A Fireside Chats excerpt by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Benny Cantun hauled the Weber barbecue grill out of his pickup and set it in the empty parking space between the truck and his cargo van. While he did his macho duty, Aurelia took the younger children into Merry Market to use the toilet. If one had to go, she took them all. She said it was like a contagious disease, which always made Benny chuckle. So he laughed as he built the makeshift hearth of the temporary home they and a good number of other wildfire evacuees were creating in the market’s parking lot.

“My Aurelia, she is a good woman,” Benny murmured. He paused from his chores to remove his palm leaf hat and wipe his brow, and he took another moment to watch the growing community of those who also refused to leave town or had no place else to go, nestling in as the wildfire’s winds swirled ash across the graying asphalt. He put a fire starter on the grill, stacked a pyramid of charcoal on top and thought of his young primo, his cousin Jesus, just arrived from Teotihuacán and stubbornly camping in the barranca near the recycling center, when he could have been staying at their ranch with them.

“Where will he go now, with the fire? Foolish kid, too much pride,” Benny said to no one in particular, because no one was close enough to hear him, not that Benny was in need of an audience. In fact, even when his family was around him, he suspected his words sounded puny compared to Aurelia’s. When it came to his wife, she might as well be La Virgen de Guadalupe herself. She ruled the family, as his mother had hers. And he knew it was best, just as he knew it was his job to rail against it. The only thing Aurelia really needed him for anymore was to capture her rage when it escaped her. “Ah, bueno, as it should be. … I hope that boy joins us here — if he receives the message that our destination is this parking lot that wishes it was a campground.”

“Papi! Who are you talking to?” Benny’s oldest girl, Graciela, the one most like his Aurelia, called from inside the van.

“Nobody, nobody.”

“I bet you’re talking to yourself again, Papi, sí?” Graciela looked out the side door and twirled her finger by her temple.

“A little respect, por favor, Nena!” And they laughed together, knowing he would always talk to himself and she would always kid him about it, teasing being their common expression of love.

Benny pulled a match from the band of his hat and started the fire, noting the contradiction and sending a quick prayer to La Virgen.

“Maybe the boy won’t show; maybe he’s afraid to be seen by all the uniforms in town. La Migra, immigration, though, aren’t among them, but he won’t know that if he doesn’t pull his silly head out of that ditch. I guess we’ll find out as the night progresses.” He fanned the fire a moment with his hat, then meandered to the van to check on Graciela’s efforts to convert it into a comfortable bed for them all.

Benny admired the movements of his girl, so like her beautiful mother. She had finished high school while working her way up to checker at the market, and now she was taking her first classes at Palomar College — while she helped with the younger children and paid for half of her own education. Benny knew it was all Aurelia’s doing, but he couldn’t resist the glow of pride when he saw the girls at church who had not fared as well, coming to his youth group with swelling bellies and no papis to honor them, their babies or God. He looked into the van. “You have your Mami’s fine looks, Nena, but you did not inherit my mouth. You’ll need a lot of hot air to make those mattresses soft for us all.”

“Okay, Papi, you can blow them up with all your hot air if you want, but they come with a pump.”

“Ah, sí, sí, sí. You inherited your Mami’s smart cabeza, too. You’re a good girl, Graciela.” Benny tossed up a prayer of thanks that she was wise enough to grace Aurelia and him with sufficient ignorance to keep their hearts at ease. As best as he could tell, she put herself at little risk, swatting away the caballeros who would lead her from her path.

“Thanks, Papi.” Graciela silently re-affirmed her belief it was better not to share everything with her parents. “You’re not so bad for an old burro, but get out of my way so I can finish.”

They laughed again as Graciela pumped air mattresses and Benny turned to the cab of his truck and pulled an old portable radio from behind the passenger seat. It had only two working settings: Benny’s favorite music station and KGAP, which Benny usually avoided, but he thought tonight might be a little different. News littered with religiosidad was better than no news. He put the radio on the tailgate, turned it on to his music, and stared at the smoking charcoal. “Burn, you rotten bandits.” He poked at the briquettes, a compulsion he shared with the men of his family — it didn’t matter that their poking invariably postponed the magic moment when the coals accepted their destiny.

