A Chance Meeting, With Bubbles

 

           A soap bubble floated silently among the trees of the Baker National Forest one day, from stage right all the way to stage left.

            But Ralph paid no attention to it. His brain didn’t even register the sight. Fatherhood was weighing on him a little bit this morning. He was in his office, well, seated on his big log where he does his thinking. Twigg was growing up some. There were rumors of another offshoot, and he felt like maybe it was time to be teaching Twigg something about being a Forest Keeper. He was pondering which skills he should invest the boy with, starting with the most important ones obviously.
            He thought over his own skills, putting them in order of importance.
            Vanishing
            Reappearing
            “Singing”, really a type of magic, to all appearances. (Covers a lot of ground.)
            Dispensing Wisdom
            Nest Building, which can occur in caves, etc.
            Forest Security Issues
            Doctoring Wounded Animals and Others
            Practical Jokes
 
            He smiled happily because he had settled his mind on the matter of the first, the most important thing he must teach Twigg. Vanishing! “There ya go, Ralph, old fellow,” he thought to himself.
            A flurry of bubbles flew by, propelled by the breeze. He saw these but wasn’t concerned. Things happen in the forest. There was also the sound of some very faint distant music.
            He stood and stretched, spreading his hands about 9 feet apart. Then he set off to find Twigg. He figured the boy would be hanging around the cave chattering at his mother. He was right. Twigg was practicing a kind of stealth walk behind Ramona as she moved around.  She was pretending not to notice him.
            “Twigg!,” Ralph said when he got near the cave. “I have decided to teach you how to disappear and then re-appear! It’s our first and best defense, and really essential for practical joking. What good is a joke if you’re visible?”
            Twigg thought anything his dad came up with was cool, so he was totally game.  He stopped pacing Ramona and said, “I want to be ‘visible!”
            “Well, you are remarkably visible right now, as it happens, Twigg,” said Ralph, confusing his son a bit. “Let’s you and me head out to my log and work on this!”
            It was a heartbreakingly beautiful day in the forest. Beams of sunlight slanted down through the tree tops. In the yellow light a few harmless insects dove and fluttered. A fine scent of the earth rose up and filled the nostrils with a resinous funk. Once again, there was music, far off stage. A flock of tiny gray Bush Tits flew like a wave on the sea, up and down and around the tree trunks, making their tiny cries.
            Hundreds and hundreds of shiny bubbles about the size of baseballs clamored by. It was like being kissed by fairies over and over, leaving little soapy smooch marks.
            Finally, Ralph noticed. There were bubbles popping all over his and Twigg’s fur, and more just kept coming toward them.
            “Where the everloving skunk are these bubbles coming from?” muttered Ralph, “and who is making that racket? It reminds me of something, ah never mind, Twigg.”
            Ralph sat his son down on the big log and stood right in front of him, looking pretty serious.    “Okay, this is how it goes.  The first time you vanish you must be holding my hand.  After that you can do it on your own. Hang on now!
            “What you do is whisper onetwothree and then hold your breath for a few seconds! You will fade!  Try it! I’ll do it at the same time.  Ready?”
            Just as Ralph and Twigg vanished from view, a lady came striding onto the stage near Ralph’s log. She carried a battery powered bubble machine, a backpack full of bubble supplies and had a small speaker stuffed in her shirt pocket. She was six feet tall and wore a black beanie.  She was very fond of the 80s sound, Men Without Hats, et al! She had a rather fluffy domestic tabby tom cat on a leash. So, her hands were pretty full.
            Seeing the handy log, she set her bubble machine up there and turned it on! The air swarmed with bubbles! She hopped up on the log and pulled out a smoke and lit up.
            Minutes went by. Ralph got tired of being invisible.
            “Boo!” said Ralph. She didn’t look impressed.
            He said “threetwoone” on a big intake of air and popped into view.  All eight hairy feet of himself.  The tabby cat was impressed but being on leash didn’t have much scope to express his surprise.
            She looked at him through the bubbles, took another puff and said, “hey.”
            Ralph was expecting more of a reaction, but he said “hey," too.
            “Now what?” said the lady.
            “Well, I was showing my son here how to vanish and reappear, and you wandered right into the middle of it,” said Ralph. “Making bubbles,” said Ralph.
            “Tell ya what handsome, me and my cat will show ya how it’s done,” said the lady hopping down off of the log. Scooping up her bubble machine and her cat she strode off into the dim forest. Soon it was as if she had never been there at all.
            Ralph kind of rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t sure if any of that was real, really.
            “Hey Twigg, grab my hand and we’ll bring you back.” Together they did that thing where they say, "threetwoone," on the instake of breath, and Twigg popped back into a visible wavelength.
            So, the little guy learned how to vanish and reappear in spite of bubbles.
            Ralph thought that was probably enough teaching for one day and he was getting hungry anyhow. So, in visible, ahem, form Ralph and Twigg padded silently back to the fire circle to see what Ramona had been cooking all morning.
            It was big pan of red Pontiac potatoes roasted over the fire in rather a lot of butter, with salt, pepper flakes, garlic, and rosemary. 
            What an interesting morning it had been, Ralph thought, while delicately ingesting a yeoman's serving of roasted spuds! You just never know who you might meet out here in the Baker National Forest.

