This could just have been a free-flowing plea for another pair of free Nikes. And I have no recollection who Bill might be. – JDW
June 28-July 1, 1993
Dear Bill:
Greetings from BIG SKY. Montana, The Last Best Place. We are currently ensconced in a $187-a-day lakeside condo 7800 feet above sea level. WILD DOG is the guest of some adoring subscribers and old friends. Snow-capped peaks tower overhead.
Contrary to popular opinion among the ignorant, I am not necessarily “unemployed” by choice. I am a professional freelance writer and a prize-winning poet who applies for, let’s say, a half dozen “real” jobs monthly. And never manages so much as an interview.
Which is fine. I don’t interview well.
By the time somebody actually offers me a Monday-through-Friday eight-to-five-er with two weeks off annually, I hope to be a successful wordsmith, admired by his peers, emulated by youth, respected by the public, ignored by governmental authorities.
I operate best without someone second-guessing my every move, questioning my every choice, disparaging my every idea, diminishing my special qualities, imposing their will, you get the picture. No, thank you. I am quite capable of living my own life.
I’ll pull in for gas when I think the tank is low.
Hey, what I know about women would fill a book. What I don’t know would fill a library.
Don’t take everything you read literally, even if it is true.
WILD DOG interrupts your life to bring you this important message: “I think I am being stalked by Ann Rule,” Barker Ajax confided.
Scary, Huh?
Because I am The Man Who Knows The Man, not to mention A Friend Indeed When A Friend’s In Need.
Some women just don’t get it.
So, imagine Barker’s surprise when Hiawatha Moskowitz walks through the door with tears in her eyes and two pints of different Ben & Jerry ice creams.
New York Super Nut Fudge and Dove Bar, My Ass. My very most favorite flavors.
Two bottles of Damnhill County’s finest grape. Chateau Benoit.
Pacific Pearl brand whole fancy smoked oysters.
Organically grown black bean chili chips. Featuring “The Bold Taste Of Jalapeno.” Two bags, hot and hotter. I am doing a taste comparison as I type.
Carob-covered peanuts, like new age M&M’s. Ate them all already.
Chocolate chip cookies. More nuts.
For dinner, she cooked hot and spicy Thai chicken with eggplant Parmesan.
A Brownie surprise for desert. Ha!
For the first time in weeks, they made love. Like a muscular circus act in a peep show reel.
Basically, after years of Barker telling Hiawatha she was treating him badly and she should stop, Hiawatha announced her agreement. She apologized for busting Barker’s balls, like some distaff Bobby Bonds.
She promised to do better. She loved him and she didn’t want to lose him.
“I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you I’m leaving,” Barker responded.
To tell you the truth, his greatest fear was exactly this. She’d come to her senses, and leaving would become more difficult. Better she’d continue to treat him as badly as she had for the past couple of years.
Soon thereafter, Hiawatha said she was leaving.
Then she told him he was leaving. Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more. No more.
Needless to say, they are still together.
Nothing in Barker’s life ever seemed simple. It used to bother him, until he finally came to the realization no one’s existence is ever as simple as it seems.
Or who’ll be carrying it where.
I am willing to relocate for the right opportunity.
I will give the wrong opportunity serious consideration.
I just sent my resume into the local sewerage agency, as well as the Oregon Department Of Revenue. Both governments offer insulated bureaucratic jobs – complete with full medical and dental and retirement and credit unions – at a living wage for a man of my modest needs, and extravagant background as a publicist/writer.
Wouldn’t you just know it? The poop plant wants to give me a urinalysis, the ODR wants to audit my taxes.
Fat chance. Ha!
The top is a good place to start, it’s where you want to go anyway.
Might as well ask the pretty girl to dance.
“I am being stalked by Ann Rule,” Barker Ajax confided.
“Are you serious?,” I asked him.
Barker gave me that look. You know the one, the stare that tells you he’s crossed the line again, and you don’t know which way he’s headed.
“Listen, a woodpecker pounds his beak into a tree all day long, he don’t wonder why his head hurts.”
A man in my position, that is being Barker Ajax, city boy moves to country, likes to walk a lot, a dangerous man encountering dangerous situations, must be able to move fast over great distances of pavement and grass, comfortable with his foot on a gas pedal, doesn’t travel with a closet full of footwear, must look good at all times in all situations.
You can see proper shoe selection is essential to effective fiction.
Since coming off the road, living on a multi-dog farm through rain and snow and mud, I have been wearing Lava Domes. My last pair is, now, too unsightly for town. On dry days I wore Air Mowabs – not good in slush – which make me look like a cool guy in expensive tennies. A look I’ve always liked.
We did actually have one “edge of the world experience” in Montana, ‘The Last Best Place.’ As Merry Miler crested the Continental Divide (elevation 7393 feet above sea level), a huge grey wolf came bounding out of the woods. Hiawatha and I both got a good look at the wild dog. No doubt about it. Wow. Considering I have already seen a porpoise (Florida) and a bobcat (just down the road) this year, I’m counting serious coup in 1993.
In a gas station outside Bozeman, a young woman, not much more than a girl, was talking into a pay phone.
“I’ve had it with Montana. I’m sick of the people. Sick of their bullshit. I’m gone.”
She paused to listen to the other end of the line.
“Will you give me some warning before you let my husband out of jail?”
I took my twenty-inch lawn mower and I carved a four-tenths of a mile figure-eight loop through the fallow fields of our nine-point-three acres. The Barker Ajax Trail. Then, I started to jog six or seven loops a day when the mood struck me. I ran four days in a row, consecutively, then I missed five.
Then I ran a few more days. One day, not many days into this process, I thought, “I must remember to tell Coach Kevin Harper, I am running again. He will be so pleased.
AT THAT VERY MOMENT, I felt a painful tightening grab the bottom of my right calf. Barely able to put weight on the leg, 14:10 into my jog, I stopped running.
That was a week ago, I am still limping. Seems like a pulled muscle. Emotionally, I am willing to resume running as soon as I am able, but I can’t help noticing I NOW feel much less healthy (i.e., limping and slightly immobile) than I did before I laced up those Air Paeleosaurus. The good news is, for the first time in about four years my back has stopped hurting. Makes all the difference every day.
I needed to buy a car. Some wealthy friends suggested I get a Ford Explorer. In some cents, I heeded their advice, buying all the four by four I could afford.
I now have both a new vehicle as well as a new hobby. I call my ’69 Bronco pickup hardtop convertible, an early Explorer prototype. This is a fairly cherry truck; 88,000 original miles with the engine, drive-train, etc. rebuilt just ten thousand miles ago – easy, I’m sure – 302 V8, 4-barrel carb, headers. Get out of my way, you rice-burning tofu-eaters. Bronco still needs a nickname and a lot of work, hence the hobby. I don’t know auto mechanics from Shinola, but I’m about to learn.
Thinking of vanity plates: WILDOG.
I wasn’t even particularly looking for a Bronco, but anybody can drive a Jeep, and a Landcruiser is just another Japanese car. A Scout was built by tractor makers.
A cowboy rides a horse, of course.
He called the little red truck “Shane.”
Oh, don’t forget, Barker wears a size thirteen. Extra-wide.
And he likes bright, bright colors.
Bright.