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  I leaned the microphone up against Raylou’s groundhog kiln. She started laughing. I said, “Are you intent on making an X-rated film? You need to watch your language a bit, Mom, if you ask me. I don’t care what those correspondence-course directors say, even art-house movie joints have some sense of decorum, from what I hear.”

  “Cut,” my mother said. She set the camera down on the hard rock of our acreage. “Don’t y’all have any friends or anything?” She swept her arm around. “I need some people to tell me some stories, man. Y’all obviously can’t do it.”

  She left her equipment on the ground and walked back to the house as if marching toward a spank-needy child. I said to my wife, “I told you this wouldn’t work out. She was kind of nutty way back when. That kind of behavior doesn’t reverse itself.”

  Raylou shrugged. She said, “I’m betting she won’t need another twenty-four hours to understand she can’t find a story here.”

  Those same ducks, I was pretty sure, flew back overhead in the opposite direction. My mother yelled out, “What the hell are these things?” and I looked to see that she’d almost stepped into the snapping-turtle pond.

  I said, “Never mind those things. It’s a long story that involves Raylou’s getting too involved with rescuing animals she thinks are being tortured by biologists.”

  “Biotoxicologists!” Raylou called out. “Hey, now that might be—”

  “Hurry up and bring the camera,” my mother yelled. “Leave the microphone for now. Hey, when these things have their necks stretched out, they kind of look like…good God, man, talk about your father.” She said, “I got a whole new idea. Take one, baby, take one!”

  What my mother decided to shoot ended up—I’ll give her this—was kind of a good idea. She took a real liking to the six snappers—now weighing in at about twenty pounds apiece, their necks able to stretch out nearly a foot—and filmed them burrowing down in the mud, gnawing on chicken necks, sticking their heads out of the water like prehistoric periscopes. My mother said, “I think I could just dub some Bartok over the film—maybe some Shostakovich—and then market this documentary to schools, so they can get their students to understand biology and music. I’ll call it something like, damn, what’re those words for a turtle’s shell? One for the top and one for the bottom.”

  My wife said, “We have copperheads around here, too. A few rattlesnakes. You’d have to go farther south to find cottonmouths. I’m thinking you could do a whole series of shorts involving, you know, God’s scary creatures of the South.”

  I said, “We got fire ants, and the neighbor down the hill tried to smuggle in some anteaters from Central America or someplace, but they all got loose. Two of them, from what I understand, are now mounted, looking down from some confused hunter’s mantel.”

  We sat in mesh chairs that Raylou got somewhere; they rolled up and fit in a bag. We sat in the Quonset hut, surrounded by what angels I had finished, drinking coffee. My mother and Raylou ate dry, dry homemade scones that I wouldn’t touch, because I figured they’d remind me of the days of pretzels and beer. My mother said, “You know, it’s really not all that bad here in Gone Ember. I don’t see the hustle and bustle like where you were brought up, Harp.” My hometown might’ve held two thousand residents. Maybe nothing is more selfish than a committed drunk become a committed recoverer, which may explain why I said, “Don’t think about moving up here.”

  Raylou said, “Harp. That’s not very nice.” To my mother she said, “You can come up here any time you want.”

  “Hollywood East,” my mother said. She rubbed at her scalp a few times, the way a kid might rub a balloon to create static. “No, I was just being polite. I’ll keep my home base right there near the Dial-a-Style, so I can remember every day why I’m on this planet.”

  I cleared my throat. I got up, rummaged through a drawer of old washers, and found a pack of Camels I’d stashed for mornings when I felt lost without bourbon. I said, “Is your reason for being on the planet that you want to make sure everyone knows what Dad did twenty-five years ago? I mean, that first documentary you started—the one about how I looked like him, and I was destined to act like him—to be honest, I thought it was plain mean-spirited. And kind of presumptuous.”

  Raylou got up and said that she wanted to throw a couple dozen face jugs, that she needed to chop oak for the kiln, that she’d bought a new shingle hammer she thought might work best for cracking up the old porcelain plates she used for scary teeth. I think she felt uncomfortable. I think she thought my mother and I had to have some kind of long-time-coming talk, in which my mother might admit to some shortfall in her child-rearing skills, or I might confess that I should’ve initiated contact years earlier, before the era of correspondence courses, when my mother had no hobbies or use for family members.