A Painting and Open Thread

 

Girl with a hay rake. Winslow Homer 1878

Long Branch, New Jersey. Winslow Homer 1869

Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is regarded by many as the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century.

A concise history of the painter's life and work, if you are interested.

Boys in a dory.  Winslow Homer 1873

Until I decided to look into his works a little deeper, I had thought of him as primarily a painter of marine scenes. Not so!  A nice surprise are all the beautiful watercolors of figures, giving a real sense of the years in America after the Civil War.

Thanks Dad, I Don't Know How You Did It All

.    You know, it's a funny thing.  I just looked through pages and pages of photos. And I find very few of the man himself. He must have been behind the camera. I must have been behind the camera for this shot.  I barely remember that day. Those are my sibs and my father.

    And yet, like some domestic hero, he was always there. He was like landscape. A sort of human absolute. And then one day, he wasn't there and it was as if a mountain range had unaccountably vanished.

    You know me, I'm always about cases. So that is my case. The man who provided everything, he also taught me just about all a person would need to know to live. He was my first moral teacher, he is the one who told me of the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

    I think the most essential thing I can say about him is that he prevailed. 

    I want to acknowledge all of our fathers, and all of you who are fathers. And good men in general. Where would we be without you?

    What a fine tribe of excellent characters! Thank God for their and your faithfulness and strength. 

🤍Happy Father's Day Youse Guys!🤍

Final Chapter, Nowheresville

 

          When I pulled up to 324 Alder Lane again I spoke to Taylor. “Wake up sweetie. You’re home. Let’s put your shoes on and go see Mommy.” She sat up, I undid her seat belt. She yawned and smiled up at me. I got her into her shoes and we both scooted out of my side. I took her hand, and we walked the short distance to the porch and up the two steps.

          “Let’s knock,” I said and knocked on the door for the second time that day. It was early evening now. Everything looked different. The sun was going down over the bay. A soft wind was moving the tree tops just a little. I was both full of joy and terrified at the same time. Change was on the agenda.

          Lloyd opened the door. His questioning expression changed when he saw Taylor with me. “Thank God, Dan. Thank God,” he said. “What the hell happened? Where was she?”

          He called into the interior before even moving to let us in. “Judy! Dan brought Taylor back!” Then he opened the door wide and stepped out of our way. Judy, who had been lying on the sofa, jumped up and ran to her daughter. She picked her up and ran with her back to the sofa and sat down. She buried her face in Taylor’s whole little body and didn’t even speak at first. She just sat there silently holding her child. Then she looked at me. Her eyes flashed.

          “Where was she Dan?  Where did you find her?”

          The moment was here, and I was going to have to speak. How could I explain in such a way that her mother and her grandfather could hear it and accept it? I could hardly accept what I knew to be true.  How would they receive it?

          “Judy, Lloyd, the legends, those stories we grew up with and forgot are all true. I know this now,” I began.

          “What do you mean,” said Judy.

          “I found Taylor up Bear Creek Road. That’s a plain fact. How she came to be there is going to be hard for you to understand. It’s hard to explain,” I told her. “This morning before school, while she was waiting for her bus to stop for her, a creature from the forest found her. You know what our grandmas called them. I know how that sounds, but that’s what happened. What you feared came to be.”

          “Oh, Dan,” she moaned. “Please, how can this be true?”

          “It is. This creature carried her to the cemetery. I don’t know why,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure that anything these things do makes a lot of sense. So, then, they were met there by someone else. I know we don’t believe in Sasquatch or Dzoonokwa anymore, but that doesn’t matter. He was there. He met them there because he has ways of knowing.”

          Judy, holding Taylor on her lap, and Lloyd just looked at me. Dark eyes neutral and waiting.

