to the middle school when con-solidation came—but the new single level rambler made of brick the color of rain-soaked soil. Behind is a parking lot sided by a basketball arena, a baseball field, and a stadium with a track wrapped around the football field like a scarf. The communal parking lot’s an asphalt ocean awaiting vans and carloads of folks. God forbid that any sports seasons overlap.

Midwesterners believe sports were surely ordained by His spirit. It’s no secret that Pastor Paul Rankin covets the sporting events attendance for his church.

Brandon Breeden, Steve and Jackie’s only child, was the reason the sports-themed school was built. The term ‘athletic grace’ does not capture his spectacular prowess. His play was magnificent, adroitly poised on perfection in every instant. Sports writers from the Detroit Free Press came, not to report on him—for the city was miles away—but for the privilege of witness.

Though Brandon activated a perfect storm of boyhood’s jubilant energy, his adult life is a craven imitation of his family’s tradition. Neither the misfortunes of the economy nor his immaturity explain his messy lack of commitment. His aimlessness cannot be consigned to the unfortunate honeymoon accident that ended his pro football aspirations years ago.

If he’d been my son, I’d have looked like the American Gothic painting’s couple. I’d have stuck the pitchfork in him. But Steve remained stoic, and Jackie kept shiny smiling. They tried to ditch the scene—their son’s comprehensive escape hatch strategy—in an RV, but the road trip didn’t last overlong. Farmers cannot be capricious, despite a Baby Boomer yen for self-actualization and fun.

Retirement gifts time for rumination, so I’ve been occupied mightily in my mind. Reflections of my life as far back as images emerge, at around age four. I’m mostly mired in high school, trying to make plausible our current teens’ experience, the much written about Gen XYZers. I often flounder to understand. Empathy is impossible.

When I was in high school, I used to gaze at Grant Wood’s American Gothic, aloft on the study hall wall. I was a good student. Homework rapidly done, I’d daydream about the small, white house with its exotic, churchlike window; anything to ward off thoughts of teenage angst or Vietnam, which played out nightly during supper on our TV. My mother wouldn’t let me read during a meal, but I could daydream with my eyes straight at the screen, glazing over the news’ reality.

My mind’s eye bypassed the couple’s glum expressions, miscast against the agrarian reverence connoted by the house’s window. Perhaps they lost a son in the Vietnam War and set themselves apart from happiness.

So I moved my imagination inside the home to create good lives; I was early a dedicated enabler. I parted the lacy window curtains and peered into a young girl’s room, painted mint with daisy chains rimming the walls near the summer cloud ceiling. The girl was prone on her bed, blond braids splayed across her shoulders to nearly touch her daisy-sprinkled bedspread. She was bent to a drawing tablet and pastels, working out the muscles of her favorite horse. She frowned when her mother called her to help with supper chores, feathering one last line in the tail. Sometimes my ingénue had posters of the Beatles; sometimes of Herman’s Hermits, the Kinks, or the Rolling Stones, whose music played in my invisible headphones until my dad yelled to stop my drumming the utensils on my plate.

In more current daydreams the room can be golden, with sunset shadows shifting across perky wallpaper. Sometimes it’s a boy’s room with a Cowboys and Indians comforter and Lincoln Logs strewn about. Sometimes a Slinky falls from a desk to a chair, then the floor, poked by my omniscient hand.

But the pallid couple remained the gate-keepers of my teenage catharsis. I couldn’t get past them, no matter what. Why were they unsmiling, dour when they were living the dream? Our community’s promises that lay all around us, in fields so well furrowed that even snow drifted in sync with the grooves. Fields with sweat, labor, and some tears, but not blood.

These puzzlements became hilarious when I took an art history course: the model for the pitchfork-holding farmer with the clamped lips had been a dentist. Not proud of his teeth after all that Fluoride and floss? Go figure.

The farmers I know are well humored. They regard themselves as ardent caretakers of God’s land. They earn their keep, with or without His help. The land may bring them closer to God, but keeps them as distant as needed in a clan, a community, a couple. There’s all that toil, little time or energy for talk.

I’ve got a little time on my retiree hands and beaucoup stories in my tape recorder brain. While the men folk don’t talk, their wives do. I’m sharing this Stashes sequel because my friend Jackie wants to star in the movie, before her conniving ex-daughter-in-law beats her to it. That girl’s name is Amy, a sequence of letters in infamy, which is what she brought to all our lives.

Though Amy’s not likely to star in anything soon; she now resides in a gray bar hotel.

I’ve rhapsodized about Wood’s famous painting, so it seems fair that I paint a word picture of our small patch of Earth. The scent comes first: moist muck holds promise for anything. Life refreshed again and again, season upon season, year upon year. Flat, verdant, square land, parceled two hundred years ago to eager homesteaders under the United States’ dual mores of expansion and equality. A blue bowl sky seems to hold it all together, our God’s terrarium in mid-Michigan.

