Vienna Sausages

Vienna Sausages



I looked upward through the defrost capable glass of the Lima bean to the back heads of Lila and Tommy, the transistor cigarette lighter tv between them. I wished the puff of cloud would stay there forever because I knew then like I knew when I sang at the back porch that you should not worry about things and I never thought that one day I might wonder if I knew what to do.
We were going, that day, between the fur trader hills and alongside the chapel window rivers of Montana. I hadn't seen a Motel 6 since Dispute, Idaho. Telephone poles staked like fire lookouts on the horizon. I lay as quietly as candy in a special occasion box on the side of the road in the backseat surrounded by my friends. The inside of the car was like the inside of a submarine, every one to his position. Sometimes Tommy and I would play hangman, but mostly it was me and the moving view. I liked that we were finally moving together. My mother looked out the window too, because early afternoons when we first checked out of the Motel 6 usually, the jokes were over. I liked to watch for the Motel 6s and Super 8s; they looked like space stations, lit up, waiting for us to pull up and attach for refueling; and they were 6 and 8 dollars for real. The beds had appendages like pinball machines, so before I got under the plant bed of rayon and polyester I popped a quarter in and thought, as I was jarred around like a bean sorter, how could this ever coax anybody into relaxing, let alone sleeping. In the morning the housekeepers would kindly smile as they invaded our cozy burrow, with the rotary phone and its recess bell ring, it was the front desk calling, egging us on our way, making everyone clamor in a group effort to send us back out into the world of pavement and dust. It was warm and Lila had the window rolled down about the size of a baby's arm. She was done, but she left it open and her hair blew around in a swarm cloud of crows, as at dusk. I could tell from the tired way Lila sped off into the distance in her mind that we would make a rest stop soon.
Soldiering on I lay in back, content with routine, never arriving, my introverted exhibitionist life beginning then and there. All I'd ever had was school to temper my wild west mind. The precepts and boxes were done, out the window, for what would have been third grade. I remember the only time I ever remember Lila going there with me, she seemed so tall, so comprehensible. The teacher said, really nonchalantly, actually shockingly so, that, yeah, they'd be doing some things, some exercises, problems, but nothing I hadn't shown I could do, over the top, with vigor and enthusiasm and speed and nothing was said about perfection, but as I had been called Brainiac by the other kids, and took unbelievable sportsman's enthusiasm at find the book in the stacks at the school library and even hung out there during lunch, made it our clubhouse, other nonbookenthusiast kids harassing us obscenely, accusing me of saying something derogatory about one of their mamas, sure, she thought it would be okay for me to go to a tropical island for the next year. You gotta hand it to the 70s, especially a 70s school with a gifted program. Sure, we think it's beneficial to send your child to Antarctica to run the weather station half the year, then to be a fire lookout in the wilderness near Whitefish the other half; that ought to about parallel our predicted curriculum.
The director had ordered silence! in the front and in my non-despair I watched the poles flick by like matchsticks through the too steeply slanted back window of the hatchback, filled past safety's brim with books and t-shirts and fishing poles and things I knew not of because I didn't know what they kept in their drawers and closets, or even how often they brushed their teeth. It didn't seem like they ever did that. I had myself ladled into the seat mold created by the pin cushion comforter pillows and my brightly colored cohorts, the only ones who got it and me in that car or anywhere I would come to find out for sure eventually.
“Honey, we'll be stopping in a minute. Think about what snacks you want to tide you over until dinner. They might have Vienna Sausages here. You had them when you were really little, when we went with your dad fishing at the Kettle River, do you remember that?”
“Was it just me, you and dad?” I remembered camping, dad filled with rustic, comfortable outdoor quality, fresh air and mountain vigor. I was always impressed with mom's ability to tell stories involving Ed in front of Tommy without any hint of self-consciousness.
The light changed when we pulled into a service station. Union 76; how patriotic. It was instantly cooler in the shade of the convenience mud hut. The attendants milled around like pill bugs between the Fred Flintstone house and the cars docked at the filling stations. He was the first out, duty bound manhood calling. She had to let me out, there were no back doors. Many bathrooms were outhouses then, a side shack overrun with on the road laziness and toilet paper wad rebellion. The ramshackle head had all manner of scum on the walls, a cheap linoleum floor that was being sequestered back by the earth. The garbage and its parameters were interpreted loosely. I had gone into this hole alone, which was unusual, Lila was almost always there, and when I came out I didn't see she or Tommy. I walked along the cement fringe boardwalk of the convenience store, scanning for my mom and her man, and finally caught sight of them off to the side of the parking lot talking by the car. Lila wasn't really talking, more like refereeing Tommy with himself, her stance cool and easygoing, his like the true and loyal right hand of a king, having to call upon intuition ceaselessly, trying to help and thereby touch the untouchable. I was very interested in the dense salty goodness of the brine-candied sausages, and anything Lila was genuinely excited about, so I left them to their mysterious sideshow and went inside the convenience store.
