JENNIE’S POND
I was the center of the world. Daddy made me feel that way, until my brothers were born, and I discovered everything changes. We were raised on a small farm where I milked the cow every day, and we had enough cucumbers and raspberries to employ about twenty teenage pickers. Year after year, the u-pick customers gleaned the remaining produce.
Every morning I awoke to the red-winged blackbirds singing from the cattails surrounding what Daddy called “Jennie’s Pond.”
When I turned nineteen, I took my college savings, which was no longer enough for college, and left home. I bought my own little piece of land on the other side of the mountains, where the cost of living was low, and I boarded horses. I returned to my childhood home monthly.
One day last spring, I left my parents’ homestead, driving a little too fast. I let up on the gas and drove through the neighborhood developments that had multiplied like invasive weeds on all sides of my parents’ farm. I drove down the hill to Maple Valley.
A native American about my age, walking along the highway, put his thumb out. I pulled over in my ’79 Ford pickup. I reached under my collar and flipped out my hair as I waited for him. My long blonde hair gives me confidence, even though Daddy teases me about my Miss Piggy hair. But my excessive weight makes me feel and look middle-aged. I think of my weight as protection from any would be Romeos I might pick up along the road.
The hitchhiker trotted forward and opened the passenger door.
“How far you going,?” I asked.
“East o’ the mountains,” he said.
“Hop in.”
“My name’s Jennie. What’s yours?” I asked.
“David.”
He got in and put his backpack between us.
“I came to visit my parents at their farm in Enumclaw,” I said. “It’s a long drive back over the pass, so you gotta keep me awake.”
“You’re brave, picking up hitchhikers.”
“The odds are greater that I might roll the truck over in a ditch than be killed by a hitchhiker. I’m not too worried,” I said. “I have narcolepsy.”
“What’s that?”
“I could fall asleep at any time,” I said. “The way I see it, you’re the brave one, hitching a ride with someone like me.”
I swerved across the center line and back, to give him a scare. He grabbed the dash and the armrest. I smiled as he checked to make sure his seat belt was secure.
When we reached the summit, the music on the radio turned to static, I pushed a button and a country music station replaced Seattle’s rock and roll.
“I prefer the static,” David said.
I turned off the radio. The mountain pass opened up to rolling hills of gold and green.
We slowed down at Ellensburg and I asked, “Where do I drop you off?”
“Do you know where I can find a job?”
“I have horse stalls that need cleaning. Do you think you could handle that?”
David said. “I’ve always liked animals,”
“Do you have any experience?” I asked.
“I was in the navy until last June,” he said.
“Well, that says it all! You’re hired.”
I took my eyes off the road long enough to shake his hand.
I turned off the main highway onto a straight farm-to-market road that disappeared into the horizon. I slowed down at my modest little farmhouse and bounced into the driveway. My “Horse Boarding” sign on the gate needed to be straightened.
When we pulled to a stop I said, “Hope you can fix these chuck holes, and my sign too.”
We walked in through a side door to the garage. Inside, it smelled like dirt. A ray of sunlight from a high window beamed through the dust in the air. Farm tools were neatly stacked along the walls. Narrow wooden stairs climbed up one side to a loft. At the base of the stairs, the open door of a small bathroom revealed my utility sink, an age spotted mirror, and a toilet stained rusty from iron in the water.
“My handyman quit a couple of weeks ago and he slept up there.”
I pointed to the top of the stairs. David climbed them.
That night, I slept well.
In the morning, I came into the garage and unloaded an unopened box of granola bars, a thermal cup of coffee and a bottle of water into the wheelbarrow.
“Time to rise and shine, David,” I shouted.
When he joined me, I handed him a shovel, a manure fork and a push broom.
“There’s your breakfast,” I said, pointing to the granola bars. “I hope you drink your coffee black.”
I led with the wheelbarrow to the horse stalls, and showed him how to clean them.
“I need some things in town,” I said. “Can you handle it from here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” David said.
As I left, I shouted back, “You have about twenty more to go, all down this next row.”