He hummed to the radio’s Ranchera music, contemplating the endless line of baptisms and quinceaños — much more spirited than the gringos’ cotillions — and family weddings that reached back before his conscious memory and, he well knew, would continue on far beyond the days his bones would fertilize the trees that now fed his family. He smiled as he wiped the perspiration from the back of his neck, its scars and creases, a map of his thirty years working his way through Fallbrook’s avocado groves to now owning four and managing many others.

“Most days, life is good in Fallbrook. Gracias a Dios.”

A rusty, rattling RV pulled alongside Benny’s van and stopped with a chorus of squeaks and groans and rattles, drowning out a taunt from Graciela for talking to himself again. A slim woman in a paint-smudged shirt slipped down from the driver’s seat, walked toward the market and met Benny’s glance. He looked away, but she smiled and said, “Ah, Monjaras, one of my favorite singers.” …

… Read more.

(Photo by Ross Orr via a Creative Commons License.)

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A Fireside Chats excerpt
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Walter Johnson drifted in and out of the day, waltzing at a summer dance with Maud and thanking that sweet young nurse, the foreign one, for closing his window shades so he could take a little snooze. He was old, of course, although he couldn’t remember quite how many years he had accumulated, and he was infrequently aware that he favored his reveries when he might better have attended to the present. No matter. He was no dullard. He knew his days were numbered, although he couldn’t remember what his current number might be. And it occurred to him that maybe he’d just had that thought.

“Thank you, young lady,” he rasped through tubes and phlegm to his favorite nurse, Estela, a youthful forty-one to his ninety-nine years.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Johnson. You are always such a gentleman.” She patted his arm, as she checked his pulse, then brushed a wisp of white hair from his forehead.

“And you are a kind young lady. I will ask my Maudy to bring you some of her Scotch shortbread. It is the best in —.” He struggled through a strangling cough that swished everything around in his lungs, but without the strength to bully it out, he produced nothing but rearranged congestion pressing on his aching chest.

“Well, now, that would be so sweet, Mr. Johnson.” She finished checking his vitals and removed his forgotten lunch tray, dappled with droplets of canned peach and sputum.

And then he was gone again, hoping to stealthily slip a bit of verse to Maud under the bathing room door.

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet —.

He stopped there and resorted to prose because his mind fixated on “nose,” and he didn’t think it a properly romantic word, regardless of the call for a rhyme. He waited what seemed an eternity for Maud to emerge from her ablutions and accompany him to the ice cream social at the Willard Hotel, over in the center of town. Her mother and father and siblings were their encouraging chaperones. He tied up the horse, leaving it hitched to the cart as Maud hopped down, not waiting for him to offer his eager hand. She was a lovely woman with an unusually bold stride and a true gift for baking sweet treasures. Walter could not have been more pleased to have her compose her skirts and take his arm as he escorted her into the hotel.

“Mr. Johnson,” Ashley, a nurse’s aide, poked his arm. “Mr. Johnson. You awake?”

“Fresh as a daisy, young lady. And a great good morning to you.”

“It’s Monday afternoon, Mr. Johnson, and there’s a wildfire. We’re evacuating all patients. We’re going to be moving you, Mr. Johnson. We’re driving all the patients to another hospital.”

“We’re going for a ride? Splendid, splendid! I’ll crank up the Ford and we’ll have a gay time.” He choked on mucus, cleared it partially with a weak cough and wandered into the kitchen to help Maud with the picnic fixings.

Ashley pulled a collapsible gurney into Walter’s room and hurried on to the next. “He thinks the ride will be a ‘gay’ time,” she twittered over her shoulder to Estela, who was helping the more mobile patients into a herd of wheelchairs so they could be pushed out to the four buses on loan from the high school.

