-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

May 7, 2015

Chapter 2

My ape Gen-ah is mad. His cable TV went out last night while he was watching other apes play with a big ball. (The only TV I allow is “Cute,” when the kittens run around, and “Nature.” I like the birds.) He sat in my wing chair, ignored me—ignored me!—and looked at papers stuffed together. He calls this “book.”

So, all these buzzing, winged creatures started ramming the window screens and taunting me. What is a respectable cat to do? I leaped up on the sill and slashed the screen open to get the little bastards.

Gen-ah yelped, “No, Scot-uh!”

But it was too late. The fatso bugs were now in the lamp shade, so I knocked the lamp down and ate them all. Tasted like chicken.

Gen-ah cried. Gen-ah tried to catch me. Silly Gen-ah.

“Scot-uh! Bad girl!” He was stating the obvious.

So many other mysteries am I responsible for: moved keys; pressing on the garage door opener so Gen-ah has to get up and close it; spilling any and all open liquids onto the carpet; knocking over his containers of pens and then dragging them under the sofa. I once broke five wine glasses (what is the deal with wine—meow-ick-ack-ack) by jumping on the counter and landing amongst them.

So, today, all was well. Until the wind blew all these crispy-winged seed things off the maple tree and the seed things hit the other study window, and I slashed that screen to catch the little bastards, only crispy-winged seed things taste like Elmer’s Glue (I belong to Cat-a-Non, a support group for paste eating felines), so I spat them out and hurled a hair ball.

“Scot-uh! Bad girl!”

My dog came over from next door to prostrate himself before me. Impulsively, he crouched and barked. Oh, baby. I fluffed up to three times my size and slashed his nose, the little bastard. He cried like that cookie-pushing Brownie Scot-uh I bit when she made a grab for me.

“Scot-uh! Bad girl!”

Yawnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Damn straight.

May 7, 2015

Orville: You got enough asparagus? Gene: I got no asparagus. Orville: You coulda spoke up. I will pick you some tonight after the tomatoes are planted. Gene: Stir fry tomorrow.

Orville: Plant on Mother’s Day, I was taught. Gene: I picked a container full of kale and spinach and lettuce this morning. Orville: You are a gambler, plantin’ early. Gene: A woman at Lowes told me to plant three weeks ago. Orville: And you always listen to women. Gene: Like you. Orville: The wife starts a-talkin’. I turn down the hearing aids. You win money on that there Kentucky Derby horse? Gene: A waitress at the café won nine hundred dollars on a five dollar bet.

Orville: What in thee hell is wrong with them weather guys on TV? Gene: They called for rain, and look at it. We are dry—the ground is cracked. Orville: I am cracked, I guess. I doubled the blackberries, strawberries, my back is killin’ me. Gene: Say the word, I’ll help you. Orville: I told you about the Orville Way? Gene: Yes. Orville. So.

Gene: My cardinal babies got eaten. Orville: Owls? Gene: Raccoons. Orville: You know what I call songbirds? Hawk food. Them barn cats you like to rub up against—they are bird assassins. They got most of the birds in the blackberry bushes dumb enough to think they was hid.

Gene: Here comes the beehive keeper. Orville: God dang it, I never remember his name. Gene: Bob. Orville: Why in thee hell can’t I remember “Bob”? Boy, his bees are goin’ to town on my produce.

Bob: Hello, boys. Gene: How’s it going, Bob? You have smoke coming out the back of your pickup. Bob: That’s my hive smoker. I’m gonna check the hives for an extra queen. Orville, permission to drive across your lawn? Orville: Git on over there. Bob: See you, boys.

Orville: You do realize that dog belly you are rubbin’ has been wallowin’ in horse shit. Gene: Is that what that grey crusty stuff is? Orville: That dog is useless as a dog. Look at all the barn swallows.

Gene: I better go. I have six more blogs to write for that hotel chain. Orville: What’s the beekeeper’s name? Gene: Bob. Orville: Drop by in the p.m. You’ll have you a bag of asparagus. What do you do with all that? Gene: All what? Orville: You eat kale, spinach, asparagus. Ever crap in your pants? Gene: Not lately.

Orville: Take care. Gene: Take care.

May 6, 2015

This was a bittersweet Genehouse walk. I had awakened and walked outside and, as is my custom, checked on the baby cardinals. The nest was upside down. The newly-hatched chick of two days ago lay on the sidewalk, an embryo puddle. The fully-formed babies were gone. One tiny red-tinted wing rested on the ground.

Last night, I was sitting in the livingroom. More than the usual number of owls were singing madly—there are baby barred owls all around my house. A high-pitched scream came from the front yard and repeated several times. Coyotes—so I thought.

This morning, I knew what had happened. A family of raccoons raided the front yard, the mother smelled the baby birds and stood on hind legs and shook the nest, the mother cardinal wailing and flying away, the baby birds falling violently to the ground, the excited yelps of the raccoon family, the feast.