Looking back on it now, I can imagine what he probably did while I was gone. After I left, he ate a granola bar with his coffee. The Appaloosa was hungry, so David picked some grass. After he fed it, his orientation was off. He turned his head to the side, put his right hand back to his left shoulder blade, leaned forward from the waist and lifted his left leg from the knee. He probably stayed in that position for about ten minutes. He was working on the second stall when I returned.
“You’ll have to be faster than that, David.”
“I was adjusting my orientation,” he said.
I learned about this peculiar habit, only later that summer, after talking with some other farmhands.
I looked at him like he was crazy.
He lied. “I mean, I guess I fell asleep.”
“Well, go to bed early tonight and get your rest,” I said. “You have until tomorrow to finish this up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that. Call me Jennie.”
“Yes, Jennie.”
“I’m having some friends over tomorrow night. I’ll pay you, so you can get some beer and join us.”
I made some extra bean soup for David’s dinner. He came in after dark and said he had half the stalls done. He went to bed right after dinner.
The next day he worked hard to finish mucking the horse stalls. That evening my friends came over. Pete, my boyfriend, kept putting his arm around me and letting it slide down to my butt. I would push him away and he would do it again. He pinched me every few minutes.
David looked like he wanted to intervene, but how do you intervene with a pincher? Pinch him back? Forget that! It’d probably turn him on.
Pete’s friend was Wolfgang, but we called him Wolf.
Pete and I sat on the couch, David sat in the easy chair and Wolf pulled up a straight backed dining chair.
“I guess I’m outnumbered here. Me being the only oil worker, and you all ranch hands. Jennie, I guess Pete told you I drive an oil truck,” Wolf said. “Dangerous job. It takes skill, and I gotta have all my permits in order.”
We all smiled pleasantly, leaned back and sipped our beer.
“So I guess you ranch folks don’t talk much,” Wolf said.
Directing his words to me, he said, “My sister had a weight problem like you, and she became anorexic. Don’t you do that. It’s sad, Mom always had her on a starvation diet. Mom was a real drill sergeant.”
Turning to David, he said, “‘Course you prob’ly have met a few like that, in the service, right David? I can’t even count the times Mom washed my mouth out. See how clean my teeth are?”
Wolf grimaced and showed off his teeth to all.
“I learned to like the taste o’ soap. She always kept my dad at a distance from us, though. That cocksucker called me teeny weeny. Oh! Pardon my French, Jennie.”
He tapped his heel nervously, and his knee shook as he took another sip of beer. His attention turned to David.
“How long you been workin’ for Jennie? She let’s you stay in that room above the garage, right?”
David opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come out fast enough.
“I just moved in with a Chinese woman,” Wolf said. “She can’t speak English, but who needs to talk?”
He laughed, took a deep breath and laughed again, like a donkey. I went in the kitchen. From there, I just heard snippets of their conversation.
Pete leaned forward and asked Wolf, “What’s it like, with a Chinese woman? I mean, you know.”
Wolf said, “I think she’s Vietnamese, but same difference. She has a ten year old daughter, and what I always say is this.”
He sipped his beer and paused for effect.
He leaned forward and said quietly, “If you can’t get it with the mother, you gets it with the daughter.”
He winked at David and then he laughed his donkey laugh again.
Pete laughed with him. “God, you’re awful, Wolf. Shit, you’re a pervert!”
“I ain’t a pervert unless they turn me in! These women ain’t gonna do that cause they’ll get deported! They’re stuck with me. Them Chinks start early.”
The donkey laughed again. David stood up and walked outside.
Wolf said, “The girl tells me I’m a massage-nist white supremist.”
Pete laughed, along with Wolf this time.
“That lasagna smells good,” Wolf said, “but I gotta have steak! It’s two for one night at the Black Angus. Let’s go!”
Pete followed Wolf out the front door.
I dropped a pan in the kitchen and it echoed like a Chinese gong.
When I finally had dinner fixed, everyone was gone. The door to the garage slammed behind David as he walked in the next morning.
“Did Peter and the Wolf leave?” he asked.
“How clever.” I said, sarcastically. “They didn’t eat the food I fixed for ’em. So I’m stuck with a platter of lasagna and nobody to eat it! No wonder I’m fat.”
“Is Pete your boyfriend?”
