e Trip
By JT Pearson
copyright 2013 Joseph Pearson
It was a glorious day, yellow sunshine abundant, blue heaven above. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds drifted from a radio that looked as though it had been dropped more than a few times. It was amazing that it was still able to play the cassette tape. The woman on the roof continued to ignore me as I called up to her, choosing instead to bark down instructions to her son that couldn’t have been more than ten. She waited for him to tie another bundle of shingles to the rope which dangled down from so high that it may have been tied to the moon while he tucked a bag of rainbow skittles back into his pocket. The rope hung before him invitingly, like Jack’s famous beanstalk.
“Ma’am,” I shouted again, “I’m from North Star Builders. You look like you’re doing some home repair. And maybe you’re even doing some remodeling? If I could just have a moment of your time, I could discuss what we have to offer by way of home improvement specials this month.” I suddenly realized that I hadn’t even introduced myself. “Pardon my manners. Name’s Carson Pratt, ma’am.”
“Good for you. I don’t give a shit what your name is.” Her response was barely audible from where I stood.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“Go away!” she shouted down.
I looked around. “I don’t know if I can. I’m not even quite sure how I found your house. Maybe you could come down and give me directions.”
“There are signs out on the road that you came in on. Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.”
“Seems like I’ve heard that expression somewhere before.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard. And I don’t much care.”
“That line. It’s from Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it?”
She went back to what she was doing and ignored me.
These people on the Iron Range were as insane as had been described to me. I’d been told that people like this woman reroofing her home with her ten year old were common here but it took seeing it with my own eyes to believe it. Earlier I’d driven by a woman on a ladder buckling up some vinyl siding with an infant strapped to her back. All I’d had was the opportunity to say hello before she smelled salesman in the air and gave me the middle finger, continuing me on my way.
Golden blonde curls bobbed up and down as the boy wrestled the bundle of shingles like a pintsized cowboy roping calf at a rodeo, eventually securing it with the rope and then giving two firm jerks. The shingles floated upward a foot at a time, freezing mid-ascent for the woman at the edge of the roof to take up more slack and sneak in a breath or two. She wore a heavy flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots, her cheek bulging where it contained a pinch of tobacco, I assumed. The boy wore a ragged Packer jersey that had received so many washings that the number four had become a mere apparition – now just a ghost.
“Ma’am, you just need to give me a moment,” I persisted.
She paused as the shingles swung back and forth like the pendulum on an old clock. “I don’t need to give you anything. Just get back in your car and go home,” she told me.
“Like I said, I’m not sure which direction home is anymore. Come down and talk to me. Where would I go?”
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
“Again, that’s Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it?” My comment fell on deaf ears. After an awkward silence I proceeded with my sales pitch. “That looks like a job better suited for a crew of men than for a woman and a small boy, don’t you think?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean that if you had some men up there, and a couple down here, the job would get done quickly, efficiently, and without the possibility of harm coming to anyone.” I looked at the boy as I tried to make what I considered to be a reasonable point.
“He ain’t in harm’s way. Only one in harm’s way right now’d be you – you trying to call me a bad mother and all when you don’t even know me. You’re not welcome here, sir. I’ll kindly ask you, this time, to remove yourself from my property.”
“Ma’am, please.”
“Tyler, is Meril in the house?”
“I don’t know, mom.”
I wondered if Meril was her husband. If he was married to this woman he couldn’t be too nice.
Her son had his arms folded in front of his chest as if he was ready at any moment to physically escort me from their yard.
“No reason for that, little man. I’m not here to insult anybody. I’m here to help.”I took a couple steps away from the kid. “Ma’am, just come off the roof for a few minutes.”
“I haven’t got a few minutes. There’s a storm that going to be blowing in here this evening and I don’t want to waste any money on a new tarp. I aim to finish this roof before the rain sets in on us. So if you’re done taking up all the oxygen around here I’ll go back to work.”
“Ma’am, you’re being unreasonable.” I started to climb her ladder. If she wasn’t going to hear me out on the ground then I’d meet her on the roof. I got about three steps up the ladder before everything went black.
I woke up on her couch with a bag of frozen corn on my head. Two kids sat across from me so quietly that I’d never heard them stir. The boy from earlier, the blond, was holding a plastic doll that appeared to be a witch. The other child, who looked to be around seven, had much darker skin than his brother and his eyes were nearly black. I wondered how long they’d been watching me sleep.
I’d come to this district of deviants with a mission. Every company that succeeds has a big gun, a guy who can do the impossible. I was that big gun for North Star Builders, the largest home improvement company in all of the Midwest. We were making money in just about every area of the upper Midwest except for the northeastern section of Minnesota known as the Iron Range, named for its multiple bands of iron ore. I had no idea why this group of relatively small mining cities was so important to Bud Spencer, the owner, but he had made countless attempts in the past to get a salesman into the Range to establish a foothold and eventually set up a permanent office. So far, all of them had failed.
Bud was an ex-marine and it was almost like he viewed the Range cities as hostile environment that needed to be conquered. “Boots on the ground. That’s what we need. Get some of our men in there and establish a base,” was how he put it at every meeting.
When Bud Spencer had called me into his office to talk about the Range I couldn’t say that I was excited at the prospect of going up there but I had a reputation to live up to. There was that, and the fact that I suspected that Bud, rightfully, had ideas about an affair I was having with his wife. Just extra incentive not to come back without that sale.
Bud gave me a special briefing before letting me leave. “It’s a real strange place, Pratt. There are metal deposits all over the place. They’ll screw with your mind as much as they do with modern conveniences. It’s true. Our brains operate with electrical signals. You don’t think all of that electricity and magnetism in the air have an effect on a man? Some folks swear that there are vortexes of energy that pop up. Men like Einstein thought vortexes were responsible for inadvertent time travel and such.” He paused to study my face. “Don’t you dare look at me like I’m going dim! I’m just telling you what some folks say so that you can properly look out for yourself.”
I nodded sincerely, even though I was seriously considering that his obsession with these people had affected the state of his mental health.
Bud went on. “The people of the Range are a queer sort. Act like farmers but work way down in the mines. And they have a rare combination of two seemingly contradictory traits, a no nonsense view of life coupled with a nervous superstition that
permeates them young to old. They’re as likely to invite you in for dinner as they are to punch you in the nose – man or woman. Be on guard. Don’t mess around with them.”
“Mess around?”
“You know what I’m saying,” he told me.
“Is that all?
“That’s not enough?”
“Can I get going?”
“Go on.”
One of the men I had worked with for years, Geoffrey Owens, was given the Range assignment just before he quit working for the company. The only thing he said when he returned and cleared out his desk was, ‘nothing plays by the rules up there. Madness.’ He didn’t say no one: he said nothing. It really didn’t make any sense at the time.
“No pink,” Bud reminded me as I was leaving. “Pink shirts, ties, socks, just seem to start things off on the wrong foot with those people. No pink.”
I nodded and left his office.
As I headed up highway 35, I thought about the fact that Bud hadn’t brought up Karl Chevsky – the salesman that had never returned from Coleraine. He was a powerful, masculine man – not the typical graceful slender type that North Star usually employed, the type of man that you could tell might look even better as a woman. North Star preferred their salesman pretty. Karl had been hired specifically for the Range. Bud had thought that these Rangers would relate to a man like Karl. What he didn’t expect was that Karl was actually more like the people