Lila and I had a pact. It was unspoken but certain. Small as I was, I knew I was her favorite person in the world. Senseless as it was, I was the only person she would have been able to talk to had she become unable to speak, had she gone crazy, had her language, her mind left her. She was often specific. She liked to refer to things like Calumet Baking Powder, ask you to hand her that masking tape with “I love you, Mom” written in pencil on it, the blue bowl that looked like it had beaded jewels on the rim, the dish towel Mary had given her eight Christmases ago; the coat Edward hadn't let her buy. This specificity made her genuine, even when you didn't think she was.
Tommy was a garter snake or something as innocuous. I knew he was harmless, but I didn't understand him. He could be fun, silly fun, historical knowledge fun, and you had to respect him for his ability to adapt, to wind his way through the tall grass, but there was nothing obviously useful about him for his sake, maybe he ate bugs, he had to serve some function in the ecosystem, but he was not built for the tasks he was given in his daily life, and you had to wonder what magic he could have created if he'd been allowed to run free, before he was caught by a badger.
I knew they had met at the university, where Lila had returned after Edward left. I'd stood at the big picture window that was strangely opulent in our little brown house and watched her kick the tires on the blue Volkswagen bug as Edward, my dad, drove away from the square of cement that said “Edward loves Lila,” with my name underneath, all of us inside a big star, as though we were stranded in a supernova together, our names carved in for eternity with a large stick, that moment of acknowledged love in 1976 undeniable, the beauty of their characters etched there like leadless pencil tracings. It was all clear and permanent there in the street.
The extreme air conditioning surprised me and made me feel brave and far from home. I walked over to the cooler with all its maddening array of colors and packaging, and picked out an orange juice, in a box, like milk. I started down one aisle, eying Nutter Butters, thinking it was strange how they sounded good but were not something I had ever sought out, only had at a friend's birthday or house or something, noting that this was the aisle with cookies, I loved cookies and crackers, and knew I must be nearing the Hostess stand, Ding Dongs, Suzy Qs and Donettes, and I thought of the candy I got depending on my mood, depending on the season, at the 7-11 on the corner back in Seattle, blow pops and Bubble Yum and ice cream sandwiches, candy a necessary part of winding down after school, something I simply did, my routine if you have to put a label on it, a facet of my grade school personality at a time when most everything was both particular and sincere. I found the place where they shelved canned meat; I had never thought about SPAM, tuna fish, and the prized Vienna Sausages as being in the same category before, but there they were, all in the war rations section.
Lila walked up next to me. She seemed so light, like a scarf blowing in the wind.
“Oh good, they have them,” she reached in front of me, “Take five or so,” she grabbed them off the shelf in an irrational clamor, “They'll be good to have for later.”
She left me standing there and walked over to the empty checkout terminal, guarded by magazine stands and flanked on all sides by jerky and cigarettes. Tommy came in and went over to the cooler. I followed Lila out the door.
The rest of the day Lila smoked and told Tommy what it had been like stealing beach chairs with Edward, and running down the corridor to escape/conceive, until they found themselves in Key West. I slept. When I woke in the late afternoon I looked around the car not knowing I was satisfied, not feeling anxious because I wasn't doing anything after being so studious, after composing and skateboarding, not having a moment without duty all my seven years. I looked around thought of the hills out there like a rustic dream, what it would be like to be scuffing up their dust, walking in between them, to have no distractions but the job of feeding yourself, but then, nothing would come from a can and I would have to pick things, to either kill or have the desire to eat things that were killed, and not to be able to forget that you had to kill to eat them, then the night would feel so lonely with the ghosts around the campfire, wondering then, appreciating what we had to do, appreciating that we were here and able to do it, to have a conscience again, to be born into the killing and the blanket of instinct and the comfort of the dead stars coming to us like needle pricks in my mother's dark curtains, spraying their light across our forgotten selves.
I came out of my sleep haze with these thoughts and felt the pleasantness of being hungry. My mother was staring out the window to the dark closing in around her and memories of the old Chevy and her 16 year old mind tortured by her mother's tall slow determination to replace her beautiful simplicity with someone else's decadent static dream. I sat up as fully as I could with the supplies on the floor behind their seats, and heard the rustle of a plastic bag under my right foot. I remembered what was in it. The can was compact and sweet looking with its wrap around label pictorial of the little wieners in blue and brown, festive as a Southern pig pickin. I had never popped the lid on a can before, but wedged my thumb under the little ring until I realized this was not the best way and switched fingers. The can popping startled Lila who turned around and smiled at me. “Want one?” I said.
