Coffee and Cattle

Hey.

Hey Marino.

I hate when you call me that.

I know.

But you’re still gonna do it huh?

Yep, still gonna do it. Don’t worry though it won’t be all the time. Just when I feel like rattling your cage to see if you’re still with us.

How considerate of you. Is there coffee?

Check the pot. Margie made some earlier. I know she walked out with a thermos, but I don’t think she stuffed it all.

Good news, it’s a happy healthy pot full of the black stuff! You want some Tem?

No, I’m. Actually… sure, sure I’ll have some.

Here we go boss, just as you ordered.

"World’s best grandma", my favorite mug.

I had a feeling. I grabbed the one that says, "Pawpers Purrview!"

That one. It’s got a picture of a cat with an old timey cap on, doesn’t it? Margie likes dumb shit like that.

Yeah? I kinda like it. She’s looking for that He-cat.

That sounds familiar. A remnant from your college days?

I didn’t go to college Tem.

That’s right. You’re just so articulate that I sometimes forget. Paradoxical paratrooper.

This coffee isn’t dog-wet diarrhea.... your wife definitely made it. Funny you mention paratrooping. I was watching another war film. You know I hate those damn movies. They always got a way of making a man feel inadequate. And they are for men. Real war movies don’t really give a shit about women. This one I was watching had all the usual stuff on brotherhood, sacrifice, honor. And it felt like it was just wagging a finger at me. Wagging a finger at me and saying you should have been more! You should have given more!

Well, OK. So why were you watching it if you hated it?

Because some part of me likes feeling inadequate, I guess. Like there is still something I gotta do. Something I can do and that only I can do. And my imagination happens to capture it best on a battlefield of some kind, any kind. War wherever it finds its roots. Whether that’s in some shit hole desert, a jungle, in a city, back in Mr. Harty’s overblown honors math class, or hell—even in a nursery.

Christ, a nursery. What kind of wars are taking place in a nursery?

Well, you know, wars of conscience waged between the kids and their keepers. Like, the kids don’t know it yet, but they are fucked. Deep down in em they start feeling that and already they are fighting for life. They just don’t recognize it that way. The nurses then, are supposed to be these loving tenders to the garden of fresh youth. But they’re just some schmucks who work for pay. They give a shit about these kids because they are human, and they signed up for this job. But that’s what it is, a job. See the kids don’t got no conception of ‘job’ but the first people they encounter after opening their eyes to their mom, or dad, or doctor, whoever… are these handlers.

So what. That’s the way it goes. We have to do something to sort out all the babies that are born in hospitals.

Sure, I ain’t saying we gotta abolish the graven institution. Just that it sets a tone and it’s a part of so many kid’s origins whether they know it or not. Like, some babies are definitely getting more attention from the nurses than others. Some of them ain’t getting no love at all. And hell, a bunch of other random fucks can just look through a window and see a field of babies nicely sorted and numbered. Rows of pumpkins in a patch. Like, if one couple came to the sorry conclusion that their baby was ugly or thought they were mentally defective.

Fucks sake.

Fuck it, you know what I mean. But anyway, these parents could see what was on offer and if they didn’t like the look of their own then what’s the harm in finding one that they did like the look of. One that was just similar enough to them that it wouldn’t matter once that kid got older. The parents could believe it—if it was just a happy accident. The kind that they don’t have to take responsibility for. That’s what the nurses are for. Overworked, jaded, maybe even a little spruced up on freebies from the drug closet. They get tripped up and switch things around in their heads and all the sudden the Jones’s kid and the Schwartzman’s kid are still just the Jones’s kid and the Schwartzman’s kid. But you know, different mothers. A lot of details get lost. People forget things. This is what happens to the kids whose destiny was to be born sorted. Not all, but enough.

Do you think that we have found a way to turn ourselves into cattle?

Ain’t that the state of things? People emulate nature, sure. What’s worse is that we emulate human nature like it’s separate from us. Like it can be contained and measured within a lab as long as the lab is big enough. Stupid shit people say to their kids like, “well you were loved. We always supported you”, this and that. Those words don’t eliminate the smells that the kids get off each other and off the nurses who just got in from a smoke break and ran in to start dealing with a crier. And that one: the crier—deep down he or she knows, again without knowing, or umm being aware of it I oughta say. They sense that they got saddled with parents who couldn’t love themselves enough to pay for more. More baggage than they got means. The kids that don’t cry can’t cry. Right from the start they lack the necessary faculties to recognize the horror of their condition and so they accept it and grow up finding pleasure in chewing cud. The crier gets a sense of this too. So, he or she starts wailing in desperation because it’s all the poor little fuck can do. Now a handful of the semi-sensitive types start crying because that shit is infectious. And now… now you got a micro-population of little shits who are gonna go to some under budgeted school where they are gonna do the same song and dance all over again. And they are all gonna hate the crier. Even though all the crier did was spread the word of God.