“‘Gay’ didn’t mean the same thing when he was young,” Estela scolded. “Did no one teach you to respect your elders, child?” She hurried off with another geriatric patient, gently explaining to her again that, no, she wasn’t going home just yet.

Walter was tickled that Maud was packing all his favorites, baking soda biscuits and Mr. Reche’s Fallbrook honey, chicken fried in pork fat, and peach pie made with fruit fresh from her father’s trees, nearly bursting ripe. He leaned over to steal a peck on her soft cheek, but stopped short when someone entered the room.

“Okay, now, Mr. Johnson. We’re going to move you to the gurney, and I do promise we’ll be so gentle you’ll think you are floating.” Estela and three aides surrounded the bed.

“Who are you?” he coughed. “What is happening? Is my Maudy here?”

“Mr. Johnson, it’s me, Estela, over here, Mr. Johnson.” She patted his arm. “You know me, Mr. Johnson, your favorite nurse, Estela.”

“Oh, oh, yes, of course. Estela.” He coughed and struggled to catch his breath. “And how are you this fine day?” he rumbled.

“There’s a fire, Mr. Johnson. We are evacuating the hospital — just as a precaution. There is not a thing to worry about, but we do need to move you to the gurney so we can put you on a bus and take you to another hospital.”

“Another hospital? But why would I want to leave our own little Fallbrook Hospital? Best hospital in town, it is.”

“Was that a joke, Mr. Johnson? Very good! But there’s a fire, Mr. Johnson, a bad fire, and we need to evacuate. We’re going to lift you now, Mr. Johnson. On three, everybody. One, two, three.”

“Oh, ooh, Maudy. Where is my Maudy?”

“She’s been dead —” Ashley started to say.

But Estela cut her off with a silencing look and said, “She’s just fine, Mr. Johnson. Don’t you worry.”

“You know, I do not deserve that woman. So lovely, so lovely. I do wish I could have finished her poem.”

“A poem, Mr. Johnson?” Estela sent the others away as she strapped him to the gurney.

“Yes, a poem I attempted to write for her the day I proposed marriage,” he tried to cough, “but I could not find the proper rhyme.” Walter waited for the air to squeeze a path under the murderous weight on his chest, and he thought of his lovely Maud.

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, we’re set now. We’re just going to wheel you outside.” Estela stopped to take the picture of Mr. Johnson’s wife from the bedside table and place it by his right hand, and then they headed out to the bus, Walter weakly fighting the smoke-filled air.

“Maudy and the girls, where are they? Are they safe?” Walter ran from his car and joined the well-water bucket brigade trying to douse his home so embers from the burning barn wouldn’t set into the house. As they hauled water, the town’s sole fire truck was aimed at taming the barn, an obvious loss, but Walter knew it was a dangerous one. Maud had herded the goats and the girls out of the way, and Walter wished her a kiss between buckets and thanked God for watching over them and for Maudy’s fortitude.

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, we’re going to lift you up onto the bus now.” Estela looked into his eyes, not sure where he was at that moment, but recognizing where he was headed. “Mr. Johnson? It’s me, Estela. We’re going to take you for a ride on this nice school bus here.”

“School bus?”

“Yes, this nice school bus. The high school let us borrow it. There are just not enough ambulances available with all that’s happening today. So, we’re going to have a ride, a gay ride, Mr. Johnson, on this nice school bus!”

“Ah, the school bus! Is Maudy coming?”

“She’ll be along, Mr. Johnson. Don’t you worry, she’ll be along.” Estela managed the mass of tubing, pump and IV bag and climbed alongside while the aides lifted Mr. Johnson through the rear door of the bus. “And then we’ll ride out to the coast so you can breathe that fresh ocean air. Won’t that be nice, Mr. Johnson?” They secured his gurney atop the backs of three seats. “There we are, Mr. Johnson. You have a view out the windows, and as soon as we’re all loaded, we’ll go for our ride.”