Some religious sects view animals as things on a lower plain. My mother firmly believed that our dogs would not go to heaven; heaven was reserved for humans. This is wrong, of course, sheer ego of certain patriarchal, unscientific scribes of the Bible. Cardinals and humans and amoeba are animals; humans are the highest order of apes. If your religion is strong enough to withstand that truth, pray away. If not, you are willfully turning away from Knowledge. Synonym: God.

I walked along the river path. Maple trees discharged their whirly-gigging seedpods, a crackling flotilla of helicopters crashing. The riverwater was placid, the sky filled with wispy clouds, Continue reading →

May 2, 2015

Chapter 1: “Call me Scot-ah.” I’m writing this with special translation software, cat to English for furless apes, or you couldn’t read it. You’re welcome.

There are no names in my world. We cats go by smelling each other’s butts. Speaking of which, I can lick my own butt. You apes are so limited; you poop in bowls and the poop slides away before we Supreme Beings can really enjoy the scent.

My human, Gen-ah, calls me Scot-ah. Scot-ah could mean supper is ready, or your water bowl is fresh or the can of tuna fish is being opened. I have trained Gen-ah well. He knows the extant of the damage I can cause if my needs aren’t met.

I have a dog, a small, extra-furry dumbbell that worships me. He lives next door and only comes when I summon him. He tried to sniff my butt once. I swiped his nose bloody with my claws and that was that. Now he lies before me and whimpers a proper exaltation to my resplendent body.

I’m confined to something called a house. Gen-ah thinks I will eat his precious birds of song. Gen-ah is right. Continue reading →

May 3, 2015

They pray at the café table, the husband doing the incantation. Their faces are grim; the afterlife is the Land of the Happy Whites Because We Ain’t Happy Here, and they want in. Meanwhile, stuff yourself and suffer. And wait for Fat God.

They weigh a collective five hundred pounds. They order enormous platters of food, lose sight of each other much less the room, and eat as if they had never eaten. When they are done, they shuffle to the glass doughnut case and stare in wonder and point. They might have been looking at puppies.

An old boy holds court with tales of a mole slaughter. He sat in a lawn chair at the junction of mole tunnels in his yard, shotgun at the ready, drank a cold one and waited. And drank another five cold ones and waited. “It’s a wonder y’all didn’t shoot yourself, man.” Every time the earth moved beneath him, he planted the shotgun in the ground and fired. Killed three, the rest escaped with minor injuries. Haw-haw-haw!

The juke box plays “new,” insipid country and western. All the songs have rock and roll beats by drummers on steroids, the lyrics—what passes for lyrics—are syncopated eighth notes, du-duh, duh-duh, du-duh, du-duh, and feature plenty of “Nah-nah’s” and “Uh- uh’s,” “Oh yeah-oh yeah’s” and off key humming. The themes are patriotism and touch: hold me, hug me, kiss me, God bless the USA. That sound you hear is Johnny and June Carter Cash rolling and moaning in their graves.

The three most sacred Midwest values are food (and the attendant diabetes and clogged arteries), banality of spirit and art, and right wing religion. We’re all miserable so eat up and pass the potatoes brought to us by God We Are Made in His Image He Is White Hallelujah. And we have guns in case you don’t like white bread.

Rice of color, bread of color, greens of color—even beer of color: we don’t like that here.

“That black bitch attorney general arrested six policemen for murder? Shee-it, what the world come to? The colored taking over.”

God shudders—I believe this. God shudders. The Jewish philosopher Jesus weeps. And weeps and weeps. He died for our ugliness.

And we got uglier.

April 29, 2015

The Great Depression. We lived on a farm outside Brighton. We had zero money. My mom, she growed a huge garden and we et off that and we canned stuff for the winters. And we butchered hogs and cattle.

There was a colored family lived in a shack across the road from us. We was poor, they was destitute. And my dad, he said we got to take care of folks in need. So we’d take vegetables and meat to that family—Joe Clark was the colored man’s name, how in the hell do I remember that—and Joe, he worked with my dad. And Dad give him gas for his tractor.

I don’t get the racism I read about and see firsthand. You treat a fella like you’d like to be treated—period. Ferguson—the riots after that black kid got shot. What does the world expect? Instead of offerin’ support, them towns, white people, hire cops to keep the poor people caged. You reap what you sow.

When I was sixteen, I and another guy would drive a flatbed truck up to Chicago, load it with liquor and cigarettes from one place and cases of Budweiser from another. In them days, early fifties, you just put a tarp over the load and drove back.

And gangs on the lookout along Route 66 would know you was haulin’ booze, and they’d hijack trucks. My partner kept a shotgun between his knees. We didn’t ever need it. And we’d deliver the load to a liquor store across from Wedge Bank. I can’t remember the name.

That fall, my dad walked into our barn, sat on a hay bale and shot hisself dead with a .12 gauge. I was the one found him. And a decade later, his oldest brother done the same thing—took his life with a shotgun. I got Dad’s shotgun in my closet. I don’t know.

I served in the army, in Korea. I saw things. I was in a foxhole, hunkered down while them Korean rockets came flyin’. Three guys in the next hole, they were joking around when this rocket—they made strange, kinda wobbly sounds—took the standin’ guy’s head off and blew up, and that foxhole was blood and flesh. I see it ever’ night I lay in bed.