“Sort of. I don’t like his friend Wolf, though.”
“Why do you let him pinch you all the time?”
“He says they’re love pinches because my skin’s so soft.”
I folded my arms to cover a bruise.
“You should get rid of him.”
“Why? Do you wanna be my boyfriend?”
David blushed.
“I could keep working for you and you wouldn’t need a boyfriend.”
I tried my coffee. It was cold.
“So David. You’ve never done farm work before, have you?”
David hung his head.
“I can’t pay you a decent wage for the time you spend.”
“You don’t have any respect for yourself,” David said. “You put on red lips like a clown! And you’re ashamed of your body.”
“This isn’t about me. We’re talking about what you need to do to improve your job performance.”
“You twirl and you twirl faster because the microwaves mess with your brain.”
“I don’t twirl. Microwaves? You’re crazy, and my boyfriend’s none of your business.”
David started humming.
“Stop that, David!”
David hummed louder.
“Get out!” I steered him by his elbow to the door.
“You shall not turn away the needy,” he said, leaning back as I pushed.
“I don’t know what you’re quoting, but your Bible is bullshit,” I said.
He repeated, “You shall not turn away the needy.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation.
“I’m calling the cops!”
He stood calmly and cited his imaginary source.
“Genesis, Exodus 12–13.”
I started to dial.
“Adios,” he said. “It was a great Genesis, but now I must Exodus.”
He laughed at his own joke.
He stepped outside the door to the garage and went upstairs to get his backpack. He came back down, waved and then stepped out through the front door, turned counterclockwise three times and took off running.
“What the heck was in that beer last night?” I asked myself as I collapsed into the easy chair.
The weekend after David left, Pete came over.
“They cut me back to part time at the co-op,” he complained. “I can’t afford my rent.”
“You can stay here. I’ll pay you to do David’s job.”
“If he comes back, I’m outta here!” Pete said.
“He’s not coming back.”
“He’s the kind o’ guy I pay taxes to support,” Pete said. “He’s probably livin’ off the government now.”
“He’s not a very good worker,” I said, “but at least he tries to support himself.”
“And then some do-gooder comes along and gets them a government check.”
“He’s ex-military, Pete. He put his life on the line for you and me, and what have you done?”
“Flat feet.” he said. “The Marines wouldn’t take me.”
Over the next few weeks, I learned that Pete was even slower than David. Pete refused to stay in the room above the garage, so I let him stay inside. He left food containers and beer cans everywhere, and I felt like I was his housekeeper.
As I drove to the feed store, the next week, I saw Pete walking with another woman. He reached over and pinched her on the butt. I pulled over. Pete walked up to the truck.
“You should be ashamed!” he shouted. “I’m sick of you checking on me all the time.”
“Checking on you?”
Pete said. “I feel trapped, like you’re watching my every move.”
“I’m not apologizing,” I said.
The other woman ducked into a coffee shop, as Pete looked back.
“That girl don’t mean a thing to me.”
“And neither do I, obviously.”
“You’re getting too fat anyway,” he said.
“So you finally say what you really think!” I said. “Don’t come back!”
I was nervous about calling Mom. My parents met Pete when he drove me on one of my trips to see them, and they instantly liked him. I didn’t let them know he had moved in. They would say I should marry him first. A week passed, and then I called.
I asked, “What’s up, Mom?”
“You haven’t called in over a month, Jennie.”
“I’ve been busy. You could call me, you know.”
“Your dad doesn’t want me running up a big long distance bill. You know how he pinches pennies.”
“I know. He couldn’t afford to send me to college,” I said, “but he had the money to send Danny and Derek, so they could drop out after two years partying.”
“He regrets that, Jennie.”
“So do I,” I said.
“I have some good news, though.”
“Go ahead, Mom. I need some good news.”
“We’re building a nice new house on a corner of the property and we’ve sold the rest of the farm. We’ve wanted to retire for a long time.”
“What?”
I was speechless. For years I had hoped that someday I could buy Mom and Dad’s property and raise my livestock there.
“Your dad called both of your brothers and neither one’s interested in taking over the farm. It’s too much work.”
