January 12, 2009

• No Compound Fractures

  While Doug and I were completing a relatively uneventful grocery shopping trip and water run, Greyfox was having a vehicular crisis.  First, he lost all his power steering fluid.  He drove (or herded) his red Mazda minivan full of knives, swords and various other things to where he could get the fluid filled, and he made an appointment with the mechanics to bring the car in Wednesday for repair. 

  He was on his way back home when he threw a belt and lost all his coolant.  He called AAA, who said they couldn’t have him towed for three hours and that would have gotten the car to the garage after it closed for the day, so he left the car by the road, hitchhiked to the mechanic’s, and gave them the key so they could go pick up the car.  That will cost an extra $80, but might make the difference between his having the car running by the end of the week, or having to rent a car and transfer a load of merchandise from his MPV to the rental car for the Wasilla High School Gun Show this weekend.

  Doesn’t the thought of a high school gun show strike a weird chord?  It’s for the benefit of the hockey booster club, and is one of Greyfox’s most lucrative annual events.  “Only in Alaska,” he says.

  Blur, my silver Subaru wagon, started right up this afternoon after about three hours under a tarp with an electric space heater.  I love that car, and have a high degree of respect for and gratitude to the mechanic who was Blur’s previous owner, for installing the manual choke and the toggle switch for the heater blower, for filling the engine with extra-slick synthetic lubricant, and whatever he did to the engine to make it run so fast.  I love that car… said that already, didn’t I?

  At Jack’s store, we got 60 pounds of dog food, 30 pounds of kitty litter, and a few other items, but he didn’t have everything we needed.  On to Cubby’s, where we got a great price on Fuji apples, blanched at the price on the plain yogurt but paid it anyway,   The cart wasn’t even half full, but the cost was appalling. 

  As I waited to check out, Doug came up and dropped a toy on the conveyor.  With raised eyebrows, I asked him if he was buying that, or if he expected me to pay for it.  His response was oblique and indirect:  “You haven’t bought me a toy for quite a while.”  I replied, “Yes.  I haven’t bought you a toy since you were a child.”  I bought the toy.  It’s supposed to light up, but it doesn’t.  Doug doesn’t care.  When he squeezes it, it is squishy, and he likes it.

  I still hadn’t scored any goat milk, and I recalled seeing a can of evaporated goat milk down at Camp Caswell, a mile or so beyond the spring, so we headed on down the valley to Caswell.  I got my milk, Doug got his milk, which he’d forgotten to pick up at Jack’s or Cubby’s, and we got ice cream (cherry chocolate chip), too, then turned back up the valley to get our water and go home.

  At the spring, two trucks were there when we arrived.  The heavy traffic there suggests that my neighbor Lori wasn’t the only one whose water system froze.  A man was filling jugs and a woman was waiting in her truck for him to finish.  I parked behind her to wait. 

  A big shiny new red pickup truck pulled in, a man got out, grabbed two jugs from the bed and went down the path.  He filled them, and made two more trips up and down during the time the other two people were trying to fill their jugs.  There is only room at the pipe for one container at a time, so while he was filling his, someone else had to be waiting to fill one of theirs.  The asshole fellow in the red truck never said a word as far as I could tell, and didn’t make eye contact with me coming or going.  He was focused, and he was in a hurry.  A perception of urgent time pressure is a symptom of NPD.

  The recent weeks of cold had caused a thick buildup of ice around the waterhole.  It encroached from all sides, and made the surface of the pallet where we crouch or kneel to fill jugs about half a foot higher than usual, and s.l.i.c.k.  I carried a few empties down for Doug and then sat down on a bucket so I’d be there if he slipped.  He laughed and said, “Yeah, I’d slide into the water and you’d lunge ineffectually to catch me.”  I didn’t argue.  He was probably right.

  I replied, “But if you got a compound fracture or something, I could drag you out of the hole and stop the bleeding before you bled out.  Then I’d shove you into the hatch and take you to the hospital.”  He asked me what I’d do about the empty jugs.  I said that the next person who came for water would find a mystery.  He replied that the blood would be a clue.
  

  • 9:33 pm
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