“I learned from an old Dutchman when I was a kid.” Peter hissed and spit the words with several nods of his head and gave a wide, rising hand gesture that had me looking out across the fields to where he indicated as if I would see the old Dutchmen as well as he had. Then Peter sharply turned to look me directly in the eye. I didn't move and held my breath as I waited for his next.
“He used to tell me to do it right or don’t do it at all.” Old Peter’s voice was filled with disgust and disillusionment. “Not like this, the way it is today.” He indicated with his chin the piece of metal something-or-other he had secured before him in a large worktable mounted vise.
He shook his head again as he moved back to the workbench. Some minutes passed as he continued making some sort of preparations, clearing a space, arranging things on the table. The air inside the room on the side of the barn where Peter did his metal work hung heavy with the heat of the day. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze.
I liked the way Peter looked at you when he was talking to you. There was no hidden meaning in his communications. You didn’t have to read between the lines. If he said it, he meant it. After his last I would have added a comment or asked a question if it were appropriate.
“Do it right or don’t do it at all.” He said it all. That was it and enough talking. Right now it was time for business. Slowly and deliberately he put on the heavy work gloves. Then Peter lit the torch with a spark and a pop, and quickly adjusted the flame, and snapped down each of the dark lens of the goggles over his eyes. The shower of sparks began as he touched flame to the metal.
I watched his bare arms and baggy pants deflect or absorb the thousands of sparks. I wondered why he didn’t burn himself and the barn to the ground. It was too much for me, that torch work. I couldn’t do it. All was quiet save the hiss of the torch gas as he got on with his labor. His body looked natural in the “s” curve it formed as he welded. It was a crooked shape acquired from a half century of work under and around engines and other metal goods. For Peter only his work existed now. I’d have to wait if he would talk again.
It was hot enough in there so I walked out of the barn and leaned against one of the large double doors so as not to watch the hypnotic flame as he worked. I’d catch a breath of air, but there wasn’t any. The intense afternoon sun had the temperature up near a hundred. Out across the ranch there was the cloudless blue above, and a field of rusted junk below. As I lit a cigarette and brushed away a fly I saw a few dark birds soaring low in the distance, heading off near the riverbank to some mysterious bird purpose.
When my wife and I first moved into our rental trailer on the ranch I spotted Peter right away. He was easy to see. All you had to do was look for something moving. There wasn’t much of anything going on out there on the ranch. It was dirt and junk and then he’d interrupt the quiet. He’d drive by in his late model, large, filthy wreck of a car with the window down and him slumping as low back in the seat as he could go and still be able to see over the wheel and out the filthy window. He’d go slow, real slow sometimes and look very deliberately to see what he could see. I’d see him from a window of the trailer, or if I were outside doing something I’d just as casually look at him. If he could wait, so could I. What’s the hurry? There’s nowhere to go. Just back and forth from his trailer to the work barns. He’ll be back and I’ll be here.
For the first few days he didn’t acknowledge that I was alive or capable of even looking back. He’d just glare and drive past slowly. Then after a few days we’d ever so slightly give the merest nod of the head or twitch of the face. Gradually we became more deliberate in our exchange until it became an actual greeting of sorts.
Then finally one day he went from a slow crawl to a stop near my trailer door when I was outside. Then we began to talk. I don’t think we ever shook hands. It wasn’t like that. He was in his car and filthy. He wasn’t stupid. I didn’t want any grease on me and he was aware of that. I’d been accepted. He’d been accepted. So we exchanged names and started to talk.
Nothing much was said. Names, I just moved here with my wife, he’d been here a while, that’s was about it. Information was slow to pass. We took our time. Things were slow, but I new it ... and he did too. It was like the unwritten code of the west. I call it a code of the West because that’s where we were, West of the Sierras in Northern California. I imagine it has been the same code everywhere ever since there where people. That’s how things went, and that’s how people got along. But through observation and our brief exchanges and our own common sense we figured out who the other was. He was the old guy who’d been there a while, and we were the new folks just settling in. Peter and I understood: we were both quiet, observant, tolerant cause we chose to live there, and patient enough to wait each other out. As it turned out we were both undemanding. Neither one of us was the type to ever run next door and ask for a cube of butter. Over time we realized we’d get along just fine.