“Not for me, Mom! I coulda done it.”
“And then a real estate developer came by and gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Mom said. “We get to live here and we’ll have a small yard for a garden, but the rest will be developed for a shopping center. We’ll have enough to live comfortably for the rest of our lives.”
I said, “What about the pond?”
“Your dad was tired of cleaning all the crap and the grass out of it. They filled it in. It was a mosquito magnet.”
“Mom! Why didn’t you ask me? I could have used more pasture, and I could have paid you in installments.”
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“I wanted to call you, but your dad says only a man could run this place.”
“There you go, Mom. You’ve never stuck up for me. I just remembered why it’s been so long since I called.”
There was silence on the other end.
Then Mom said, “They named the shopping center Jennie’s Pond.”
I felt the tears coming.
“Jennie’s Pond? But there’s no pond!” I said. “Like the Country Meadows Shopping Center. But there’s no country meadows. Why do developers always do that?”
“I suppose they can name it anything they want to.”
“How can they name a place for what they just got rid of?”
Mom asked, “How’s Pete taking this?”
“I haven’t seen him, Mom.”
“He was over here alone two weeks ago and he’s wanted this place for a long time. He just wants us to give it to him, or put it in our will for you.”
I was speechless.
“Are you there?” she asked. “He was gonna ask you to marry him.”
“Oh yeah?”
“We need to support ourselves. This property’s our retirement.”
“Pete broke up with me two weeks ago, Mom.”
“We told Pete we were selling it and he said we just stole his hopes and dreams.”
“He didn’t say anything about your place,” I said. “He told me he felt trapped.”
“I’m so sorry, Jennie.”
“He just stuck with me because he thought he’d get your farm.”
“If I had known this would cause trouble between you and Pete…”
“Mom! You guys did me a favor,” I said. “I gotta go now.”
“Love you, Jennie.”
I hung up, poured myself a Nutrisystem chocolate shake and stared out the window at my small pasture.
None of David’s fruit picking jobs lasted long. The Rodriguez family had been kind. But they were migrant workers and they had to move on. The apples had already been picked. They had treated him like part of the family, until it was time to leave, and they didn’t have room for him in their pickup.
I heard he was looking to plant winter wheat, but the farmers said that was all automated now. As the migrant families moved on, I think he got lonely. In October he stopped by to see me again. I was surprised, but I let him in.
“What are you doing here, David?” I asked.
“I’m looking for work,” he said, “What happened to your truck?”
“You mean the headlight? I had a little episode and I hit a stop sign. The cover’s cracked, but the light still works.”
“You shouldn’t be driving.”
“I just drive the backroads.”
“Backwards? That’s dangerous.”
I was beyond laughing at his humor, but I needed him.
“Could you stick around and be my driver?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“I try to control my sleep episodes, but my stress level makes it worse.”
“Do you take medicine?”
“My doctor said he could prescribe amphetamines, but I don’t wanna get started on that!”
“You look like you’ve been eating healthy foods.”
“Yeah, I’ve lost ten pounds. You’re the first person to notice,” I said.
I smoothed my blouse down, tried to look sexy and winked at him.
David didn’t respond.
“The clerk at the health food store thinks vitamin B might straighten out your thinking,” I said.
“I tried bee balm and it made my allergies worse.”
“I’m talking about the way you go crazy sometimes,” I said.
“You’re the one who’s crazy,” he said.
“I’ve heard about you,” I said. “I heard you stood in the middle of an orchard doing weird poses for hours, like some kind of statue. What’s with that?”
“I’m normal,” he said.
“O.K. let’s drop it.”
I picked up a brochure and showed it to him.
“I think you would like this hot springs,” I said. “Me and my parents used to go there.”
“It looks nice,” David said.
“I had a reservation to go there with Pete, but that’s out of the question now,” I said. “Could you drive me there this weekend?”
“I don’t know if you could be my girlfriend.”
“You don’t have to replace Pete. You can just be my friend, can’t you?”