  When my mother opened her mouth wide, I thought she was going to acknowledge some shortcomings on her part, or say that she admired my overcoming the Spillman family’s drinking problem. The sound that came out of her throat, though, sounded like what happens when you use one of those trick cellophane-and-cardboard discs that kids put in their months to talk like the speech-afflicted. Or it sounded like a death rattle.

  I said, “What?”

  My mother pointed at her chest twice. She pointed at half a scone—and later I would observe that outside of a cheap way of killing yourself, scones were better used as door stops—and then at her throat. She got up out of her chair and walked quickly to my twelve-gallon wet-dry Shop-Vac. She made that noise some more and stamped her feet. On her face I read…frustration? Discomfort? Some kind of existential dread? Finally she eked out, “Choking.”

  She was the one to turn on the switch. I jumped up like a good son and tried to figure out how to perform the Heimlich maneuver without touching my mother’s breasts, because, well, I had enough nightmares.

  My mother shoved the black nozzle in her mouth, tightened her lips around the business end, and unclogged her air passage. The image was one I knew I would never escape, even with daily visits to a certified psychoanalyst with training in hypnosis to eradicate Oedipus complexes. I screamed for help, but by the time Raylou showed up, the vacuum’s hose was snaking around on the floor, a chunk of scone stuck to the plastic attachment, and I stood there cradling my mother’s abdomen from behind. Raylou said, “I knew y’all would patch things up. I wish I had this on film. I didn’t want to say anything before, but you don’t need all the cursing and violence.”

  I let go of my mother. Later I would think about how most people would thank a son for having a Shop-Vac at the ready, for my at least attempting to heave at her diaphragm. “Lucky thing I don’t wear dentures,” my mother said. She went back to her chair. “If you end up with your teeth falling out someday, Harp, you can blame it on your father’s gummy side of the family. Maybe that’s why he ran off with Flora Gorman. It wasn’t for her hair, believe me. Maybe her having retractable teeth played a part in it. I saw it before. I saw her in the Dial-a-Style. I saw her have to apply another strip of that gum glue.” My mother laughed and laughed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a four-inch clay pipe that I supposed Raylou had given her. “Now that I think about it, your daddy’s mistress looked about like those snapping turtles when it comes to smiles.”

  Then, like any good sniper, she left the premises. Raylou went back in the house, and I stood in my studio making a mental list of what I needed to do next. My mother packed up her van and drove straight through Gone Ember, without so much as an invitation to come see the final cut of whatever it was she had shot. I realized that in the movies I would probably have a voiceover saying, “What just happened?” or, “I hope to hell this is all a dream,” or, “This isn’t good for my recovery.”

  I locked the door to the Quonset hut. At the snapping-turtle pond I tried not to think of my father’s mistress from years ago. Inside, while my wife took orders for her face jugs over the Internet, I turned on the television. One of those cable channels w
as showing a Three Stooges marathon. Another was showing a Marx Brothers film. The Atlanta station had Laurel and Hardy, and the cartoon channel offered up Road Runner.

  Nothing seemed funny.

  I turned to the Independent Film Channel. A German man and woman, their faces in close-up, talked about the good and essential symbiotic nature of termite mounds, with subtitles. I think the man tried to make some kind of connection with Schopenhauer. I turned to Animal Planet, and—God or Satan will insist that something more powerful than I had planned this all along—a man was doing a voiceover explaining the many differences between land tortoises and aquatic turtles, but declaring that both depended on sturdy plastrons and carapaces. A woman pointed out that although it’s not common, snapping turtles have been known to be monogamous, and one pair stayed together more than fifteen years.

  I thought about post-acute withdrawal syndrome. I turned back to the cartoon channel.

