Be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
It’s not uncommon for people to assume stories are a reflection of the author — especially stories in which an author features a writer as a protagonist. “Revisions” is about a writer who was raised by a single mother. Some people who know me mentioned they felt it was heavily influenced by my mother.
I discuss where my life is similar to the protagonist in the story and…how our situations and views greatly differ.
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An author tries to finish construction on her recently-deceased mother’s home while writing her second novel — the follow up to a New York Times Best Seller.
Content Advisory: Death of a parent and struggles with self doubt. (For once, no swearing!)
And if you’re so inclined to pitch in and help the farm animal sanctuary I mention in the intro, check out The Farm Micro Sanctuary on Patreon, or on their Facebook or Instagram accounts.
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Credits:
Music: Theme – Ergo Phizmiz. Story – Johannes Bornlöf, licensed from Epidemic Sound.
Story: Christopher Gronlund.
Narration: Cynthia Griffith.
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[Listen]
[Sound of an ax chopping wood. Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…
My name is Christopher Gronlund, and this is where I share my stories. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny—other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never—EVER—share a story about lumberjacks.
This time, it’s a tale about an author trying to finish construction on her recently-deceased mother’s home while writing her second novel—the follow up to a New York Times Best Seller.
And now, the usual content advisory…
This is where I normally warn you about a story’s rougher edges, but “Revisions” is pretty tame compared to most Not About Lumberjacks stories. It deals with the death of a loved one and the narrator’s self-doubts, but that’s about it. There’s not even swearing in this one. I’d go as far as calling “Revisions” an all-ages story, but it would probably bore most kids.
Speaking of wholesome things, I want to chat a moment about The Farm Micro Sanctuary. Based in Larwill, Indiana, this 501(c)3 non-profit sanctuary provides a safe haven for at risk farmed animals, educates the public about the repercussions of animal farming, and strives to promote compassion for a healthier planet.
My wife and I sponsor one of their goats, the impish Arlo Goathrie, who’s currently in training to serve as an animal ambassador for public education.
Learn more about the sanctuary at patreon.com/theFarmMicroSanctuary, or do a search on Facebook or Instagram for Lopin’ Along at the Farm Micro Sanctuary to follow what they’re up to.
And one more quick thing before getting to the latest story…
If you listen to Not About Lumberjacks and have thought, “I like Christopher’s short fiction, but it would be cool to listen to something longer,” well: I have you covered! New to the menu on nolumberjacks.com is a section for novels. Right now, the only thing there is my first novel, Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors is a humorous coming-of-age story about a family traveling cross country in a possessed station wagon. But I plan to release a novella and more novels soon-ish.
All longer works shared from the Novels menu option will have their own subscription feed, so the main story feed will remain solely for the short fiction I’ve been sharing for years. I hope you enjoy my longer stories as much as the shorter tales…
All right—let’s get to work…
* * *
REVISIONS
FEBRUARY 17, 2021
This house is the book of my mother’s life, and I am lost within its pages. It is here, beneath a spiral staircase, where my mother decided to bring all its curves together—a point of stability in an otherwise chaotic world. Three stories above me, exposed beams in the ceiling form a starburst from the glow of the huge skylight holding me in its gaze. This house is an unfinished cathedral, a testament to my mother and her perfectly tangled life. As I listen to the north wind blow outside the safety of her dream home, I think about all the work ahead.
I have no idea what I’m doing—no idea why I believe I can finish what a brighter mind started. I don’t even know how to clear hair from the drain in the bathroom sink, but I’ve now convinced myself I have it in me to manage contractors, to even do much of the work myself and finish the house my mother saw only in some imagined glory.
I know that feeling, seeing a perfect thing in your head waiting to be shaped, a vision so strong you want to make it whole and take its place in the world. I wonder if my mother viewed this house like I view the books I write: a thing beyond the imaginations of many people, but also, something never seeming to live up to the perfect versions in our minds. Somehow my mother found a shortcut to creating a physical masterpiece of a home, but I’m sure she saw flaws where I see perfection. How I wish I carried a fraction of her confidence.
When I finished and sold Standstill, my mother said, “See? I told you you’d written something beautiful.” And when I protested, mentioning all I still wanted to fix, she compared it to this house and said, “Every perfect thing has its flaws if you’re intimate with its construction. What matters is what others see…and that it’s no longer taking up space in your head.”
She was right—she was always right. I need to get this house, and this book, out of my head.
* * *
It’s never been lost on me how fortunate I am: raised by a mother who encouraged me to be myself, while other parents insisted their children pursued futures already decided for them. In those demands came a security I didn’t have for much of my life. I watched friends marry, have children, and accumulate funds in 401Ks while I worked odd jobs so I had more time to write. We grew apart, our differences amplified by the passage of time and the paths we walked. I’d be lying if I said I never felt like a failure. I worried about a future devoid of savings and security, stuck working a mishmash of jobs until one day I could work no more. By my mid 20s, I’d already sold myself on a bleak end in which the very thing I loved—writing—became my undoing.
Through it all, my mother believed in me. But that’s a mother’s job if you’re lucky. Still, on my thirtieth birthday, I sold a story to Tin House. Other literary journals followed: Granta, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. I somehow turned that string of successes into a part-time instructor of English position at Ohio Wesleyan University—where I taught creative writing until my first novel found its way onto the New York Times Best Seller list for half a year. I would have loved sharing that success with my mother, but by then she was gone, reduced like so many others who one day found a lump that never stopped side-stepping the best efforts of modern medicine. She would have loved my rocket-ride to the top.
I’ve read that astronauts have a hard time coming back from space after long missions. I don’t know if I can compare my successes to that, but coming down from the rush of a successful book feels empty without my mom being there with her reassurances that everything will be okay. Now I’m stuck with the daunting task of doing it again with another book—this time, under the scrutiny of critics waiting to feed.
I’ve considered paying back the advance on the second book and living in this house as-is, a silent existence until I am no more.
* * *
My mother and I couldn’t have been more different. Where she was outgoing, I was reserved. Where I was cautious, she took every chance that crossed her mind, savoring the experience no matter how things turned out. Her independence shined like the sun, its warmth one of her traits I absorbed. She once told me we were lucky my father ran when he found out she was pregnant because he’d have only gotten in our way. I have no reason to doubt that; I cannot imagine any life but the one my mother and I lived.
She fell somewhere between beatnik and hippie, a free-spirit content to meander where the winds of her life blew. That didn’t stop with my arrival—I was raised on the road, living in campgrounds and national parks, communes and squatted buildings. She carried me like a backpack across Europe and South America, let me roam free in Alaska and the Caribbean. At some point along the way—whether it was her belief that I needed a proper education or that she hoped in it I’d see a regimented life mandated by others might not be to my liking, she settled down and put me in school. One day I was living on Saint John in the Virgin Islands, and then in what I later found out was a house my mother inherited from the grandparents I never knew, in Columbus, Ohio. She funded our adventures through odd jobs along the way and rent collected on that old house, until we moved in.
While I toiled away in school, exposed to the ways of rote learning, my mother landed a job as a keypunch operator for an insurance company. A high school dropout, my mother was given the opportunity to attend night school at a community college—paid for by her job. Soon, the novels she loved reading gave way to books about programming languages: COBOL, Pascal, and BASIC. By the time I was in junior high school, she’d started a small software company with a work friend. Shortly before I graduated high school, they sold the company to IBM, and I was told we’d never have to worry about money again.
With me on my own, I figured my mother would return to a life of traveling, but she found a new obsession: building a house with her hands. She had a simple plan: construct a cob home that was large enough for her and a guest or two, and then take what she learned and build a bigger place—more space for more guests. But as we all know, sometimes things don’t go as planned.
* * *
This house and my novel-in-progress are not good companions. They have conspired against me, one serving as an excuse to not devote time to the other. When I should be writing, I’m reading books and websites about tiling, flooring, and basic plumbing—tasks I’ve convinced myself I can do on my own. When I should be working on the house, I reread fragments of my broken manuscript, making tiny changes instead of progress. It’s amazing how little one can accomplish pursuing small tasks: tracking the house’s to-dos in a spreadsheet, fixing typos in the manuscript, and insignificant pursuits giving me a sense of completion, even though I begin my days in the same place as the day before. I could spend the rest of my life piddling about and never finish either.
When I taught, I always told my students to finish what was on their desk before starting something new. While some people do well moving between two projects, most people I know—myself included—end up giving neither project appropriate attention. Everything suffers—especially the artist.
As driven as my mother was, she made few demands on me. She seemed to recognize that forcing me to do something was a sure-fire way to get me to not do it. I always admired the speed at which she accomplished things. My mother was a targeted shopper, never content to linger unless window shopping was the goal. If we were there for something specific—whether it was new school year clothes shopping for me or picking up groceries—we moved with a plan, dividing and conquering the aisles like commandos. She seemed to cook Thanksgiving dinner in half the time as others, but with better results. It was like she could stop time when needed, and come out on the other side ready to do more.
I plod along, procrastinating and stressing until running out of time. I wake up in the middle of the night with a racing mind that remembers everything I need to do at three a.m., but jettison those waking to-do lists like lost dreams when it’s time to get up. I only finished Standstill’s edits because it had a deadline attached to money. That motivation doesn’t seem to be helping this time around. When I sit down to write, I think about all the things left undone in this house. I let the sound of contractors allow me an out: “How can I write with all this noise and commotion?” Then, when I give in to the house, my mind wanders to the book.
Lost in the fog of competing projects, I sit and wait for the sun to burn it all away, but it only gets darker each day.
* * *
While my mother and I struggled, I was always happy—well, as happy as happy is for me. Before settling into school, I had few other children with which to compare my life to. Living in tents, shared spaces, and an old VW Bus seems normal when it’s all you know. When we settled into my grandparents’ old house, I remained a loner, turning away friends because I found books easier to understand. If I wanted something, my mother provided—so in my mind, we had it as good as everyone else. It wasn’t until high school that I realized what a strange life I had lived.
Somewhere along the way—most likely from one of my mother’s many friends and the varied jobs they worked—she brought home a pair of sneakers with the American Airlines logo on them. A group of “popular” kids teased me about it, trying to shame me for not wearing brand name shoes. The weird thing is their taunting didn’t hurt: I felt sorry for them, and I told them as much. Out came what I now know was a defense of my mother, talking about how I’d traveled all over the world, while I guessed some of them would never leave their hometown. I mentioned the artists, musicians, and actors I knew—friends my mother accumulated along the way. My mother and I could go anywhere, and people would help us—I asked those taunting me if they were so fortunate.
I won’t say that day led to me becoming popular, but I mentioned enough about my life in my rare moment of speaking up that I was at least viewed as the quiet cool kid who knew famous people and had adventures none of them would have in their lifetimes. With that new visibility, though, came attention to my writing.
I always carried a notebook and a pen. Before classes, and throughout lunch, my face was in those pages. When classmates found out I was trying to write a book, my reputation as the “interesting” girl everyone seemed afraid to talk to grew. In time, a braver soul among my peers asked me when I’d be done.
“I don’t know,” I said.
They all looked disappointed.
With that classmate’s question and my answer, doubt pushed its way before confidence. Trying not to think about it only made matters worse. I asked my mom what she thought about the slow pace at which I wrote.
“All things take their own time…depending on the times.”
I didn’t understand.
She continued: “I’ve never written a book, but I imagine a good book takes time on its own terms. Maybe you can hurry things along, but I imagine it would result in not writing the book you want to write. You know I love how much you think about things, but right now, just enjoy writing for its own sake. If you’re lucky, the day will come when you’ll miss working at this pace, with no expectations but your own.”
I still can’t explain why I was such an unhappy child when I had all I needed and a mother who was always there for me. If I had to analyze my younger self, I suppose my problem was expectations exceeding my abilities. I was well-read enough to know what was possible, but those words were out of reach.
I grew up believing introspection was a curse…and as I sit here today with a late manuscript, I’m not so sure I was wrong.
* * *
Somewhere along the way, the thought of writing books became more practical than a passion. When I saw my mother sell her company, and the money she had to live on without a care, that’s what I wanted—even though my mother’s money was also mine. It was important to do something on my own—not just take what was given to me. Maybe I’d not have a long career as a writer, but I wanted something big I could point to that allowed me to say, “I did that.” I knew what I was writing would not be that thing.
It was freeing when I finally came up with the idea for Standstill. No longer did I obsess over every word being perfect, building to each new sentence that followed. It’s a nice thought, but one not steeped in reality. I had a basic idea: a woman stops time with a magic watch so she can spend more time with her gravely ill husband. It allowed me to write the literary passages I dreamed of writing, but also have fun along the way. I was so fixated on being accepted by the “serious” writing community that I’d forgotten why I wrote in the first place.
I wrote Standstill when my mother was sick, and the parallels of the story are not lost on me. How I wished I could stop time and kept it just the two of us, like when I was little and we had nothing but time to wander. I was in a race against every second writing that book, and that allowed me to break through all that previously stifled me.
My mother was the second person besides me to read Standstill. I was in her hospital room when she finished reading; I watched her weep when she was done. I felt bad, like I’d driven home that soon she’d be gone and I’d be alone.
She smiled and said, “I’m not crying about my time coming to an end. I’m crying because I’m happy for you. Finishing a book was a long time coming, and I’m glad this is the book you wrote right now.”
I wonder what she’d think about my latest book, Ellie’s Second Chances—a story about a woman who gets to travel back in time and change three moments in her life.
