Culvert Mozart Lane Ch. 03

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I could go into great detail describing every week of the next fifteen years, but most of it would resemble, "June 3rd - I woke up and scratched my backside like I usually did. Most times I farted on the way to take a piss but didn't need to that morning." Nobody enjoys reading that, so I'll spare you. Here are the parts you might actually want to know.

Nora gave birth to our daughter Renee in 1951, then Mark in '52, John in '54, and Sally in '55. They could rightfully be called bastards, since their mother and I were married to other people. Jake knew I was their father but loved and cared for them like they were his own. I loved them too but kept my distance to protect our secret. Though she didn't want any more children, Nora and I kept up our affair. We'd meet in the woods, the hay loft of their barn, or the ice shack during the winter. We had some sexy fun a couple times a week, and I added cugi... cuntla... whatever it is when a man kisses a girl between her legs, to our more than pleasant meetings. To celebrate each pregnancy and each birth the beautiful redhead would even let me up her rump! Once she told me Jake liked hearing about what we did. It got him excited, which I didn't understand and still don't. The last thing I'd want is details about my spouse cheating on me.

I helped Jake re-wire his house in the spring of '58. A guy from the power company came out and shut the electricity off at the pole by the road, so we could disconnect the old wires and hook the new ones up to the transformer on a pole next to his garage. It was easy to stand on the garage roof and reach the pole and wires, which was convenient then and terrible later. My wife Elaine and I had supper with their family that night. We complimented them on having twice as many lights, and an outlet in each room like we did.

The next morning Nora saw our nearly 4-year-old son John had climbed the ladder and was walking around on the garage roof! She called to him and tried to coax him down, but he was proud he was able to get up there. He clapped a lot and raised his hands over his head, touching the power line that instantly electrocuted him. One of the hardest things I've ever done was restraining my feelings at his funeral. To keep our long-term affair secret, I needed to seem only mildly sad my boy had died. It's hard for me to admit this, but the next afternoon I walked into the woods alone and bawled my eyes out.

My stepsons Lawrence and William married ladies they had met years before in school and moved away with them. Their brother Thomas loved God instead of girls, and went to a college for ministers. I forget the name of it. He preached in a small town an hour away for a few years and returned when our minister decided to retire at 'only 82 years young'. Thomas never married and was kind enough to let another fella share the parsonage with him for several decades. He even gave him a job mowing the grass, cleaning the church, and so on. Now that I think of it, I guess they might have been gay. Back then it would have been a terrible disgrace and they even could have gone to jail, but now I see that people need to find happiness and companionship where they can.

My wife Elaine's youngest boy Stanley wanted to marry his lady friend Carol, but neither of them had much money. We spoke to her parents and they agreed to split the cost of a trailer house and a small wedding with me. We bought the kids a two-bedroom 'Tri-Level' mobile home. It technically had three floors, which was sort of a sales gimmick. The upper floor was a 5-foot-tall child's bedroom covering the rear third of the trailer's length. The 6-foot-tall room below it was a living room, which sat on a bed of fist-sized rocks we'd laid. The rest of it was about 4 feet above the ground, as the middle 'floor.'

I hooked up the water and electric for it. Stanley and his family stayed and helped out on the dairy farm a lot. Luckily their first two children were a pair of boys, so they could share the little bedroom. Their third was a girl, who slept in the living room until she started school. Eventually they moved into our house and took over the dairy farm, but I'll get to that later.

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I was cutting some dead trees for firewood in the late autumn of '61. It was a cold and very windy day. One didn't fall the way I expected and surprised me. I tripped and it crushed my lower legs, trapping me. My chainsaw dropped to the ground just out of reach. I could have grabbed it easily if only my arm was three inches longer. I thought about what I should do as I laid there on the ice of a frozen puddle, stuck under the heavy tree trunk. I was a quarter mile from home and knew everybody would be inside because of the cold. It was unlikely anybody would hear me but I shouted for help many times. Since nobody shouted back, I knew I was the only one who might get me out. I kept trying to reach the chainsaw but it taunted me, just sitting there a finger-length out of reach!

I saw a wolf walk out of the woods and look at me across 200 yards of snow-covered field. A little while later, two other wolves appeared out of the forest. I yelled at them several times as they slowly approached but they kept coming. They might have been fifty yards away when another, larger wolf walked out of the clump of trees I had just been cutting. It was only ten steps away! I screamed with all my might, but the beast wasn't afraid. It growled and kept walking toward me! From only spitting distance, the wolf sniffed the air and stared into my eyes.

Suddenly he turned toward the others and howled, then he ran to them and led them away. I noticed he was limping slightly and didn't put much weight on his front right paw. I finally realized he was the wolf Pine and I rescue from the trap, all those years ago! I had helped saved him, so he saved me. I smiled and decided we were nearly square, since he still owed me a couple of mink.

