Fiction

“I see you found Lorna’s clothes,” he said.

“Lorna?” said Daisy.

“She died a week ago here in the park, in her rig. Cancer. I was with her at the end. She’d been here for 15 years, before I bought the place.”

“Did she have any family?”

Daisy thought she was going to cry because she already knew the answer.

“No. Nothing. We put everything in here to give it away. Take what you want. What doesn’t go, I’ll take into town and load up the thrift stores.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“She was a rodeo queen and champion rider in her 20s and 30s. She used to mention it. But that’s about all I know.”

“Did you find any photographs of her?”

Daisy was desperate to know what Lorna looked like.

“Not a single one.”

“How old was she?”

“I think in her early 80s.”

“Which RV was hers?”

“The Vixen. What a rig that was! They only made them for three years. A total bust. But she kept it up nice.”

Bruce laughed as he said this.

“Can I see it?”

Daisy had no idea why she’d asked this. She just knew there was a real live human story in progress and she had to dive in. She was coming alive with it. Nothing like this ever happened at work. Or maybe it had and she was too fuzzy to notice.

“Sure, it’s unlocked. It’s empty and ready to sell. We’ve got in on Craig’s List. She signed the title over to me. There was no one else. I kind of feel bad taking it.”

“Don’t feel bad Bruce. You were there at the end.”

Bruce merely nodded and went over to the dryer.

Daisy left and headed straight for the Vixen.

Daisy awoke at first light. Rain had stopped. She exhaled and could see her breath. She got out of the Volvo to stretch and smoke and heard two distinct sounds—the churning roar of the ocean and a saxophone playing what she recognized as a Christmas Carol but couldn’t recall its title or any lyrics. Daisy knew the ocean was behind her, but the exact source of the saxophone mystified her. It was apparently coming from one of the rigs and was obviously not a recording. Someone was playing right then! A Christmas carol! Who does that?

Some 30 quail darted across Daisy’s path as she walked to the restroom. A couple gulls flew overhead. She saw morning doves and blackbirds. blue jays and crows. Perched in a shore pine was a chipmunk nibbling what appeared to be a mushroom. A short distance away, two deer bolted past one of the RVs.

“Angels We Have Heard on High.” That was it! Daisy remembered the name of the carol and found herself singing the falalalalalalalalala….gloria chorus in an exaggerated choral voice that made her chuckle.

After using the restroom and washing up, Daisy saw a Beach Access sign and followed it. Not long thereafter, she descended a cliff with the assistance of a rope and landed on a beach populated by thousands upon thousand pieces of driftwood. Daisy walked and walked, never in a straight line. (No one at the beach ever does if you’re experiencing an existential crisis.) She pocketed shells and rocks. She kicked at foam and played with kelp. She breathed in the brine. At one point, Daisy surprised herself by jogging. She’d never jogged in her life. She stopped 75 yards into the jog and lit a cigarette. She smoked and stared at the ocean and saw a tiny boat out to sea. I’m never going back to Coos Bay, she said to herself.She said it twice. It sounded good. It sounded like a damn good country song about a faded, jaded, junky nurse who let it bleed.

After her walk, Daisy grabbed a cup of coffee and some beef jerky from the store and decided to check out the laundry room and lending library for no other reason that she had absolutely nothing to do and was living out of car. Who knows? She might even find a book to read, something she hadn’t done in years.

She opened the door and beheld more of a thrift store than a laundry room or lending library, although a dryer was drying and a white-washed shelf listing at five degrees held an enormous amount of books.

Daisy entered and what struck her first was all the apparel hanging from the exposed overhead pipes. Several rows. About half of it was still covered in dry cleaning bags. Several seconds into her inspection of the apparel, Daisy knew she had stumbled across perhaps the greatest collection of vintage women’s Western wear in the country. Shirts. Skirts. Vests. Boots. Hats. Jackets with fringes all the colors of the rainbow. And here the collection was in an RV park laundry room! For free! Daisy didn’t even wear this kind of fashion. She would now! Yee haw! She ripped off her coat and sneakers and began trying on items as if it was Black Friday. Everything fit perfectly, including a rhinestone-encrusted leather belt with a buckle the size of a dollar bill. The buckle was pewter with an inlaid design colored a shiny gold. The design was of a woman in pigtails wearing a cowboy hat riding a horse. The horse was jumping over a barrel. The text read MOLALLA BUCKEROO CHAMPION.

