A Self Made Man

          “I’m sorry? You want to do what?”

            That’s how she reacted when I told her.  I couldn’t believe it.  I mean, I didn’t expect her to jump on board right away. But she just stood there, one hand on a cocked hip and a dippy look accompanying her dropped jaw, like she wasn’t even sure I had spoken English.  To be fair, she did have a long day doing nothing and had barely sipped her vodka tonic before I approached her. I reclined into the patent leather folds of the sofa as I restated my proposal. Her tilted head made me realize that I may have relaxed too soon, not anticipated the full weight of what I had just dropped on her.

            “I have some property in West Virginia and I want to build a shelter there. And live there while I do it.  Start from scratch, you know?”

            Her silence wasn’t comforting. I plodded on, trying to instill some excitement in my vision. “Don’t you think we could use a change?  We can afford it,” I tried to convince her. “We don’t have to get rid of this place. It’ll be a year.  Maybe two. You can come whenever you want. I will go out there with a saw and a tent and a gun and carve out a new paradise.  The world will never find us.” I sat forward and added, “We don’t need it anymore.” It was a half-hearted argument, clearly not meant to include her.  I can see that now.

            She sipped her drink as I spoke and drained the remains when I finished, turning her back to pour another at the mahogany bar cabinet we had inherited from her mother. Her friend Sara brought an antiques dealer to a party we hosted once, and he told us we could probably get forty-five thousand dollars for that thing.  Marcy’s eyes lit up then, but she said she could never part with it, that it was priceless to her.  Bullshit, I say. I think she just knew it was the only thing of value she had brought to the marriage.

            “Jimmy! You are a corporate attorney.  You don’t own a gun. You’ve never built a thing in your life.”

            “That’s not true!” I interrupted quickly, because I knew where her laundry list of facts was headed. “I built quite a few things as a kid. Before high school. Before girls.  And you,” I added quietly, losing track. Marcy’s raised eyebrows told me that much. “Remember? That neighborhood in Jersey I grew up in was built around us. There were new houses going up for the next three years.  That was my playground. We built so many forts on those properties, with the leftovers we could find.”

            Marcy’s scoff snapped me out of my trailing gaze and wistful remembrance. “You want to go live in a fort?” she asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?  Rebuild your childhood?” She gulped a mouthful of liquor from her freshly poured glass. “What is this?!”

            I sighed and cut to the chase.  I knew I was going to end up here one way or another, I just thought it would take longer. I had honestly hoped for a healthy discussion. I had hoped I would have a couple of hours before I resulted to stating ultimatums.

            “Marcy.  I’m going. The plans are laid, the pieces in place.  It’s done.  If I fail, as you clearly think I will, then I’ll be back in a few weeks and you can send me to your therapist, or whatever you’d rather do.”

            “What about work?  What will they say?”

            “I’ve got it taken care of.  They are expecting me to be gone for at least a year. Jackson and Marshall have all the accounts covered.  They began to take things over three months ago.”

            From my seat on the sofa, I stared at her still standing crookedly, in confusion. Her form was nearly a silhouette in front of the floor to ceiling glass that enclosed the western wall of the living room.  The house overlooked the lower Sonoma Valley and the sunset was beginning to reflect off the infinity pool we had installed last year. I had never been in it.

            Surrounding us was the other twenty-five years of accumulated treasures: the forty-five thousand dollar liquor cabinet of course, and a Matisse sculpture, Eames chairs, a Chihuly chandelier. The sparse but costly furnishings reflected off the polished granite floor that ran seamlessly through the glass to the projecting balcony. We had paid the architect dearly to “bring the outdoors in”, as they say.  We had built this mausoleum of concrete and steel, glass and wood, plastic and oil, all in an effort to make it seem like it wasn’t here. It was a perfect metaphor for the way we had adjusted our lives to fit the positions we had attained; we had made ourselves invisible so that we may fit in. Everything we did was an effort to give our waking moments a framework for being, as if the moment itself was not enough to appreciate, not worthy of life, without things.

            I’d been having these thoughts a lot lately.

            I was having them when I walked out of the meeting with Eric LaSalle from the Securities and Exchange Commission and his representatives from the State of California.

            I’d been escorted from the offices of Madison & Waters nearly three months ago. I hadn’t lied to Marcy about the fellas taking over my contracts or the folks at work expecting me to be gone for a year.  That was all undoubtedly true.  They probably expected me to be gone for fifteen-to-twenty.

            Most of the glances I had garnered on my way out the door that day were rudely accusatory and carried more than a handful of disgust.  Only Paul Shell, the copy room boy with the Grateful Dead patch on his backpack, wished me well and genuinely seemed like he would miss me.  I would miss him.  He always had a Tupperware of homemade hummus and warm pita breads.  He made it all himself, with ingredients he grew or traded for with others. I never knew something could taste that good.

