-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

February 16, 2015

“Come for coffee and toast.” Irene 2:16

And verily I dideth come to my neighbor’s house, past shoveling out from snow and her dog did lick me and play tug-of-war with me and sniff my socked feet. For lo, rain and sleet and six inches of snow, first snow of the winter, did fall from the heavens, and it was good and pretty and NO MORE FRIGGING SNOW!

“Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils and millet, and spelt and put them in one vessel…” Ezekiel 4:9

And verily Irene served me strong coffee and blueberries and strawberries and Ezekiel bread, and it was good—it was mouth heaven, tongue ambrosia, throat lozenge, tummy tickle. And no other bread can I puteth in my bread hole, for once thou hast tasted Ezekiel, to eat less than that heavenly grain would be freak-ial.

“You have to freeze it or it rots.” Irene 2:17 Continue reading →

February 13, 2015

I have an explosive history. Literally.

When I was five or six, a Fourth of July in Sidney, Nebraska, my mom’s brother, Dee took a length of narrow steel pipe and stuffed it with gunpowder and some other ingredients. He balanced the pipe against a concrete block, lit the fuse and ran for it, his brothers and sisters yelping with anticipation, and me and my sister excitedly covering our ears.

Nothing. A few seconds passed. Uncles Dewitt and Jess were discussing what might have gone wrong. Dad and Grandpa Jones drank whiskey with Beanie the Bulldog.

Suddenly I stood up, ran for the pipe, grabbed it, my mom yelling, “No,” and I stared down the barrel and KABOOM! My face was ashen gray and my eyes were studded with paper wadding. My flesh was rent. I ended up in the hospital, of course.

When I was seven, my grandfather Floyd pushed back from the Thanksgiving table and said to Grandma, “No pie, darlin’. I will explode.” Continue reading →

February 12, 2015

Two days ago, I emerged from the Rio Vista woods and hiked westbound along the Mississippi—and stopped. A glider plane was headed east, over the trees—or so it seemed, me looking into the sun.

It was a dark-hued bird with an eight foot wingspan, the width of the wings over two feet across, soaring straight-winged above the bluff line then descending at an angle, like it was Lambert Field ahead.

The golden eagle, brown and grey and white-ruffled, its curved beak four inches long landed in a slender treetop outside my friend Jerry’s house, the tree bending from the poundage of the giant bird.

It saw me. It glared at me. It dared me.

Yesterday two immature bald eagles went claw to claw on a stubby length of driftwood at the foot of Clifton Terrace. They were playing tug of war—with a small fish instead of a rope. Back and forth rocked the black-headed birds, the fish’s body elongating but not coming apart, and then the eagle on the left let go and took off toward Scotch Jimmy Island, the victor swallowing Continue reading →

February 10, 2015

Yesterday dawn the eagles took showers in swirling mist.

Yesterday dawn I walked through the brown woods, my face beaded with mist and even the stillness was wet. Three pairs of cardinals settled in my yard and foraged, the females tweeting eighth notes and the males long glissandos, these dancing valentines.

Yesterday morning late the air turned to cold stone.

Yesterday morning late the wind meditated with deep breaths, in and out, making the arthritic trees bend and moan. I touched my tongue to the breeze and it stuck and I tugged away and my tongue tasted coal and fish and juniper and black-capped sparrow and clay.

Yesterday afternoon a kestrel hovered midair, flapping its fast wings.

Yesterday afternoon a rabbit screamed and leapt into a brush pile, clumps of its fur impaled on the bramble bushes. I watched the kestrel rise straight up and drop again, and field mice scurried to the brush fort, and the predator moved on—food was everywhere.

Yesterday sunset the clouds were Swiss cheese.

Yesterday sunset stars and planets filled the holes, Orion stretching his belt and limbering up for the voyage south. I leaned against the spruce tree and watched deer shadows and heard wild violets crying to get out of bed and tree frogs sighed and rolled over.

Yesterday night, a barred owl posed the question: Who?

Yesterday night there were no answers but there was music of maracas of budding trees and chattering teeth of feral cats. I saw the river’s reflection flow across the meadow and fall into the black sinkhole and sate the thirst of the dreamers, of the dreamstate.

This morning I lay in bed and felt for scars and lumps.

This morning I saw my ravaged face its eyes swollen its teeth translucent the skin all redness and greenness and yellowness—a man of color, I—and thought of yesterday’s landscape paintings, of the Painter, of how painting is alienism:

Of how dreams drown in sleeping pill puddles.

February 7, 2015

“There are three black bears,” the Missouri conservation officer said, pointing to the south along the Missouri River. “We don’t advertise it—you know how people can get. But they’re out there in the wetland.”

“There is a black bear along the bluff over Clifton Terrace,” my friend Layton told me over coffee. “I seen it shufflin’ across that bean field.”

A farmer at the diner showed me and the boys a photo from a trip wire camera he mounted along his fence line. A full grown mountain lion, its eyes red from the camera flash, stared at us.

“A person would have to be a fiend from hell, to shoot that beautiful animal,” Layton said.

That noise you hear is the fiends from hell who live around here locking and loading their semiautomatic rifles and Uzis.

Genehouse is less than five miles from all of the animals mentioned above. I have seen the bobcat early of a morning, bathing itself with its right leg raised over its head. Coyotes regularly walk across the yard. Continue reading →

February 4, 2015

She had her fifteen minutes of fame when the St. Louis Post Dispatch wrote a cover story about her in November. I remember reading the story and wishing I could help. There are so many stories, so many people in need of our help. But this particular saga featured a young black woman, 18, her glued-together eyeglasses pushed up on her nose, who grew up way before her time.