“No that's okay. ... Well maybe, sure. They started making those when I was a teenager and I'd eat them when I'd go camping by myself on the James River. Those and molasses beans. The water looked muddy but when I dipped my cup in it to drink it it was as clear as tap water.”
The sausages sat snugly in their compact ring like a carburetor. The tinny meat smell dispersed into the car and filled me with satisfaction. The essentialness of their existence in this vast land, like the motels, the only thing keeping us from falling into the earth.
I pulled them out individually, like fingers, each an echo of evenings at home, doing calligraphy by the fire, playing with the dripping wax, molding it into shapes, making sausage-shaped replicas of my own fingers by pouring wax onto them, pressing it against my skin like the thin, soft paper of my Grandmother's hand resting on mine in church.
I bit them off, each with the dusky smell of old underwear and the texture of my lips when I covered them in Vaseline. I ate them as we drove past the rolled up boles of hay like corn on the cob sitting there in the fields, threshing machines about to be done for the day, horses and cows flicking their tales in the twilight. The misplaced things between them solidifying and scurrying off into the wild where the desert rodents ran out of the corners of our eyes. Dusk on the road; permanence and a tranquil settling down of mood and heat. We were as air-packed inside the lime green car, the wind blowing in shifts, stirring outside, inside cool and warm, the Nightly News a black and white shrill of movement, it and the movements on the forefront of the horizon a mockery of our stillness.
I liked to watch the sky settle down, the scene change between blue cloudiness and stars, the extremeness upsetting if you thought about it, the sun going to the other side of the earth, the earth twisting and turning like a top, as precarious as Tommy being in charge of the brakes.
“Honey, we'll be stopping soon. We're near Whitefish, where I fished the last time I was in Montana, before you were born. We'll get a river cabin and go fishing in the morning, before we get on the road. If you catch anything we can pack it in the cooler and cook it at the next motel, probably near Elk, tomorrow night.”
She and Tommy had been passing a beer back and forth for about two hours. It wasn't the same beer of course, but I had never kept track of how much they drank. The boxes accumulated in the kitchen next to the back door, then on the back porch, I never even saw them clear them out, though they must have sometimes. I had no knowledge of alcohol's effects, no judgment. I didn't know it was trashy to keep stacks of beer boxes or to give your child the bottle caps off of Luckys that had the puzzles on them. I thought the puzzles were fun – “I see your soapbox racer.”
I was always wide wake at night. My bedtime had been set for around ten, though I had watched David Letterman enough to dispute this. Before we pulled into a motel for the night was pleasant, like coming to the end of a race you knew you were going to win. Satisfaction and a warm sense of deserving a comfortable bed and pleasant, meaningful dreams.
The lights flashing behind us were jarring, as though someone had come upon us in an alley to grab our backpacks and walkmen. Lila took the beer from Tommy into her lap and sat up straight, drinking it directly in front of her. Tommy eased on to the side of the road, into the soft, rocky earth. The wind no longer streamed around the car and I could hear the crickets were singing loudly and I could feel the secrecy for the first time, what I had recognized as self-assurance in Lila when she had come to my school suddenly became a red curtain, and behind it whole a theater full of curtains.
Lila opened her door and began to pour out the beer as the officer came over to Tommy's window. I watched fixed as Lila poured out the beer with one hand, the other on her bare leg just below her cutoff jean shorts, while the officer asked Tommy where he was going and why he had been going so fast. It seemed fantastically privileged what I was seeing, the turning of a card to the other side of another person's personality, like watching the scurrying mischievous look on a hungry street kid's face as he pockets an apple while the grocer turns around to make change for the old lady.
There was more tension in Tommy's voice than usual, than there was when he tried to calm Lila down at night when she was worried about her mother in the nursing home, worried about her worrying about the past, or when he was complimenting her on her tacos or fried chicken. But the calm of my mother's ring filled fingers pouring out the beer at the side of the road, the sureness of her steady hand on her leg, made me know it would be fine. Among the blue red and white lights flashing against the country darkness, I looked down into my lap at the sausages I held that my mother had gotten me, watching as she tucked the empty beer can into the opening between her seat and the door frame. I held to the thought of eating them as soon as the officer, the traveling salesmen stuck at our threshold, was gone, mimicking my mother's hunted silence.


Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
Portland/Summer 2009