I’m sure she’d say it’s a silly notion—that we should accept there are things we’d always change no matter how many do-overs we’d get. She’d say, “The moments we’d change are likely the moments that define us. What matters is what we do in their wake.”
* * *
I keep two photos on the desk where I write. The first is a photo a friend took of me at the release party for Standstill. It’s an image of me lost in the middle of a room full of smiling people. When I was given the photo, my friend said, “I love how everybody is turned toward you. That was your moment. I know you wished your mother could be there, but you had quite a turnout of other loved ones celebrating your success.”
I looked at the photo, admiring the blur of hands and smiles, a tunnel of souls with me standing at the end in perfect, still focus as though I were on the outside looking in at my own party.
I thanked my friend and said, “Yes, it would have been nice if my mom could have been there. I didn’t miss her that evening, though—at least not in that moment. I remember what I was thinking when this was taken. I looked around at everyone gathered in celebration of what I’d written and thought, ‘This is as good as it will ever get…’”
The other photo on my desk is an image of my mother standing in front of the piles of mud that would later become her first cob house. When you hear “cob house,” you probably think, “quirky hippie hut,” or maybe something resembling an adobe home in New Mexico. But the first house my mom built was neither or those things.
If a stranger were to break through the hedges and trees and wander onto the property today, they might convince themselves they stepped through a portal and into an old English garden—her first home serving as a quaint thatched guest house for those visiting the main estate. But the day the second photo on my desk was taken, all those things only existed in my mother’s mind’s eye. She stands among friends, all smiling and covered in mud and straw from mixing cob all day. There was so much laughter—and not a soul present who doubted my mother’s ambitions. She stands in the center of the group, smiling and holding a glass of cheap jug wine, her smile brighter and more beautiful than the blazing sunset behind her.
* * *
Somebody reading this might think my mom was a perfect person, but she was not without her faults. She ran away from many of her problems and, sometimes, people. Those trips to national parks were moments she loved, but it was also an easy way to hide. The amount of times life seemed anchored, but we ended up moving abruptly, would make a military brat feel settled.
I’d never call her an alcoholic, but there were times she hid in the bottoms of bottles. Sometimes she chewed through men. And while she never so much as raised her voice at me—let alone hit me—there were times I knew to leave her alone…sometimes for weeks.
Near the end of her life, she apologized for the bubble of instability in which she raised me. I told her I didn’t mind—and I meant it. Left with time to myself, I read and wrote. I’d not be who I am today had I been raised by someone more involved in their child’s life. She was always there when I needed her. The trust extended to me did not go unnoticed—I recognized how fortunate I was in many ways.
Still, she insisted she could have done a better job as a parent, but I imagine all parents feel that way. I’m sure we can all have done more with the time we’re given—and even the days ahead for those of us fortunate enough to wake up tomorrow.
* * *
I’ve found myself relying more on contractors than doing the work on the house I set out to do on my own. I suppose, much like everyone seems to believe they have a book inside them ready to come out, many of us also think we can do the work of people more skilled than us. I don’t know anyone who believes they can sit before a piano and play a concerto on their first try, but I’ve met so many people who have told me they plan to sit down one day when they have the time and write a book. As though it were that easy. But here I am, doing something similar.
It’s not lost on me how ridiculous it is to think I can pull this off. I tell myself building a house is not entirely unlike writing a book. Words form sentences that form paragraphs; nails and screws and boards form walls. Enough paragraphs, and you have a chapter; enough walls, and you have a room. Enough chapters, and you’ve written a book; enough rooms, and you’ve built a house. But there’s an art to putting 100,000 words in enough order to become a book, and even more effort to have a polished story. I may have gleaned some building tricks through osmosis, simply from helping my mother over the years, but I know a simple oversight could mean a leak that destroys a room. Something not wired right can reduce a house to ashes.
I don’t reread my stories when they’re published because I always notice things I want to change. It’s one thing to change a word or two—even a paragraph here and there, but that’s not so easy to do with a house. Adding or removing a door is not like highlighting it and pressing delete. And so, I’ve only been doing updates to the house I’m comfortable doing; I’m no longer spending my days researching bigger tasks better left to more capable hands.
I don’t know if this means I’m resigned to finish Ellie’s Second Chances, but it feels like something’s about to give…
* * *
Today is the three-year anniversary of my mother’s death. My mother died a month before Standstill was released. I wanted the world to stop—I wanted time to get my head around the year and a half that had passed: edits on the book, a cancer diagnosis, and then my mother fading more each week as anticipation for my first novel grew. She never got to hold the hardback in her hands, but the printout I gave her—and then the advanced reading copy—was never out of her reach. She apologized profusely for getting sick during such an important part of my life. (As though she did it by design.) She reminded me the world stops for no one and that she hoped I’d be able to enjoys Standstill’s release despite the circumstances.
In a strange way, my mother’s passing took an edge off the anxiety I’d have likely faced if the release were my only consideration. I cannot imagine all my thoughts directed at the book finally seeing its place on shelves. While my mom felt terrible about dying just then, it allowed me an excuse to withdraw from some of my responsibilities. My publicist did a great job nudging me toward the book while still giving me space to grieve. By then, I’d prepared for my mother’s passing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use it as an excuse to avoid things I should have attended to.
I know there will be a day the next book is out there, and I won’t have such a readily available excuse to retreat when I want. Perhaps I can fire the contractors and return to trying to finish up the house myself. Anything for a distraction.
* * *
It’s a new year, and I saw one of those, “I’m gonna be the best version of me!” posts on social media. It’s a weird world when people talk about re-branding their identities. I’ve always had a hard time trusting people like that; to me, it says, “I have been trying to be something I am not all along. I didn’t get the results I wanted, so now I will attempt to be someone else.” And they keep at it until something sticks and they end up several degrees removed from who they really were. Who they really are, deep down. They become stuck pretending to be someone they are not. It sounds exhausting.
But I suppose we all pretend. We say we’re okay when we are not. We pretend to like jobs we hate. We bite our tongues to make peace. We are social creatures struggling to fit in.
When Standstill was nearing publication, my publicist presented a list of things that worked for other authors: dinners with booksellers, speaking opportunities at conferences, and plans for the types of essays in publications that help sell novels. Even starting a podcast. Can you imagine—a podcast?!
Still…by choosing to write the kind of book I wrote, I knew what I had signed up for. While Standstill may not be a beach read, it was written with commercial aspirations. By writing such a story, and ending up with a two-book deal, I understood what came with it. And so, I dined with booksellers, talked to packed rooms at conferences, and saw my essays about grief and moving on with life published online and in print. I even agreed to be interviewed on several podcasts.
While the thought of being a brand turns my stomach, I’ll soon be dusting off my smile and practiced poise. I’m seeing an end to these revisions, and my house is in order. There’s still work to be done, but maybe there’s something to the new year/new me thing after all…
* * *
I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever hear from my father. I’m not famous, like a celebrity abandoned by a parent who later returns, offering to catch up—when what they really want is money. With few exceptions, best-selling novelists are not household names. Say the name Anthony Doerr to most people in the U.S., and they’ll say “Who?” despite him winning the Pulitzer Prize a handful of years ago and a book that sat on the New York Times Best Seller list for one-hundred and thirty consecutive weeks.
I suppose it’s natural to think about the man you’ve never met who is responsible for one half of your existence. Hell, John Irving has made a career writing about missing fathers. Not knowing mine has never bothered me. There’s no void in my life; perhaps because my mother did a good job explaining to me his actions were not our fault. Leaving was on him.
I used to think about being famous, back when we had literary paperbacks as impulse buys at grocery store checkout stands. I remember my mother picking up The World According to Garp at a Jewel grocery store when we were knocking around northern Illinois one year. I wanted that: my book right there next to candy bars and gum and magazines. Back then, if you broke in, you were almost guaranteed an audience. Now, it’s all so splintered.
When I used to imagine my books being on display with John Irving, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, and Tom Wolfe, I also imagined my father seeing my books in stores and tracking me down. In those fantasies, I told him to go to hell and leave my mother and me alone. Now, when I imagine meeting him, it already feels like a sad memory. I can only imagine him appearing with the hope of me giving him money or to be absolved of some guilt he’s carried with him for years.
I don’t care to meet him, but if he ever shows up, I’d not close my door to him.
At the same time, I can’t imagine leaving it open…
* * *
I got the idea to start this journal when I found several notebooks my mother kept. She had one for the house, one for the software she continued writing, even after selling her company, a travel journal, and a general notebook chronicling her thoughts and moments in life worthy of capturing. Her notebooks rarely deviated from their intended purposes.
I set out to make this journal solely about the process of writing Ellie’s Second Chances. I figured I’d be able to go back through it and pull bits for essays or interviews. I even thought, if I ever did do a podcast, I could chronicle the process of following up a bestselling book with ease. But much like the stories I’ve written, this journal has changed as I’ve filled its pages. It’s now mostly about my mother and this house; about me and this latest book.
Maybe there’s a story worthy of writing in there somewhere…
* * *
It’s been a while since I’ve written here…
I finally turned in Ellie’s Second Chances!
There is still plenty of work to be done, but the hardest part is now behind me.
I don’t know why I complicated things so much. I had a list of things to fix from my editor—in some sections, she practically wrote what I needed to swap out. But there’s something about revisions and me.
I know other writers crave revisions. And I cannot deny that it is in those later passes that everything comes together. But, like so many other things, just getting to that point is such an effort, and all I want to do is hand over a rough draft and call it done.
I always told my students to learn to love revisions. I went as far as comparing the act of revising stories to life—whether working on a book, or yourself, always striving to improve things. But as I’ve gotten older, I know there comes a point at which you’ve become a better person if you’ve done things right, and you deserve to go easier on yourself. Even let some things fall through the cracks.
My mother used to talk about the importance of breathing, how there is so much power in a simple breath. I learned to appreciate simple things when I was young, and perhaps I came to resent that it’s not enough to just be. To make it in this world, you have to keep moving. And we move so fast that our breathing often ends up shallow and rapid. There’s always so much more to do.
For now, though, I can sit back and enjoy what I’ve done. I can put some final effort into this house. I can decide if this book will be my last. Not the last novel I will write—I can never stop writing—but the last one I’ll work to see published…
* * *
I am writing this from a backcountry campsite in the Great Smoky Mountains. While I was never as into nature as my mother, this is the first place I remember camping. It was with a large group of her friends in the frontcountry during a Fourth of July weekend. I remember thinking how enchanting it was to sleep outside. Little did I know how much of my childhood would be spent in camping tents and yurts; inside huts and hand-made cabins. The novelty wore off quickly; or rather, it became a normal way of life that eventually lost its charm. This is my first time camping in years.
The house is almost finished. I did all I could, and now it’s like a final episode of This Old House, where tradesmen run through their punch lists, wrapping everything up. I wanted to step away from it all and return to something that felt new again. In the past three and-then-some years, I’ve come to know that house and my second book all-too-well. I want those things to once-more seem as magical as sleeping in a tent beneath the stars. I want to revel in the rewards of monotony.
When I was younger, I believed every moment spent on my dreams would feel like living on another plane of existence. At the very least, to write novels and inhabit a beautiful home would be like living in the clouds. How quickly I realized it’s all still work. (But in the end, isn’t everything?)
If my younger self could see me now, she’d be impressed. To balance the dreams of youth with the responsibilities of adulthood is, perhaps, life’s greatest accomplishment.
* * *
I stand in the heart of my house with another book behind me. And what is a book, but a tangle of stories unwound and laid out in something resembling order. This house is no different, a place where my mother’s stories echo—where so many of my stories are yet to be written. I don’t know what it is about the wooden spiral staircase in the center of it all, rising up several stories to a window to the sky, that captivates me. Were I to ever write a book brought together to such a perfect conclusion like the house my mother started—that I helped finish—it’s possible I’d never write again. That thought crossed my mind many times in recent years: if not giving up on my second book, at least never writing a third. But each time I sit on these stairs and look up, nothing seems impossible.
The first house my mother built stands solid on the other side of the garden, but this home is her masterpiece. My first two books are solid, but my obligations to others are done. What comes next may not be my masterpiece, but something changed while writing Ellie’s Second Chances and finishing the house. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I carry the spirit of my mother inside me. To not challenge myself would waste that energy.
Today, as I listen to the north wind blow outside the safety of my home—at least for some time—I can finally rest. But when warmer breezes find their way back home, I will draw a deep breath, slowly let it out, and begin again…
* * *
[Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks…Theme music, as always, is by Ergo Phizmiz. Story music this time is by Johannes Bornlöf, all licensed through Epidemic Sound.
Even though I opted for no sounds this time around, sound effects are usually made in-house or from Epidemic Sound and freesound.org. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and the music.
In April, it’s a story about a geek who, while knocking around an antique shop with his grandmother, finds something that changes his life in a most curious way…
[Quirky music fades out…]
[The sound of a chopping ax.]
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
“Garsh, it sure is purty,” Aunt Margie said. “I can see why Maw always came here.”
“Yeah…” Mom said. She was pointing things out to Lucky, who even seemed mesmerized.
We stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon in awe. Mom and Aunt Margie didn’t smoke and even the twins appreciated the view, although they couldn’t separate themselves from a bag of fresh marshmallows. We all just stood there staring at the big orange hole in the ground my grandmother loved so dearly.
Looking at that big hole, I realized what Dad meant when he told me there are things bigger than our thoughts you just can’t explain. I understood why he did the backflip from the top of the Cadillac; I wanted to leap into the canyon for no other reason than I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I couldn’t explain.