LaTonya Williams and her mom and little brother had moved to a suburban St. Louis housing complex in Valley Park off Route 141. They had moved to escape the crime of the inner city and so that the girl and her brother could attend decent schools. The strip of apartments was so new that no public transportation was available. No sidewalks had been laid.

So this amazing adult in girl’s clothing, in addition to attending high school and assuming the burden of helping her family survive walked two miles one way to her two minimum wage jobs at Burger King and Bob Evans. What is the deal about a four mile round trip? Continue reading →

February 2, 2015

So I’m sound asleep this morning, 4 am, and I hear a slight noise and start to stir when my forehead explodes. Thinking I’m under attack, I pull my handgun out of my shorts and start firing. Six shadows are killed.

I jump out of bed and get stabbed in the foot. I run to the bathroom and flip on a light. Blood is spewing from my head, and a severed vein in my right hand is shooting a geyser of blood six inches into the air. A one inch shard of glass is sticking in the heel of my right foot. Blood covers the bathtub and the floor; blood runs down the wall from the light switch.

I grab toilet paper and try to stop the hand from leaking, but each wad of paper turns redder than a rose. And now I feel sick, and my head throbs. The bathroom looks like a suicide or a murder occurred. I think, “Dexter.”

I walk into the kitchen, bloodying my carpet, to get paper towels. Blood spews over my dishes in the strainer. I think, “Psycho.”

(I also think, what a horrible singer is bloody Idina Manzel, having held the National Anthem end notes for ten seconds, mistaking that and her grimace trick for artistry. Why do modern singers grimace so much? Because they’re hoping we’re distracted by the face and not listening to the voice?)

The blood stops flowing after thirty minutes. I investigate my own crime scene. It seems that dame I picked up at the Super Bowl party waited until I feel asleep then she hit me over the head with a champaign bottle. She took my money, my Medicare card, all the cat toys, my peppermint Altoids, Jennifer Lawrence’s pink underpants—J-Law left them here when she visited over Christmas—my the complete works of Rod McKuen, my Holy Bible and my unholy Bible, my collection of newspaper plastic sleeves, my good hairpiece and my bad hairpiece, my Phyllis Schlafly voodoo doll, my Stan Musial bobblehead, my woven cat hair serape, and a sweet potato.

Just kidding. The light fixture on the ceiling over the bed, a glass plate type, fell and shattered on my head. Could this be because I’m fracking my own backyard? Because it’s groundhog day? Because Scout the Cat loosened the nut holding the light fixture? Was this the actual Obamacare Death Panel?

The emergency room glued my hand, my foot and my head. A lovely nurse gave me a tetanus shot. A nice doctor told me I have a “slight concussion.”

Can you tell?

January 30, 2015

I hadn’t seen Farmer Orville and the Quilt Queen for a week. And since the day was sunny and windless and mild, it seemed like a good time to visit. I walked up the driveway and Reba the farm dog came running. She lay on her back, but when I got close she ran. This little drama was a game.

Orville, clad in new blue jeans and a too-big shirt, opened the kitchen door: “Reba, if you ain’t gonna defend our place and eat intruders I am gonna fire you.”

It was good to be home. My friend poured me a cup of coffee and pointed to the last bin of Christmas cookies but I refused manfully. We sat at the kitchen table and jawed about bald eagles and the thousand fat robins along the bluffs and how in the blink of an eye the strawberry field would be flowering and blackberry-bush-pruning would commence. I resolved to eat more blackberries this summer. I ate them last summer until my skin oozed juice.

New this year: My friend Farmer B. will be bringing some beehives to Orville’s north field, beneath the walnut trees. I will be assistant beekeeper, and I can’t wait.

Quilt Queen, fresh from a nap, made her entrance. They were expecting their fourteen-month-old great-granddaughter for a visit, so the talk turned to theories of child rearing, about which I know nothing. Continue reading →

January 24, 2015

I saw the white sedan approaching at a rapid rate of speed. I was going 45, the speed limit, westbound toward Genehouse, the setting sun directly in my face. The driver made as if to ram my car, then began to honk. I looked in the rear view mirror. It was a teenage girl.

Being the calm and cool person I am, I ignored the kid. She braked and backed off about fifteen feet then she hit the accelerator and came at me again, this time putting her hand on the horn and holding it there. I looked at her again and out came her left middle finger. I tell you, I was terrified.

I waved—well, I returned the finger gesture and mouthed a word appropriate, I felt, for a stupid teenage princess, rhymes with “runt,” and wondered who the parents might be, of this moron who felt she owned the road, the car, the old man, the United States, the world, the universe.

Now the princess began to hand jam the horn: BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! Continue reading →

January 20, 2015

There are days in one’s life where, psychologically, time seems to creep like viscous mud. And then there are days of serendipity, where what was supposed to happen suddenly felt meaningless, and what couldn’t have been anticipated overwhelmed the senses. That was my yesterday.

I sat down to write, the sky azure and clean and the sun heating the sleeping cat and birds calling madly, and in the yard a new resident made an appearance, perhaps in honor of Martin Luther King Day: a black squirrel—we’ll call him Ebon. Day set, day on.

Until my neighbor Irene called and asked if I wanted parmesan cheese on my “zucchini spaghetti.” I was in mid-sentence creation, so I said no parmesan and really didn’t think more about it, and I went back to work. At midday, Irene knocked—I had forgotten about the food—and I opened the door and received a hot Tupperware container. “Lunch,” Irene said.

The smell emanating from the container was tomato-y and inviting. I took off the lid and—no zucchini, just stewed tomatoes and pasta and spices. I fetched a spoon and dug in, and—the pasta crunched. The pasta was long, curly strings of zucchini. Irene had bought a machine that shredded squash into noodles: zuchghetti. Continue reading →