13. Possum Stew and Road Kill

It was the summer of John Denver and the bicentennial.  It was a time for back to the land, Rodale’s Guide to Organic Gardening, Diet for a Small Planet and the Foxfire books.  It was all about self-reliance and living off the grid.  The Carpenter Husband, Lilly Beth and I loaded the ‘54 International Panel Truck with all our worldly possessions and our high hopes.   We put the wooden Amstel Holland Beer box between the seats and filled it with cloth diapers and an old Aladdin thermos full of coffee.  The portacrib was lashed to the floor behind the seats and filled with soft blankets and stuffed animals.  Then with the Rand McNally in hand, we headed out to the hills of West Virginia to join some city friends from Detroit.  Our destination was a plot of land on the road to Harrisville, population 347. The entire town consisted of a gas station/post office combo and a five and dime store.  Our friends bought a farm in West Virginia to build a life for themselves and their two kids.  A life away from the apocalypse that we all knew was sure to come.  It was post Watergate and pre-Iran Contra but our faith in all things government was strongly shaken.  No longer the starry eyed hippies that danced at Woodstock, now we were the hard eyed pragmatist who spoke of alternative energy and the price of canning jars. We no longer believed that we could change the world, we were afraid the world was changing us.  So we ran away.  

Our house was three miles in off the hard road, down a winding path to the bottom of the holler.  The road was lined with ferns and waterfalls and wild blackberries.  At the bottom sat John and Judy’s little house and down the road nearly a mile further was our place.  The sprawling two story house had been a stop for the teamsters back when teamsters drove horses.   It was built with of sturdy oak, had a wrap around porch on both levels, a pump next to the kitchen, gas lamps, gas heaters and a natural gas well on the property.  It was almost heaven, West Virginia, except for the skeeters and the snakes.   

At times it was “almost heaven” – at times it seemed that the Carpenter Husband and I had enough love for each other and our girl child that we could conquer the world – or at least that little plot of West Virginia.

There were other times too.  Like just before a rain and the air was hot and heavy.  The pressure rises and you’re waiting for the rain. The humidity is so high that you feel like you’re breathing under water and you’re waiting for the rain.  And you’re waiting for the rain.  Lightening flashes across the meadow and finally it rains in buckets.  The rain washes out the road and the creek becomes a raging river and you’re waiting for the sun.  Everything you own is wet and damp and muddy and you’re waiting for the sun. 

Some days, when the bucket that I kept under the sink (instead of indoor plumbing) overflowed again, I’d think of my sisters and their dishwashers and wonder why I had to do it the hard way every time. 

Then Lillie Beth would come to the door with her tennis shoe full of blackberries and her face berry blue.  She offers you up her tennis shoe and you just have to laugh.  You take her down to the creek, find that little spot that seems custom made to fit her little bottom.  The water flows gently over her and she splashes until her face is clean again.  It’s those times you feel that God is in his heaven and what a wonderful creator to have this place, this wonderful place just for you.  Then the Carpenter Husband, who hasn’t a single romantic bone in his body, brings you home wildflowers he picked along the road.  You set them in a milk jug on the window ledge and feel blessed by God. 

Then he goes off to work in town.  It’s the bi-centennial and he’s helping to restore a 200 year old cabin with 200 year old lumber.  This seems to require that he spend hours at the local hardware store taking with the menfolk and incidentally using the indoor toilet.  You are out in the wilderness alone with a young child for most of the day.  Then the time stretches out and he misses dinner.  It grows dark and shadows dance across the walls.  Strange noises fill the silence.  You hold Lillie Beth on your lap and try to rock her to sleep.  Suddenly, trash cans bang and clatter on the back porch.  Out the uncurtained window you see a big black bear.  You heart stops.  You grab your rifle – you own personal “I can kill a pop bottle at 20 paces” 22 caliber.  You sit back in the rocking chair with Lillie Beth and the rifle in your arms. You just keep rocking.  In your head you realize that you must look like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies but you are too scared to move.  You just keep rocking.  After an hour the bear moves on.  Shortly after the headlights flash across the windows and he’s home again.  Each day as it takes him longer and longer to find his way home, you realize that heaven is only in your mind.  You wonder how long you can just keep rocking.

One day I was inside washing up the dishes while Lilly Beth took her nap. I’d filled a big washtub with water from the pump outside the kitchen.  I was watching the Carpenter Husband mow the weeds in the front yard while I waited for the water to heat on the stove.  We’d purchased a beautiful antique gas stove at one of those great West Virginia Estate Auctions that was more like a tent revival than an auction.  The stove was bright yellow enamel over cast iron, burner grates shaped like little flowers and a handy warming tray on top.  We also got a gas refrigerator and some pretty radiant elements for the gas heaters.  Then we used a heavy duty garden hose to connect to the gas well on the property.  We had a deal with the big time energy company – they got the gas from the well and we got an allowance for the house.  It was a good deal all round.  It matched our new “self sufficient” image. 