  PROBATE

  WE DIDN’T CARE, REALLY, ABOUT THE TRAVELING EUTHANASIA vet’s failed marriage. We didn’t care about why this woman showed up nine hours later than she said she’d arrive. I can’t say all of this for certain. I’ll admit that I’m making some suppositions. I’d like to say that I could call Miranda and fact-check this whole night, but she took off two days later without leaving much of a note, and certainly not a new address. Her voicemail’s full, so I can’t leave a message, saying, “Call me back so I make sure I don’t go around telling this story wrong.” I can’t even remember the vet’s last name, though I remember her showing up, trailing along a rolling hard-shell case of dog biscuits, sedatives, and animal heart-stoppers. She came in, didn’t make eye contact, and said her name was Dr. Nancy. She was one of those kinds of vets—like a pediatric oncologist who took one too many humanities courses, or a fearful dentist specializing in adolescent pulpectomies, or a questionably intelligent recent seminary graduate intent on teaching a group why evil, famine, early death, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis, tainted water supplies, dwarfism, cystic fibrosis, asthma, and muscular dystrophy exist in the world (not to mention AIDS, war, domestic violence, neuropathy, club feet, polio in the old days, death by handguns)—who think it necessary to go by first name only. Dr. Nancy. Like Cher or Madonna. Oprah, LeBron. Jesus.

  “Hey, I’m sorry I’m so late, but I got stuck on the phone with my therapist,” this vet said. Miranda and I stood in our kitchen, where our dog Probate, lying sideways on the floor, panted, squealed, yelped, and practically pleaded, “Put me down now.” Probate’s real name happened to be Max; we’d inherited him when Miranda’s mother died seven years earlier. Probate seemed to be a mix of Chow and pit bull, he lived to at least fifteen years old, and his hips didn’t respond daily. He was so black that no one would adopt him other than us, we knew, what with that fact about black dogs left forever at the pound. He had three tumors on his belly, which meant when I tried to lift him he bit me. “I’d do the same thing,” I said to Miranda.

  Probate had responded to his new name right away. You could say, “Come here, Max,” or, “Come here, Probate,” and he’d do so. That fucker would stare at me nonstop until I finally said, “You want to go to the recycling center?” I’d say, “You want to go see Robin at the liquor store?” I’d say, “You want to drive over to Señor El Perro Caliente and get a wiener?” He loved me, and I him.

  A good dog, is what I’m saying.

  If Miranda were here, she’d admit that the dog’d quit eating a week before. Anyone with a rational side, or a heart, would understand that it was Probate’s time.

  My dog Probate!

  Miranda’s momma died at Hospice Care of the Lakelands, which meant she got lung cancer, didn’t want to leave her own house, never told anyone. Nor did she confide to Miranda or me about all the bins of What Doctors Won’t Tell You and Miracle Cure pamphlets and books she kept shoved beneath beds. She never let on that she possessed hoarding tendencies. It’s not like Miranda and I visited, then found it necessary to open closet doors to find stacks and stacks of Bradford Exchange “limited edition” collector plates; post-1992 Donruss, Topps, Upper Deck, and Leaf baseball cards from when the market got flooded; Beanie Babies; electroplated “coins” produced by the British Royal Mint in conjunction with the Columbia Mint in Washington, DC; every canceled check since 1965, and so on.

  We visited often, but didn’t go snooping around, I guess. And Miranda’s mom came to live with us on a number of occasions. We lived ninety miles away only. Miranda’s mother showed up after hip surgery, and after that time when she fell down and dislocated her shoulder, and the ER doctor said, “I can pop this back in,” and then he sheared the ball right in half. Miranda’s mother—her name was Evelyn—came to live with us that time when she thought she might want to hurt herself with the drugs she held left over. She brought poor old Probate with her. He lifted his leg on the dining-room table, on end tables, on both couches. He walked right up to the front door and lifted his leg, then trotted to the back door and did the same. He went up the stairs, jumped up on the guest mattress, and licked himself in ways that ruined the queen-size bedspread.

  Probate!

  “He’s the only thing my mom had to love,” Miranda announced more than once. Personally, I think it was a slightly passive-aggressive thing for her to say. I mean, I guess I should’ve gone ahead and blurted out, “No, she had you, Miranda,” but I rarely followed through. Sometimes I got out, “She had the entire Atlanta Braves lineup, in order, stacked tightly in those little boxes, or in plastic-sheeted notebooks, from about 1990 until her death.”