          “The forest man fought the evil one for Taylor’s life Judy. They messed up my grandmother’s grave in the battle. He picked up her stone and threw it on the thing. I don’t understand if these things even have a physical body, because there was no body there when I got there.

          “Before I knew that, I was led on a journey into a much older version of the forest. It was a hard path. At the end of this journey at the end of the road, in many ways the end of a road, I found Taylor asleep and safe. The forest man had brought her there. When I asked him why not bring her home, he had something to say to me. He said that I needed to walk that path, for her sake, Judy.”

          I took a few moments to let them think about that.

          “Why Dan? Why did you need to walk that hard path Dan?” Judy said softly, looking over our daughter’s head. Lloyd looked from Judy to me and back to Judy like he was thinking some hard thoughts.

          I began, “because I have been a coward. I have failed as a man.” Breathing was hard, but I continued. “I let you shield me from my responsibility because you were strong and good, and I was weak. I allowed you to do what I should have been doing all these six years.”

          I turned to Lloyd. “Lloyd, Taylor is my daughter.” I could see his dismay.

          “Judy, I don’t know if it would ever be possible for you to forgive me, but I would like to begin to do what is right for Taylor.”

          She didn’t answer right away. I could see that she was thinking. Her black hair shielded her face as she looked down.

          “Alright, Dan,” she said, looking up. “I think the best way to do this is to go really slow. Let’s just start gradually changing things. Okay? It’s true that Taylor and I have had a hard time living on state money. It’s not much. But, I need to know that you aren’t going to say something different tomorrow or next week. So, as a practicality, what do you want to do for Taylor?”

          “First,” I said, “I want to formally acknowledge her in some quiet way. I don’t want to do anything embarrassing to you. So, you decide. I’d like to help you with money, if you will allow me to. And may I get you a little car, so she doesn’t need to ride the bus?” I was still standing in exactly the same spot as when I had first walked in the door.

          “Sit down Dan,” Judy said. “This is all so sudden!” she was laughing. “No need to be so stiff and sad!”

          I sat on a hard chair by the table. That laugh reminded me of why I had liked her before. I sneaked a look at Lloyd. He still hadn’t said anything, and he wasn’t laughing at all.

          “I’ll tell you what Dan. I really like your hero’s journey. I thank you for finding our girl. I am entirely in your debt for that. The score is even. I will accept your offers gratefully. I thank God for the forest man too.

          “Let’s do this tonight.  I will make dinner. Taylor will take a bath and get into her jammies. We will have a decent dinner because this is a good night. Then you will drive my grandfather home and try to make peace with him. I hope it goes well.”

          She was laughing again. Lloyd looked to be thawing just a little too. I thought that maybe we would still be friends, in a day or so.

Link to the whole story.

Early The Next Morning

 

 
          He didn’t sleep much, but finally dropped off toward morning. At about 5:00AM he rolled out of bed and got into his work clothes. Milly was asleep. He didn’t even stop in the kitchen.  He just went out the back door, down the steps and stood there looking around. He thought how funny it was that everything could change but still look the same. Sky lightening. Grass. Birds waking up. Equipment parked neatly.                  “So, this is a morning that I will remember as long as I live,” thought Luther. That was a rather prophetic observation, though he didn’t realize it yet. 

          Now, it happened that one of Luther’s three vehicles was a 70s vintage Chevy pickup truck. From where he was standing he could see its rear, with the tailgate flapped open.  He hadn’t left it like that. Then he noticed that it was sitting way down like it had a heavy load on board. It created questions in his mind. Luther strolled over to take a closer look. It looked okay, just loaded.