“Remember how she said it’s like it takes your soul down to the river and cleans it?” Aunt Margie said. “I think I see what she means; it is healing.”
“It’s gorgeous!” Mom said. For the first time I can remember, Mom was humbled by something. The beauty of the canyon transcended things like pink lawn flamingos, bingo cards, and themed casinos. At that very moment, she probably would have admitted the canyon was as beautiful as the King of Rock n Roll himself!
“So what do you guys think?” Dad said.
“It’s great,” the twins said.
I was practically moved to tears. The best I could get out was a long, “Wooowwwwww…”
“How about a picture?” Dad said. He ran off to get his tripod and camera before any of us could answer. He set everything up, framing us through the viewfinder.
“Okay, everybody get together,” he said.
We huddled together, putting our arms around each other like a real, fully-functioning family. Elvis didn’t make any smart-alec remark when I put my arm around him—he simply wrapped his arm around me and smiled for the camera. Olivia didn’t make any sour faces, and even Lucky behaved. The canyon did something to us and I felt that everything from that moment forward would be different in some way, like we’d all get along and be a model family.
Dad triggered the camera’s auto-timer and rushed into the picture beside my Mom. “Say cheese!” he said.
“CHEESE!”
The image the camera captured is one of my most prized possessions; Dad had finally—after years and years of trying—snapped his perfect family photo! We looked happy standing there as the morning sun poked out through the dark clouds in the distance, covering everything in the kind of lighting you only seem to see in movies. In the years that followed, when the twins acted up; when Lucky was on a tear; or when Mom and Dad were arguing, all I had to do is look at that photo and remember that deep-down where it counted, we were a family.
“Well, I suppose it’s time to do what we came for: scatter Mama’s ashes just like she wanted,” Mom said. It seemed a fitting event for Grandma’s fiftieth trip to the canyon.
“I’ll go get the urn,” Dad said, pointing to approaching clouds. “Need to get moving because it looks like rain.” As he trotted back to the Inferno, a few fat drops fell here and there. He came back with the urn and one of the garbage bags from Clyde McAllister’s Civil War Museum and Alligator Village. He covered the camera with the bag and handed the urn to Mom.
Mom set Lucky on her shoulder and carefully took the lid off the urn so the wind didn’t blow its contents free. Aunt Margie reached out and they both held my grandmother’s cremains. I figured someone would say something special, but seeing the two of them sharing in one of the most special moments of their lives, I realized words would have only ended up getting in the way. They stepped to the rim of the canyon and I thought I was going to see a perfect moment. I should have known better.
Mom tugged at the urn and said, “Are you gonna let go?” to Aunt Margie.
“Are you gonna let go?!” Aunt Margie said, standing up to her big sister. Sibling rivalry was turning a beautiful moment into something ugly.
“I’m the oldest!”
“Only by ten minutes!”
“Still, it’s the way Mama would have wanted it,” Mom said.
Aunt Margie wasn’t about to give up. She tugged a little harder and said, “She woulda wanted me to scatter them. She liked me best!”
“No she didn’t!” Mom said, pulling the urn back to her side.
“Yes she did.”
“You’re wrong as usual, Marge. She told me she liked me best.”
“Look me in the eye and say that, Mary.”
“No!”
“You can’t because you’re a liar! Maw did so like me best!”
“Did not!”
“Did to!”
I couldn’t take it anymore! We were there to give Grandma a fitting send-off, not watch two grown children fight over their mother’s mortal remains and argue which one was more loved. I didn’t pack into the back seat of the Inferno only to drive cross-country just to see my mom and aunt fight.
“Both of you!” I yelled. “Stop it!”
“Leave us alone, Michael,” Mom said. “You don’t understand!”
“What’s to understand about two greedy sisters who are too dense to see that maybe their mother loved them both equally?!”
“He’s right, you two,” Dad said.
They both shouted, “Shut up!”
I tried reasoning with them. “What about the car? You guys keep fighting and the car’s gonna do something.”
“Screw that piece of shit car!” Mom yelled. “I’m here to dump my mother’s ashes and damnit, I’m gonna dump them if I have to throw my little sister in to do it!”
“You’re both doing a disservice to Grandma!” I said.
“She’d understand, Michael” Aunt Margie said. “And she’d want me to dump her ashes!”
“No she wouldn’t!” Mom said. “She’d want me to dump them, you white trash bitch!” Like Mom wasn’t white trash!
“Don’t call me names, Mary!”
Mom was going for the jugular. “I’ll call you whatever I want, you hillbilly sow!”
“That’s why Maw liked me best,” Aunt Margie said, almost crying. “I’m not mean, like you.”
“You guys, shut up!” I yelled. The twins joined in the argument.
“You shut up, Mister Michael Know-It-All!”
Dad had enough. “EVERYBODY, SHUT THE HELL UP!”
With that, the clouds grew to a deep bruised color, unable to hold their contents. Sheets of rain broke loose and were driven down by the hard wind. Lucky was almost knocked from Mom’s shoulder and into the canyon, but he took shelter in Mom’s blouse. Mom, Dad, Aunt Margie, and the twins kept yelling at one another; I was the only one who was thinking about the car. Before I could say something, the car had everyone’s attention, though.
“RRRAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!” The sound was half mechanical, half unholy! A deep growl punctuated the engine’s revving; we all looked at the Inferno, which was rocking back and forth, feeding off our anger! When Mom slapped Aunt Margie across her face, it finally happened. With a squeal of tires, the Inferno bore down on my family. Dad instinctively pushed the twins and me free from the charge, but Mom and Aunt Margie stood directly in the way! For the first time ever, Lucky abandoned Mom, leaping from her blouse and rushing to safety. I looked up just in time to see Mom and Aunt Margie pull at the urn so hard, they lost their grips and fell back, out of the Inferno’s path.
BAM! Mom and Aunt Margie were safe, but the Inferno slammed into Grandma’s urn, sending her ashes scattering over the edge of the canyon. The only good thing was the car went over with Grandma’s cremains and exploded on the canyon’s floor, sending a huge fireball all the way up near us, reminding me of my nightmare. We got up and looked. Grandma’s ashes floated on the heat thermals from the burning car and were scattered across the canyon on the winds. When she was gone, we all watched the Inferno until the fire went out. I tried thinking of something to say, but was speechless.
The twins were the first to speak: “At least the car’s gone.”
“So’s all our stuff,” Mom said.
I lost it! We were all almost killed by an act of greed and all they could think of was the car finally cashing it in with all our stuff! “Forget the car!” I shouted, “do you really think that solves our problems?! Look at us! We just had a possessed station wagon scatter Grandma’s ashes into the Grand Canyon because two grown women were too stubborn to give their mother a proper send-off, like she wanted. And what about Dad’s soul, now? How’s he gonna get his soul back now that the car’s been destroyed by our stupidity and greed and not by an act of God? You two make me sick!”
Mom turned my anger toward Aunt Margie. “It’s all your fault.”
“It’s all your fault,” Aunt Margie said.
The twins saw a chance to take another dig at me. “You make us sick, Michael Barfbag!”
I gave up trying to be the level-headed one; the car was gone and so was Dad’s soul. I was going to drop to their level, and family be damned if I was going to care about what I said. I turned to the twins. “Shut up, you fuckin’ retards!”
“You shut up!” Olivia said, stepping toward me. I punched her in the arm. When Elvis charged me, I was ready. I kicked him between the legs and started pounding on him. All I remember is his bloody nose, Olivia screaming and kicking me, and my grip on his shirt so tight that Dad couldn’t pull me off. We all fought each other: me taking on the twins; Mom and Lucky working over Aunt Margie. No matter how hard Dad tried, he couldn’t pull me off Elvis.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Inferno!
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We all turned to see it right back where we left it, revving its engine!
RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Oh…shit…” the whole family said in unison, like the twins. The twins started crying and were quickly joined by Aunt Margie. Mom prayed, and Dad stepped in front of us all, as though that would protect us from a car sent to wreak hell on our family. I pushed my way past him, remembering what Brother Rob said. I had a mission; my name and the situation was all the proof I needed to summon some confidence.
“Okay…everybody just be cool. Remember…get along,” I said.
Mom and Aunt Margie shut up, but still continued shooting dirty looks back and forth. The car kept revving.
“Even your thoughts, guys! You gotta get along!” I shouted over the wind and rain. Lightning hit a nearby tree, splitting it in half.
“Just get along,” I said.
Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. I could make out a swirling cloud directly above us. Something big was about to happen.
“Just get along…”
I was asking too much, apparently. “Who died and made you God?” Olivia said. Elvis quickly recovered enough to laugh.
I was at the end of my rope. “Why the hell do I even try?”
“YAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I shouted as I charged the Inferno. I threw myself onto the slippery hood!
“Take me, damnit!” I shouted. “Take me and spare my messed up family!” the Inferno bounced up and down, trying to throw me, but I got a grip on the windshield wipers. “Take me and spare my brow-beaten father who works his ass off for a family that doesn’t appreciate him! I love him, damnit!”
The right wiper broke free as the car shook violently—I gripped the left wiper so tightly, it drew blood. “Take me and spare my hillbilly aunt!” I yelled skyward. “She may eat crap that turns my stomach, but she’s got a big heart!” I felt the hood pop open beneath me. Green goop spewed from the radiator and through the cracks in the grill. “Take me and spare my overbearing mother! Her bark is worse than her bite and I know, no matter how many times she threatens us with that damn sauce ladle, she’d never do anything to hurt us!”
The Inferno levitated! I didn’t know if I was hurting it, or simply pissing it off, but either way, something was happening. “Take me and spare Mom’s rat-dog, Lucky! I don’t care if he pukes on everything I own! If he makes Mom happy, I can live with him, damnit!” The Inferno spun in circles; I held onto the left wiper blade for my life, like a bull rider in a rodeo! “Take me and spare my freaky brother and sister! I may not get along with them and they may torment me ‘til the day I die, but damnit, I really do love them!”
The Inferno did everything it could to throw me: spinning in circles, jolting up and down, and spewing steam and hot green goop from the engine. I looked toward the heavens. “Are you listening to me?! Huh?! Damnit, I’m talking to you!”
Nothing.
“Listen to me, damnit! Prove to me you’re up there!”
Nothing at all. I was about to give up.
“Why the hell do I even bother?! JUST DAMN THIS CAR! DAMN IT STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!”
CRACK!!!
A bolt of lightning hit the Inferno, blowing it to pieces and knocking me back. I hit the edge of the canyon and bounced in!
“MICHAEL!!!” everyone shouted. They rushed to the rim and looked down, where I was clinging to a rock.
“There he is,” Mom shouted.
Dad got down on his stomach and leaned over. “Quick! Everyone hold my feet!”
Mom, the twins, and Aunt Margie grabbed Dad’s feet to lower him down to me. Even Lucky joined in, grabbing Dad’s pant cuff and pulling back.
“You’re too heavy, James!” Mom said.
“I’ll do it!” Olivia said, climbing down Dad’s back. They pulled him up so his waist was on the canyon’s edge and held him there. He grabbed Olivia’s feet and lowered her to me. I remember thinking, “She’s too weak!” when I saw her, but when we grabbed each other’s hands, nothing was going to separate us.
“Pull!” Dad shouted. I was pulled to safety and smothered in hugs.
“Thank God, you’re alive!” Mom said, looking skyward. “Thank you!”
“See, told you there’s a God,” the twins said.
“He sure works in mysterious ways,” Aunt Margie added.
We turned back to the Inferno. It was really gone.
“How are we gonna git home?” Aunt Margie said.
“Mary still has her purse and money,” Dad said. “We’ll fly home.”
“All our stuff…” Mom said.
“We still got each other,” Aunt Margie said. “That’s what really matters. And I know God done kilt that devil car. That means Jimmy gets his soul back!”
“Yeah!” the twins said.
We all wandered toward the crater where the Inferno was just moments before. Nothing remained, except a small fire and the windshield wiper I pulled free. I picked it up and said, “I’m gonna hold onto this.”
“Why?” Mom said.
“I just think I’m supposed to.”
Dad entered the crater; something caught his eye in the center, near the fire. I stepped down near him to take a look as the twins wandered off toward some bushes.
“What’s that?” I said, seeing Dad bend over, pick something up, and kiss it. He turned around holding the Plastic Mary.
“Hold onto this while you’re at it,” he said.
The twins came down with six sticks and handed them out. They grabbed some marshmallows from their bag, put them on their sticks, and passed the bag around. We all roasted marshmallows as the rain stopped and the skies cleared.
I started singing. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall…”
Then Dad: “Ninety-nine bottles of beer…”
Mom and Aunt Margie joined in—Lucky howled along, but this time, didn’t tell me to die or burn in hell. “Take one down, pass it around…”
And finally, the twins: “Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall…”
“Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall,” we all sang. “Ninety-eight bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around…ninety-seven bottle of beer on the wall…”
I’d like to say the events of that trip made us the perfect Leave it to Beaver family, but they didn’t. We still argued, we still got on each other’s nerves, and we still loved one another unconditionally, despite our setbacks. There’s no such thing as that perfect 50s sitcom family; there never was, but Mom and Dad, the twins and me, and that little rat-dog stayed together through good and bad. People on the block talked behind our backs—I knew what they said about my mother and I knew they wondered why my father stuck with her throughout the years. That trip showed me what Dad saw in her; that trip showed me what we all saw in each other. That trip showed me we may be “dysfunctional,” but you know what? There’s function in dysfunction, and that’s good enough for me.