My neighbor took care of the horses for the weekend. David drove me to the hot springs early Saturday morning. We signed in at the campground and pitched a tent, ate lunch and then hiked to the hot springs. The hike was easy for David, but he stopped often, so I could catch my breath. When we got there, a younger couple was already fooling around and soaking in the lower pool. David and I stripped, and stacked our clothes neatly. We climbed in on the other side of the pool. David was enjoying it there, but I quickly got too hot and went up to the next level. I climbed up to the ledge, where I stretched out and let the warm water drip down over my shoulders.
I heard the girl say, “That’s disgusting!”
David yelled out, “She’s beautiful!”
He told me later about a Titian painting of Venus in one of his grandmother’s art books. I was like the Venus in the painting, but he didn’t think of me as fat.
Throughout my life, I’ve been described in terms that I took as compliments. Independent, capable, pushy, but never beautiful. The other couple left and I joined David at the lower pool.
David said, “You looked like Venus up there.”
I said, “Thank you, David.”
I moved closer to him, and he moved away a little bit. I went limp and fell towards him. He caught me to keep my head from going under.
As the sun set, I woke up and we were left in the shade. We dried off and dressed quickly in the chilly twilight. We got back to our tent, started a campfire and roasted hot dogs.
“I think I should tell you a story about Raven,” David said. “You need to memorize it, because there might not be paper to write it down in the future.”
“Depends how long it is,” I said.
“There might not be computers either, and you might only be left with oral history to pass on to your children.”
“What are you talking about, David?”
“That’s what happened with the birds. They lost their hands because they needed wings to get away from their enemies,” he said. “But now they can’t write anything down. So they evolved, and they tweet their oral history to their chicks.”
“Come on, David. Birds never had hands.”
“You don’t know. Nobody used to know about dinosaurs either.”
“Birds never wrote anything down.”
“People are discovering things every day. They’re digging up ancient civilizations and finding out that they might have been even more advanced than we are.”
I said, “We have computers and satellites. Ancient civilizations couldn’t invent something like that.”
“O.K. How did they make the pyramids?” he asked. “They probably wrote it down on paper that rotted away over the years.”
“Right…”
“But if they had an oral history to tell their children, we would still know how to build pyramids today.”
“By the way, what are you on?” I said. “Because I’d like to take that drug.”
“Nobody paid attention when my great-great grandparents tried to tell the Europeans that a big tsunami took place in 1700, and nobody believed them until scientists discovered submerged trees off the Washington coast,” he said.
“I never heard about that.”
“The oral history survived,” he said, “and only later they found the physical evidence to prove it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me your story about the Raven.”
“Why doesn’t anybody listen to me anymore?”
He grabbed a stick and started hitting the fire with it. I watched the sparks fly.
“You’re scaring me, David.”
“I can’t …remember …the Raven …story, …so I can’t …tell it.” he said, whipping the coals at each pause in his speech. Something was making his eyes water. He dropped the stick and wiped his eyes, so I wouldn’t see the tears.
But I saw the tears as a cry for help that was hard to reconcile with David’s strong body and military background. PTSD maybe?
The fire became a pile of coals after we stopped adding wood. We went in the tent and laid our sleeping bags side by side.
“I’m cold,” I said, after a few minutes.
David said, “I’m warm.”
I asked, “Could we zip our sleeping bags together, so you could warm me up?”
David looked around the tent, turned on the flashlight, and didn’t see anything that could warm me up. He re-organized our sleeping bags and zipped them together. David let me cuddle up close to him. I began to stroke him and he stiffened up. I think I saw a shadow through the tent wall.
“No! I don’t do group sex!” David barked.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, as David unzipped the sleeping bags and moved over to the other side of the tent with his pillow.
“That would be disrespectful of you, Jennie. How can you go along with this?”
“What are you talking about, David? Come back here.”
“I’ll stay over here,” David said.
He put his jeans and jacket back on and tried sleeping alone.
He didn’t sleep well. Maybe he was trying to figure out who the intruder was. Was it Pete? Was it the guy up at the hotsprings?
I didn’t sleep well either. I was worried about what David might do next, and what kind of ghost he had seen.
As David drove us home the next morning he said, “I don’t like it when you touch me.”
“No problem, David.”
My illusions of romance had faded the night before.