He was a drinker too, of sorts, the quiet sort. He’d sometimes have a bottle in one hand, and on those days he’d drive by real slow. Once or twice he’d stop somewhere on that few hundred yard drive from the barn area where he worked to his trailer the other side of ours. Some times he’d drive part of the way and stop to sleep for a while, or maybe he’d pass out.
There was junk on either side of the lane. Wood ties stacked tall, old refrigerators all in a line, old yellow gear like forklifts, heavy surplus equipment and assorted junk of every description. And once in a while I’d be inside and hear him run into something. No need to check for damage, he’s only going five miles an hour. There’s nothing to hurt anywhere. He’d just back up and start forward again. Then just as slowly and quietly he’d be moving again on that three hundred yard drive home. Later I’d learned that his wife had died a few years before. I’d heard that that’s when he began drinking in earnest.
He was an unkempt old codger and I was the middle class new guy. My wife was around and she was somehow acknowledged and accepted by Peter although she never had an exchange of words with him. She was quiet and private, another perfect candidate for the strange world of faraway-nowhere where we lived on this ranch in one of the rental trailers in the center of an eighty acre oats farm, in the conglomeration of barns and out buildings and junk and equipment that was located a mile from the road in the center of this endless spread of fields, another ten miles from the nearest town. Peter lived in the trailer right next door. Maybe fifty feet away. But that was off the end of our trailer and near the doorless end of his trailer. Neither of us had windows on that side.
We never had the need to walk to that side and we didn’t. He didn’t either. The space between our trailers was a no-man’s land. Well there was some junk parts and stuff there, but it didn’t get moved often. So it was simple. We minded our business and so did Peter. We had a garden out back and a center door facing the road and a side door farther from his side. We all left that area between us untrod. So the distance between us may as well have been a mile. When he drove past we’d look. When he looked we’d acknowledge each other. If I happened to be outside when he drove by, often he’d just loosen one hand’s grip and the steering wheel and I’d move a shoulder and give an appreciative facial twitch of salutation.
The ranch is isolated, and that’s the beauty of it, for those of us who lived there anyway. Some people may not have liked it just because it was a mess. You could take the main highway and drive right by the ranch and never give a second thought to the small group of buildings huddled together three-quarters of a mile down a side dirt road in a flat expanse of field. It was this privacy that gave the people living on the ranch a sense of freedom. We were out there and unnoticed. Conventionalities were tossed to the wind. Those of us who have lived here one time or another found it possible to work in the city while living in a social wilderness, acres of oats fields with a small winding river running through it. San Francisco was forty-five minutes away. Here there was only our solitude.
Residents of the ranch can’t accurately answer the questions most commonly asked by guests. “How many people live out there?” “What do they do with all this stuff?” These are the usual ones. I used to wonder the same things myself until I realized that these questions can’t be answered. First of all, you’d have to be a guest to be out there. No one could just happen to drive from the highway, three-quarters of a mile down a straight dirt road to an unseen area clearly marked “Private – Keep Out”. You have to be invited to get there, or nuts.
It’s hard to give a count of how many people called “Prizzleville” their home. The section with buildings covers about ten acres. There are about fifteen mail boxes all in a row, but judging from what I’ve seen, some residents don’t get mail, and many are without phones. The mailboxes themselves tell a story of the village. Some are indeed mailboxes, others are bird houses or mouse houses, or extras or duplicates or boxes I haven’t identified as to their purpose. Decorative items, I suppose.
Vehicles do come and go occasionally. The ranch, that’s what my wife and I call it to give our home distinction when talking to friends, and for lack of a better word, is the kind of place that the coming or going of another truck loaded with this or pulling that, or another car, is of little interest. A count of houses is also impractical, for they are too numerous, diverse, hidden in the weeds, or obscure for an accurate estimate of their number. Some residents live in trailers like we do, some in sheds, or in rooms sectioned-off in barns and other out-buildings, or in low flat shanties that were pulled in by barge from down river and now linger against the bank of the meandering reed lined shore.
