Letter 127

       I grabbed the bucket I used to clean gutters, pull weeds, placed it upside down at the base of my pine. Sitting, I found the familiar negatives in the bark that received the bones in my back. Having brushed the dirt off the back of my shed instructions, I posed with pen.
       What to write? Oh, what to write?
       My new shed filled my view, so I thought I'd write about that. 
       Before writing a writer wants to make the face writers make when posing for their book jackets. Feeling sufficient gravity pulling on his jowls, he raises the brow above the eye closest to his subject matter. Watch out now, bloods about to fly, for said writer is about wrest the bones of meat.
       What caught my eye were the shed's imperfections; the bent nail, the askew board. Yes, the very imperfections that made a shed a shack.
       I looked down, put pen to soiled paper. But, no; imperfections were old hat where literature was concerned--old hat as windows. 
       I looked up. Say, that's what my shack could use--a window.
       I took a break from writing to ask: What wall of my shack wants a window? What view out my shack do I want? How big a window can a guy cut in his shack without undermining his shack's integrity?
       Integrity was a big word of mine. Where others bowed down, wrapped their arms around stuff, I stepped over stuff, shook the hand of integrity. There's a saying associated with death: You can't take it with you. That's true with stuff, but not true with integrity.
       Say, that's what a guy should write about; integrity. Ya, how integrity is the only thing you can take with you in death.
       I bowed down, put pen to paper. "Having lit his cigar, the rich man stepped off the sidewalk, stood in the gutter as if he were the greatest thing on earth. The people pointed to him and said, 'He's got it all.' Out of the gutter stepped the poor man, plucked the butt end of the cigar off the sidewalk, threw it in the trash. The people pointed to him and said, 'He's got that certain something.' That certain something was integrity. The storehouse of true wealth a soul accumulates over lifetimes of performing true works."
       I peered out of the pine grove to see if Bob was coming. Nope, still inside with young Alicia. I recalled then how Alicia, who was from the South, hoped to write like Falkner some day. I looked down. That's what I should write; a letter to Alicia. Ya, an earth shaking letter I'd call: Letter To A Novelist As A Young Woman.
       Again, I turned to my shack for fodder. Let's see . . . threshold, door, lock.
       And that's when it came to me; the key to my novel--well, the solution to that troubling first sentence, anyway. Sure, instead of a pony tail, I'd put in a lock--a lock of hair. No little maturity in a lock of hair. No little symbolism, neither.
       I rewrote the first sentence to my Great Work. "I rather liked my horse, but then a certain finger stirring a certain lock of hair roped me, and that's how I lost said horse."
       I looked up. Nope, no Bob yet. So I got back to my letter. "So, young novelist, you're hell-bent on traveling abroad in search of setting, are you? Well, by all means, go to the ends of the earth. How else will you come to learn the setting of settings has already been banged together right in your own back yard?"
       I looked up--looked up as if my shack had said something. Shacks can't say anything, of course, but in the interest of character development, I made as if my shack had said, "I don't know; perhaps the male novelist ought to pen a novel before he sits down to pen his letter to his novelist as a young woman."
       And that's when it came to me; the second sentence to my Great Work. Sure, a simple sentence introducing my shack. No little literary history in a shack, no little symbolism, neither.
       What, no Bob yet? What's the bastard doing in there with my young Alicia?
       To get my mind off guy-guy Bob sweet-talking Alicia into repainting her face, I envisioned the shock on Alicia's mom's face last summer when her prissy 22-year-old daughter came home from college all lumber-jacked up. But I saw something else in mom's face that got my back off my pine. Damn, Alicia's mom had a 22-year-old daughter. That would make mom about my age.
       Bob--who was my age--came lumbering into the pine grove then.
       "Here it is," I said, presenting my shack. "Yep, just banged her together."
       Bob screwed his eye into that of a building inspector, stuck his head into my shack.
       One might think guy-guy Bob would want to talk carpentry. Bob was guy-guy, all right, but more on the order of Hemingway. "Good going, Anton. Now you got a good place to shoot yourself in the head."
       I threw my head back that I might better laugh my head off. But my eye, running up the trunk of my pine, lit on certain danger. 

       What we had here, in terms of tree danger, was the onerist bark-inclusive crotch. No, I logged a lot of time under my pine, and a weak crotch like that had premature death of a novelist written all over it. That was that then; no more sitting under my pine till I had my Great Work banged together.
       
       Driving Bob home, he and I played a game we often played--the game of learned literature professors. Today's subject: Shack-lit. I went first, touched on the lieutenant in Knut Hamsun's Pan. "That Glahn. Something how he holed up in that hut in Nordland, quelled his potency by shooting game." 
       Bob responded in kind, touched on the lieutenant in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. "That Mellors. Something how he holed up in a hut at Wragby, raised gamecocks so Sir Clifford, the impotent, would have something to shoot."
       Pulling into Bob's pot-holed driveway, we wrapped up our game. How about that; both Glahn and Mellors had had their freedoms undermined by women who happened by their shacks.
       Damned that Edvarda. Damned that Lady Chatterley.
       "Damned that Drucilla," I added.
       Bob threw me his lit-crit eye. Which was the same as his building-inspector eye but with more highbrow.
       So I told Bob my Drucilla story. How the girl had forced her way into my shack, tried to steal my freedom. But, no, the groundskeeper stood strong, threw the girl out.
       "Nope, Bob, ain't no gamekeeper, nor game-taker in all of literature who can hold a candle to that alpha-groundskeeper you've heard tell about."
       "Alpha?" Bob said. "Alpha is the guy who nails the girl in his shack. Not the loser who throws the girl out."
       "Not in my book," I said.
       "Oh, I know what's in your book: The loser who not only arms himself with the morals he got out of a lit class in college, but is nerd enough to actually live by them."
       I wanted to explain how literature was hardly my source of morals--my code came down from the stars--came down eons before the term 'literature' had ever been coined. But, really, how does the sage explain such acme to the base? So I laughed Bob off like a professor laughs off a sophomore. Ha, ha, sophomore Bob, whose acme of literature was Lady Chatterley's Lover.
       Which, of course, got professor Bob laughing me off. "No, really, Anton, someone should put you in a novel. The tragic middle-aged man standing firm in his shack full of dog-eared books, throwing every willing woman who falls in his dog-house window, out his dog-house door."
       Which, again, raised the age old question of man: How does a guy go about cutting a window in his shack?

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