Yeah, I got a bunch medals, a Bronze Star for valor Continue reading →

April 26, 2015

He walked into the café—stumbled more like it, slowly making his way to a table, his left arm held close to his body, the hand and fingers curled, like someone who had suffered a stroke. He might have been eighty, though tall and straight. He was dressed in blue and a blue ball cap rode his head. His feet wobbled badly—every step was a balancing act. No sooner did he sit down, he got back up and headed for the men’s room. His journey took fifteen minutes.

Sometime in the 70s. He had been a handsome man, cut a good figure and women flirted with him. He was married and had kids, but he liked the attention. And then love struck him blind: a married woman. They acted like teenagers and evoked disgust from the judgers and moral leaders of the town, and there were plenty of those.

And the two carried on in a public manner. One night he and his mistress were sitting at a bar and drinking beers and bumps. The cigarette smoke was blue and thick; the juke box blared country western music. Life was electric. He needed to urinate, but the men’s room had a line. He stepped outside, walked around to the back of the bar and relieved himself.

Three shadows descended on him, knocking him to the ground and beating him with ball bats. They grabbed him and stuffed him into the back of a pickup truck and drove off. He was just drunk enough that the pain of the attack and the reality of the situation hadn’t fully settled on him.

Until they pulled up to a gated cemetery, cut the bolt on the locked entrance gate and drove in. His dad was buried here. His cousins lay in a row. The attackers seemed to know that.

The driver parked the truck. The attackers climbed out, opened the back of the vehicle and dragged him off the truck bed and onto gravel. They pulled pistols and waited.

Suddenly there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world that could keep him from the realization that they intended to kill him. Continue reading →

My friend Sheila S. is one of the funniest women on the planet. Here paraphrased is her car trip from hell, May 31, 2014.

I was goin’ to the Cardinals game with Connie. We always meet in Alton—she’s from the Fosterburg area, me up on Elsah Hill. And I’ m nervous; I have to leave the house early, because added to my duties is, I am meetin up with this Mary Kay lady in the Schnuck’s grocery parking lot, to get my Aunt Jean her wrinkle cream. She is 84.

Jeanie, she says to me, “How would I look if I didn’t use Mary Kay wrinkle cream?” And I refuse to answer that.

So I get into my silver Hyundai and turn the key. The friggin’ car is dead. I hadn’t closed the back hatch all the way couple of days ago? And now it’s dead. So I switch to my black VW Cabriolet, even though it needs a new muffler and is really, really loud, because I don’t have enough time to call for help for the Hyundai.

Anyway, I’m drivin’ down Elsah hill and I pass this old black VW on the side of the hill, and I think, damn, it looks like my Cabriolet. I probably thought it had broke down. And I cruise on down into town, and there’s this cop car parked off to the left side, and I pass him, and then he puts on his blinkin’ lights, and I am thinkin’, damn muffler. Continue reading →

April 22, 2015

Yesterday afternoon, I played a phone message from my whiskey-voiced landlady, Bowling Ball, informing me that Genehouse was going to be landscaped. So I called her back and told her about Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal and their nest with three eggs (see the photos I posted last week) in my bush. Well, a bush.

Bowling Ball has been a nuisance since she was a teenager. Her parents couldn’t handle her or her brother, Penis Pump, so they put each kid in a separate, satellite house. According to the older neighbors, the kids threatened bodily harm, toted handguns, took drugs and bullied their way through adolescence.

Now the siblings don’t speak—Penis Pump has been banned from returning to the property—so Bowling Ball has more or less designated me as her stand-in enemy.

“The bush is not yours, Gene, the dang bush is mine,” Bowling Ball said. “What happens to it is none of your business.” “You’re not killing my babies,” I replied. “I will landscape the way I want,” she returned serve. Continue reading →

April 14, 2015

The farmer waddles into the café, his booted feet splayed out and open. The boot laces are untied to accommodate ham-size ankles. He weighs over four hundred pounds, most of it in his massive belly which protrudes at least three feet straight out, held in by tent-size overalls with all the buttons unbuttoned. He has to counter this appendage by leaning back. Thus, he is bent and has to navigate between tables carefully, stepping like a penguin in slow motion. If he fell, five men couldn’t lift him.

He sports a narrow edge of grey-white beard along his jaws, no mustache, and has long, curly hair. His red nose is wide and squashed. His fingernails are always black.

He makes a chair vanish when he sits. He often orders two platters of eggs and toast and bacon and home fries. He is always alone. He knows plant corn, you get corn.

* * *

The ancient man walks so bent forward he has to crane his neck to see ahead. His right eye is covered with a pirate’s patch. His skin is a mass of liver spots. His hands tremble so much he has to hold cup his coffee cup and billfold with both sets of fingers. Yet he is cheerful and groomed, dressed in pressed khakis and dress shoes.

He and his very petite wife always ask for menus, always order coffee, never order food. They ask the waitress the price of everything. Everything. And then order nothing. Continue reading →