The stuff that is scattered all around is the most prominent feature of the ranch. It represents at least one lifetime of collecting: bulldozers, stoves, diesel equipment, generators, large industrial-purpose trucks, boats, backhoes, road graders, tractors, metal frames, surplus government equipment of any sort, pallets of wood, and pipes of all types and sizes, sheds, farm gear, cranes, pulleys, wagons, logs, wooden beams, refrigerators, various other kinds of tools, furniture and implements too numerous to detail or too antiquated to identity. All piled together, or stacked, tied and bound in no apparent order, usually with some walking or maneuvering space between them. Everything lies between the weeds and through every kind of weather. If rust were gold this place would out value Fort Knox and the lost Incas treasure.
In the immediate shop area, three large size barns are loaded with every conceivable tool and accessory ever made since pilgrims set foot on this continent. Immediately out front of the barns the hard, dry clay ground is nearly covered with the overflow of tools and machine parts and jobs half started or completed, strewn about and left to rest where they were last used, in storage until they are needed again. There are four or five of most everything, and all of it going to hell in the intense summer sun and the long, wet, rotting gray rains of winter.
In a flash the jumping blue flicker and giant welding shadow of Peter ceased to exist. Peter turned off the torch and set it on the ground. When the metal stopped glowing red he used tongs to remove it from the vise and drop it into a bucket of water, then pulled it up again and held it close to his face to examine the weld.
“Peter, oh, why don’t you answer me!” When she spoke she shook her hand like it was on fire, emphasizing the rhythm of each word. Mrs. Prizzle was suddenly there in the shop.
She had white skin and long thick gray and white hair knotted above her head, a frail build and about five feet tall. Her meanness made her seem larger to me. I didn’t like her one bit. She had a rubber face capable of changing from a grotesque, laughing smile to a hideous, sour scowl in a second. The ease with which she made this transformation was unnerving. I stayed in the doorway and kept my distance from her. She wanted something from Peter.
She reminded me of the satyr that kept away from the man blowing his hands to keep them warm, then blowing the bowl of soup to cool it off. The satyr never trusted a man that could blow hot and cold with the same breath ... and she did it all the time.
The two of them could have been classmates sixty years ago, although I doubt either of them had ever spent much time in school. Standing together they looked like ancient orphans in second-hand rags. She usually wore four or five sweaters over several skirts that often-time dragged on the ground. Today, however, they were raised up, showing Rolled-down nylons and some sort of war surplus footwear.
Her conversations alternated from blunt to mysterious, but Peter could handle her well.
“Yea, well you go on back to the house,” he told her with a lot of hand motions thrown in, “and I’ll be over and see what I can do about it.”
As she began to object he just repeated himself. That’s all she was going to get from him.
Mrs. Prizzle was the matriarch of the Prizzle clan, and the Prizzle ranch. The Prizzles leased thousands of acres for others to farm, and charged fair rent for many to stay at the ranch; yet they lived like paupers.
Her two sons Bowler and Hank executed the duties of the ranch, whatever that amounted to. Bowler was the fast-talking, full-bellied ball of misdirected energy. Hank was the slow talking, loud-mouthed pro-nazi. It was hard to determine who was the more foul mouthed.
Mrs. Prizzle made about four attempts at turning away from Peter, stopping each time to reconsider, but finally she was leaving, coming out my way this time. She steadily approached, then stopped right before me in the shadow, clutching her thick walking stick that was taller than she. This was a direct confrontation. I didn’t know if she was going to use the stick on me or not. Inside I may have been daring her. It was a few shaky moments delay before she composed her face deciding against a direct assault. She took a breath, closed her eyes and began to speak, “Now who are you?” She said, tossing her head side to side with each word. Her bitter tone burdened with irritation and feeble exasperation.
I told her my name and that I live here, and that my wife and I had lived here for two years and that “Peter is helping repair a bracket that broke on our stove. Bowler was going to get around to it, but we can’t use the stove, so Peter’s taking care of it. Peter is.”
She said nothing more. I wasn’t sure if my words pissed her off deeply, or if she heard me at all. Her expression was not familiar to me. Mrs. Prizzle turned away and headed directly out into the hot afternoon sun. I watched her shuffle on in her colorless rags, dull gray from washing and overuse and dust. She stabbed at the earth with her spear, kicking little clouds of dust, daring anything or anyone to get in her path.