The farm work went well for several weeks, until David re-wired the headlights in my truck. It started running rough and I took it to an auto repair shop while David was mucking the stalls. Everything worked fine until he touched it. Everything from the refrigerator to the microwave to the truck. My episodes increased under the stress.
“You just got some bad gas,” the mechanic explained. “We put in some additive and it’s running O.K. now. The wiring on your headlight wasn’t a problem, but your turn signals were backwards. It’s easy to do when you fool with wiring on your own vehicle.”
When I got back, David was fixing himself a snack in the kitchen.
“David,” I said, “we’re not good for each other. We each have our own health problems.”
He gave me a couple of crackers with cheese, and we walked into the living room. “Being together just makes it worse,” I said. “You’ll have to leave.”
I sat on the couch and fell asleep at the most inappropriate time. As I was waking, I heard David phone someone in Seattle, to see if he could move in with him.
“Oh, Hi David. I’ve got some sad news to tell you,” the voice on the phone said.
“Don’t tell me then,” David said.
“Dad died. He had a heart attack.”
“I can’t believe that,” David said.
“Well, it’s true.”
“What would he want me to do?”
“You know what he’d want you to do, David. He’d want you to go turn yourself in at the behavioral clinic and get help.”
“No, no, no. That would be like killing myself.”
“Don’t kill yourself,” Rick said. “Just go to a psychiatrist. Dad thought a lot of you David. You were as much a son to him as I was.”
David hung up.
When I sat back up, David said, “Uncle Chuck died, and he would not want me to live.”
“Who’s Uncle Chuck?”
“Uncle Chuck died and he would not want me to live…leave. And he would not want you to not let me stay.”
He repeated himself as he paced back and forth in front of me.
I rolled my eyes. “David, if you don’t stop this I’ll call the cops.”
David repeated the words louder and louder as he continued to pace.
I called 911.
“I have a friend here and he’s acting real crazy,” I said, as David continued talking louder.
“Is he threatening you?”
“No, but he won’t leave.”
“We can send a police officer, but we have other calls that take priority.”
“Well, he’s crazy and I’d like to get him committed to a hospital.”
“Is he suicidal?”
“He keeps saying his Uncle Chuck would want him to die.”
“Well then, I guess he’s suicidal. Does he have a gun?”
“No, but I do, and I might have to use it!”
“We’ll send somebody over.”
I hung up the phone.
David was still shouting when the officers pulled up.
“Uncle Chuck died and he would not want me to live and he would not want you to not let me stay!”
They handcuffed him without a fight, and they walked him out. They drove him to the hospital and I followed in my pickup. They took him to the emergency room, where only one other patient was waiting. The other patient had his hand wrapped in gauze and David couldn’t take his eyes off the blood seeping through it. He started shaking. They took him into another room. He tried to run when he saw the blinking fluorescent light in the hallway, but they gripped his arms tighter.
I followed.
“Leave this place!” David yelled. “It’s unhealthy and the x-ray machines are bad for you! The fluorescent lights will kill you!”
A medic closed the door behind David and the police officers.
I heard him yell through the wall, “Leave, for your own safety!”
I went back to the waiting room. After a short time, a nurse called me into the room with David.
“Is this your friend?” the nurse asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
I saw a small bandage where they had drawn blood and asked about it.
“We took a sample. He tests negative for drugs,” the nurse said. “We can’t hold him here. He’s not suicidal.”
“Well, you can tell he’s crazy, can’t you? Can’t you treat him for that?” I asked.
“We can’t hold him against his will, unless he’s a danger to himself or others.”
“Well, he’s a danger to me! And you’re not holding him against his will,” I said. “Can’t you see he came willingly?”
“Sure. Once they had him in handcuffs!” the medic said. “You’re not in any imminent danger. He’s calm now, so we’re required by law to release him.”
I stormed out and drove myself home. The phone was ringing. I picked it up.
“Mom! This is a surprise.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Did I ever tell you about David?”
“No,” Mom said.
“He tried to protect me from the fluorescent lights. How’d he know they trigger my…”
When I woke up, the phone was off the hook. I hung up. The phone immediately rang and it was Mom on the line.
“Are you Okay?”
©2017 Barbara B. Johnson