It dawned upon Daisy that all this fantastic Western wear had belonged to one person and that person was gone. She was unbuckling the belt when Bruce came inside the room.

Every morning an hour after the Zane Gray Coffee Shop opened, old white men from Pistol River gathered around a table to hold court on the state of the nation as they saw it, as they positively knew it with the surety of gravity and the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Every morning they wore their Trump ball caps, sweatshirts and underwear, drank drip coffee and regurgitated the Fox News red meat gnawed down the previous 24 hours. Every morning they ripped Barak, Michelle, big cities, the homeless, bicyclists, gun control wimps, Deep Staters, NY Times, Pelosi, AOC, Kapernick, liberals, PETA, Hollywood, illegal immigrants, LGBT people, Black Lives Matter, teachers, unions, France, socialism, Europe, tennis, cannabis, the Clintons, asylum seekers, voters, the godless, tree huggers, climate change fools, all scientists except ones on the take from industries ruining the planet, whales, sea lions, wolves, electric cars, Muslims, abortionists and whatever else Fox News invented for them to fear, hate, deride.

Every morning they gathered to rail against the government even though Medicare and Social Security kept them alive. Every morning they were loud and punch drunk on a cocktail of bile and certitude. There’s nothing quite so stomach churning as having to digest the guffaws of old white men in their contempt for other people.

Every morning they never tipped and drove away customers with their blowhard swaggering. They never put change in the containers to support the animal shelter, food bank, or the senior at the high school who wanted to travel abroad and volunteer at a leper colony. They gathered in the town’s only place where a few of the county’s progressives met to survive. They wanted the progressives to see them in their numbers, their all knowing, their clairvoyance, their mastery of facts that everyone was blind to except the Russian teenagers inventing them online from a warehouse in Minsk while swigging vodka and watching pornography.

Every morning they farted through their mouths toxic clouds that poisoned anyone in the shop. The ants died. So did the mint hanging in a pot from the window.

Every morning they all agreed on every issue. NO ONE ever questioned the opinion of another because there was only one opinion. No one at the Trump Table ever uttered a single original idea or insight. They had none. They didn’t think. They had lost that ability. Everything was scripted. Everything in their brains had been expertly programmed after 20 years of watching Fox News. Their hearts had atrophied. Their souls were sick. They lived inside a vacuum, an echo chamber. They were canned hams as human beings.

Every morning they managed not to use the word nigger, bitch, faggot or wetback during their broadcast and somehow to them this demonstrated their social progress since the days of lynchings and church bombings.

And every morning, Jennifer the 29-year old owner and barista at the Zane Gray Coffee Shop, had to listen to their vitriol and vendettas, witness their petulance and posturing.

But not this morning, a week before Christmas. She was mad as hell and wasn’t going to listen to it anymore. She could have just demanded they leave and never return, but in a way, they would have cherished that persecution, the martyrdom of it all, and Jennifer didn’t want to give in or truck with their delusions of grandeur. No, there had to be another way to handle them. She was not without hope that there remained something decent lurking inside these old white men. If only one molecule. Why did she believe this? Well, it was Christmas for chrissakes! Peace and tidings of good joy toward all old angry white men and all that jingle fake news jazz.

What finally pushed Jennifer over the edge?

No, it wasn’t their screed about Satan’s spawns attempt to crucify the Christ out of Christmas. No, it wasn’t their belief that the Messiah was actually a blue-eyed, blonde-haired white dude who trumpeted the virtues of capitalism in his dusty wanderings. No, it wasn’t their declaration that Die Hard was the greatest Christmas movie of all time. No, it wasn’t even them wearing MAGA Santa hats, although seeing that did induce nausea.

It was: that very morning the old white men had made fun of a kid with Down’s Syndrome after he sang Silent Night in the coffee shop and butchered it. After the kid left, Jennifer shot three double espressos in the aftermath, seethed, and schemed how she was going to confront the table. How do you confront this kind of reckless, lockstep, jackboot, divisive, diseased, self congratulatory behavior that Hermann Goring would have applauded? How do you confront it if the goal of confrontation is to enact positive change and not just spill more anger into an already angry America? Trump people live to lap up more anger!

Jennifer watched the table. The men yukked it up. She palmed her face and twisted her long brown hair. A strategy swam to the surface of her mind. It swam like an sea otter who poked his bewhiskered face barely above water and looks ready to get into mischief.