“Splendid, splendid! The school bus ride! Maudy and the girls are coming, too. Have you met my little daughters, Opal and Sally?” He tried to wait out the need to cough. “Sally married one of the Yoakum boys, a nice young fellow. He —.” Walter lost his voice to a rumbling spasm of congestion, and Estela rushed to help the next patient board.

When his throat was clear enough to breathe, Walter looked about the bus with pride, pride and deep satisfaction. It had taken the town the better part of a year, but they had succeeded. They raised the necessary funds and now they had themselves the finest school bus in San Diego’s North County. Used, it was, but still the finest and Fallbrook’s first. And all the donors were being treated to a grand celebration, a ride on the bus and a picnic at the schoolyard, a wonderful community picnic under the live oak trees. He knew his Maudy’s baking soda biscuits and peach pies and her almond shortbread would be standouts among all the baked goods. They always were. She was a lovely woman, a lovely woman with an unusually bold stride and a true gift for baking sweet treasures. She had given him two fine daughters who did well for themselves, yes they did. He was pleased to have such a lovely woman as Maud take his arm. If he could just finish that poem for her, before she left the bathing room.

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet —.

He stopped there, struggling to move his mind off “nose,” the only word that came to him, but he didn’t think it a properly romantic one, regardless of the call for a rhyme. He waited what seemed an eternity for Maud to emerge from her ablutions, and then it struck him: a couplet instead, of course, of course! He was tickled with his verse, perfectly apropos as it was, and so too, it seemed, was Maud.

To My Precious Maudy
From Your Adoring Walter

You are the blessed sunshine, a wild beauty rose
You stir such joy into my heart, it must be you I s’pose
Whom the angels sent to us, to make our town so sweet
If you consent to be my wife, my life will be complete!

Maudy embraced him and agreed to be his, and though he held her tight to his heart, his chest felt as light as the day he was born.

“Mr. Johnson?” Estela touched Walter’s shoulder. “Mr. Johnson, you’re sleeping through your ride, your school bus ride. We’re almost at the coast.” She looked into his face and she knew at once, she knew from years of nursing, from midwifing her own parents to their deaths, she knew he was gone. She pulled a tissue from her bra and dabbed away the spittle on his lips, the tears from his eyes, and returned it to her heart. She shut off the pump and pulled the line from his tired vein. And she placed Mrs. Johnson’s picture on his chest, put his hands together over it and held them as she hummed a love song for Walter and Maud.

And Walter and Maud laughed at his silly, lovely rhyme and fed each other baking soda biscuits with Mr. Reche’s Fallbrook honey as they lazed in the live oaks’ shade.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Live oak tree photograph by Bill Ward via a Creative Commons License.)

A Fireside Chats excerpt

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The Valley Oaks Mobile Home Park was an oasis in a stereotypical wasteland of trailer trash. Whether transformed by the magical grace of its live oaks, its meandering stream or the simple good fortune of stable, crime-averse tenants, Valley Oaks had always managed to skate clear of toilet-bowl lawn ornaments, refrigerator and car-hood fencing and the dizzyingly sweet and sulfurous fumes of methamphetamine labs. The park’s diverse tenants communed under a lush canopy of gray-green leaves and gentility more commonly ascribed to the explicitly affluent landowners who locked themselves in their towers up in Brook Hills or Morro Hills or Rolling Hills.

Not far from sea level, Valley Oaks’ residents were more akin to the salt of the earth. Artists captured the park’s pastoral landscape from the decks attached to their doublewides. Elderly couples walked the winding streets at dusk, their matching oxygen tanks in tow. Immigrants shared the earthy bounty of their verdant, well-measured gardens, and their respectful children always waved hello. Retired widows and widowers had ready and willing partners for their serial games of bridge and whist and the occasional roll in the graying hay. Eccentrics found accommodating neighbors who laughed at their antics or agreeably ignored them. People escaping raucous, chaotic lives found sweet solace in the pacific lanes and sage-scented breath of the community.