Aunt Margie spent the rest of her days in the mountains of West Virginia, selling beat-up cars and fridges with Uncle Otis. Daryl lost his life three years after our visit, while out hunting with Debbie. Everyone who knew them suspected it wasn’t a “hunting accident” at all, but no charges were ever brought against Debbie.
The Twins wrote a series of successful, no-holds barred self-help books, which led to their very own daytime TV talk show: Get a Life! They travel the country giving “motivational speeches” and have their very own brand of marshmallows on the market.
Mom won the country’s largest lottery on Lucky’s seventh birthday. She found a couple other investors and used the money to open a casino in Atlantic City called Lucky’s Sevens. She swoons every time she hears “Love Me Tender,” on the radio, swearing up and down the King of Rock-n-Roll sang it just for her.
With money brought in from Mom’s casino, Dad was able to fulfill a life-long dream and open a specialty shop called Another Roadside Attraction, where he sells highway memorabilia and tacky oddities, like jackalope heads with glowing red, light-up eyes. He now has a valid excuse for his long summer cross-country treks and even gets to write them off as a business expense.
Lucky lived to the ripe old age of twenty-one. He was evil to the bitter end and is forever immortalized in Dad’s store, where he’s stuffed and mounted (complete with red eyes of his own), right next to the cash register.
And me? I’m a travel writer now, but you know that already. I’ve got a wife and four great kids (twin girls and twin boys). We go to the Grand Canyon on vacation whenever we can. When the kids ask why it’s always the Canyon, I tell them the same thing Grandma always told me: “It’s healing.” They say they don’t understand, but I have a feeling—just like me—one day they will…
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
I must confess, seeing Brother Rob in action threw a wrench in everything I believed. You hear about half-baked freaks all over the country claiming to work miracles and all you can do is laugh at them. But seeing Brother Rob got me thinking…maybe there was something more. Like Dad said at Graceland, if I didn’t believe in God, how could I believe Lucky was possessed? To believe in one phenomenon and not the other didn’t make sense. I did a lot of thinking on our way to the Canyon; I wanted to keep thinking, but my family had more pressing issues on their minds.
“So what are we gonna do about the car?” Mom said.
“I think Michael’s onto something,” Dad said. “He thinks it feeds off our arguing. The more we argue, the worst the car acts up, right Michael?”
“Huh?” I was still thinking about Brother Rob.
“The car acts up from our arguing, right?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“I still hate this car, possessed or not,” Mom said.
Dad felt a need to defend it, now that he could attribute all its problems to possession. “It’s not that bad a car, really, if you look beyond the possession. It handles really well when we’re not all arguing and it serves our needs. It’s a fun car when you get down to it.”
“Well, it does have more legroom than that crap Gremlin.” Mom almost seemed to be warming up to the Inferno. She ran her hand along all the dials and levers on the dash. “It does have a peculiar charm, I suppose. Do you know what all these things do?”
“No,” Dad said, looking a little nervous. “I haven’t had time to read the owner’s manual.”
“Where is it?” Mom said.
“What?” Dad was trying to play dumb, but Mom wasn’t about to give up.
“The owner’s manual—where is it?”
“Oh…yeah…” Dad said, searching for an excuse. “I took it out because I planned on reading it. I left it at home.”
Mom saw right through him. “I know you, James O’Brien. You wouldn’t leave home without the owner’s manual. It’s gotta be in the glovebox. How do you get into this damn thing?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said, knowing Mom was getting warmer.
“Well there’s gotta be a way in.” She fumbled around with buttons, dials, and levels until finally triggering the switch. “There we go!” She dug around and found the owner’s manual. She looked at the cover and read the quote from The Book of Revelation.
“Jesus Christ!”
“What?” Dad said, acting surprised.
“You liar!” Mom said. “The owner’s manual’s right here! You had to see it when you put paperwork in the glove compartment; how could you have seen this and not questioned it, James?!” She held the manual up for everyone to see. She dug around the glovebox some more, before pulling something out and reading it.
“Holy shit!”
“What?” Dad said. She held out the contract.
“The down payment was six-hundred sixty-six dollars, James. Didn’t that trigger warning bells in your head?! You almost deserve all this, you’re so stupid!”
“Now remember, Dear. If we get mad, the car’s going to act up,” he said. “Take some deep breaths. You have to stay calm, or the car gets bad.”
“I’m not gonna yell at you,” Mom said, “but how could you fork over a check for six-hundred sixty-six dollars and not given things more thought. How could you have looked at the cover of the manual, seen the quote from Revelations, and not been just a little suspicious?
“It’s Revelation, not Revelations—“
“I don’t care if it’s from the Book of Christ Himself, James! How could you not have at least thought something a little weird was going on?!”
“Shh!” he said. “We don’t want to anger the car.” I could tell he tried coming up with a good excuse, but the best my old man could summon at that moment was, “I really liked the car. It’s neat.”
Mom started reading the contract—I never saw Dad more nervous. After a couple minutes of uneasy silence, Mom smiled and said, “So we’re not supposed to yell, or get frustrated about things, right?
“Right,” Dad said, knowing Mom was about to drop a bomb. “Why?”
“I just don’t want you getting mad when you see you signed your soul over to Satan.”
“What?!” Dad hit the brakes so hard, the car went into a skid and he pulled over to the shoulder.
“Take some deep breaths, James,” Mom said. “You gotta stay calm or the car acts up. Remember?”
“Oh, crap!”
“I can’t believe you of all people didn’t read this before signing it.”
“I figured it was a standard contract,” he said. “I wanted to get behind the wheel.” He tried reading over Mom’s shoulder. “What’s it say?”
“Exactly what I told you,” Mom said. “By taking the car and signing the contract, you give Satan your soul for all eternity when you die.”
“Can I get it back?” Dad asked. “Is there a refund clause?”
“There’s fine print,” Mom said, pulling her reading glasses from her purse. “Lemme see what it says.” She mumbled to herself as she scanned the document. “Oh, here we go! ‘While the signee forfeits his soul to Almighty Satan, standard means of redemption apply. One: Almighty Satan reserves the right to trade signee’s soul with any party Almighty Satan chooses. In this occurrence, rights to signee’s soul transfer to the party with which Almighty Satan traded. Two: if biblical prophecy—as stated in the Book of Revelation—occurs and the Rapture arrives before signee dies and signee is a Christian, his soul will be placed in turnaround and revert back to the property of God Almighty. Three: if the Inferno is destroyed by an act of God, the signee’s soul will revert back to the original owner and not be claimed by Almighty Satan at the time of signee’s death.’”
“That last one sounds the most promising,” she said.
“Yeah, but if a guy who can drive a demon from Lucky can’t do the same thing for the car…it doesn’t sound very good.”
“Well, according to this,” Mom said, “it’s gotta come straight from the Big Guy upstairs anyway.”
“Those don’t sound like the best odds.”
“Ya never know,” Aunt Margie said. “He works in mysterious ways…”
* * *
We drove along for a couple hours, all of us silent, thinking about the contract. Before leaving New Jersey, I was a skeptic, but knowing Satan owned your father’s soul could change your mind. The whole trip, from thinking it was a pilgrimage of sorts, to seeing Brother Rob—it all seemed to be adding up. I was right: something big was going to happen at the canyon and somehow I knew I would be an important part of that event.
The twins finally broke the silence. “Are we almost to the Grand Canyon?”
“We’re getting closer,” Dad said, “but we’ll be going in the morning, after we sleep.”
“Are we going to stop someplace we can roast marshmallows?” they asked.
“I don’t think your Mom will ever sleep outside again,” he said. “I think it’s hotels the rest of this trip, so we probably won’t get a chance to roast any marshmallows, guys.”
“BOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!”
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
As Dad flew along Route 666 full-tilt, he dug through one of the bags we filled at the gas station and tore into a big bag of chips. When he was nervous, he liked munching on things.
“James, you need to stop eating and keep your eyes on the road,” Mom said.
“I can eat and drive at the same time, Mary.”
That was true. My old man could eat Thanksgiving dinner in his lap while flying down the interstate a sixty-five miles an hour. Forget cup holders; he just shoved his drink between his legs and didn’t care if it looked like he wet himself when he got up. His flat lap served as a tabletop where he could lay out a cheeseburger, French fries, and catsup on some napkins and not be distracted by less-important things, like the traffic before him. On those occasions he pulled a sixteen-hour haul and needed more food than the average drive-thru could provide, he used everything from the armrest on the door, the space between him and Mom, to the dashboard for holding food and drink.
There was no stopping his appetite for eating and driving at the same time—he believed in moving down the highway at all costs. The only thing he stopped for were side-of-the-road attractions, and those times we could no longer hold it and really had to use the bathroom (even then, he’d see if we could “hold it another fifty miles to the next rest stop?” even if we were a mile from one at the time. And if it was Elvis or me simply needing to pee, he was known to pass back a bottle or cup and tell us to fill it. He stopped that practice, though, the time we were driving to Yellowstone and Elvis decided it would be funny to “accidentally” spill a Coke bottle full of urine on me. The ensuing fight was one of the rare instances I actually defeated Elvis, and it took everything Dad had to separate my hands from my little brother’s throat!).
Mom normally asked Dad to stop on the side of the road when he wanted to eat on a trip, but to pull over would be admitting some kind of defeat in my father’s mind. As long as he had a car packed with the children he sired and a fast-food meal in his lap as he maneuvered a huge, gas-guzzling American-made automobile down the road, he was a man!
Dad used Lucky’s possession as a valid excuse to see just how fast the Inferno would go. Mom was so concerned about Lucky’s well-being, she wouldn’t have cared when he brought the car over one-hundred miles an hour had he not been munching on chips while struggling to open a can of soda. She prayed out loud when he had us going one-forty on a straightaway, though.
“James, I’ll open the pop for you; hand it here. Just keep your eyes on the road.”
“I’ve got it,” he said. Right as the pop-top made a little FWOOSH sound, Dad lost control of the Inferno!
We bounced from one side of Route 666’s shoulder, to the other at over a hundred miles an hour! Dad dropped his chips and drink on the floorboard; he gripped the steering wheel like Gilligan and the Skipper on their fated three hour tour, just holding on for dear life and hoping for the best. He totally lost control, sending us into a spin. I don’t know how many three-sixties we did; all I remember was hearing Mom pray. We skidded to a sudden stop in a poof of dust, and when it cleared, we found ourselves safe and sound in the parking lot of The Church of the Holy Visage.
“Is everyone okay?!” Dad said.
None of us could speak. He looked at Mom, then in the rearview mirror at the rest of us, seeing we were all fine, just very shaken. We stared at the church.
It was a tiny mission at one time, the kind of place most towns restore and turn into tourist traps, but years of neglect told the story about this old church. Even the sign, a painted face of Christ meant to look like a stained glass pattern, looked ancient.
Dad grabbed the sleeping bag with Lucky inside and stepped from the Inferno. He looked back at the highway, smiling. Racing along a lonely old road with the engine wide open and living through an out of control skid with the needle on the speedometer almost pegged as far as it went made him feel manly, I’m sure—the kind of thing he only dreamed about. When the rest of us regained our composure, we piled out of the station wagon and went inside the church.
The interior was a continuation of what greeted us outside. The place echoed, creaked, and had a dusty look that reminded me of a movie set. Scavenged pews, chairs, and a podium before the altar were taken from other churches. As we walked up the center aisle, antique, ornate Catholic pews sat beside plainer, Protestant pews. Folding wood chairs with faded, stenciled names like “FIRST METHODIST CHURCH, BISBEE,” and “MARY IMMACULATE” sat beside dented steel folding chairs. There were definitely plenty of places to sit, but I had the feeling none of the pews and chairs had seen the backside of a disciple in decades.
The altar consisted of a podium that was probably scrapped from one of the churches where the old chairs or pews were found. Behind the altar, a plain, white T-shirt was placed on the back wall about ten feet up. I thought I was seeing things, but if you looked hard enough, you could see a faint—almost glowing—image of Christ on the T-shirt. The image didn’t appear to have been printed on the shirt; I looked around to see if there were any stained glass windows in the church where maybe a beam of light was shining through from outside, casting a stained glass image on the shirt. All the windows were boarded up—only a couple cracks let tiny beams of light shine through, illuminating particles of floating dust.
Flanking each side of the podium were pedestals surrounded by clear, acrylic cases. I walked up the aisle to see what the cases contained. In one case was a tortilla with a Shroud of Turin-looking Christ face on the surface. The other case contained a red mechanic’s rag with Christ’s face appearing in an oil stain. I almost laughed.
“Hello?!” Dad said. “Hello?!”
Nothing.
“Is anybody here?!” Mom said.
A figure in a hooded robe stepped out from behind the altar, startling me. I wanted to run back down the aisle and into Mom’s arms, but stood my ground and looked. The robe was fashioned from the rag-tag dregs of what appeared to be holy robes from several denominations. As the figure stepped toward me, I could see the rubber fronts of green canvas sneakers poking out with each step.
“Greetings, weary travelers and welcome to the church,” the figure said. “How may I help you?”
“We need an exorcism,” Mom said.
He pulled the hood back, revealing his scruffy face. I don’t think he was dirty, but he sure looked dirty. A scraggly beard stopped at his chest and when he shook his head free from the robes, waist-length hair (some of it matting into dreadlocks), flopped all about. He looked homeless and reminded me of Jesus for some reason.