            The day before I walked out I had mused aloud, in front of Paul, about the land in West Virginia. He innocently suggested I take a vacation.

            Marcy clinked the ice in her empty tumbler to pull my attention back from the view out the window.  Her gazed still conveyed only frustrated confusion. The news of my indictment would likely be in the paper tomorrow morning. That would clear things up for her.

            “A few of the guys at work actually think that it will good for me to get away for a bit,” I said.

            “No they don’t,” she sneered, and walked out of the room.

~

            I wasn’t sure how far I would get when I left that night. I was relieved to arrive in Salt Lake City and sleep for a day in a simple motel. I smelled life on the comforter.  It was a bitter stench, but somehow more refreshing than purity.

            Every step of the journey was a surprise to me. I honestly didn’t think I would make it on the airplane the next day.  I couldn’t believe it when I did. Though I still have now, an even harder time believing I got off the plane unaccosted in Charlotte, North Carolina, bought a used car with cash, spent a day gathering supplies at  various stores, and drove six hours to a remote twenty acre plot I bought two years ago to launder my embezzlement. I could only hope that my ex-secretary Betsy, would not discover through an unnecessary credit check, the duplicitous use of her identity, and that she held partial title to twenty acres in the heart of southern West Virginia.

            It was nearing sundown when I pulled past the yellow NO TRESSPASSING sign that I’m certain demarcated my property. I had stocked up on what I could before leaving the last town I passed. I wasn’t in a position to buy a firearm, so I would have to subsist on purchased rations for the foreseeable future. I had canned and dry goods, an axe, chainsaw, hatchet, hammer, chisels, tent, et cetera.  All the goods would spill out of my car the next morning and I would assess what I had purchased in my last frantic shopping sprees. 

            But that first evening, as I pulled to the end of the road at the crest of the hill and saw the sun settling into the tree tops that capped the hill beyond and the stream below me, I felt anything but frantic. My thoughts flitted to the twelve pack of cold beers I had grabbed as a celebratory gesture to myself.  They would be the last drink I would have for some time, that wasn’t going to be fresh spring water.

            After pissing on the ground to mark my territory, I sat on the hood of the Four Runner with a frothy can of micro-brewed heaven and the sounds of twittering birds. I exhaled. Really exhaled. I lost weight with that exhale. A steam cleaning for the spirit.

            I slept in the car that night and the next night too. Soon I had cleared a small plot on the widest spot of a level stretch of ledge and assembled my tent.  I had a machete, shovel, rake and plenty of rope.  I developed a work space.  On the third day I heard an engine roaring off in the distance, and lamented my lack of a firearm.

            A fence took shape at the perimeter of my ledge. I felled whole trees and stockpiled fire wood. I slept and rose with the sun. I was dirty. I did not miss Marcy.

            I still had my cell phone, but it had long since lost its power and become a vestige to a previous time. Time had in fact become its own kind of relic, like money.  Time is money. That previously preached lesson was not easily forgotten, and I treated both of those things with the same disdain.  I purposely did not count days. I measured progress only by the changes to the quality of the space I inhabited. I think it was about three weeks before I began to worry about nourishment. 

            I enjoyed scaling the elm trees with my rope and dismantling them from the top down. I had tied a harness and seat from the climbing ropes. I was quite comfortable fifty feet in the air, with my chainsaw.  Marcy would not have believed it. Sometimes I spent my time in the trees simply sitting in a place I shouldn’t have been. I got to know the squirrels. I was clearing the view from my terrace to the stream.

            Maybe it was the sound of other gas engines beyond my own chainsaw that jarred me from my work today. I’m not sure if I cut the rope or if it snapped on its own.

            As I fell, the sound of my own whirring chainsaw stopped abruptly as I let go and I heard the sirens more clearly.  My leg must have been cut quickly.

            I thought I would roll down the hill after I landed.  I was quite concerned about that stage of my disaster as I fell.  I should not have been.

            I landed with a thud and stuck to that place. I didn’t at all anticipate landing on the axe. Or that it’s protrusion into my chest cavity would happen so smoothly.

            I could taste the dirt in my mouth being washed from my tongue by blood in my throat. I could see the base of my terraced ledge above me, though I could feel my blood running downhill behind me. I wished then that it was me rolling down the hill, body intact, getting bruised and feeling pain, because that would mean I was at least alive.

            But I didn’t roll. I was still. True stillness comes when breath stops. I could see the top of the fence posts I had carved and the first steps of the descending trail I had created off to the side. The vision was blurred and crowded by the small grasses that lay in front of my face. I saw the dress clad figure of Marcy peer over the edge of my fence while the uniformed officers flowed down the hill around her, like my blood to the stream.