          ‘You have questions,’ he thought he heard outside his own thoughts.
          “You could say that,” returned Luther. “Why not,” he thought, sort of out loud.
          ‘I noticed that you were awake,’ it came again. This time for sure.
          “Who are you,” said Luther getting right down to cases. “Yeah, I’m awake. Too awake to think I’m dreaming.”
          ‘Why don’t you call me Morgan? The name my mother gave me would be hard for you to say,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m here because you have become aware of a problem, and you are a man with initiative.  We can work with a man with initiative.’
          “Okay, back up,” said Luther. “Who are you means more than your nickname. Also, I’m not used to speaking to invisible entities.”
‘I can fix that,’ said Morgan, ‘but you need to prepare yourself.  This might be more than you bargained for.’
          Slowly, a large figure appeared to solidify, sitting casually at the rear of the bed of the pickup. He was roughly human, but hairier and unclothed. He looked like about 500lbs and maybe 8ft tall. A rather amused looking large face with a broad flattish nose regarded Luther, waiting to see his reaction to the revelation. Luther took it pretty well. He kept breathing.
          ‘We call ourselves something that translates roughly to dwellers. We’re here, there and everywhere, but we don’t let on much. We’ve always lived right beside you materialists. Most of you couldn’t see us if we did show ourselves.  Your species is blinkered like nobody’s business. I think a bucket on the head would be less opaque.
          We are one species, for lack of a better word, who are agents of the Maker here on this planet. Actually, our Maker, yours and ours, has heard your prayers and so, here I am.  You have a big problem, and I have an answer, if you will it.’
          “Alright, okay, I’m listening, weird as that is,” said Luther. “Tell me what my problem is then. If you know how to fix it, you must be able to tell me what it is.”
          ‘I see that you are no fool Luther,’ said Morgan. ‘To put it briefly, your species is infected. But you are not infected by a natural parasite or bacterium. Your problem is that this infection is manmade. It was made to destroy by the hands of your fellow men. Some of you have been able to stave off the effects of it, but not to remove it entirely. It is a wickedness unique in all the ages of man.
          The changes in character in your children and your friends is a symptom of this wicked thing. The faint glow on your wife’s face and pillow show that she is infected and contagious.  As a matter of fact, Luther, so are you,’ said Morgan.
          Luther was looking at his own hands and wrists for any sign when Morgan stopped speaking.
          “You seem to know your stuff,” said Luther to Morgan. “I have to assume you mean God when you say Maker. So, how can you, as an agent of God, help us? I’m serious. I don’t see a lot of hope, in the natural course of events.”
          ‘Here’s the plan Luther!  We’re going into business!  You and me!’
          “You're going to have to explain that slowly,” said our simple farmer.
          ‘Listen Luther! I have a recipe. This recipe is for a bottled hot sauce that people will cry for it.  They will buy any of it they can get.  The really nifty thing about this sauce is that it has a secret ingredient, which when combined with normal hot sauce ingredients will utterly destroy the manmade horrors growing in the blood of whoever will use the sauce. You’re going to end up a very rich farmer Luther, and you will save your people. Those who will use the sauce, that is.’
          “Listen, I’m not sure I can do this Morgan. I’m not a business man.  I want to help the people, but maybe you picked the wrong farmer,” said Luther.’
          ‘Listen. Try it. I’ll give you the recipe.  You make some and use it, get your wife to use it. See if it works. Pass some out in regular jam jars to those girls up at the potato shed in Burlington! Send some to your kids! What can it hurt? See if they improve! Hey, I’ll be around if you need backup. Luther!  You’re the man, believe me!’
          “Maybe, maybe. I’d like to believe. But, hey, what is this secret ingredient? Is it hard to source?”
          ‘Here sit down Luther and I’ll tell you,’ said Morgan, patting the bed of the pickup.
          ‘The secret ingredient is one reason why you are the man. It is a ferment of red Pontiac potatoes. That’s it. The secret is potatoes.  But it has to be this variety and you are the only farmer in the Skagit Valley, or most of the world, who grows this old variety and is aware enough to see me and hear me and take my help to heart.  That’s it Luther.  Are you in? Do you want to save your foolish, relatively hairless people one red potato at a time?’ Morgan put his big hand on Luther’s shoulder as they sat there, and he waited.
          “Alright. I’m crazy. But yeah, I’m in. Sounds like I have some preserves to make, er sauce. But tell me this.  How do you do that invisible bit?”
          ‘It’s not very complicated. Some of the colors that we are, are invisible to you. I can kind of turn on the colors your eyes and brain can read, and then you can see me. Well, some of you can see me.  Some of you won’t, no matter what I do. I could throw rocks and trees at them, and they still wouldn’t see me.’
          “Yeah, sure, but how do you do that,” said Luther.
          ‘I hold my breath and count to three. I can’t figure any other way to explain it Luther. To disappear I do the same on an inbreath. It sounds awful to you guys! Now you see me.  Now you don’t! It’s just like breathing to me!’

        "You're a weird dude, Morgan," said Luther.

        'It's a weird world, Luther, weird and in many ways unbelievable to us too,' agreed Morgan. 'But we have to do what we can to make sense of it and make it work somehow.'

        They sat in companionable silence for a while in the bed of the pickup before getting to work on some potatoes and chilis and such.

Link to the whole story.

June 13, 2024- Never Give A Day Away

🌺🤍🌺

        This is one of those old open threads, which of course they all are anyhow.

        Anybody who has ever shopped for fabric and has been a sewer knows that the stores sell off small leftover pieces as remnants.