Like most men at the time, all my pals and I smoked. I had a craving and dug in my pockets but couldn't find my cigarettes. I turned my head and saw they had fallen out of reach too. What I did find was a screwdriver. I stretched my arm out and pushed the saw handle back and forth with the screwdriver, and it slid down the slight hill toward me! Starting a chainsaw while laying on your back is even harder and more dangerous than it might sound. I thanked God and sighed in relief once I'd cut the log and freed myself. My lower legs hurt like crazy! Even flexing a toe was agony! I tried to stand and nearly blacked out from the pain. I crawled about twenty yards to my truck, then climbed inside and called for help on my CB radio.

One of the best things I've ever heard was a neighbor Edgar saying, "Fire up the engine and get warm. I'll be there soon." He rushed me to the hospital and x-rays showed both my fibulas or shinbones were broken. With casts on both legs, I was totally useless on the farm for three months, and Elaine wouldn't let me forget it. We started sleeping back-to-back and she scoffed or made snide remarks whenever she brought me something or helped me wash myself. The small resentments and anger piled up and up. The last time I hurt anyone intentionally I think I was five years old, maybe six, but she tested my self-restraint almost daily.

We argued until we decided talking was pointless, and kept our distance any time we could. Once I could walk again I began drinking beer after supper and stayed up late to watch the Tonight Show. I liked Jack Paar but when Johnny Carson took over he was funnier. Eventually I switched from beer to whiskey, since I needed far fewer bottles. Elaine snored quietly when I crawled in bed each time, and she was always awake and working on something when I woke. That spared us a lot of further confrontations. I think the last time we ever even hugged was a few days before I broke my legs.

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In the spring of '62 Jake started coughing a lot and it got worse over time. By that Halloween, he was so short of breath he could barely walk from their house to the barn without stopping to rest. He finally took Nora's advice and went to the doctor. He had sarcoidosis, which was slowly destroying his lungs. When he got home he told Nora and I the awful news. There was no chance of recovery, and he only had a year left, maybe less.

Our Indian friend Pine brought a 'medicine man' named Smallfox to see Jake, but his prediction resembled the doctor's. My best pal was fading away, and it wouldn't be quick or pleasant. Smallfox suggested a tea made of a few certain plants would end his suffering quickly. Jake and Nora dismissed the idea but thanked him. Six weeks later Jake couldn't even stand up on his own, and every breath pained him. After a sad discussion with Nora and I, he asked me to gather the plants so she could make the lethal tea. Out of strange mix of kindness and jealousy, I helped my secret lover kill her husband.

There was nothing dramatic about it. He smoked a final cigarette and coughed, as he knowingly drank the deadly brew. We held his hands as he spoke his final words, "I love you both so much." He fell asleep, then over the course of an hour, his breathing slowed and eventually stopped.

I hugged Nora as she cried a long time. He'd been sick so long nobody even thought about an investigation or autopsy. Jake was buried two weeks before Christmas, 1962. She had quite a difficult time without him. Fortunately, her son Roger and our daughter Renee acted as substitute parents for the others.

They were generally good kids. Roger was a hard worker and a jolly lad most times, but he had a temper. He angrily kicked items around or threw stuff in frustration when life didn't go the way he wanted. I wondered if that was the reason he didn't have much luck dating. He went out with five or six girls, but only once or a few times each. I couldn't believe it when I heard a rumor, once he dropped a young lady off at home with a black eye and split lip.

When my oldest child Renee got married to her high school sweetheart David, I helped them build a house a quarter mile down the road, near the far edge of the woods. He got a job as a mailman and the two helped on the farm when they could.

Nora didn't have much desire or time anymore and ended our affair in the summer of '63. I was disappointed but understood. Sally was our youngest and cared for the chickens, and the others kept up the rest of the farm so their mother could get a job in town. Sally was a little cutie, but frequently sad. When I asked her what was wrong she always answered, "Nothing." I'd often sneak her candy or other treats to cheer her up a little.

Our middle son Mark had more brains than brawn. He grew to nearly six feet tall by the time he was 15, and added another half a foot in high school. His arms and legs always seemed too long for the rest of his body. To overcome his lack of strength, he came up with several tricks and shortcuts to make the farm work easier.

One day my school pal Joshua visited my dairy farm. He had been a lawyer for several years and was running for District Attorney. He asked if I would put up signs and pass out some flyers to help. I told him I'd be glad to. My wife Elaine played nice to keep up appearances. She gave him a wheel of cheese and a jar of jam, and wished him luck. We threw a small party when he won the election. I invited him to the ice shack several times that winter and we had some fun. It wasn't like my relaxed and jovial friendship with Jake, since Josh was a little formal and uptight, but I was glad to have a fishing and hunting buddy again.

Nora seemed to age ten years in just year after Jake died. It was quite a surprise to see a cigarette in her hand one day. I began to ask, "You started..." She was tired and grumpy after her job in town and several hours' work on the farm. She cut me off with, "If I can work like a man, I can smoke like a man." She blew smoke in my face and the look in her eyes told me to drop the subject.

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