A stolid brick building in the center of Lodenberg, our Hiawassee County seat, bests the height of the hills around. Besides government offices, the building houses a police force of three. Law and order are core—the decorum required of community—but our rules are more truly defined by religion. Our people never force man’s will upon God’s, though we attempt to shape it. It’s called farming.

Walmart and the mall stores on vast acreage beyond the town’s perimeter gutted the historic downtown, so there is more plywood than glass on the empty storefronts. There used to be a Montgomery Ward catalogue store, which everyone called ‘Monkey Ward’, as if it were in a hospital or zoo. The store manager moved to Flint, where he worked alongside Jackie’s husband, Steve, in the auto industry.

There is no uptown, which suits. The years 2009-10 foisted hard times on central Michigan. The bar/church ratio remains equal; our community cherishes balance. The noisy communion of each resounds across the town streets, at alternate times, so as to not compete.

There’s still the Koffee Kup Kafe and a pert little gift shop. The latter sells more ice cream and local fudge than anything, people’s instant gifts to themselves. The proprietor painted the bricks lavender, so the shop seems to sashay amongst the other blank spaces. Watson’s Drugs remains a mainstay and likely always will: people crave their meds dispensed nearby. For similar motivations, there’ll perpetually be Kroger and Milton’s Liquor Store.

We have a post office where you can wire money and flowers on opposite ends of the counter, multi-tasking that convinced the federal government to not close our postal outpost. It helped that the postman, Willard Partin, is also our mayor.

Waylon Huffington is the de facto mayor, for he’s the editor, sole reporter, and printer of our weekly newspaper, which is called Hiawassee Highlights. The paper thrives on local sports, liquor and grocery store ads, and all the wigwag gossip locals can create. The rival church pastors write a column to expound good news, vying for each other’s flocks. And bucks, I could add, but I won’t.

A dance and yoga studio opened up in the failed five-and-dime. This is where my life intersected with Amy’s. Even in yoga pose, Amy’s height filled the space, and she scored every moment, performing moves like a Marine. Amy glided in and out of the studio, speaking with no one. If she’d looked beyond her nose, she might have detected a kindred loneliness in others—and she might have acted differently—but we’ll never know.

Amy worked at the bank that anchored a corner of the square, the true monument. I pegged Amy as a classic example of ‘looking good’ instead of ‘being good.’ Jackie Breeden is my closest friend; she and I share this point-of-view. Though Amy worked, she didn’t earn. That girl walked and stalked entitled.

Our farm-knit community missed friend Jackie and her husband, Steve, when they abandoned good sense for the vanity of a lengthy RV road trip. They departed the day after Christmas; the trip was their gift to themselves, an adult act of impulse.

Jackie and Steve left their homestead in the less-than-capable hands of Brandon in addition to allowing him and his wife to live in, to squat. Brandon had lost his job and home to foreclosure, collateral damage of failed government policies.

Amy embellished Steve’s micro-dairy by growing and selling marijuana edibles, naming the venture MilkWeed Goods, dragging Jackie into the scheme. Amy financed the pot business by secretly increasing the amount of the Home Equity Line of Credit that financed the Winnebago. The term ill-considered doesn’t begin to describe this loopy maneuver. Actions always beget reactions and consequences.

Amy was no entrepreneur; her elaborate plans crashed, leaving Jackie and Steve to finance their ride-to-the-rescue gallivant home by dealing weed. Just a little, but they broke with God’s law and man’s. They’ve yet to come clean in the community, and I can’t say they should.

I may be the lone person who knows the full details—the truth and nothing but—and I’m not confessing to Pastor Paul, with whom I’ve become close. He just praises the Lord that Jackie and Steve distributed Big Braghorn’s ashes for his widow, who replaced all the church windows with stained glass.

Inevitabilities ensued. Consequences prevailed. Jackie and Steve returned to their placidly solid Middle American lives—their friends, their neighbors, their everyday tales—their dreams remaining out West. Their son Brandon moved into their Winnebago parked on the farm lot for a semblance of independence and reveled in all the single lady attention evoked by Amy’s divorce decree. There were not many roosters around.

But if you thought the math of Amy + Farm = Chaos was resolved, think again. Another wild ride just entered their contented realm. California, here he comes.

One: Bashes Begin

Sparty darted from the corner of the barn, his Dalmatian dots blurring like flurrying snow. He’d been idly nosing a Daddy Long Legs, a passel of sticks that wouldn’t play. Steve’s head jerked to follow his dog, and because his arm followed the swift trajectory, Old Bessie mooed: red alert!

Odd. Sparty seldom left Steve’s side for long when he was milking, content to supervise in quiet. Outdoors the squirrels scampered in disquieted haste, to beat the winter that always seemed to be on its way. Sparty could chase them all day.