“I am Brother Rob,” he said. “I can help you. You may look at me and see a madman, but remember: there were those who believed Christ a madman, too.”
“This has to be a joke,” I thought.
“No, Michael—no joke,” Brother Rob said, locking eyes. “I am for real.”
I felt sick. “How did you know my name?” I said. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“There are things I just know; a gift from Him,” he said, pointing to the T-shirt. “I was bathed in His light seven years ago to the day. I was a janitor in a church and an unbeliever just like you, but that would all change.”
He took a deep breath and went on. “I was wearing that very T-shirt when it happened. I mopped all the floors and scrubbed all the toilets in the church where I worked. After locking the doors for the night, I went to the chapel and turned the lights out. The streetlights outside cast the images from the stained glass windows across the chapel floor. The unbeliever that I once was, I began laughing and dancing on the images of the saints and the Savior. When I stopped, I noticed his visage was cast onto my white T-shirt from the lights outside. I laughed at Him and left the chapel, but His image stayed on my T-shirt. I was bathed in His light and given sight. With His gift, I know things. That is how I know you saw a message on the wall of a bathroom stall signaling the battle that lies before you. That is how I know your name: Michael, the name of the Archangel who drove Satan out of Heaven.” He looked at Mom and Dad. “Your parents named you well.”
I’m sure Dad thought the story was all well and good, but we were there for a purpose. “Can you help with the exorcism?” Dad said, hoping to get started before Lucky woke up.
“Indeed. May I see the afflicted,” Brother Rob said.
I stepped back, behind Mom and Dad. Dad opened the sleeping bag enough for Lucky to poke his head out and struggle. The instant he saw Brother Rob, his eyes glowed red and he said, “DIE!!!” in a deep, gravely voice. Had it not been so terrifying, it would have been humorous!
“I see…” Brother Rob said. He stepped to the tortilla at the side of the altar and removed the case. He placed it in the palm of his hand and made his way toward Lucky, who started fighting Dad. The room went cold, like someone opened a door in the middle of winter.
“In the name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord…” Brother Rob said. “…strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God; of Blessed Michael the Archangel—“ When he said “Michael,” Lucky’s head spun around backwards and looked right at me.
“MICHAEL…” Lucky said in the deep voice. A wind picked up from out of nowhere, almost knocking me over. “MICHAEL, IT’S TIME TO DIE!”
The whole church started shaking. The cracks in the boards covering the windows grew larger, bathing the interior of the church in white-hot beams of light. Chairs and pews flew through the air, heading straight for Brother Rob, who calmly ducked out of their path; he shouted above the wind, continuing.
“…of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints; and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil.” Lucky, now frothing at the mouth and snapping his jaws, flew from the sleeping bag, through the air, straight at Brother Rob, who parried with the tortilla. He slapped Lucky in the head and shouted, “Be gone, demon!”
The force knocked Lucky back into Dad and me, sending us both to the ground. Lucky and the tortilla fell to the floor as well. The first thing I thought about was being on the floor with Lucky. I was convinced, in an instant, I’d have a possessed Chihuahua ripping my throat out and no one—not even Brother Rob—would be able to save me. There was no attack, however, but I did hear chewing.
“Lucky, no!” Mom shouted. Lucky was wolfing down the Jesus tortilla.
“It is okay,” Brother Rob said. “He is healed.”
“It’s like a big holy wafer!” the twins said, laughing.
I sat up in time to see Lucky taking his last bite of the flour sacrament. “Is he normal again?”
Dad looked at me. “Was he ever normal to begin with?” He helped me to my feet.
Mom bent over, clapped her hands, and Lucky jumped into her arms. He licked her face and wriggled about. He was still the rancid little creature he always was, but we all knew whatever had a grip on him was finally gone…we just sensed it and somehow knew he was free.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Mom said.
“Nothing,” Brother Rob said. “Just be careful. The demon may be gone from your dog, but I see a greater evil ahead for all of you.”
“The car!” I said.
“What about the car?” Brother Rob said.
Mom answered. “Our car is also possessed. ‘Least that’s what they say—I think it’s just a piece of crap.”
“Think you can fix that, too?” Dad said.
“I am not a mechanic,” Brother Rob said. “I only perform exorcisms on living beings. There is nothing I can do for you, there. I am sorry.”
“That’s fine,” Dad said, shaking his hand. “You’ve done more than enough. Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
We all said goodbye to Brother Rob and thanked him at least three times before leaving. I lagged behind as we made our way up the aisle. Dad opened the front door and the church flooded with radiant light, practically blinding us. I had to turn away. I thought it was my eyes adjusting, but with one turn of my head, all the pews, chairs, and other things tossed about during Lucky’s exorcism were right back in their place. For that moment, the church was one of the most beautiful things I ever laid eyes upon. It didn’t matter that the pews were mismatched; I didn’t matter that the chairs were a hodge-podge from other places. There was just something that seemed so right to me at that moment…something I couldn’t put my finger on, but welcomed.
Brother Rob looked at me. He winked and said, “Remember this, Michael. Remember, you have the power. Godspeed…”
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
When I woke up the next morning, I heard Mom and Dad talking—it was still dark. The episode with Bubba really got to Mom, and she was laying down the law to Dad, telling him how it was going to be.
“James, since I won so much playing bingo and you’ve lost your wallet and have nothing,” she said, “I think what I say is gonna stand from now on. And I say from tonight, forward—for the rest of this trip—we’re sleeping in hotels.”
Dad looked as disappointed as a little kid called in early on a summer evening. Ever since the visit to Yellowstone years before, he couldn’t convince Mom to take traditional camping trips anymore, so he had to settle for second best: sleeping in tents on road trips, or in the backyard with me.
“Okay,” he said. “But can we at least sleep with the windows open?”
“No,” Mom said. He knew pushing the issue would get him nowhere, so he shut up.
Breakfast that morning was gas station junk food: strawberry Zingers, Honey Buns, and doughnuts washed down with chocolate milk. It only took a few minutes to make it to Cadillac Ranch. The sun was just peeking over the horizon; Dad wanted to get there before anyone else.
“I don’t think this place gets crowds, James,” Mom said on the drive there.
“It’s famous, Mary,” he said. “You never know with these things…” He just used it as an excuse for an early start. The more time spent on the road was more time for adventure in his mind.
There’s just something about ten Cadillacs buried face down, halfway into the flat earth in a wheat field in the Texas Panhandle—you either love it or hate it. Mom hated it, of course. Had it been a field full of pink lawn flamingos, she would have stood in awe, insisting Dad take plenty of pictures. But Cadillac Ranch offered nothing for Mom, except a chance to complain some more.
“This is crap!” she declared. “A total waste of good cars! Cadillacs are classics, not like that station wagon you bought.” Dad could have argued that point; I’m sure he saw the Inferno as a distant cousin to the Cadillacs, but he knew better than give Mom what she wanted. “We should bury that piece of junk car of yours totally! None of this half out crap.” She lit a cigarette and Aunt Margie moved her way like a moth to flame, hoping for a handout.
You could count me in as one who loved Cadillac Ranch; it was one of the neatest things I had ever seen—the kind of thing kids love. To Dad it was so much more—to Dad, it was a testament to humanity. Burying Caddies in a wheat field and calling it art was what separated us from animals, like Lucky. That someone even thought about burying cars in the earth, and that people came from all over the country to have a look—to Dad it was a thing of beauty. No admission; this was a gift to mankind for free, making it “truer” art in Dad’s mind than something one would pay to see in a gallery. No one even selling souvenirs on the site—just ten Cadillacs face-down in the dirt!
“Isn’t it beautiful, Michael?” Dad said.
“Yeah, Dad.” I didn’t see the beauty in it, but knew it meant a lot to him so I went along. “It’s neat.”
He peeled his T-shirt off and handed it to me; something came over him. “Hold this, please.”
He went up to the ’59 Coupe DeVille and ran his hand along its body, as though it were a horse and he were asking for permission to climb aboard for a ride. And that’s precisely what he did: in a flash, he climbed atop the car and stretched his arms toward the sky. He looked like a pagan god, standing atop the half-buried car, calling the sun from the horizon to do his bidding, the master of his own Stonehenge of rubber and steel and spraypaint. He let out a primal “YAAAWWWWWWWP!!!!!!!” then inhaled deeply.
“What’s wrong with Jimmy?” Aunt Margie asked, blowing smoke into the morning air.
“He’s nuts is what’s wrong!” Mom said. She turned her attention to Dad. “James, you get down from there right now.” She said it like she was scolding one of the twins, or me.
As if ripping his shirt off and climbing on top of one of the cars wasn’t weird enough (even for Dad), what he did next was even more surprising. He turned toward the horizon, so his back was facing us, and he leaped backwards, pulling into a little ball—he was doing a backflip! He was no gymnast, though. He spun too much and landed flat on his ass and slumped forward.
“Jimmy!” Aunt Margie shouted.
“James!”
“Dad!”
We ran up to him and I thought he was crying, but he flopped on his back in the dirt and laughed.
“That’s not funny, James!” Mom said. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
He kept laughing.
“Stop that right now!” she said, but he didn’t. She stomped off with Aunt Margie trailing behind. “I’ll be waiting in the car…”
I wondered what made Dad act the way he did. I thought maybe he was simply stressed and needed a release, that all the years of living with Mom and taking her crap had welled up inside him and communing with the sun on top of the epitome of American machinery was the only way he knew to let it go. A religious experience. My theory wasn’t far from wrong.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
“I’ve never been better, Michael.”
I handed him his T-shirt and he pulled it on after knocking dirt from his back. “Why’d you do that?” I said.
He looked at me with intense purpose, like he was bestowing some ancient secret. “Michael,” he said, “there are moments bigger than our thoughts that can’t be explained. That was one of those moments and it was special. I can’t explain it anymore than that. It’s healing…”
We both stared at the sunrise. Over the years, I’ve heard many people talk about Texas having the best sunsets, but the sunrises are pretty impressive, too. To begin the day looking at something so beautiful…it sent us on our way energized and ready to tackle all that lay ahead.
We had hardly made it into New Mexico when Dad saw a sign advertising a reptile farm. BIG TEX’S RATTLESNAKE PIT AHEAD—10 MILES!
“James, we can’t stop—we don’t have time,” Mom said. “Haven’t we seen enough reptiles on this trip already?” Mom should have known better than to give Dad an option.
“These are snakes, though!” he said. “Rattlesnakes! We got an earlier start than usual, and the kids would love to see it, I’m sure. Right kids?”
Elvis and Olivia went nuts—the thought of seeing something as venomous as themselves appealed to them, and I’m sure their minds instantly set to work figuring out a way to get copious amounts of snake poison into their big brother’s body, while making it seem accidental. I wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“How ‘bout you, Michael,” Dad said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. I was still thinking about Bubba penned up somewhere; how if I wanted to see rattlesnakes, I should go out on the plains among the rocks and see them as they’re meant to be seen. “Rattlesnakes, Buddy! How cool is that?”
I knew we were going to end up stopping, regardless, so I said, “Yeah.”
The reptile farm wasn’t nearly as big as Clyde McAllister’s Gator Village and Civil War Memorial, but how big does a side of the road attraction featuring a pit of vipers need to be? Judging by the one other car in the parking lot, they did twice as much business as Clyde McAllister, with maybe one fifth the square footage.
We wandered in and were greeted by a rail thin guy carrying an almost full Dr. Pepper bottle. Just like Lance, he wore a belt buckle so huge, that it reminded me of a satellite dish. He had tobacco stains around the edges of his mouth, and introduced himself as “Big Tex” (even though we were in New Mexico and he maybe weighed a hundred pounds in cowboy boots and leather chaps). At first, I thought maybe he’d eaten a chocolate glazed doughnut and forgot to wipe his mouth, but as he talked, he constantly spit tobacco into the bottle (if you ever visit the American Southwest, a word of warning: never drink from a Dr. Pepper bottle that isn’t yours, or one that has left your sight—you just never know what may be inside).
“Big Tex” took a headcount and told us admission would be twenty dollars. Dad instinctively reached for his wallet, quickly remembering he’d lost it. He looked at Mom, who was probably thinking she should have remembered she was the breadwinner du jour, and therefore, should have simply told Dad to keep driving when he saw the sign. Instead, she forked over the cash and said, “This is the last stop for something like this, James. Including the drive home…”
Big Tex took her money and noticed Lucky between her breasts.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we got a no pets policy. One of these snakes sees that little guy and they’ll think he’s dinner.”
“I just gave you twenty bucks and you can’t make an exception?” she said.
“Sorry, ma’am. Those are the rules.”
“Fine!” She set Lucky down. “Go to the car and wait for Mama, Lucky! Mama will be right there.”
He ran beneath the swinging saloon doors and hopped into the Inferno.
Mom looked at Big Tex. “See if we ever come back here.”
Big Tex’s Rattlesnake Pit was pretty much just that—a pit full of rattlers. He had a couple aquariums with other snakes lining the walls, complete with little signs like GARTER SNAKE: NON-POISONOUS—SAFE TO HANDLE; COPPERHEAD: PRETTY DURN POISONOUS—WATCH OUT!
The highlight of Big Tex’s place was the old redwood hot tub he’d converted into “THE RATTLE PIT!” He built a little deck and railing up to the side of the hot tub—you climbed a couple stairs and looked down on his pit of poison. In what appeared to be an old pool cue holder, he had fishing poles with balloons tied to the ends so you could hang a balloon over a rattler’s head and watch it strike the balloon.