She reached her little, red, old, toy wagon, half-loaded with horse manure and, taking it by the handle with one hand, clawed at the dead earth with the ugly staff in the other.
I just didn’t like the old lady. That’s what Peter called her,“The old lady." She walked a few yards and scratched the crack in her skinny ass, then put her stick hand over her eyes to shield the sun. She looked about deciding something, before moving on toward her house.
Peter came over to where I stood and looked out with me into the sun. We didn’t have a lot of words to exchange. Despite fifty years difference in our ages we were comfortable in each others silence. Once in a while Peter would start up a story somewhere in the middle and tell just the part that brings him a pleasant memory. I watched him light the cigarette that hung from his lip like in a scene from a Bogart movie. He’d light it, then swirl the match around as if he were removing something sticky from his hand. Peter was working for his keep at the Prizzle ranch, and of all the metal workers and machinists I’d seen anywhere he was the best. If he couldn’t find the part he needed he could make it from this or that.
“Godawful bright,” he said at last.
The suddenness with which he spoke caught me by surprise. “Huh?”
“God awful bright,” he repeated. “What’s the matter, can you hear?”
Coming toward the shop was Bowler in his battered van. It moved with a rough sounding engine that had a sense of urgency just like its driver. The van stopped out front at an odd angle and Bowler hopped out with the motor running. He also left the door open, as was his custom. Bowler propelled his sweaty, round body with the full-bodied motions of a cross-country skier. He was head-down and mumbling. When he about ran into Hank he shouted, “They can’t seem to, uh, find what it is we need. I know we have it, but it takes time us...”
His High-pitched words whined sharp before trailing off. It made no sense to me, but Bowler seldom did. Per usual, Bowler seemed angry with Hank.
“They don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground,” Hank yawned the words like an old man from Maine, although he’d never been east of Reno. It was a strange dialect,
“Those sonofabitches better! Why ... they can never call when I’ve got to get other things and ... uh ... I waited! I’ve got to get back this afternoon!”
Bowler was yelling in Hank’s face.
“I can’t worry about that!” Hank howled back, then mumbled something else and stuck his head back into the engine he was working on. There were several forklifts with engines suspended on chains. It appeared to me they were working on many projects at once, which was usually the case.
“Hitler was right!” Hank yelled front the engine.
A loud buzzing filled the entire area. It was the phone. They installed the buzzer on the peak of the middle barn so anyone ten acres away could hear the phone above the sound of heavy equipment engines and enemy aerial bombardment. There were no engines running now, so the buzz vibrated the earth. Bowler put his head down and marched off to the shed to answer the phone.
Peter and I observed it all, and then he shook his head in a discouraged manner and went back to work.
“Tell that stupid sonofabitch to shove it up his ass!” Hank tilted back his head to roar at Bowler who was coming out of the barn and heading for the van. Bowler was carrying a handful of junk and papers. As he walked he sorted out two small plastic envelopes, the kind that contain screws or bolts and the like. Bowler was forever making the ten-mile drive into town to buy a few nuts or bolts, even though the three large barns had thousands of them. The trouble was he couldn’t find anything. I asked for thee twenty-penny nails once. He couldn’t find them.
“Now what I’m going to do is put all of these in separate boxes," he waved his arms to show the expanse of the storage areas, "so we can find them when we need them.”
All three metals barns were so full of tools, parts, benches, boxes and containers that it was difficult to walk through.
Another time, several months before I asked Bowler about purchasing an old wood burning cook-stove I saw rusting away on the back of a flatbed truck near the mailboxes. I approached him at the workshop.
“Hey, Bowler.”
“Hello?” He looked up from outer space, and identified that it was a real person talking to him. “Oh, you there.”
Then I asked him about buying the cook-stove.
“No, uh, I, uh. Have a...it’s part of the plan that I uh ... have to, uh ... What I am going to do is get all of this together ... the whole thing, like it will be uh ... uh ...”
“A collection?” I guessed.
“Exactly ... it will be like a collection of things ... uh ... that I will, I have ... and it’s the plan, you have to see the whole,” and here he drew a large circle with his hands ... the whole plan.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, nodding.