She removed her apron, turned off the the Christmas music, and darted out from behind the counter. She didn’t say a word of explanation as she passed three customers waiting in line. Jennifer marched up to Trump Table. She knew all the old white men and they all knew her. She’d grown up on the Rogue River and won a dozen titles in track and field in high school. She hunted and fished and grew super dope weed. She’d returned to the coast and her family after graduating from Oregon State with a degree in botany and wanted to open the first pot shop in town. But the old white men who ran the city council like a medieval fiefdom hated pot and thwarted all attempts at recreational shops with a series of absurd and expensive ordinances that made it impossible to start a business. Jennifer had spent many an evening testifying in vain. She gave up and opened a coffee shop instead. It quickly became the most popular joint in town, and not long thereafter, the reactionaries decamped there to unwittingly ruin it.

The men stopped talking when Jennifer appeared at the table. She knew many older Americans weren’t like them. In fact, they represented a minority. That’s why she was standing at the table. She wasn’t giving up on them. She didn’t remember old angry men like this in her youth.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “for the past couple of years I’ve listened to your constant and annoying bitching about America. In my shop. Every morning.”

Not bad. Keep it rolling. Keep it calm.

“But I haven’t heard a single thing you’re doing about it in our community.”

Everyone in the shop stopped their conversations or fiddling on their gadgets and turned to watch.

Jennifer continued. “Instead of bitching around this table, I want you to go out today, starting right now, and perform some kind of random act of Christmas kindness. Then come back tomorrow and talk about that. Free coffee tomorrow and brownies if you do. Let’s call it the Christmas Kindness Challenge.”

Christmas Kindness Challenge! Where had that come from?

“It only has to last one day. One act.”

No one at the table responded. They looked at the containers on the counter.

Jennifer saw them looking. “No, that’s not good enough. Get off your ass. And you can’t know the person, either.”

That hadn’t been part of her original scheme, but it was now.

Silence settled over the room. It was thick.

A transient appeared outside the window, a regular. He was pushing a baby stroller full of cans. He passed the coffee shop every morning at about this time. The nearest store to redeem the cans was over a mile away. No one knew his name or story, but the table loved to joke about him.

“Go give that guy a ride,” said Jennifer, pointing to the transient. “That’s a great place to start.”

One of the men started to get up, but sat back down. Maybe he wanted to act. Maybe he just couldn’t muster the courage and slice a way out the canned ham.

“Well,” said Jennifer. “Do you accept?”

Nothing. The men stared at each other.

“Do you accept?” said Jennifer.

Nothing.

Jennifer stood there. The rest of the patrons watched and waited, waiting for the men at the Trump Table to not turn this story into an existential Christmas tale, because nobody wants to read that. We want sweet transcendence in our transforming tales of bitter Americans and desperately want to believe they remain a possibility.

Daisy pulled into the park, easing under a towering rainbow-colored arch wrapped in Christmas lights, just as rain subsided. The gray everywhere was turning black. She saw a blinking red OPEN sign in a window of what appeared to be an office. The office window was framed by candle lights with flickering orange flames. The building housing the office was covered in white lights twinkling with machine gun speed.

How did one check into an RV park? Particularly one decorated for Christmas. Well, you just walk right up!

As Daisy inched the Volvo to the office, she noticed a row of RVs lined up on either side of the gravel driveway. They were older models, decades older, a bit weary-looking. She read their odd names. She’d never read RV names before. Who does? (Perhaps we should. There might be something in their oddity that explains the current malaise gripping much of our nation.)

Spirit of America

The Nomad

The Adventurer

The Ambassador

The Flair

The Pioneer

Escape

Reflection

The Bounder

Freedom

The Rambler

Brave

Searcher

Swinger

Observer

The Seeker

Endeavor

What were these names trying to suggest? Inspire? Aspirations? Lies? Blatant contradictions in contemporary American life? Isn’t every American a walking, sleep-walking contradiction between the ideals of America’s foundation and the reality of American reality?

Daisy noticed a few of the rigs sported holiday lighting. There was even one gigantic display that featured a classic life-size plastic Santa in sleigh pulled by four life-size plastic reindeer, Daisy smiled when she saw it. How refreshing to see something old school and not those cheap inflatable monstrosities that invariably deflate, and deflate as well the Christmas spirit of everyone who saw them dead yet writhing on the lawn.

Never, ever, underestimate the saving power of an outdoor holiday lighting display on a beleaguered, suffering soul. One glowing angel in an upstairs window might prevent a hanging in the basement or taking a dump under the Christmas tree.