Indeed, the friendly tranquillity of the park was, Dorrie Cupa felt certain, the perfect — no, the only — place fit for nestling into her final days. And she had known plenty of less-qualified nests and nesters over the wide-ranging course of her life.

She awoke late-morning, as was her norm, to a chorus of birds — wrens, towhees, sparrows, scrub-jays — all vying for tasty morsels revealed as the morning shifted toward noon. After decades of rising with the sun in obligation to others, Dorrie was enjoying her natural nocturnal rhythms. She came alive in the dark; she loved the skies, the songs of the night, the cover of shadows. She would have howled with every moon, had she no neighbors. But she was content with crooning the tunes she used to belt in her youth. She would serenade the stars and the beasts who shared them with her, dancing through the night with her collection of seventy-eights and forty-fives, the albums and sheet music — music once devoured and then dedicated to a decade of audiences, until a consensus of disapproval of her burgeoning belly hooked her from the stage.

Rising slowly now, to avoid the vertigo of her eighty-eight years, Dorrie noted a different pitch to the birds’ songs as she hummed the Eames Brothers’ “Indian Summer Blues,” whispering a line or two: “Too bad you’re leaving, but I know you got to go.” She stretched her crinkled body, naked but for the turquoise and silver coiling every limb and the tattoo on her left breast, once bold and brash, now elongated and faded with the reach of age. “Live and love well,” it said, two things she had practiced avidly and with varying results until she got them both just about as good as she figured she could.

She took her old Brownie camera to the window and snapped the view, as she did every day, not wanting to forget one moment of her life and hoping her eyes wouldn’t go before she did, so her photographs would always serve as ready reminders. She donned the blue jeans and shirt she had tossed earlier that morning on the armchair by her bed, slipped her feet into ancient moccasins, and walked just a little gingerly toward the caffeine awaiting her in the kitchen. She touched the turquoise necklace that lay heavy on her chest and said “Good day” to her multitude of elders and cousins and siblings and friends and enemies, as she passed each along the hallway. She paused at the end by her Antonio, her dear husband of inadequate years.

“Beat you by ten thousand, three hundred and twenty-five days, Dear One. Ha!” And she kissed the glass that kept her husband’s lips, flung to the winds some twenty years before, from her own.

She put coffee on the stove to perk, rolled her cigarette and dropped some loose tobacco into her breast pocket, then headed for the yard to give thanks to Mother Earth for her many gifts, including allowing her to awaken yet another day more alive than dead.

As she stepped outside, she understood with one deep and smoky breath of the Santa Ana wind why the birds had altered their tunes, and then she heard a muffled, incomprehensible voice booming through the trees and someone banging on her front door. She tucked the cigarette in her pocket and walked back through the house, picked up her Brownie and opened the door to two young men breathing heavily and blinking fast, windborne ash caught by their ruffled hair.

“You gotta get out!” one of them blurted. “The fire’s coming!”

“Yeah,” said the other. “You have to be out in ten minutes, Ma’am. Do you need help packing up?”

Dorrie looked into their faces, not yet bearing the marks of much experience, and she took their picture. She could see they were as scared as they were eager to be part of the biggest thing that had ever happened in their short Fallbrook existence. But their image dimmed as she was struck by the vision, oddly out of context given her relative good health, of her life replaying on an ethereal screen only she could see.

•     •     •

The greasy smoke of a cook fire beside her father’s truck seemed to Dorrie a welcome alternative to the dust that had driven them westward, filling their nostrils and ears, their creases, even the folds of her most private part. She did miss little Wilma, her younger sister. The pretty one, she was married off to anyone but a farmer before they packed for California, the meager remnants of their life leaving plenty of room in the truck for people, flesh-and-blood and remembered. She never knew the three boys lost to the flu in 1918, the year she was born, but she missed them anyway. …

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