  Her momma sank and fizzled and occupied our time, then she died, and then we went through probate. And we got good Probate, who put up with us until we needed to call the traveling euthanasia woman.

  As an aside: Miranda hired out an auctioneer. Me, I didn’t care about the estate’s worth, but my then-wife seemed upset that her mother’s collections didn’t bring in more than two thousand dollars, after the twenty-five percent, after the thousand dollars charged for sending out mailing-list postcards to people who, obviously, didn’t care to clog their homes with Beanie Babies, baseball cards, collector plates, or fake coins. Even the Hospice Thrift Store people didn’t seem all that excited about garnering the leftovers that no one bid on: a console stereo, circa 1968, that weighed about four hundred pounds, for example. That Hammond organ with the special piccolo/flute/timpani keys. Maybe thirty stuffed vipers, all coiled in a lifelike way, that Evelyn kept after her husband—an amateur herpetologist—took off for one of the southwestern states when Miranda went to college. As it ended up, we filled most of our attic with useless “collectibles.”

  BESIDES NOT MAKING eye contact, Dr. Nancy showed up dressed in what appeared to be some kind of damsel-in-distress costume. I’d never met a traveling euthanasia veterinarian in the past, so it didn’t occur to me that, perhaps, he or she should wear scrubs, or at least blue jeans if the euthanasia involved a horse or goat. I’d left the back porch lights on and had told her—some eleven hours earlier, when she said she’d show up at noon—that the driveway would lead her to the back of the house. I heard her big Suburban growling onto our property, spitting pea gravel, and went to the door.

  I should mention that Probate had howled, probably in pain, for all this time. Miranda spent most of the hours petting the dog’s head, or crying, or finding ways to go outside and perform tasks that could’ve been accomplished later: raking pine needles, filling the Yankee feeders with sunflower seeds, cleaning the gutters, checking the tread on our two cars’ tires with a Roosevelt dime.

  My wife started digging a grave in the red clay that might’ve measured six inches deep until later I went out there with a real spade, and an ax to cut through roots and tendrils. I rifled through every drawer we had, but could only find aspirin, Benadryl, and half of what I figured might be Lortab from when Miranda suffered her last bout of kidney stones. I discovered a sliver of what might’ve been oxycodone, and residue from about six separate o
ne-hitters I’d stashed on the bookshelf behind The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When the vet hadn’t showed up by two o’clock, I placed a speculative concoction on a glob of peanut butter, lifted Probate’s flews, and scraped the homemade sedative behind his upper back teeth. He bit at me, sure, and then continued his horrific howl-whine.

  It just occurred to me that “howl-whine” sounds like “Halloween.” Maybe there’s a reason. Add that to Dr. Nancy in her costume, at our door. She wore a corset, a floor-length dress made of velour-like material, lace sleeves, the whole getup. Dr. Nancy sported a Robin Hood hat with a feather spouting out the side, which I thought, in retrospect, kind of veered from the rest of her attire. I don’t know what kind of brassiere she sported beneath, but it influenced her décolletage mightily.

  She dragged that suitcase and said to me, “Please tell me you’re the Stinsons.”

  I nodded. I said, because I wanted to know, “Does your therapist have a dog that needs putting down?” Of course I knew the answer. Dr. Nancy harbored unrelenting neuroses and spiteful daydreams and more issues than the Library of Congress’s newspaper and magazine stash.

  “No,” she said. “No. I just need to talk to her when I’m spiraling. My husband left me after nineteen years. You ever have any foot problems, Mr. Stinson?”

  I said, “Call me Charlie.” I almost said, “Call me Mr. Charlie.” I said, “I’m Charlie, and this is Miranda.” Probate lay on the kitchen floor panting, whining, yelping. I said, “I’ve never had any foot problems.”

  “My ex was a podiatrist. You probably know him—Walker Posey. I think he’s been named Best Podiatrist in the County going on about ten years now, according to the Spinning Around Readers Poll.” That was the local newspaper’s weekend supplement that came out on Fridays so people would know all about the crummy things people like Miranda and me wouldn’t do on Saturday night. Spinning Around’s readers named Olive Garden as Best Italian Restaurant, Walmart as Best Sporting Goods, Subway as Best Ethnic Food because the place offered ciabatta bread.