        It looks like we have the potential to be  remnants of our world and way of life also.  The pieces which remain, or survive. Well, how about that?

        What is important now? In the greater sense , the same things that have always been important. Isn't that so?

        We're to live gently and constructively in our mostly pleasant but flawed world. We're to love one another. We're to realize ourselves as spiritual beings. We must try to see as the Almighty Lord of Creation does.

        I also think it's important to live each day fully. There are no extras to waste. The angels always say "fear not."  I think that's very sound advice.

        I would hazard a guess that there will be more silly stories soon. Like tomorrow. I can't help myself!

What We Didn't Know Then

 

But we sure know now.

          There were agents on the earth. Sometimes people called them cryptids. Other people swore they were alien life forms from some other place. Their nature was hard to nail down at first, and they were just plain hard to see.

          People began to notice changes in their friends, their co-workers, and even their most loved family members. The changes were subtle. It presented as a kind of coarsening of memory for one thing. Dear old family stories and jokes were received with blank stares. That gentle nimbus of understanding that people had with lovers and friends thinned out and became almost commercial. That wouldn’t make sense unless you had experienced it. It was like some alternate message was being broadcast inside people.
          Those who noticed the change had a hard time describing it, and God help them if they tried to describe it to one of the changed. The initial reaction was usually a cold estrangement, turning quickly into blistering rage if the innocent persisted.
          There were visible signs.  But at first no one knew what they meant.  It got to be a public joke.  You could see them in the dark. Glowies. If one sat on a bench they left a shiny little legacy behind when they left the bench. Homeless tent cities glowed at night with a sulfurous miasma. It was one of those jokes that aren’t really understood as funny.  It scared people.  Nobody wanted to glow like that. It was also contagious.
          What we didn’t know was that we all carried it to greater or lesser degrees depending on strength of one’s immune system, exposure to others, and something else that was intangible.
          Our protagonist was a farmer. He wasn’t around other people very much. He had a wife. His children were grown and had left home. There were three of them. He and his wife kept in close touch with their children. The farmer and his wife were Luther and Milly Hancock. They were in their late 60s. They lived in an agricultural area fifty miles north of Seattle generally referred to as the Skagit Valley. He raised red potatoes on a ten acre section, and a smaller amount of cruciferous green vegetables on five acres near the road.
          Sometimes even a solitary type like a farmer needs to go into town. If he and Milly were doing some serious shopping Milly rode along into Mount Vernon. In the fall he drove loads of potatoes to N&N’s Potato Shed in Burlington. It was a pleasant drive along highway 11 into the small but busy city of Burlington. The ladies at N&N’s knew Luther well. They always had a nice chat when he came in and his spuds were being unloaded. The one he knew best was a farmer’s wife working at the shed, named Susan Tork. A kind friendly lady who didn’t really need the job.  She just liked to get out of the house in the fall when the potato harvest was on.

          So, in late September of 2025, as was his custom, Luther drove some of his potatoes into Burlington, heading to N&N’s. It was a mild day in early fall. Children were back in school. Leaves were turning. The sky was blue with some perfect clouds up there for effect. A bit of wood smoke was in the air.  It was a little cool in the mornings now and people were lighting their woodstoves to take the chill off. The drive was so plain and normal that he relaxed into a dreamy state, smiling a bit at dairy cows, other farms, whatever. He liked it all.
          At the shed he got his reds weighed as usual and walked upstairs to the desk to get his check. Susan was there.
          She wrote out his check without looking at him and thrust it at him, waiting impatiently for him to take it. “Hey, Susan,” Luther said, “how’s it going?” She looked at him as if she had never seen him before and didn’t smile.
          The light kind of went out of the day for Luther.  He didn’t understand Susan at all. That was strange incident number one for Luther. When he told Milly about it she seemed unconcerned.
          Their days continued normally. Thanksgiving week came. Milly invited their children to dinner, naturally. There were no grandchildren. Their kids were all married professionals. The two sons didn’t pick up their phones, nor did they respond in any other way.  Their daughter, Terri, answered but was noncommittal about Thanksgiving dinner. She said she would talk to her husband, but never called back. Luther and Milly were mystified and greatly hurt. This second incident seemed like the beginning of something terrible to them.
          One night, when Luther was having trouble sleeping, he happened to look over at Milly who was solidly asleep. On her face and in her hair he could see a slight orange glow. Her pillow was glowing a little bit too, where her head had lain. This was number three for Luther.
          Now, Luther wasn’t one to just accept this. He lay thinking, and praying, long into the night.