“Rattlesnakes and balloons!” Dad said. “That’s a picture dying to happen. Go for it, Buddy!”
Normally, I’d be going nuts over something like that, but I kept thinking about how wrong things suddenly seemed after meeting Bubba Bear.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m not feeling so good. I think breakfast is catching up with me.”
Across the pit from me, a fat kid with a crew cut, glasses that made his eyes look as big as baseballs, and a striped shirt was bonking a docile snake on the head, trying to get it to strike his balloon. When it finally did, Dad snapped a picture and smiled. He turned back toward me.
“You sure? Just one picture?”
“Okay,” I said, feeling guilty.
I grabbed a fishing pole and waved the balloon over the snake pit, but the snakes seemed to not be into it just as much as me.
“Agitate them a little bit…bonk ‘em on the heads, that should work!” Dad said, camera readied.
I did, but the snakes did nothing. I let the fishing pole droop into the tank and stared at Dad. He wanted that picture more than anything—capturing the very moment a poisonous viper hit his son’s balloon, making a pop and scaring the snake half to death (no wonder the snakes didn’t want to strike). I zoned out until I heard Dad shout, “Michael!”
He was yelling at me! I couldn’t believe it—against my own will, I tried getting the snakes to strike for his amusement, and now he was yelling at me!
“Michael!” he yelled again. “Look out!”
He wasn’t yelling because I didn’t get the snakes to strike; he was yelling because a rattlesnake had wrapped itself around the fishing pole and was crawling up it like a branch, toward my arm! I flinched, sending the snake off the end of the pole, through the air, and landing on Mom!
“AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!” Mom shouted as she rushed about, doing her best to keep the dangerous end of the rattlesnake as far from her as she could. Instead of tossing it from her shoulders and running away like a normal person would do, she thrashed about, running in circles like a cartoon character. She fished her lighter from her purse and tried setting the snake on fire! Mom figured that would do it, but in her panic, she couldn’t get the lighter to work. Dad rushed over to save her; the snake was about to strike! When it finally did, Lucky came to her rescue.
He charged across the floor (how he knew Mom was in trouble is beyond me), and leaped with all his might, taking out the snake that would have struck Mom right between her eyes! He flopped to the floor with the middle of the snake firmly in his teeth, thrashing about like a feral little mongoose against a cobra. He got the upper hand, biting the snake several times and rendering it useless for a fight. He took it’s head in his mouth and swallowed the snake in a few quick bites, stopping for a moment at the rattle, where—I swear to God—he looked right at me and shook the rattle like a warning before swallowing the last bit of snake!
“That’s why we allow no pets!” Big Tex shouted as he ran over. “That dog just ate one of my snakes!”
Mom puffed out her chest, dwarfing Big Tex and sending a message to back down. “That dog just saved you from a huge lawsuit!” She looked at Lucky, making sure he was okay.
“I think it would be a good idea if we left, guys,” Dad said.
* * *
We passed a few more signs for side of the road attractions: caves, more reptile farms, and UFO landing sites. Dad knew better than to ask if we could stop.
The incident at the reptile farm shook us all up—we drove along in silence, making our way across the state in record time. In a weird way, it was nice seeing Lucky save Mom—it meant maybe there was still a glint of the good Lucky in that little body after all (“good” being relative when it came to the mean little canine).
Dad finally pulled in for gas late that afternoon. Mom grabbed Lucky and jumped from the car.
“Gotta pee!”
“I’ll be in after filling up,” Dad said, as she ran in. The rest of us got out to stretch our legs and see what the convenience store had to offer in the way of food. When I entered, I heard the cashier telling Mom, “Excuse me, Ma’am. You can’t be bringing your dog in here.”
“What is it about this state and no dogs allowed?” she said. “Nobody else in this country has a problem with him. It’s not like he’s a drooling Great Dane, or something.”
“Those are the rules,” the cashier said. “Sorry.”
Mom opened the door and set Lucky down on the pavement. “Go to the car, Lucky! Go to the car—Mama will be right back,” she said. On her way to the bathroom, she huffed at the cashier and said, “That’s a stupid rule.”
“Like it or not, it’s still a rule,” he said as she opened the door to the lady’s room.
The twins went straight for the marshmallows. I grabbed good “road trippin’ food,” as Dad called it: pork rinds, tiny chocolate and powdered donuts, soda, bubble gum, and plenty of beef jerky; some sandwiches and chips, as well. Mom came out from the bathroom, grabbed what she wanted, and we all headed for the register. Dad timed the fill up perfectly and met us. He took one look at everything I held and gave me a thumbs up; I grabbed exactly what he wanted, too.
“This all together?” the cashier said.
“Of course,” Mom said, hoping to start something with the guy who put her beloved Chihuahua out. Everyone was smart and ignored her.
“Yes. And the gas on pump four,” Dad said.
“That’ll be fifty-three sixty-seven.”
Mom pulled a wad of bills from her purse and handed them over. “We’re giving you all that money and you couldn’t let me bring my dog in? How’s that for gratitude?”
The cashier ignored her. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, right!” Mom snapped.
The twins went right into their fresh bag of marshmallows as I divvied up my haul with Dad. Mom was the first into the car.
“AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“What’s wrong?!” Dad shouted.
“Who let Lucky do this?!” she said, holding up the backscratcher. Lucky had chewed it beyond recognition.
“Oh, sweet Jesus! No!!!” Aunt Margie said. “That thing done touched the King!”
“Why didn’t somebody keep an eye on him?!” Mom bellowed. “How could youse guys let this happen?!”
“Mary. Dear,” Dad said. “Please. Calm down.”
I thought she was going to hit him. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down, James David O’Brien!” she said. “Just when things start going good, this crap happens. Why didn’t somebody watch him, damnit?!”
Dad started pleading with her. “Take it easy, Mar–”
“I WILL NOT TAKE IT EASY!!!” she shouted. Her nostrils flared and her face turned beet red. She was about to explode; that was exactly what the Inferno wanted.
“Mom, you’ve gotta stop!” I said. “Stop!”
Everyone stared at me.
“Mom, you’ve gotta believe me. Lucky chewed the backscratcher, but it wasn’t really Lucky,” I said. “It was a demon or something that’s possessed him. It’s trying to get us all to fight. So is the car. The car’s possessed, too!”
“See, told you he was nuts,” Olivia said.
“No duh!” Elvis replied.
“What do you mean, he’s possessed?” Mom said.
“I swear to God,” I said. “He’s possessed!”
Aunt Margie said, “I thought you didn’t believe in God, Michael?”
“Just trust me on this.”
Dad backed me up. “Trust him, dear.”
Mom looked at Lucky. It was like he knew what we were saying. He opened his eyes even wider than usual and did a little pant that looked like a smile. He was trying to look cute.
“He’s not possessed, Michael.”
“His eyes turn red, his head spins in circles. Trust me, Mom—he’s possessed!”
She pointed Lucky at me. “I don’t see any red eyes.”
“Try this,” I said, pointing to Dad’s plastic Virgin Mother on the dash. “Say some Catholic thing to Mary and touch Lucky to her.”
“Huh?”
“Dear, just try it,” Dad said, nodding.
She went along with us. Whatever had hold of his soul knew something bad was about to happen. He started fighting. “Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee,” Mom said. “Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Lucky thrashed about in Mom’s grip. She was not about to let go.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” she said even louder, ”pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”
Lucky began howling and his eyes finally glowed red. Olivia screamed and ran from the car. Aunt Margie was frozen in her seat, paralyzed by utter terror. Mom touched Lucky to the figurine. He yelped and his head smoked where he touched the Blessed Virgin.
“Amen,” she said, letting Lucky go out of fear. He floated in mid-air, panting! I knew he was about to do something; before he had a chance to react, I grabbed an Elvis statue, took a big swing, and knocked Lucky to the floorboard, out cold.
Mom was in shock—she wasn’t even mad that I may have hit his molera. “We need to find a church…” she said.
Dad rushed into the convenience store
“Can I hel—“
Dad interrupted the cashier. “Is there a church around here?!”
“A couple,” the cashier said. “What do you need?”
“An exorcism!”
The cashier tried not to laugh. “I don’t know of any churches in town that do that. Who do you need exorcised?”
“Our Chihuahua!” Dad said.
The cashier laughed—he couldn’t hold it back any longer. When he finally regained his composure he said, “There’s a place called the Church of the Holy Visage up on Route 666, between Tohatchi and Naschitti. Probably about half an hour’s drive. The guy who runs the place is a nutjob—he might help.”
“Route 666?” Dad said.
“Yeah, I’m not making that up, either. Just a ways up to the right,” the cashier said, pointing down the highway.
Dad ran back to the Inferno and we sped away. As we raced down I-40 for Route 666, Dad suggested we wrap Lucky in a sleeping bag, in case he woke up. Elvis and Olivia handed a sleeping bag to me without an argument. Granted, it was mine, but for once, we were working together. I helped Mom wrap Lucky up—just enough to give him air so he wouldn’t suffocate, but tight enough to at least give us a fighting chance of controlling him if he woke up.
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
I was so happy to hear Dad believed me. When you’re thirteen, it’s easy to think nobody gives you any credit, but I realized on that trip that it wasn’t so much that I was ignored, as much as I’d reached a level of maturity that adults began expecting more from me. “Dad, I think the car is possessed and I’m scared!” would work for a seven-year-old, but it’s not something adults want to hear from a teenager. So having my father believe me was a big thing at the time. I felt safer; in my mind, since Dad knew the car was possessed, nothing bad could happen. I felt great! Everyone seemed to be in an excellent mood, too. It was like we were all a real, model family. I had to give it another shot.
“Hey, anyone wanna sing Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall?” I said.
“Not now,” Mom said, recounting her money for the umpteenth time since winning.
“No, shut up!” from the twins.
“I don’t know the words and I ain’t no good at countin’.” Aunt Margie said.
Dad said, “Looks like we’re out-voted.”
Okay, so maybe we weren’t a model family, but we were making big strides.
We rolled into the Texas Panhandle as the sun was going down. First thing, bright and early in the morning, Dad wanted to visit the Cadillac Ranch, where ten Cadillacs were partially buried in a wheat field and called “art.” To everyone but my Dad, it was something that could easily be skipped, but it was one of those places he waited years to finally see.
We pulled off I-40 to a campground a few miles off the highway. Mom wanted to stay in a hotel, to celebrate her big bingo win, but Dad insisted he was too tired to drive any further. In reality, Dad wanted to sleep outside in a tent on hard-packed dirt. Mom did her normal, “What about bears?” speech and Dad assured her all was safe.
“The only bears in Texas are in zoos,” he said.
We paid for our space, pitched the tents, and started a campfire. Our space was at the back of the lot and the campground wasn’t very used; it was almost like roughing it for real.
“Goody, we’ll get to finally roast marshmallows!” the twins said.
“Yeah, you sure will!” Dad said, setting some twigs on tinder. It didn’t matter that we lived in a urban nightmare; on these trips, my father was just like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. He blew on the dried grass he’d collected, nursing a hot ash started by a flint and steel set he carried with him everywhere since his Boy Scouts days (be prepared—never know when an insurance salesman will need to start a primitive fire, after all). With a little POOF, the grass gave way to flame and spread to the twigs. He stacked bigger pieces of wood on until we had a good fire going. The twins pulled out a bag of marshmallows and sticks.
“Youse two put those back!” Mom said. “You need to eat a healthy dinner, first!”
The “healthy dinner” consisted of hotdogs, pork and beans, and greasy potato chips, all washed down with soda pop. I’m guessing, while a bag of marshmallows didn’t have much in the way of nutritional value, that meal wasn’t far behind. After dinner, Mom and Aunt Margie lit up and Dad kicked back, relaxing.
“This is the life!” he said, rubbing his belly. “Nothing like a meal cooked over an open fire and a clear sky above. Can you hear that?”
We all listened. “I don’t hear a thing,” Mom said, looking around nervously.
“Exactly!” He laughed. “That’s what I mean! This is great—we don’t get this back home.”
“We don’t get chewed on by bugs, either!” Mom said, swatting at invisible mosquitoes. “If I get malaria, you’re never going to live it down.” As she swatted at another bug only she could see, she knocked her Coke over, spilling the can’s contents all over the log she was sitting on. She stood up, Coca Cola dripping from her clothes.
“This wouldn’t have happened if we stayed in a hotel!”
The twins looked at Mom, ignoring her dilemma. “Can we roast marshmallows, now?”
“Sure, go ahead,” she said as she grabbed napkins and wiped her bottom. Then she screamed!
“What?” Dad said.
The twins screamed and Aunt Margie joined in.
“What?!” Dad looked at me. I screamed too.
“WHAT?!” he shouted. I pointed to the two-hundred fifty pound black bear standing behind him! Not a monster by any stretch of the imagination, but in Mom’s eyes it was a two-ton, twelve-foot tall, fire-breathing Kodiak with a taste for fat women from New Jersey. It justified all her notions that if one sleeps outside—no matter where they are—bears will descend upon their camp and devour them in the night.
“I told you, James O’Brien!” Mom shouted as we all ran for cover. “I told you bears would get us!” The only place to run was the Inferno.
I got there first. “The doors are locked and the windows are up!” I yelled.
“They shouldn’t be—we left them unlocked!” Dad said. It was the first time he saw the kind of things the car was doing to me all along. Just like the night it tried choking me to death, it was now trying to kill my family by not letting us in and leaving us to the bear. Dad picked up the twins and threw them in through the broken window, followed by me. Aunt Margie was next, even though Mom tried forcing her way toward the window after we were safe. When Dad tried putting Mom through the window, she got stuck!