Odder yet, Sparty’s bark was neither rascal-pursuit nor guardian-like. Steve deciphered his dog’s messages as readily as Jackie understood Brandon’s baby whimpers and coos. Sparty sounded like boyhood Christmas.

Sorry, Old Bess, Steve said with a pat to his cow’s haunch, but I gotta go reconnoiter. Sparty is acting the scout.

Steve lifted his cap to scruff his longish hair, then resettled it, hoping the S aligned properly, his version of company best. Whoever was out there was new, not a neighbor. He may have heard tires crunch the gravel of his lane moments ago, sounds that were plausible during midday because the postman and pastor made rounds.

His recently-divorced and near-thirty son, Brandon, might be home from a date, stumbling in soon to do chores. Perhaps gaming in his personal suite, their Winnebago parked between two small yellow barns.

Steve was unalarmed. It was, after all, his property and his dog, both long tethered to his soul. His wife, Jackie, was cooking massive quantities of homogenized teenager-pleasing fare at what she liked to call her lively ‘hood: the local high school cafeteria. She was an ardent punster, especially when finessing self-delusion.

Steve’s stride was purposeful as he crossed the threshold, yet his curiosity threatened to loft his cap into the breeze. Fall swirled the air with possibility. With winter’s frosty temps, folks bought more of his dairy’s milk, probably for vast quantities of hot cocoa and holiday baking. It was hard not to shout hurrah for health benefits sabotaged by season-sanctioned treats.

Howdy. To what do I owe the pleasure? Steve said to the figure backlit by midmorning sun, his tone friendly yet authoritarian. Cautious, strangely calm. He’d never seen Sparty waggling about so, not even for Bran. His tongue vigorously worked the stranger’s extended palm, as if he were lapping up crumbs.

You owe the pleasure to our awesome mom, the man boomed, and then stood after a pat to Sparty’s head.

Say what? said Steve. He took in the Tony Lamas that trumped his functionally forlorn rubber boots, his gut struck with emotion as if kicked. A hand came forward hard and fast from a solid shaft of a man. Military posture, present and accounted for, Sir.

It wasn’t a fist, though it might as well have been. Steve felt so much all at once that he felt nothing. In the eye of torpor, he couldn’t react. Though Sparty barked encouragement, Steve’s jaw clenched itself mum. His brain, his body unhitched from his command.

I sent you a registered letter announcing our connection, and you replied via email. Something about being on an RV trip, destined to visit my state. I see a newish Winnebago parked. Did you make it or not? A hella adventure, I hope.

Steve nodded, a slight gesture. The tall, well-built stranger was stringing him along, asserting without sharing much. Foreign, but formidable? Sparty didn’t think so.

He moved into the guy’s handshake, casting a wary look over his shoulder to case the barnyard. There was no massively hormonal motorcycle in the lane, only a dusty Toyota whose tires seemed to sag with exhaustion.

Steve shifted his stance away from the grip and noted the guy’s short sleeve shirt, so loud in its floral print it was no wonder he didn’t shiver. His never-washed jeans were crotch-creased as if they’d been worn seated for days. Not working man stock.

Was that a small golden hoop glinting with the sun? From an ear lobe?

Steve couldn’t speak. He was busily cataloging details in case he needed them later to report to Sheriff Terrain. Mentally counting the steps to fetch his rifle, stashed behind the milk barn fridge, his weight began to shift side-to-side, like an edgy animal in a cage, decidedly dissimilar to his typical manly calm.

Name’s Carl, the man said, moving closer with Sparty’s orchestral bark. Nine months ago—the time for birthing a baby—you were in my state. I was expecting a visit, but it didn’t come, so I did. I reckon I am more curious than you.

As a religious man, Steve succumbed to guilt well; as a church deacon, he excelled. The symmetry of the situation was downright contemplatable, though not now: Sparty had sniffed a welcome to Carl, the supposed brother who lived in California. Sparty, who’d not accompanied them on the Winnebago trip out west. Who said Dalmatians were dumb?

Steve’s innards froze. A rumble surged in his ears, as loud as a creek breaking free of its winter ice. His arms, used to welcoming everyone, glued to his sides, manners decomposed by shame. Hey finally emerged from his throat, and his left hand—not his dominant right—clasped Carl’s in greeting. The handshake concealed the misgiving that was edging into his frame: Pastor Paul often said that the devil resided permanently at one’s left side, premeditating bad actions. His inexplicable gaff alarmed him.

So you’re a lefty, too, said Carl, pumping Steve’s hand easily, then cupping it in both of his. Looks like we have more in common than hair color and height. I’ve driven a hella long ways. Can you offer a man a place to take a leak, then a beer to replace it?

Sure, said Steve, and led Carl into his cozily functional barn. The sun lent an aura of warmth to the men’s movements, stride-for-stride, in step. While Steve was surprised, Sparty barked his applause.

