lodging at the Shady Lane Motel, just off Main Street. (No shade, no lane. The professor in me shivers at such vacuity of language.) Enthroned in my room, I showered, rested, corrected papers, raged, wept, plotted, napped. Near dusk I returned to my car and executed a slow reconnaissance up Main Street. Why exactly was I here? In part, no doubt, out of desperation. And because the trail of human misery inevitably leads homeward. And, it goes without saying, for revenge: I yearned to cause hurt where the hurt would hurt most—at the roots.
And so I cruised—tooled, as my freshmen say—up and down Main Street. The town had changed little since my departure thirty-odd years earlier, still bleak, still threadbare. In modern dictionaries, under the word
boring
, you will find a small pen-and-ink illustration of Owago, Minnesota. Flat, bald, windy, isolated, desolate. (How impotent the adjective.) Proudly, a bit ridiculously, the town promoted itself as the Rock Cornish Hen Capital of the World, a grip on fame at once tenuous and pathetic. Firstly, the hen business had fallen on hard times; the graph spiraled downward. Secondly, it struck me as sad that a community’s grandest annual celebration boiled down to an event called Rock Cornish Hen Day. (In September of each year a banner is hoisted to the top of the water tower; ministers prepare sermons; housewives bake pies. At midday, a few hardy farmers truck their hens into town, dump them in front of the courthouse, then herd them up Main Street in a great cluckingparade. The citizens of Owago watch from sidewalks. Then they go home.)
Odd duck?
Me
?
With these and related memories, I drove past the Rock Cornish Café, Wilson’s Standard Oil station, the courthouse, the First National Bank, the Ben Franklin store. Day had passed into dark by the time I parked in front of the tiny stucco house of my youth. There were no signs of animation from within. No lights, no sounds. The place seemed impossibly small, as if shrunken by the tumble of time, and for a moment I considered pointing the car back toward Minneapolis.
Instead, impulsively, I locked my vehicle and strode into the backyard. The birdbath was still there, and my mother’s rhododendrons, yet again I felt a curious compressive force at work. My whole life suddenly seemed puny and pitiful. My dreams had shriveled. My spirit too. (I had wanted to be a cowboy, for God’s sake, but here I was, a peddler of the English language.) I was struck, also, by the thought that Lorna Sue had represented my one true chance at happiness—my life raft, my lovely bobbing buoy—and now even that gallant vessel had gone to the bottom under the winds of marital treachery.
It made me want to cry.
And I did.
I lay beside the birdbath and made fists and blubbered at the moon.
Imagine my embarrassment, therefore, when only minutes later I was interrupted by a shrill, off-key, distinctly displeased female voice. I blinked away my grief. Above me, haloed by moonlight, loomed a tall, very shapely member of the wholly opposite sex. Stunning specimen, I thought, although at the moment she held a garden spade to my head.
“Trespasser!” she cried. “Don’t budge. Not one muscle.”
My position, of course, was awkward. (Supine. Teary face. Spade at my skull.) To my advantage, thank goodness, I was dressed in respectable garb, a blue wool suit and a silk tie, and with this modest consolation I sat up and introduced myself.
“Thomas H. Chippering,” I said merrily. “Professor of linguistics.”
My captor was not enthused. “Professor?” she muttered. “In somebody’s backyard? On private property? Bawling like a three-year-old?” She poked at me with the spade. “What
is
this anyway?”
“Apologies,” I said.
“Sick man.”
“Of spirit,” I admitted. “May I stand?”
“Not yet.”
The woman appraised me with a blend of fear and curiosity, perhaps slightly shaded toward the latter, and I therefore seized the
And so I cruised—tooled, as my freshmen say—up and down Main Street. The town had changed little since my departure thirty-odd years earlier, still bleak, still threadbare. In modern dictionaries, under the word
boring
, you will find a small pen-and-ink illustration of Owago, Minnesota. Flat, bald, windy, isolated, desolate. (How impotent the adjective.) Proudly, a bit ridiculously, the town promoted itself as the Rock Cornish Hen Capital of the World, a grip on fame at once tenuous and pathetic. Firstly, the hen business had fallen on hard times; the graph spiraled downward. Secondly, it struck me as sad that a community’s grandest annual celebration boiled down to an event called Rock Cornish Hen Day. (In September of each year a banner is hoisted to the top of the water tower; ministers prepare sermons; housewives bake pies. At midday, a few hardy farmers truck their hens into town, dump them in front of the courthouse, then herd them up Main Street in a great cluckingparade. The citizens of Owago watch from sidewalks. Then they go home.)
Odd duck?
Me
?
With these and related memories, I drove past the Rock Cornish Café, Wilson’s Standard Oil station, the courthouse, the First National Bank, the Ben Franklin store. Day had passed into dark by the time I parked in front of the tiny stucco house of my youth. There were no signs of animation from within. No lights, no sounds. The place seemed impossibly small, as if shrunken by the tumble of time, and for a moment I considered pointing the car back toward Minneapolis.
Instead, impulsively, I locked my vehicle and strode into the backyard. The birdbath was still there, and my mother’s rhododendrons, yet again I felt a curious compressive force at work. My whole life suddenly seemed puny and pitiful. My dreams had shriveled. My spirit too. (I had wanted to be a cowboy, for God’s sake, but here I was, a peddler of the English language.) I was struck, also, by the thought that Lorna Sue had represented my one true chance at happiness—my life raft, my lovely bobbing buoy—and now even that gallant vessel had gone to the bottom under the winds of marital treachery.
It made me want to cry.
And I did.
I lay beside the birdbath and made fists and blubbered at the moon.
Imagine my embarrassment, therefore, when only minutes later I was interrupted by a shrill, off-key, distinctly displeased female voice. I blinked away my grief. Above me, haloed by moonlight, loomed a tall, very shapely member of the wholly opposite sex. Stunning specimen, I thought, although at the moment she held a garden spade to my head.
“Trespasser!” she cried. “Don’t budge. Not one muscle.”
My position, of course, was awkward. (Supine. Teary face. Spade at my skull.) To my advantage, thank goodness, I was dressed in respectable garb, a blue wool suit and a silk tie, and with this modest consolation I sat up and introduced myself.
“Thomas H. Chippering,” I said merrily. “Professor of linguistics.”
My captor was not enthused. “Professor?” she muttered. “In somebody’s backyard? On private property? Bawling like a three-year-old?” She poked at me with the spade. “What
is
this anyway?”
“Apologies,” I said.
“Sick man.”
“Of spirit,” I admitted. “May I stand?”
“Not yet.”
The woman appraised me with a blend of fear and curiosity, perhaps slightly shaded toward the latter, and I therefore seized the
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