“Uh ... yes.” He was satisfied with that explanation.
“Say, though, Bowler, you’ve got those beautiful antique blacksmith tools over there, next to where I live. I don’t want to buy them, or anything, but you really ought to get them in out of the weather, because in a few more years they’ll just rust to nothing.”
“Well, that to." He shook his head. "I’ve got to...right now I’ll uh...just leave ‘em, you see, cause I’ve got to get this where I can get the whole place...uh...uh...together, you see, but here are priorities.” He was finished talking and went back to whatever.
I had seen Bowler’s priorities. All ten acres of junk seem to move around as if it were on hind legs. A large pallet with construction blocks near our place, for instance, mysteriously moved from one side of the road to another. An old military boat that sat upside down in back of our place with three gaping holes in the bottom suddenly appeared another fifty yards further away, as did a beat-up, late model station wagon.
It was common knowledge that when the days turned shorter and the gray-winter rains arrived you would hear the roar of large equipment and look out to see Bowler driving by in a yellow rain-slicker on a bulldozer. Then a half-hour later he would shake the trailer with a near miss from a road grader. And if the rain persisted and the chill winds blew as it turned evening you could see him moving large objects about with a forklift. Only the buildings on the ranch seemed to remain stationary. Most all of the entire ten acres of junk was repositioned from one month to the next.
That winter it rained record amounts. All continued usual at the Prizzle Ranch. Mrs. Prizzle wandered about, stopping to change directions.
Bowler and Hank had loud arguments that could be heard from a long distance. Peter, alone since his wife passed away several years before, would frequent Mrs. Prizzle’s kitchen and get intolerably drunk. Many were the times I’d look out the window in the rain and see him sitting for long periods of time in his car out in front of the shop. He’d drink wine from the jug until he was senseless.
Occasionally I’d be outside when Peter drove by on his way to his place about fifty yards the other side of ours. He’d roll down the window as he approached. He’d stop and look at me. I’d stoop what I was doing and look back.
Sometimes we’d say something, often times not. He’d look, and wave with a nod or a slight lifting of the hand. He’d go on blindly drunk. Some evenings I’d hear him drive by slowly, almost stopping, then spinning the wheels and throwing gravel he’d continue on home or back to the shop.
Once, one evening I was indoors when I heard him run into the back of my car. It did some minor damage, but sounded like a major wreck. I don’t think he knew he hit it; even though he had to back up and try again to drive around my car. Neither of us ever mentioned it.
My wife and I never invited Peter over. Not for a meal or a talk. We often discussed it as we listened to him drive back and forth during the relentless rainy season. And, never did he hint for an invitation. He’d bring our dog bones, but he’d drive around with them for several days until we ran into each other outside. My friendship with Peter was confined to the shop area and the roads of the ranch.
Peter hung around with the Prizzle bunch, living in oil and grease. Even though he wore filthy rags until he threw them away for another set of second-hand baggy clothing, Peter was my friend.
In January a new storm front swept in and brought torrential rains that woke us from our sleep one Monday. It was a deluge with a violence that hit our trailer like buckshot from a shotgun.
By late afternoon it was raining harder and Bowler was out running a bulldozer back and forth, moving things. A half hour later he went by on another piece of heavy machinery. I couldn’t tell what he was doing.
All that night the rain continued, and by morning water was collecting in large puddles around our trailer. By noon the rain still poured. It had been coming down more than thirty hours non-stop. My wife went to the store to get supplies in case we got flooded in. I ran over to the shop to see what Peter was doing.
He had a diesel engine apart and was refitting the head gasket. He was grease to his elbows and engine parts scattered everywhere. I came in through the open double doors being careful where I stepped.
Peter was speaking Dutch when I came in. He kept it up, directing his conversation to me when he saw me. He threw in a few English words so I knew he was talking about the engine he was working on. It was a game we played once in a while. Id shake my head in agreement and add a “Yah” or "Nah." at appropriate times.
Hank drove up from the barn to the shop in a forklift carrying a large section of pipe with an engine attached. He stopped in a large puddle right out front. At the same time, coming from the direction of the main house was Mrs. Prizzle. Bowler’s van pulled up then, he’d come from another direction. Bowler left the motor running and hopped out, leaving the door open. Bowler looked very official in his yellow slicker, rather like a school crossing guard.