Over there’s a john. It’s simple, but plenty clean. The Health Department sees to that or I’d lose my county health certificate. Like I already did once, Steve grimaced as he resumed Bessie’s milking. The task’s familiarity was more welcome than Carl in the moment.

Steve was flummoxed. The day, begun as mundane as most, had turned hard left. Or right as rain, high praise on a farm. An affable stranger, welcomed by his dog, couldn’t be stranger than others among their recent life storms: Ritalin Jones, the Idaho mechanic, came to mind. He’d also had s single pierced ear.

By God, it’s not a purple cow, Carl said jovially when he emerged, refreshed from the road, with a look from Bessie to Steve. Did your folks teach you that nonsensical rhyme? Before Steve could answer, Carl said, Never mind. Don’t let me sidetrack you from helping me wet my whistle. Guess I could sample your milk, but I’d prefer Corona or Coors.

Steve uncoupled Bessie from the milkers, then turned to Carl, fully surrendered to the wonder of new kin. Beer’s cooling in the fridge over by the sinks, but you’re only going to find Pabst. He emphasized the brand because it was his, as were the barn, the cows, the dog.

Carl may have flinched abit at the assertion—the small hoop in his left earlobe jerked—so Steve added, softer in tone, There’s also Fudgesicles in the freezer, if you prefer. But stay away from my wife’s cookie stash, punctuating the last with a wink.

I’ve got milking chores to complete, and then I’ll join you. Shall I see you to the parlor or do you want to watch?

I only want to stretch out in a parlor when I’m dead, looking fine in an Armani suit, Carl said with a slow motion wink.

Now Steve thrust a proper handshake, warming to a man who mingled country custom with Hollywood style. California hadn’t molded an uppity man. A man with an arm that pumped iron.

The milking chores got completed in no time, no time at all, sped along by amicable, back story-oriented talk. The two men shared a six-pack of beer through the afternoon while Sparty chased squirrels and cavorted though autumn leaves.

Jackie’s van churned the dusty lane like the cyclone inside a Dyson, as if she wanted the air to know her earnestness. After the mega-lunch prep of her school cafeteria job, she was hell-bent on making supper. Peeling potatoes was her therapy; she’d decided on scalloped to go with chicken-fried steak and a small salad that only she would touch.

She pulled the key from the ignition as soon as the windshield nudged the neon yellow tennis ball, ceiling hung as her parking boundary. She never allowed the ball to bounce on the glass, such was her precision. Her dad taught her well; Steve’s admonitions were teasing, though not quite.

Immediately into the purse side pocket the van key was stashed, no muss, no fuss for finding it tomorrow. She had to be at work by 5:45 a.m.—exactly twelve hours away.

Ten steps inside the house, Jackie paused. Steve was grinning like a guilty man, with another guy who looked similar, as if Brandon had doubled in age. Hi, Jackie said, who’s inhabiting my kitchen? Steve, this isn’t one of your natural haunts.

Jackie, meet my brother, Carl, Steve said, flinging his arm wide to accompany the introduction. He did not—probably could not—rise from the chair, Jackie thought as she watched Steve’s elbows reattach to the tabletop to form a tripod of support. Steve was pleasantly loaded; she tasted beer in his kiss.

Wasn’t this just rich! She’d made hundreds of meals all day, and now there was an extra ravenous man in the way of a good night’s rest. Surprise numbed her already aching feet.

You don’t say. Gosh, you are real, Carl…what did you say your last name was? Not Breeden, is it? Jackie said under the flush of red, words falling from her mouth like the leaves from their trees, no longer attached to reason. She was no better at assimilating guilt than her husband. She was flexible, as a farmwife must be, but she wasn’t good at meal pop quizzes. There were only three steaks.

We are sorry we didn’t visit you in California. We had a few crises, well, matters to attend to, didn’t we, Steve? She looked at her husband for affirmation, wiping her hands on her slacks, not knowing what was appropriate under the circumstances: a hug, a curtsy, a slap? And on which man’s face?

Thank goodness she’d worn a new sweater to work today, no snags or rips apparent as she rapidly glanced up and down. She was certain her slacks had floury dough smudges, so she hastily donned her full apron. All of the quips she’d made about Steve’s brother and Brandon’s over-favored childhood book, Good Dog Carl, swelled her throat and colored her face.

Jackie, it’s all been handled, water under the bridge. Well, not water, but beer washed it all away. Carl stood and walked to the island.

Jackie was glad once again for the barrier the island offered. She’d hid behind its bulky convenience more than once—well, many, many times. It was her personal shield, the guardian of her significance. The kitchen was her farmwife shrine.

Let me get a casserole in the microwave, set the table, and settle myself, Jackie said, simultaneously opening the refrigerator