The Will

Dad had opened the garage door for me so that I could come in through the door to the laundry room. This was his regular routine and I had long ago stopped asking him why he didn’t just let me use my key and come in through the front door. I walked past the space heater he had going in the garage to keep his plants warm during the winter. Another subject I no longer bothered to debate.

I found dad in the TV room sitting on the couch with his head down wringing his hands. I sat down next to him, put my hand on his shoulder, “What’s the problem, Dad?”

“I’m shaky,” he said in a high, squeaky voice.

“Why are you shaky?”

“I don’t have a will,” he croaked. “What’s going to happen when I die?”

This business of the will came out of left field, because he and mom had made out their wills long ago, and then updated them when they’d moved up here to be close to us.

“You have a will, dad,” I said, in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.

Dad glared at me and waved his index finger at me like I was a naughty boy. “No I don’t!” he shot back.

“Well, let’s just check,” I said. I went to the desk where my mom had organized all their important documents and quickly found the will.

Dad hardly looked at the will when I brought it over to him.

“Your mom was very organized,” he said.

“Did we leave any money to Joey’s kids?” Dad asked.

“Joey’s kids?”

“You know, the gambler, and the…”

“The alcoholic?” I finished the sentence for him. Joey, Dad’s long deceased second cousin from New York, had two children, Chuckie, a compulsive gambler, and Dominick, an unreformed alcoholic.

Dad looked at me. “Yeah,” he said, uncertainly.

“You think that’s a good idea, Dad; giving the gambler and the alcoholic money?”

Dad switched gears without blinking an eye.

“What about that guy, Corlini?”

“Corlini?”

“Yeah. He’s been nice to us.”

“Wasn’t he the guy that you gave the jewelry to on consignment?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. Your mother liked him.”

“Dad, he disappeared with that jewelry.”

Dad squinted at me through smeary bifocals.

“Anyone else we should leave money to?”

Sagebrush Pen

Typical farmers' market, not ours, we don't have tomatoes yet and our location doesn't have those nice trees.

The Kennewick Farmers' Market has been moved from downtown Kennewick out south here to an area called Southridge. There are ambitious long-range plans for developing Southridge, but as one "farmer" told me today, "There's not much out here." This lady was selling Chelan Cherries, which she informed me came in earlier than the I was hoping for. She pushed a bucket of purple cherries toward me and told me to try one. "Don't worry about that," she said, gesturing to the dun-colored powder on the cherries, "That's just dust."

It was windy this afternoon and the farmers' market is set up in a parking lot next to an expanse of land that's being leveled for construction. Dust devils whirled over the parking lot and tented awnings flapped energetically in the wind. The cherry lady was stocky and immovable in the wind, although her should-length, straw-colored hair flew about like Saint Vitus. I bought a pound-and-a-half of cherries and moved on.

I had been looking for gifts for some Slovenian friends we'll see next week and came across a table filled with pens labeled "Sagebrush Pens." I stopped to inspect the pens. A diminutive, bright-eyed older man wearing dog tags and a baseball cap with "U.S. Air Force" written across the front was looking up at the tent he had constructed over his display table. "I may have to take this down," he said. I asked him about the pens. "Made with sagebrush," he said. He gave me his card. It said "DICKS fancy WOODS" and under that his name, "Dick Rambo."

Dick was from Pasco and had been hand making wood products, pens, belt buckles, key rings, etc., since his retirement from the Air Force in 1971. His card said "Wood from your History, Transformed." I asked him about that. "A lot of these things are made from the wood flooring that was torn up from Richland High School during its renovation," he told me. I bought a pen made of sagebrush and told him it was a gift for a friend from Slovenia. "That's a first," he said.

I took my cherries and my pen back to the car and drove away from the flapping tents in the Kennewick Southridge Farmers' Market. A sign at the highway tells me to expect "Burger Bob's soon." It's been there for several months. The farmers will be glad when it finally arrives.

Waiting for my Prescription

I handed Bethany, the pharmacist clerk, my prescription. She held it up to within a few inches of her face and squinted at it.
“Where are your glasses, Bethany?” I asked.
“They're down there gettin fixed,” she said canting her head in the direction of Kroger’s eye clinic.
“Well, are you sure you can read that?” I said. I was used to seeing her with glasses that made her gray eyes look huge.
“Protonix,” she said.
“You’re guessing,” I said. It was the only prescription medication I took and I picked it up every month.
Bethany gave me a rueful little smile and told me it would be ten to fifteen minutes. “You wanna wait?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders, turned, and walked over to a bench and sat next to a stocky, middle-aged woman wearing a hoodie, jeans, and work boots. She smiled at me.
“They are a tad busy this morning,” she said.
“Tuesday,” I said.
“Oh, yah?” she said, puzzled.
“The day the retirement homes bring in their people to shop and pick up prescriptions.”
“Oh, yah,” she said. “They do that on Mondays in Saint Cloud.”
“I thought I noticed an accent. You from Minnesota?”
“Born and raised,” she said. “But we don’t have an accent.” Her smile made her look younger.
“Are you living here, now?” I asked.
“I moved out here in 1973 with my husband. He was a dry land wheat farmer."
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a hard life.”
“Before that, I lived on a farm near Saint Cloud, so I was used to farm living. We raised eight kids, two boys and six girls.”
She began digging around in one of her shopping bags.
I checked my watch and glanced at the pharmacy counter.
“My father raised chickens,” the woman said, a piece of candy stuck in the side of her mouth. “We ate a lot of chicken.”
She held the candy roll out to me.
I took one and smiled. “So, where are your kids now?”
“Mostly in Minnesota, but one son lives in Alaska. Both boys hunt and fish. They get together now and then. They were gonna ice fish last year, but it was too warm. The vans were falling through the ice, don’cha know.”
“Global warming,” I said.
She grimaced and shook her head. “I don't know about that,” she said.
“So what kind of hunting do your sons do?” I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about how warm the earth was getting with a person from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
“Deer, moose, stuff like that,” she said.
“Moose?” I said.
“Oh, yah. I ate some once or twice. Gives me gas.”
I saw Bethany motioning to me.
“Looks like my prescription is ready.” I got up. “Nice talking with you. And by the way, be sure to check that you get the right medication.”
The woman smiled up at me. “Check out the sign at the sushi counter,” she said.
“Uh?”
“The sushi counter,” she said, pointing over towards the deli section.
I nodded, wondering what the hell she was talking about.
On my way out I went by the deli and stopped at the sushi counter. They had their usual assortment of sushi and sashimi in neat little throw-away boxes, with pickled ginger and wasabi. There on the counter was a display of their California Roll. Next to it was a sign that said, “For your own safety, please don’t eat our display.”

I saved a Killdeer chick today

I was on my way to the Amon Basin to take photographs when I saw a Killdeer in the street next to the curb. It had one wing draped over a chick that had fallen into the street and was cowering against the curb as cars whizzed past. The chick panicked, left it's mother's protecting wing, and wobbled along the curb on spindly legs. I made a U-turn, parked, and dodging cars, went across to rescue the chick. The mother bird began to cry out and flopped along the ground faking a broken wing. Suddenly the father bird swooped down and circled my head. I reached down and made a basket of my hands just in front of the running chick. It jumped right in and I scooped it up over the curb and into the prairie grass. I stepped back and watched as the mother herded her chick into the protective cover of a big sagebrush. I heard her saying, "I told you to stay out of the street!" Some chicks never learn.

Spring Flowers

Balsam Root, Shrub-Steppe, Amon Basin, Richland, Washington