She parked the Volvo near a small cinderblock building with a sign that read Laundry Room and Lending Library. At least 50 crab floats hung from its facade and front gutter. Each float was wrapped in blue and red lights. Two demonic elves twisted themselves around the downspout.

Daisy got out of the car and walked to the office door. She knocked in the center of a lacquered pine cone and sea shell wreath and went inside.

An elderly bespectacled man stood behind the counter. Overhead, a black and white version of A Christmas Carol played silently on television. The man introduced himself as Bruce and asked how he could help. In due course, Daisy plucked down $20 for one night, got the lowdown on park facilities, a candy cane, the Wi-fi password, and where to drive to the tent camping area. Bruce told her the store closed in 20 minutes if she needed anything. Daisy thanked him, used the restroom, and then got in the Volvo. She sat there for a moment to collect her thoughts. She checked her phone but there was zero reception. She put in the password to connect to the larger world. She connected and scanned various communication channels and absolutely none of it mattered.

The tent camping area was in a separate, wooded part of the park. Surrounding it were about a dozen or so RVs slightly more disheveled than the ones Daisy seen upon her arrival. Daisy parked in the grass, exited the car, and hustled to the store. There, she bought a bottle of Chianti and a can of spaghetti and meatballs, As she was leaving the store, she saw a flier advertising a locally-produced podcast called Secret Coast Radio. She made note of it.

Ten minutes later, Daisy had rigged up the Volvo as a crash pad, snuggled herself inside the sleeping bag, cracked open the spaghetti, guzzled wine from the bottle, lit a cigarette, and tuned into the latest episode of the podcast. It was a special holiday show. She heard a story set to freaky instrumental music about a Scrooge chipmunk eating magic mushrooms and changing his miserly ways, She heard poems about the homeless, beavers and whales. She heard another tale about a kid who stole a dog chained to a pole on Christmas Eve. She listened to an instructional on how to build a driftwood fort Christmas tree.

What is this place? thought Daisy. What am I doing here? What am I going to do tomorrow?

She fell asleep around midnight and dreamed of the snowy egret flying above a river.

The Volvo rolled over the majestic McCullough Bridge into North Bend, into Coos Bay, past the Steve Prefontaine mural with his immortal words, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

Daisy hadn’t ever bothered to read Pre’s words. She read them now. Everybody should.

She saw the entrance to the hospital parking lot and the familiar neon sign slicked in mold and crusted in gull guano. She thought about what might unfold on her shift. She thought about the doctor who would give her a wink and pinch on the bottom. She imagined scavenging a pill to put the fuzz for breakfast.

There the entrance was,,,,and there is wasn’t. Daisy drove right by it. She never once slowed down. In fact, sped up. She removed the lanyard ID from around her neck and slid it out the gap in the window. She lit another cigarette and kept going south,south, south, right out of town, past a logging yard, past a junkyard, past a sex shop, past four pot shops, past the sign for the Coos Bay Speedway.

Daisy texted her supervisor: not coming in today, family emergency—the trusty old dodge no one in authority ever questioned. Daisy thought about her family. She didn’t really have one. What is a family anyway? Merely blood relations? Something on paper? Or is there something else to the definition?

A loaded log truck slowed traffic on Highway 101. Daisy didn’t know where she going or where she might stop. She turned on the radio and tuned to a station broadcasting out of Coquille. An ancient voice, a craggy voice, a real person, a real DJ in a studio in Coquille (!) was analyzing the nuances of obscure psychedelic tracks he’d just played and the tracks he was about to play—a Christmas show, a curated ultra-depressing Christmas show chosen by a stoned rock and roller working the knobs, not an algorithm computed in a cloud.

Daisy largely hated Christmas music but she suddenly got giddy about the prospect of a show that featured depressing holiday music. Oh joy!

“Brothers and sisters,” the DJ intoned, “wherever you are listening to this station, just know, you can’t be depressed as the people in these upcoming tracks, so be well.”

The first song: “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” by John Denver.

Oh hell yeah screamed Daisy. She’d never heard it before!

Then came, “Christmas in Prison,” by John Prine.

Daisy listened to, It was Christmas in prison and the food was real good / We has turkey and pistols carved out of wood, and laughed aloud.

Next was, Merle Haggard’s “If We Make it Through December.”

Not we thought Daisy. I.

