Blame game

In Tritown, shame is a movable feast

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Lennie Peterson

The burden of undone tasks weighs heavily on Hollis the Mountain Man. As the drought continues, Picture Pond recedes. First, subtle openings to a beaver's parlor are exposed, then the odd cinderblocks and detritus too depressing to contemplate. When the top of the 1947 Desoto his great-uncle Wilton had driven into the pond -- rather than pay the excise -- is revealed, Hollis begins to feel a bit desperate.

More important, the usual starboard list of his dock has developed into a fullfledged droop. The dock is the site of his nightly contemplation with homebrew -- pond-cooled and pulled up by a rope attached to a bleach bottle. Hollis could see -- heck, anyone could see -- that one piling has rotted away completely. Hitherto, the prospect of standing ankle deep in the muck that passes for pond bottom -- let alone digging in it -- is almost more than Hollis's delicate sensibilities could abide. But not today.

So Hollis's indeterminate-brown pick-up roars -- in reverse -- up the long hill toward the Old Post Road, and the hardware store. THWOCK. A cicada (upon later examination) hurtles through the sliding window, ricochets off the rearview mirror onto Hollis's lap. Or would have, had his lap not already been occupied by a large and well-loved travel mug (slogan: "Tritown Solar Panels Warm You Up" -- one of brother Mason's 1970s schemes), coffee full to the brim. The truck swerves 10 or so degrees to the left as Hollis lurches to save the coffee.

GRGGNNNCH.

Yes, that's right. Hollis the Mountain Man, adept at living outdoors on three matchsticks, a wad of aluminum foil, and a pound of raw hamburger, has committed that most un-(Mountain) manly transgression: he's backed his own vehicle into something on his own property, into the largest boulder in town. It might be the dumbest, Mountainous move since his brother burned his legs with a depilatory trying to decrease wind-resistance in preparation for a bike race years ago. Yet Mason could hide his shame with long pants; but there is Hollis now facing a thousand-pound granite erratic that sports a sorrowful badge of indeterminate-brown shame on the Post Road side. Who in Tritown can't put two and two together? (Hollis did, after all, have the only indeterminate-brown pick-up in the neighborhood.) Hollis knows he'll be reckoned a complete fool.

Such was the state of his mortification that he decides not to tell anyone. Instead, the Friday after the accident he opts to drown his chagrin in a bunch of tall-boys at Myrt's Rod 'N Reel Club on the Old Post Road. But only if he arrives after dark and parks the truck so that the telltale dent isn't visible.

Muttering darkly, he slinks into the tavern. The usual crowd is at the bar, and even Lorencz the Hermit, Tritown's resident troglodyte who dwells in an abandoned school bus even further up the mountain, is holding down a stool at the end.

Hollis never knows in what kind of mood Lorencz will be. Usually, he is fairly addled as a result of eating things he finds growing in the yard, but this year has been different: Lorencz had a job tending the furnace and performing other duties as the winter sexton at All Faiths. (The church doesn't need a summer sexton, as there is no air conditioning.) But the ladies of the Vestry had decided he is worth saving, and by god, they save him all right -- but only in winter. So he's free to roam Tritown during the warm months. And, of course, wherever Lorencz goes, a trunk-load of books on chess openings, JFK conspiracy theory (Hoover did it), and alien abductions goes with him. Constantly frothing and speculating, Lorencz is all id and no superego. In short -- beyond embarrassment.

Myrt, the ex-showgirl barkeep, gives Hollis her usual half-smile and reaches into the cooler for his usual LaBatt's green. Then, after an almost tender exchange of looks, bends nearly in half to fish out a 20-ounce Haffenreffer and gently slides it in front of him. Can she tell the boulder had a stain?

Hollis takes a grateful swallow and scrutinizes the droplet-shaped ruby glass candle encased in plastic netting. The flame is tiny, but it casts an ersatz sunburn across Lorencz's grizzled face, revealing his concentration as he busily folds a piece of paper. First once, then twice, then three times. "Damn," he swears. "Can't do more than six."

"You're not supposed to," Hollis responds. "That's the trick. No matter how big a piece of paper you start with, you can't fold it more than six times."

Lorencz disagrees. "I know I folded it seven times -- it was in the church -- very thin paper."

"The Bible?" asks Hollis. "You actually ripped out pages?"

"Just the Book of Revelations," Lorencz replies enthusiastically. "I thought they wouldn't need that. It's at the end, and it's gonna take years for them to get to it. Besides, I thought it was a pretty-interesting story."

Hollis looks at Lorencz's bony forearms, and then into his wild eyes, his mind percolating with possibility. You see, Lorencz had helped move the boulder once before, when they propped up the telephone pole on the Post Road after it was knocked down by a dead branch. Better still, Lorencz is the one person in Tritown who can be trusted with the tale. But Hollis decides to be cagey. He challenges him to a game of darts. Lorencz's eye-hand coordination is very unpredictable, but there had been a night some years back when all his synapses were incandescing and he got a stream of bull's-eyes. (Interestingly, Lorencz doesn't show much delight or pride in this accomplishment, lacking embarrassment and its converse.) They find a spot on the worn patch of floor opposite the dartboard. Posters boasting Schlitz and Rheingold are pierced so often they seem more like pointillist art.

Hollis has a third beer. His limit is generally three, but he is feeling so comfy here, he just wants to hang out. Away from his truck, and even further away from the smeared rock.

WHEN LORENCZ WINS a number of rounds, a triumph that leaves him unimpressed, Hollis quietly asks if he'd mind moving the boulder again. "Right now?" asks Lorencz. "No problem, last quarter-moon should give plenty of light."

Hollis hasn't planned on the cover of darkness, but he realizes it suits his bruised ego better than the harsh glare of sunlight. Once he has the boulder turned around, he can get the big truck and get new pilings and fix the dock and be sitting there again with a frosty in his mitt instead of here in the rank-smelling but convivial surroundings of the R 'N R. One of the Mountain Man credos is never to ask for help, but there are some situations that demand assistance. And if your assistant has no short-term memory, no one needs know you needed to ask. And if worse comes to worse, Hollis can just tell everyone the brown paint was lichens. He has Lorencz to vouch for that.

Sally Cragin would always ask for help if she had a great big boulder to move.

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