Word of God. You’re being funny with me, aren’t you?

A little joke at the end of that sad spin of yarn, yup.

Well, OK. So, you want to go back and give it another shot? Little baby Marino gets try number two and somehow recollects in his infantile, reeling, post-natal mind that he needs to fight his way out of this one.

Fuck Tem! Yeah sure, then I’ll teach myself how to walk. And when the nurse comes in I karate chop her unconscious. The revolution begins with my escape and soon the whole country’s managing an uprising of newborns who are fed up with being forced into mechanical pageantry.

Sounds like a worthy cause. I think I’d have joined you.

Except you weren’t put in a goddamned nursery, look at you. You were blessed, chosen, I can tell. You stink of money even though you live in this dolled up dilettante’s existence. Shit, I’m sorry Tem.

Ha! No apologies needed. I’d get bored if nobody but a hot iron to my life every now and then. I think that’s why so many people are miserable. Nobody cares enough to stick them with the poker. But I digress, you are right of course. I was delivered at home by the family doctor. The best that can be paid for and a true friend to my father.

Well at least true in the sense that he liked what your daddy could offer him.

Right, he would come to my baseball games growing up and him and my dad would gab about ways to keep their wealth and stay ahead of the trailing pack. And, as I am sure you could guess, our home was on an, ahem, farm.

I see it now. Perched on a hill, overlooking bountiful green acres that spread for miles. The only thing missing were the old timey servants walking about saying, “Yes lord Goddard”, and “What a lovely day my lord! how are you this fine morning?”

I mean, we had cleaning people come. And gardeners. And a cook every now and then. My parents liked to cook in the evenings…most days.

Shit Tem, what a life. Cook as it pleases you. Clean only to learn the ‘lesson’ of responsibility. We never should have been friends you know.

Yet here we are.

Here we are. I guess all my crying wasn’t for nothing. So, what did your old man and 'uncle' Doctor share about making money? Were they secret sleazes who peddled timeshares and cockamamie insurance through an underpaid disposable workforce of low-IQ sociopaths and sycophants?

Nothing so exciting. Sorry to crush your fantasy. Besides, I can’t tell you what my dad and the doc would get on about. I just heard the rumblings of my mother after she endured those evenings in their company.

Then just throw out some trade secrets.

Your adamant I suppose. Fine. The farm was a farm even if we weren’t working it like folks might imagine. Dad’s fascinations came from a pursuit of quality. He considered the idea of higher and lower and wondered what, if anything, there was to it. It led him to a fastidious life of sorting through the catalogue of people whose lives fell on a spectrum divided by the poles of charlatan and savant. People whose craft was composing a sales pitch and those whose sales pitch was evident in their craft. He himself was seldom able to find the time for his own hobbies, though I suppose you could have considered his ventures to be as such. The farm itself consisted of a ranch split between a riding range and a cow patty with an adjacent slaughterhouse. Oh, and at the borders of the estate was a tidy vineyard.

What the fuck.

His fascinations thrived because of inheritance, in no small part. Yet, in larger part because of his endless divisibility of mind. I tried to ask him about his day when I was oh, maybe 5 or 6. He said, “Son, you need to be specific.” Then he walked off. He weaved, within our world, many microcosms. Mom got the horses and the riding pasture. She kept them after they split. A couple other fellas got tasked with the grapes and the cows.

I think I need a top off. You got anything a little stronger I can sprinkle this with?

You know where the liquor cabinet is, it's all open.

Here we are! George T. Stagg Limited Edition. 70.7% Alcohol by volume. 141.1 Proof. Uncut and unfiltered my friend. You’re having some Tem.

That’s not really for coffee… but then, hey, what is whisky for if you don’t drink it.

Cheers to that! Alright, so you lived in wonderland. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard this before.

I’m in a rare mood. You know I prefer to live like a dilettante. At least, while I can.

What did you do as a kid?

I rode. Both my parents did, and it was the most time I got to spend with mom. We would go out further and further as I got older. But those are my adolescent years. As a kid, I walked around a lot. Mrs. Doherty, my sitter, watched me for a couple hours before passing out with a copy of something or another by Victoria Holt. I knew I could make it to the ranch or the vineyard and be back before she stirred from her lustful dreams. I favored the ranch and the cows in particular.

You looked at cows. You knew where they were headed right?

Uh yeah, I did. And I didn’t just look at them from the side of some hill. It was all open air. The farmer who ran it, Mr. Alderman would wave to me as I came to make my peace with the herd. He taught me all their names. I would sit by a different cow each day and I would listen. Sometimes I'd talk to them.

I bet bovine have plenty to say.

They do. As much as anyone, I guess.