“James, if that bear bites my ass, you’re dead!” Her legs were kicking; her underwear exposed to the wilderness of Liam McGuy’s Campground. “Next time you’ll listen to me about the bears!”
The bear was still at the campfire, though, rifling through our food. It devoured the twins’ marshmallows, filling its belly full of goopy, sugary goodness before moving on to hotdogs, potato chips, and desserts. When it was done devouring everything we had, it headed our way. Dad picked up a nearby stick to fend off the beast. As it lumbered toward us, I noticed it wasn’t nearly as large as it seemed when it suddenly appeared behind Dad.
Dad stomped his food and thwacked the stick on the ground, trying to appear menacing. “Yo, bear! Get back, bear!” he shouted. Mom started screaming.
“I’m gonna die in this crap car and it’s all your fault, James O’Brien!”
Dad stood like a mountain man doing his best to fend off a feral beast. The bear stopped and stood on its hind legs; I thought for sure it was going to attack, but instead, it sniffed the air. It wasn’t looking to maul our family—it was looking for food! Dad caught on quick.
“Michael, do me a big favor, Buddy. Grab anything from the cooler and slowly hand it to me.”
I gave him some old sandwiches. He tossed them to the side and the bear ate them, bag and all. It made its way through the sandwiches in no time and turned its attention back to Dad. “Anything else?” he said.
I handed him a stale marshmallow I found on the floor. Before he could toss it, the bear took it from his hand. Dad thought it was cool. The bear licked his hand and Dad said, “That’s it—nothing else.” The bear stood up and sniffed the air again; it was still picking up the scent of something sweet. It moved to Mom and licked Coke off her butt.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” she screamed. “IT’S MAULING ME!!!”
Dad pulled the bear back like it was a big dog trying to hump someone’s leg. From the trees near camp, we heard someone shout, “Bubba! Bubba Bear!”
A skinny guy in a cowboy hat stepped out. A belt buckle as big as a wrestler’s champion belt held his bootcut jeans at his waist. He walked right up to the bear and started petting it.
“There you are, Bubba,” he said. “You messing with these nice people?” He pulled out a candy bar and fed it to his pet. For the first time, I realized Bubba had no teeth. Years of consuming sweets ensured he at least wouldn’t have been able to bite us if he were feral.
“Your bear?” Dad said.
“Yep—he got out of his cage. I’m really sorry.”
“He’s tame?” Dad said.
“Harmless as a bunny-rabbit.” He extended his hand to Dad. “Name’s Lance.”
Dad shook his hand. “James.”
“Nice meeting you.”
Dad started helping Mom out of the window. Lance, realizing his bear was the cause of the problem, gave a hand without even asking. Bubba joined in, too, returning to lick more Coke from Mom’s rear.
“You’re a dead man, James O’Brien,” she said. “Hear me? Dead! When we get back to Jersey, it’s ladle time for you!” I knew she would never hit me or the twins with the ladle, but even Dad looked like he wasn’t sure if she was kidding, or serious.
Once Mom’s feet were back on solid ground and Lance had Bubba away from her, the rest of us got out of the car. Dad asked if we could all get a picture with Bubba; Lance took a picture of all of us, except Mom, standing with the stinky bear. Lance explained he bought Bubba several years before from a guy who owned a gas station. The gas station owner put Bubba in a cage near the pumps to attract customers; he had bought Bubba from a small circus that went under and couldn’t afford to keep him. Dad took a couple more pictures of us with the bear before Lance said he had to get back home.
As I watched him walk off with Bubba, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the bear and all the other animals we’d seen along the way. In a cage or a wading pool on the side of the highway wasn’t the way animals were supposed to be viewed. I thought about the hawk and deer we saw at Aunt Margie’s back in West Virginia—that was the way things were meant to be.
I like to think Bubba escaped from Lance and wandered back to his birthplace in the hills, but the reality was he probably died with a belly full of sugar, on a concrete slab surrounded by chain-link fence.
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
Mom and bingo went hand in hand. She was convinced she could earn a decent living playing bingo, and for a short time, she was pulling in more money than my old man. If anyone could turn five dollars into enough money to fund the rest of the road trip, it was definitely Mom! We walked along the access road to the biggest bingo hall I’ve ever seen.
I can’t remember if the Choctaw Nation, or the Chicasaws ran the bingo hall, but I do remember the image on the sign above the building. The words “HIGH STAKES” were prominently featured in several places, and the proud face of a tribal chief was placed over a bingo card. I remember thinking how tacky it seemed as Dad said, “When we come back by here, I’m definitely getting a picture of that!”
We made our way inside and Mom was in heaven! She reached into her purse and pulled out her lucky card blotter—she never left home without it. The hostess knew Mom meant business.
“Can I help y’all?”
“One card, please,” Mom said, handing over the five. She pointed to Lucky, her third breast. “Is it okay if I bring him in? He brings me luck.”
“I really shouldn’t let you,” the hostess said, popping her gum, “but I understand. Go ahead, but if you get caught, I didn’t say you could bring him in.”
* * *
Mom and Aunt Margie fit right in with the bingo crowd; they were among their own kind. A thick cloud of smoke hung over the room, a sticky fog that wouldn’t go away. Over 25,000 square feet of tables, chairs, and people there to win money; it was overwhelming. Players lined up their good luck charms in front of them: rubber troll dolls, rabbit’s feet, crosses and other religious icons. One woman, wearing a T-shirt with a four-leaf clover on it, wasn’t taking any chances. She had stacks of pennies around her cards, a horseshoe, a baseball cap with a rainbow and pot of gold embroidered on it, stuffed animals, and so many Precious Moments angels it was creepy. The entire time we were there, she won nothing.
Another woman’s good luck charm was something floating in a jar of liquid; the way she inhaled cigarettes, maybe it was part of her lung. Some people had chair cushions with everything from slot machine graphics on them, to old cartoon characters, like Betty Boop.
Mom found a chair and we all gathered around to watch. The woman to her right and the guy to her left each were running multiple cards. They had them taped to the table and each time a number was called, they worked over their cards with two-fisted bingo blotters. A woman in the back shouted “BINGO!” while Mom got situated. By the time they verified the winner’s card, Mom had a cigarette burning, her card ready, and her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, revealing armpits full of stubbly hair.
They called the game and Mom was the first to shout, “BINGO!” She ran her sole bingo card like Minnesota Fats running a pool table. She won twenty-five dollars and immediately sent Dad to buy five more cards. When Dad returned, she set the cards on the table and pulled another blotter from her purse.
“Wanna borrow some tape for those?” the guy sitting next to her said.
“Thanks, but I don’t need ‘em,” Mom said. Bingo was like Zen archery to her; no matter how many cards she played and how fast she had to go over them, they stayed put and never slid around. All she needed to win was a scratch on Lucky’s head, a constant supply of nicotine, and room to throw her arms around like an octopus. In no time, she turned one five dollar card into ten—it was like watching a cell divide over and over. Soon, she drove her neighbors off and had one side of the table to herself. She was never one for exercise, but the way she ran back and forth checking all her cards, she exerted herself enough to last her months. She kept winning and winning. She took over the table like it was a small country. People actually stopped playing their cards and watched her in amazement.
“She’s cheating!” someone shouted. I didn’t see who said it, but Mom did. She locked eyes with a bear of a man—easily six foot seven and three-hundred fifty pounds. He said, “Sorry,” grabbed his Funshine Care Bear, and shuffled away.
“Hon, you need to stop buying cards,” Dad said.
“Don’t tell me how to play bingo, James O’Brien. I know what I’m doing! If you remember, there was a time I made more playing bingo than you did at work.” She loved rubbing that in. “I’ve got enough cards for that!” She pointed to a “$5,000 POT THREE TIMES A DAY” sign. It was just about time to make her move.
“All right, everybody…thiiiiiiiiiiiis is the moment you’ve been waaaaaaaiting for!” the caller said into his microphone. Up to that point, he was very serious, like a Secret Service agent, but now he was working the crowd over like an announcer at a monster truck rally. “It’s tiiiiiiime for the fiiiiiiiive thousand dollar jaaaaaackpot! Be sure to get your cards. This is a five minute breather. Goooooood luuuuuuuuuuuck!”
Flashing lights and police rollers flashed. People ran to the counter to buy more cards. Mom sat in an almost meditative state, waiting for her big payoff.
“Are ya really gonna win it all?” Aunt Margie said.
“I don’t play to lose, Marge. You know that,” Mom said.
Everyone took their places at their tables. Cards laid out, blotters in hand; it was like the line up right before a stock car race and Mom had pole position. The woman next to her was ready to give her a run for her money, though. They snarled at each other as the first ball was announced.
“B-13,” the caller said.
Mom and the woman beside her blotted several cards with the first number. They ran neck and neck, sometimes Mom would fall behind, other times she took the lead. Both women were large, sweaty, and smelling like menthols. The game seemed to last longer than others, but when the caller said, “O-25” I saw Mom had it! So did the woman beside her. They both went for the last spot; they both hit it at the same time, but only Mom shouted “BINGO!”
The woman beside her slumped onto her card, clutching her chest—in the excitement of hitting bingo on the big pot, she suffered a heart attack! People rushed up to Mom to check her card, while others ran to check out the woman beside her. In all the excitement, Mom did the most deplorable thing I ever saw her do in my life—she reached over and rubbed the winning mark off the woman’s card.
While Mom’s card was verified the winner, our neighbor was on the table, receiving CPR. With one quick lick and swipe of Mom’s thumb, not only was the woman going for a ride to a local hospital, she was going twenty-five hundred bucks poorer. Mom, however, was happy she wouldn’t have to split the winnings. The bingo hall paid out the pot, Mom stuffed fifty hundred dollar bills into her purse, and we left in time to see the ambulance heading off toward the nearest hospital.
As we walked across the parking lot, Mom came to my side.
“I’m sorry you saw that, Michael,” she said. I could see no shame on her face for clearing the woman’s card of the other winning spot. “Let it be a lesson: only the strong survive. We’d only have twenty-five hundred dollars right now, instead of five thousand.”
“Wouldn’t twenty-five hundred have been enough?” I said.
“Yeah, but five grand feels much better,” she said with a big smile.
“That’s wrong,”
“That’s helping the family, Michael.” She lit a cigarette and dropped back behind me to chat with Aunt Margie, who thought Mom was magic at that moment. I’m guessing the most money Aunt Margie ever saw at once was twenty bucks. In her eyes, Mom was a millionaire.
We neared the gas station. Dad said, “Why don’t you guys head back toward the car. Michael and I will get the hose and meet you.”
Mom peeled a Franklin from her stack and said, “Get some cigarettes and munchies…whatever you want.”
“Marshmallows!” the twins shouted in unison.
The rest of the family went back to the Inferno while Dad and I got a hose for the car, a carton of cigarettes for Mom and Aunt Margie, and a bag of snacks to last us the rest of the day. We walked back to the car, and even from a distance, it was clear Mom was talking bingo with Aunt Margie, who was eating up every second. Dad laughed; he looked at Mom with a glimmer in his eye.
“Your mother amazes me sometimes, Buddy.”
“Yeah, she really cleaned up,” I said.
“I know people don’t see what I see in her, but back at the bingo hall…that’s what I love about her. When she sets out to do something, she does it and doesn’t let anything get in her way. I really respect that side of her.”
I wanted to tell him I saw her wipe the other winner’s card, but didn’t want to ruin the moment for him. Instead, I just agreed. “Yeah.”
“And I really respect you,” he said. “It took guts to slap some sense into me the way you did. No hard feelings. We’ll get this hose on the car and head back to Stuckey’s, pay for our meal, and hit the car wash. Sound good?”
“Yeah, sounds really good.” I looked at the Inferno as we got closer; there was something I thought about on the way to the bingo hall and it was time to speak up. “I’ve been thinking about something, Dad.”
“What’s that?”
“The car. Lucky. I think they are somehow related,” I said.
Dad was actually listening. “How so?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but I know Lucky is possessed. Not just kidding around, but really possessed.”
“I thought you didn’t believe that stuff, though?” Dad said.
“I’m beginning to change my mind.”
“Why?”
“The Inferno,” I said. “I know it was choking me the other night. I know it chased me down last night. I’ve been thinking…it seems the car only acts up when we’re all mad and yelling at each other. It runs just fine when we’re all getting along, but when we’re mad, it breaks down. And Lucky: it’s like he knows I’m figuring things out and he’s trying to stop me. I bet I sound crazy?”
Dad didn’t say a thing. I thought he was going to ignore me again. When he finally spoke up and said, “I believe you,” I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Huh?!”
“I believe you,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about the way the car’s been acting, too. I’m still not sure about Lucky being possessed, but it’s all too weird for coincidence. I know you wouldn’t make things up if you didn’t believe they were happening, or seen them firsthand.” He looked me right in the eyes and said, “I believe you, Buddy, but let’s keep this to ourselves right now—don’t want to worry everyone just yet. We’ll just stay in a good mood and test your theory. Sound good?”
“Yeah!” I said, giving Dad a hug. “Thanks, Dad!”
“No problem, Buddy. No problem.”
We finished our hike back to the Inferno, where Mom was telling Aunt Margie, “There was even a time I supported this family playing bingo…”
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
[Listen]
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
We drove along for a good hour before I summoned the courage to tell Mom what happened to Lucky. I was surprised she didn’t ask where he was before then.