“Why did you get this, uh here? Why don’t we leave it the hell right on ... uh, leave it there?” Bowler yelled at Hank.
Hank was bent over looking at the pipe. He straightened immediately when Bowler shouted and, with wrench in hand, confronted Bowler.
“Your Ass! You can’t leave this engine out in the water when it don’t work.” Hank shook the wrench in Bowler’s face.
“You ignorant, stupid sonofabith, now what are’ya going to do with, uh it?” shouted Bowler, waved his arms as he stomped the wet earth puddles .
Mrs. Prizzle approached the duo and went around them without giving them a glance. They continued the shouting match almost to the point of pushing each other. Mrs. Prizzle had her stick in one hand and a burlap bag in the other collecting aluminum cans.
Bowler abruptly went back to his van, still shouting. He climbed in. The door was already open. Hank threw his wrench and bounced it off the side of the van. Bowler got back out and scooped out a handful of mud and threw it at Hank. Mrs. Prizzle kept her icy stare in the trash bins, even when some of the mud splattered her. Bowler got back in the van, stomped the gas and peeled away. The rear of the van swung from one side of the road to the other.
“What’s that thing Hank’s got?” I asked Peter.
“That’s the pump,” he replied.
“What pump’s that?”
“The one that ain’t working. That’s how comes we got all this water ‘round here." He looked at me to make sure I got it. "The pump went bum, they all knew it, and Bowler was supposed to fix it last summer.” Peter pulled his hat down over his forehead and pulled up his trousers with both hands while staring into the distance across the ranch. “Oh, I suppose I’ll take a look.”
Peter went out to where Hank stood by the pump. I followed. Twenty yards away Mrs. Prizzle noticed me then. She smiled wildly like a chimp. Dropping her bag, she waved ferociously to me like I was her favorite returning war hero in a parade. The sight of her so happy made me smile. She saw me smile, and her face went blank, as if her head cleared and she realized it was me. She went back to the search. I was sorry I smiled.
“He ain’t going to find it,” Hank yawned the words, “That friggin’ ass thinks he can go to town and find the rim that wraps around this here.” He pointed the spot to Peter.
Peter stooped lower to examine the problem.
“I promised Mother I’d take her into town so ...“ Hank was bowing out of the challenge. In a short time he and Mrs. Prizzle were in a truck heading off the ranch.
I asked Peter if there was anything I could do. He said no, that he’d have to figure why the pump isn’t working.
Tuesday evening my wife and I listened to the sounds of the downpour. It was incredible how hard it rained, and how long. When we’d think it was about to let up it’d rain harder. I had been in one typhoon in the South Pacific during my stint in the Navy and rain-wise this was worse.
More of a problem for us, than the chill winds and noise of the rain, we worried about the flooding, not really dangerous, but enough to ruin our vehicles and trap us here. By Wednesday morning the rain slackened, but we awoke to find our trailer surrounded by a foot of water. Several times during the night I looked out toward the shop. The light was on. Peter had moved the pump inside and kept working on it.
By ten a.m. the rain stopped and a bit of sun began to break through. I waded over to the shop. Peter stood in the doorway watching a blue heron high above the barn. I noticed the pump was gone.
I said to Him, “Supposed to be record high tides tomorrow, Peter. We going to be okay?”
“Yea.”
“What about the pump?”
He looked at me. “I just started it. Water’ll be down in a couple o’ hours.”
He stuffed a cigarette between his lips and kept talking with it dangling down, stuck on his lower lip. “The old Dutchman’d roll over if he know’d I used Port’a’geez leather to fix it.” He laughed one hard “Hah!”
Peter removed his baseball cap and stroked the shiny pink skin on top of his head that neatly parted two bushes of hair on each side. I'd never seen him with his hat off. It was like a circus clowns head. When he spoke he had a twinkle in his eye that allowed me to see what he looked like sixty years ago when he was a boy. He showed a grin that can only be described as cute and childlike.
“Yeah, Port’a’geez leather, ever hear o’ that? That’s what he used to call bailing wire.” Peter's grin got bigger and his eyes twinkled.