Tearing Down the Phone Lines
The day stretched its pastel clarityto the green horizon --
a post card from heaven to be inhaled.
To see a day like this is to see
a purpose to life and to know
that good things were to come
just as this day came along with
its bright sun and breezy humidity.
I drove the eighteen wheeler
in this postcard comfortably
on one of those dream rides
ahead of schedule
to the county road junction where
I would turn south to the delivery point.
The junction was clearly marked,
presenting itself as a gift for
how could I expect it to be
anything else upon this day.
The right turn was accomplished
as an elementary maneuver with
the eight trailer wheels clearing
the ditch as if they were a planet
back there sixty feet behind,
coming around in a perfect orbit.
Now I recalled the admonition
the customer had offered that
"things are a little scary here
but we do handle trucks."
Ok, I'm a truck.
The road narrowed running
through trees and the question
formed on my lips, "What type
of a truck was he referring to?"
I was getting that familiar feeling of
maneuvering the Queen Mary on
the Mahoning River.
Branches began caressing the trailer
with disturbing rubbing sounds,
moaning it seemed,
"Come to us, come to us, we want
you, we want all of you. Come to us."
A truck emerged around the bend
ahead of me from the opposite direction.
This was scary. We had to pass
each other and yet either one of us
barely fit on the road as it was.
We backed and maneuvered to the
extremities of the shoulders of the road,
and approached each other slowly until
our windows lined up. We talked.
"It's real tight back there," the driver said.
"Did you see anything that looked
like a factory?" I asked. "No,
I was lookin' for a school."
"Did you find it?" "No." We exchanged
a meaningful stare. There was a pregnant
pause. "Good luck," he said.
We slipped past each other gingerly
with a sliver of daylight separating our
trailers. Going over a hump I was
in the midst of hillbilly houses with
spooky kids emerging from yards
favoring me with blank stares.
"You know where Hawkins Wood Products is at?
The kid shook his head as if to say,
"Why should I know?"
I shook my head and crept
down the road where a big guy was waving
at me in front of a big spread.
I parked the 75 foot rig on a hillside
covered with weeds and we started
unloading 48 kitchen cabinets from
the city of boxes in the trailer.
"So, how's your day goin?" He asked.
"Well on days like this you take
what you get with a song in your heart."
But I was not humming.
The load came off and I noticed
the garden.
"You get more cucumbers
when they're climbing like that," I asked.
"They do good. Want one for the road?"
"Sure." He got me a cucumber
big enough for a dinner and
so appropriate for this perfect day.
Along the road, a cucumber cometh.
"Looks like your tomatoes just
stay green out here."
"No, we were gone for a few days
and somebody picked all the ripe ones."
"Stole 'em?"
"Yep."
"I wouldn't be
stealing any tomatoes around here."
"We shoot trespassers. I got an AR-15
that will put a lot of holes in somebody."
"Man, took some kinda gall to steal your
tomatoes."
I nodded. Just like in a story book,
I get a cucumber and
a conversation to boot.
"They were a slick bunch."
"Yeah, say, how do truck drivers
get out of here?"
"Well, if you go
straight up the hill, turn left at the top,
you'll get to the main road with no problem."
"Those were big trucks?
"Yeah, just like yours."
I met his flat eyes with mine.
There was a pregnant pause.
"None of 'em ever came back," he said
by way of clarifying matters.
"Mmm hmm." I looked at the road
that looked more like a driveway
than a road. Well, it wasn't
any smaller than the road I came in on.
"Okay." I said
and started creeping up the hill.
Going around curves it was a job
keeping the trailer on the road albeit
on the wrong side.
The cucumber loomed on the dashboard,
a perfect ending to a headache
when the end finally arrives.
"Very quaint. But why me?"
The words fell from my lips.
Branches caressed the trailer
wanting to swallow me.
I heard their moaning.
"Please don't leave us. Stay with us,
please stay, please."
I kept counting my blessings as that planet
back there came around on a precarious
orbit when at the summit my jaw dropped.
I saw what appeared to be my gallows.
Telephone poles on either side supported
a cable that drooped ominously
over the road as if to decapitate
tall people who walk while reading.
The cable seemed to be saying,
"Nah nah na na na, gotcha buddy."
I had to go forward. Backing
was not an option. Easing up on the clutch
I drifted forward under the cable and
stepped out on the catwalk
to check my clearance.
I had a few inches -- a tight squeeze but doable.
So I proceeded slowly and did not notice the
demonic cable hooking the edge of the trailer.
Everything sounded and looked normal.
Slowly, gently, innocently, I was pulling
a hundred feet of slack out
of the phone cable
until there was no slack left.
The air was pierced
with what sounded like pistol shots
cracking behind me and two telephone poles
snapped, dropping a load of cables on the truck.
A panicked horse ran wild in circles. I was
trapped by the cables as a bug in a spider web.
Then just as a bug I sought to shake myself
loose and get the hell out of there.
Desperately I grabbed a thick cable
hanging on my mirror not knowing if
it carried 10,000 volts trying to push if off
then hoping it would just electrocute me.
I wondered for a moment,
how thick a spider's web must seem to a bug.
As a bug after a futile struggle
I felt my life was over.
A bug must know a struggle is futile
but it struggles.
Shame swept over me as a tidal wave.
I contemplated the end of my professional life.
If one is not professional, what's left?
It was the end of everything as with the bug waiting
for the spider.
What were the damages here?
In the tens of thousands probably.
Soon a black sheriff's vehicle materialized
as a spider upon the scene.
My employer stupidly wanted to know
how many counties had lost phone service.
I imagined the tragedy of six counties in Ohio
not speaking by phone and let out a sigh,
saying, "Oh a half a dozen I suppose."
The state police measured the height
of my truck with a D.O.T.
precision measuring device then
said, "you're fine, no citation, you're good to go."
Well, good to go. Good to go is good to go.
Pride swelled within me as shame dissolved into
a puddle of thin milk. Another view
of the accident germinated in my mind.
Here was another view of this disaster.
The damn illegal phone lines
were in my way and I tore the sons of bitches
down. The result was no different
had I tore down the lines intentionally
or unintentionally. Let's make it intentionally!
I basked in pride that I tore down
the disgusting phone cable
on this beautiful day.
I contemplated the cucumber with
a fresh perspective.
Dinner! I grabbed it and took a mighty bite
of its corpulent freshness and then another
feral bite crunching the
crisp flesh with its seeds
without the benefit of salt.
Poetry by Peter J. Kautsky
Read 814 times
Written on 2012-01-14 at 18:09
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