Suddenly the Carpenter Husband came running in the house shouting, “Where’s that c-clamp?  Lilly Beth was playing with it yesterday!”  I looked up startled and then I heard it, the hissing sound that was filling the meadow with gas.  “Hurry!  Help me Look!” he shouted frantically.  We both began to tear the house apart looking in all her little hidey places.  Under the table, behind the stairs, we looked everywhere.  Then the Carpenter Husband lifted our mattress, which lacked a proper bed and was lying on the bare floor.  Suddenly a ten foot long black snake slithered out. 

The old wives tale says that it’s good if you have black snakes because then you won’t have copperheads.  Another tale says that Copperheads and Black snakes mate and make “blackheads”.  A friend from Michigan told me to keep a sharp hoe by the bed to chop off the head of snakes under the bed.  I didn’t believe him and I had no hoe.  In a blind panic, I grabbed the sleeping Lilly Beth and ran for my life.  I was a full mile down the road before I realized what I’d done.  I had abandoned the Carpenter Husband while he battled the black snake and the gas leak alone.  When I reached John and Judy, they both ran to rescue him.  I alone was absent in his time of need.  I thought only of Lilly Beth.  Later, when all was safe and I made my way back down the road, the Carpenter Husband just looked at me.  I knew he knew that in times of trouble, the child came first.  Not him.  Not any more.

When much of the rural world despised us dirty Callie-fornie hippies, the West Virginia natives welcomed us like we were long lost kinfolk.  Most of their own kids had no interest in the family farms.  As soon as they came of age, they left home and headed for the city.  When we arrived with a truck full of noisy youngins and a million questions, it was like an answer to a prayer for some of them. Our arrival gave them a second wind.  They went out of their way to teach us the ropes, check in and see how we were doing and drop by to sit a spell and offer canning jars full of possum stew. 

One day our neighbors Elmer and Mabel showed up on our porch. They had a basket full of biscuits and a mason jar full of possum stew.  We sat a spell with them.  They had six kids, lost two sons to Vietnam and two to the city.  The girls stayed close to home but neither of them had any kids yet. They took to Lillie Beth real quick.  Mabel offered to come down and help me can some of the blackberries. Then in the fall she could help me put up some vegetables for winter.  I was delighted and quickly accepted. I enjoyed being with Mabel.  She had a very loving nature and was full of helpful information. 

Elmer offered to take the Carpenter Husband hunting.  I kind of grinned at the thought.  You see we were determined to be self-sufficient.  To have our own power source, make our own clothes, grow our own vegetables and even hunt our own meat.  That last part was a hard one.  Carpenter Husband was a great fisherman.  He even owned a bow and arrow.  But I’d never ever seen him kill anything that didn’t have fins.  Nevertheless, he agreed to go with Elmer early the next morning.    

It was nearly noon when they got back from possum hunting.  Elmer insisted that Carpenter Husband show me his trophy.  He did but from the look on his face I knew that this was not an activity he enjoyed.  But he was the breadwinner of the family, the hunter.  It was his job and he’d done it. 

The men hung the possum in a tree and Elmer instructed Carpenter Husband on how to dress and cook it.  After Elmer left, Carpenter Husband decided to have a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey just to smooth out the raw edges.  Hours past and finally as the sun started to go down he went out to finish the job.

We looked at the freshly killed creature hanging in the tree.  We both lost our appetite.  The Carpenter Husband said, “I think it’s diseased, that’s why it was so slow to run.”  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and pulled the hamburger out of the fridge.  We dug the dead thing a grave and buried the sick possum along with Mabel’s the possum stew. 

We could no more have eaten that possum than we could eat road kill.  I’m not sure why.  It’s as if the only good meat is what we kill intentionally.  If it’s accidentally killed or worse yet, maimed – we find it offensive.  It’s the same with the runt of the litter and the deformed.  Sometimes the mother kills it.  Sometimes it’s left to die without nourishment.  Sometimes the siblings kill it. 

Sometimes I think my family feels about me the same way that the Carpenter Husband and I felt about that possum hanging in the tree.  They just want to bury their mistakes. Like the dog that you hit with the station wagon, they just want to keep driving and pretend it never happened. 

Summer in the wilderness lingered as we tried to prepare for winter.  Then I felt a strange stirring inside.  It was Max the Wunderkind making his presence known.  At an early age, he attached himself to my ribcage and auditioned for a job as a trapeze artist.  This was joyful news for all of us but it meant moving back to the city.  After nearly losing Lillie Beth, I was not brave enough to risk a wilderness birth.  We loaded the ‘54 International Panel Truck with all our worldly possessions and our high hopes.   We put the wooden Amstel Holland Beer box between the seats and filled it with cloth diapers and an old Aladdin thermos full of coffee.  The portacrib was lashed to the floor behind the seats and filled with soft blankets and stuffed animals.  Then with the Rand McNally in hand, we headed home to a little house on Third Street in Wyandotte. 

The possum stew lesson was not the only revelation we would witness in the land of traveling preachers and revival tents. We learned that he would always stay out too late and I would always run away.