Bandon. Langlois. Sixes. Port Orford. In Port Orford Daisy stopped for gas, cigarettes and a maple bar. She kept driving south. Ophir. Gold Beach. She lost the Coquille station near Humbug Mountain but found some commie station broadcasting jazz from Humboldt County and another real DJ playing Christmas bebop instrumentals from Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Dave Brubeck. Daisy didn’t know who any of the musicians were, but liked the music. It was sort of formless, improvisational, but touched something deep and muted inside Daisy that shellacked crooning by Bing Crosby or Doris Day could never hope to reach.

Rain kept falling and traffic dwindled the farther south she drove. She was driving into what seemed like a Secret Coast, a place the rich Portlandians and Californians hadn’t ruined yet. Daisy passed the mysterious, meandering Pistol River and noticed a dozen or so seals hauled out next to a dozen driftwood forts erected near the river’s mouth. She passed a half dozen transients on bicycles or on foot, or pulling wagons, some with dogs or ferrets, carrying everything they owned. Where were they going? Where would they sleep this rainy night? How had they ended up like this on Highway 101?

Daisy lit another cigarette, puffed away, and tapped out drum solos on the steering wheel with her fingers. Everything around her was gray and getting grayer. It was like she had entered a country where the official color was gray and its citizens loved living in the gray areas of life, because black and white is so boring, and utterly dangerous.

As Daisy edged around a graveled turn where the road had washed out the previous spring, she saw a large wooden sign nailed to slanting shore pine with a groovy rainbow logo right out a Fillmore East concert poster. Daisy nearly came to a halt and read: Rainbow Rock RV Park, 20 miles. We Welcome RVers, hikers, bicyclists, tent campers. Laundry Room. Store. Lending Library. Hot Showers. Fire Pit. Horseshoes. Tetherball. Pets welcome. Beach access. Quiet. Calm. Daily, weekly or monthly rates.

Tetherball! thought Daisy. She hadn’t played since she was a kid. She loved the game and always kicked ass because she was the tallest girl in school. Oh to kick ass one of the doctors at a hosipital picnic at a lakeside campground with a tetherball pole! She’d fist the ball right into his flaccid face and his wife would see the whole thing.

Rainbow Rock…it sounded almost exotic to Daisy and she loved rainbows. She loved their science but knew nothing of their folklore, not even the leprechaun and pot of gold hokum.

Daisy had never stayed in an RV Park. Indeed, she’d never stepped inside one. What the hell went on there? She had a sleeping bag, most of her clothes and toiletries stashed in the Volvo. She could sleep in the rig and figure it out later, whatever there was to figure out. The store was sure to have wine and a can of spaghetti and meatballs. She’d open it with her Leatherman and eat it cold.

Rainbow Rock RV Park it was. She floored it.

Daisy. Daisy. Daisy. She said to the herself as she glanced in the rear-view mirror driving to work in silence. A trace of rain provided the soundtrack. She wore preposterous blue scrubs decorated with snowflakes and a creepy snowman, a white elephant gift, but at least they were clean. Everything else in her Charleston studio apartment was dirty and disheveled. She didn’t care. She barely spent any time there and mostly lived out of her Volvo wagon and the hospital locker room. She hadn’t met a single occupant of her complex in three years.

What had happened? Daisy was still a damn good nurse at 32, but passion for the job drained away several years ago, and she never knew why or when it had begun. She couldn’t recall taking the gig in Coos Bay. She’d also forgotten why she even became a nurse. She barely remembered the time testing positive for heroin and nearly lost her nursing license. The work paid well enough, but Daisy always blew her savings on trips to exotic sunny locales with colleagues she never hung out with in Coos Bay. Upon her return, the tonic from these vacations typically evaporated in a few days, and then she was busy planning another adventure to resorts where enslaved monkeys and parrots entertained the guests.

The assignations with dull and dipshit doctors comprised Daisy’s personal life, except for infrequently fishing alone for salmon or renting a quad and racing buzzed through the dunes. Her parents were dead and her only sibling, a younger brother, was in the Army and stationed in Japan. She hadn’t seen him in years.

Daisy had a serious boyfriend, once, a few years ago, when she was a nurse in Tillamook. She met him when he showed up with a broken leg from an ATV accident and asked him out. He’d blown it with a reclusive nature, but recognized his error, apologized, and vowed to change. He was desperate to try. He loved her in a taciturn way she didn’t understand. Daisy never gave him a second chance and never told him she’d aborted their child a month after they broke up.