“Mom?” I said, hoping the tone of my voice wouldn’t give me away right from the start.
“What, Michael?” she said.
“Can I tell you something without you getting mad at me?”
“What did you do, now?” she said.
So much for easing my way into things—I cut to the chase. “Mom, I dropped Lucky into an alligator tank by accident and it ate him.” I cringed, expecting her to be one hundred percent serious when she told Dad to turn the car around to Jersey so she could beat me senseless with the sauce ladle. Instead, she was calm.
“You dropped him into an alligator tank and it ate him?” she said.
“Yeah. I’m really sorry—I didn’t mean to. He was fighting with me and slipped. Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” she said.
I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming. “You’re not?”
“No,” she said. “But I do think there’s something wrong with you. Lucky’s right here.”
She held the beast up where I could see him. He stared at me and I’ve never been more terrified in my life.
“Lucky was back in the car, waiting for me,” she said. “I don’t know what you let him get into or why you let him loose, but he was fine once I cleaned him up.
I closed my eyes and wondered if I was sane. Everything seemed disjointed, like I was disappearing, or floating in space.
“We should drop Michael into an alligator tank!” I heard Olivia say. She sounded far away, or like I was underwater.
Then Elvis: “Yeah, that would be fun!”
I was going insane—that had to be it! I saw Honky eat Lucky whole; there was no way Lucky could have escaped! I had to know how Lucky got out of the gator, so years later, I returned to Clyde McAllister’s Gator Village and Civil War Memorial. I asked Bonnie and Clyde to tell me their version of the story. This is what Clyde told me:
“Gator Breath called me into the Hall O’ Gators right after y’all pulled out of the parking lot.
‘Grip! Come here, quick!’ she done said.
‘What?!’
‘Just get yer ass in here!’
I went to Honky’s tank to take a look. He was deader’n a doornail. It looked like something chewed its way out his side, through the ribs and everything!
‘Sweet Jesus in Heaven!’ I said. ‘What the hell happened there, ya reckon?’
‘I dunno,’ Bonnie said. ‘You think them folk did it?’
‘I don’t see how they could of. Damn thing woulda bit anyone that got near it.’
‘They been the only ones here, though,’ Bonnie said.
‘Aw, hell. They was good folk,’ I said. ‘Even if they did it…I can always catch another gator and paint it up really good.’” (I was right! Honky was the result of a couple cans of Krylon® Flat White Decorator Paint!).
Had you told me then that Lucky ate his way free from the stomach of a gator, even after all I had seen him do, I wouldn’t have believed you, but that would all change. I still have nightmares about him to this day.
* * *
We were nearing the Oklahoma border when we passed a sign advertising a Stuckey’s ahead, twenty-five miles. With a truck stop complete with facilities, at least there’d be a carwash. Finally cleaning the car was probably one of the last things on my father’s mind, however. To Dad, Stuckey’s was a beacon in the night. To my Mom, it was a cornucopia of crap!
Dad always left Stuckey’s with plenty of proof he spent some time on the open road. He’d gather up paper placemats, buy clear, plastic belt buckles with scorpions inside, and of course, he’d buy pecan rolls. To Dad, a Stuckey’s Pecan Roll wasn’t just a snack—it was eaten with all the love and care of a high-dollar New York cheesecake or fancy tiramisu. He’d buy as many as he could sneak by Mom. Once home, he’d pop them in the freezer in his den. Anytime living with Mom became too much to handle, he could retreat to his lair, thaw one out, and sit back in his chair and pretend he was driving cross country.
We pulled into the Stuckey’s lot and the first thing Mom said was, “Clean this car right now, James! It smells like we’re riding in a toilet.”
“That’s Michael!” Elvis said from the back, causing Olivia to laugh. I let it slide.
“We can clean it after we eat, can’t we?” Dad said. “It doesn’t look that crowded inside and you know how it is: one second a place can be almost empty and the next it’s packed.” He just wanted to get in to buy stuff.
“Okay,” Mom said, “but everyone eat quick!” She shoved Lucky down her shirt and we went inside.
Dad fought the urge to head straight for all the souvenirs. A rude hostess seated us at a booth too small for us all. I was cramped and wanted some room; I was still reeling, wondering how Lucky had survived being eaten by a gator. I excused myself to the bathroom so I could mull things over a bit more in the privacy of a stall.
The bathroom was cleaner than most truckstop johns, but the scent of human waste was still beating the smell of cleaning supplies to the finish line. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom—I just needed some time to reflect on things, but got sidetracked with bathroom wall graffiti. On the condom machine, someone had written THIS IS THE WORST GUM I’VE EVER TASTED, and above one of the urinals, YOU’VE GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS. If the graffiti was that good in the open room, the stalls would surely contain a mix of wisdom and humor worthy of a Pulitzer Prize for Potty Prose.
I found the stall with the best balance of graffiti and cleanliness and sat down to read. There were all the old standbys, sayings like:
THEY PAINT THE STALLS TO COVER MY PEN, BUT THE SHITHOUSE POET STRIKES YET AGAIN!
IF YOU CAN PISS ABOVE THIS LINE, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT WANTS TO SEE YOU
And that timeless classic: HERE I SIT ALL BROKEN HEARTED…TRIED TO SHIT BUT I ONLY FARTED…LATER ON I TOOK A CHANCE…TRIED TO FART, BUT SHIT MY PANTS!
There were also some clever pieces of graffiti I had never seen before:
ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, MOST POEMS RHYME, BUT THIS ONE DOESN’T
STOP GRAFFITI!
PATRONS ARE REQUESTED TO REMAIN SEATED FOR ENTIRE PERFORMANCE
GOD IS LOVE…LOVE IS BLIND…RAY CHARLES IS BLIND…RAY CHARLES IS GOD!
URINE TROUBLE!
and IF YOU DON’T CARE WHERE YOU ARE, YOU’RE NEVER LOST
(I thought about how much Dad would have liked that one).
There were also gross ones:
EAT SHIT! 1.9 TRILLION FLIES CAN’T BE WRONG!
THE HANDS THAT CLEAN THIS TOILET ALSO PREPARE YOUR FOOD—SO KEEP IT CLEAN!
And the grossest one of them all: someone had smeared feces on the wall of the stall with their finger and written LAST NIGHT’S DINNER! beneath it.
I closed my eyes and just relaxed; I don’t know for how long. I thought about all the bad things that were happening and had a feeling things would have to get worse, before they got better. I wanted to know what would happen next, I wanted to know what I needed to do to stop the Inferno.
I opened my eyes and just before leaving the stall I noticed a piece of graffiti I had somehow overlooked. Right in front of me were the words: AND WAR BROKE OUT IN HEAVEN: MICHAEL AND HIS ANGELS FOUGHT WITH THE DRAGON; AND THE DRAGON AND HIS ANGELS FOUGHT. REV. 12:7.
When I returned to the table, Mom was trying to figure out if it was Elvis, or Olivia (or both), who put marshmallows in her Tab while she turned away. After eating, Dad could hardly hold himself back from cheap trinkets and pecan rolls. The waitress returned to our table and said, “Can I get y’all anything else?”
“No, just the check, please,” Dad said. He had his eye on a cheesy Indian headdress that read “Stuckey’s” in plastic beads.
Mom noticed and said, “You already have one of those stupid things, James.”
“Yeah,” Dad said, “but not that color!”
The waitress slid the check onto the table and told us to be safe.
“Ready?” Dad said, reaching for his wallet, but wasn’t there. Mom knew there was something wrong.
“What?”
“Did I hand you my wallet?” he said.
“No.”
“I must have left it in the car, then. I’ll be right back.” He left and returned a couple minutes later.
“You’re sure I didn’t hand you my wallet?” he said to Mom.
“I’m positive. Don’t tell me you lost it!”
“I’m sure I just misplaced it. Maybe it slid out of my back pocket, through the seat, and is on the floor.”
“Or maybe it fell out of your back pocket, was lying on the seat, and someone grabbed it through the busted window,” Mom said, probably right. “When was the last time you had it?”
“Earlier, at the alligator farm,” he said. “I bought a few things in the gift store.”
“Well maybe the car ate it, then,” Mom said sarcastically, but it set off alarm bells in my head—what she said reminded me how much I wanted to be as far away from the Inferno as possible.
“Do you have any money on you?” Dad said to Mom.
“All I have is a five.”
“That won’t cover it.” He turned to my aunt. “How ‘bout you, Margie?”
“I ain’t got nuthin’,” she said.
“Kids?” He was desperate. We all shook our heads “no.”
“What are we going to do?” Elvis and Olivia said. Dad handed Mom the keys.
“Why don’t you all go out to the car and wait for me. Leave the engine running.”
“What are you doing, James?” Mom said.
“Just follow my lead. Please, just this once—go along with me.”
We all headed toward the door and Dad said, “I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute. Gotta go to the bathroom and pay the bill!” He was talking loudly enough for the staff to hear, so they wouldn’t catch onto his plan.
In the Inferno, Olivia said, “Mommy, is Daddy going to do something bad?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Didn’t he want you to start the car?” I said. I was always looking out for my old man, even though his plans were often weak at best. Mom shook her head and turned the ignition. Nothing!
“Oh, what the Christ?!” She tried again, but had no luck.
“Here he comes!” the twins shouted. Dad was sneaking out the door, carrying a handful of paper placemats.
“Mom—“ I said.
“I’m trying, Michael!” she yelled. The car wasn’t turning over.
A busboy came rushing out from the restaurant, right behind Dad.
“Hey! Hey! Come back here!” Dad picked up the pace to a full-blown run for the car. I reached over his seat and opened the door for him.
As Dad slid into the front seat, Mom turned the ignition one last time and the Inferno roared to a start. Dad floored it, leaving the busboy reeling in the car’s stench!
Dad zipped onto the highway and drove like he was fleeing a bank robbery—we were in Oklahoma in no time. He kept looking in the rearview mirror. When the coast was finally clear, Mom said, “I can’t believe this crap! How could you lose your wallet?” She was trolling for a fight.
“I had it with me earlier,” Dad said.
“You’re always losing things. When are you going to stop losing things, James?”
Dad ignored her. We were now well down the highway from Stuckey’s and I’m sure he was thinking of all the jackalope postcards and fake Indian jewelry he could have scored, had he not lost his wallet. Mom wasn’t about to give up, though.
“You can be such a child, I swear.”
Dad wasn’t biting, but I could tell he was about to lose it. Something just felt wrong in the car. There was always stress when Mom and Dad got into it, but on that trip, it seemed amplified by the Inferno.
“James, I’m talking to you!” she said.
“I hear you!”
His reply even startled Mom. He began accelerating and sweating. Mom knew she was getting to him, though, and she lived for getting under people’s skin. She was like a bad tattoo.
“You need to slow it down, James,” she said. “And tell me, how could you lose your wallet?”
Dad lost it. “I don’t know! Maybe because—for once—you weren’t hen-pecking me and treating me like a child! Would you just let it rest, for once?! I’m sick of it!!!” he yelled.
We were all shocked. Sweat rolled from his brow and a slight odor of sulfur filled the car. Olivia began crying.
“Mommy and Daddy are going to get divorced!” she cried.
“We’re not getting divorced!” Dad shouted.
“Yes you are!” Olivia said. I told her to shut up.
“You shut up!” Elvis said. Mom spun around.
“Both of youse, shut up!”
Dad couldn’t take it anymore. “ALL OF YOU, SHUT THE HELL UP!!!”
The Inferno’s engine made a grinding, popping noise—steam shot from beneath its hood. Dad pulled over near a billboard, rested his head on the steering wheel. He began crying. His shirt was soaked in sweat, but it wasn’t that hot in the car.
“Damnit! Is it too much to ask for us to go on a trip and all get along?” he said. “Is it expecting too much from a brand new car not to keep breaking down all the time?” He punched the dashboard in frustration. “I’m sick of this crap. Just sick of it!”
I reached over his seat and slapped him in the face. If Dad’s outburst shocked everyone, me slapping Dad gave them all heart attacks.
“What the hell?!” Mom said.
“Yeah, what the hell?” Dad said.
The twins saw an opportunity for a dig. “You’re in trouble now, Michael!”
Dad ran his fingers over the part of his face I slapped. It was red and growing redder; my fingers throbbed in pain I hit him so hard.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
“Remember back at the rest stop when Lucky bit me? You said if you ever acted weird again to slap some sense into you. Well, I just did.”
I could tell, in a roundabout way, he was proud of me. He started laughing. “Yeah, I guess you did, Buddy.” He looked at us all and wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Look, I’m sorry, everyone. I just wanted this trip to go off without a hitch,” he said. “I shouldn’t have lost me temper like that.”
“Same here,” Mom said, looking ashamed. She was still a little stunned from Dad standing up to her. “Sorry.”
Steam from the engine rolled into the open windows; it seemed to make the outhouse stench even more vile.
We all got out of the car and stepped to the side of the highway as Dad looked under the hood. I made sure Mom and Aunt Margie’s cigarettes didn’t start another fire, while Elvis and Olivia finished off their last bag of marshmallows.
“What’s wrong?” Mom said.
“It’s just a hose,” Dad said. “If we had some money, I could get a new one and have us back on the road in no time. But we’re broke.”
Mom looked at the billboard, smiled, and said, “Not for long. I’ve got five dollars”
“Huh?” Dad said.
She pointed to the billboard: “CHOCTAW BINGO – NEXT EXIT! $5/CARD – $5000 JACKPOT, THREE TIMES A DAY!
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.