Four days in the dank, cool confines of an annex to the Canterbury Raceway trying to sell books to hordes of women clutching their pocketbooks to their chests as tightly as drunks clutching booze. Estrogen so strong in the place, I feel my manhood at risk.
Wednesday evening before Veteran’s Day. I drive from work to the Twin Cities, listening to a re-run of a MPR production honoring WWI veterans. Most folks have forgotten there was a “War to End all Wars” before the “Big One”. Most folks don’t know that, in the United States, there’s no official memorial to the veterans of the Great War on the Mall in D.C. and that we have one living WWI veteran left in America. Frank Buckles is his name. He’s now 109 years old. When the MPR program was produced, Frank was “a mere spritlely lad” of 106. Now he’s one of the oldest (if not the oldest) men in America. The program was just in time. The other vets who were interviewed have passed on; the radio program a fitting memorial to their service during a war that made absolutely no sense.
It’s possible to honor their sacrifice and not honor the stupidity of the politicians who sent them to war.
My mantra has an edge of the present about it as I drive south, Clapton’s new album playing on the CD changer.
That old boy can flat out play.
I set up my booth at the raceway, hopeful, as always, that I’ll make a few bucks and retire some of the debt I’ve accumulated while trying to sell my books to strangers. I’ve done festivals, bookstores, and libraries over the past ten years from Youngstown, Ohio to Denver, Colorado; from Des Moines, Iowa to Calgary, Alberta. I’ve met a whole lot of nice people; rubbed elbows with interesting folks like American folk music icon, Bill Stains (we taught workshops at the same small arts retreat); spent the weekend after 9/11 in deserted Barnes and Noble stores in Milwaukee and Madison; crashed a rental car in Winnipeg: All in the name of literary glory to little, if any, positive impact on the bottom line.
Maybe this show will be different.
Thursday morning. I wake up and watch “Cliff Hanger”, a Sly Stalone flick at my wife’s sister and brother-in-law’s place in Lakeville. Red breasted cardinals flit in and out of the trees outside the kitchen window; birds so stark and vibrant against the dead landscape of early winter that their passionate color demands my attention as I eat cold cereal with my niece and nephew. Then the kids are off to school, leaving me to get ready for the festival. I arrive at Canterbury in plenty of time but do not sell plenty of books. The one saving grace to the day? My friend and folk musician Pat Surface gives me a copy of his latest CD which I promise I’ll listen to on the drive back to the couch in the Schostag’s basement. Of course, I promptly forget the CD as I leave the festival for the day; my memory lapse a product of advancing age.
Friday I sell a few more books, though, from the number of Packers and Vikings jerseys, jackets, and ball caps that pass by my booth, it’s clear the crowd is not (how does one put this delicately?) a book buying group. I’ve found this to be true: The more football apparel worn at an event, the less likely I’ll have significant sales. Canterbury proves to be no exception.
During ten hours of torturous selling, my back aching from standing on cold concrete; my nose stuck in Staggerford by Jon Hassler; I also catch snippets of conversation between other vendors worrying about a predicted storm.
Likely overreacting.
When I arrive at my sister-in-law’s for the evening, my wife and youngest son are there for a visit. We watch television before Rene’ and I collapse on a partially inflated inflatable bed in the basement for a fitful night of little sleep.
Saturday morning. The rumors of big snow turn out to be true. Heavy wetness falls unabated in the early morning hours until the roads between Lakeville and Shakopee are reduced to rutted paths. I take it slow; the all-wheel-drive of my Pacifica doing its best to keep me on the road despite the mess.
No one is crazy enough to come to a craft show in a blizzard.
Of course, I’m wrong. I’ve underestimated the power of estrogen. Though the nearly all female crowd is modest, I sell a few more books; not enough to save the weekend from disaster but enough to soften my disappointment. By noon, the snow has stopped and the crowd picks up. By the time I get back to the Schostag’s, the electricity is out, though, because Allen is, like a Boy Scout, “always prepared”, a gasoline generator is purring away in a snow drift outside the dining room. We have enough power to cook a roast, cool a good bottle of wine (which I pretty much drink by myself), operate a flat screen television, and run the well and septic.
Sunday morning. I awaken to a sense of failure; a sense of God wanting to tell me something as I sit in my booth, Staggerford a completed project, my eyes riveted on Hassler’s The Love Hunter. I wait for all the folks who couldn’t make it through yesterday’s storm. The crowd never swells. A middle-aged woman steps into my booth and starts up a conversation.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You represented me. Corina was my daughter.”
Then it becomes clear who she is, what her story was: The woman had suffered the worst nightmare a parent can suffer: the loss of a child.
“Your case was one of the only cases where I didn’t understand what the jury was thinking. Of course I remember.”
I’d lost her case after seven tortured days in trial. We talk some more. I tell her that the opening chapter in my novel Pigs, while not a verbatim rendition of her pain or her loss, had its genesis in her daughter’s story. We haven’t seen each other in 25 years and yet, once I understand who the woman is, the case, the courtroom, the defeat surge over me in a wave of disappointing memory. She buys a copy of Pigs. She makes my day.
Then, the show is over. I make six trips through residual slush and muck with my two-wheeled cart stacked with boxes and plastic bins full of unsold books. I pack my stuff into the cargo bay of the Pacifica. It’s pitch black outside. Vendors hustle and bustle, pulling or pushing carts and dollies loaded with their wares in a carefully orchestrated ballet of departure. In the van, Pat’s voice rings high and clear. The Bell of the Ball plays as I stomp on the accelerator. The Chrysler exits the Canterbury Downs parking lot. I head north on Highway 169, singing bad harmony with my friend. I hope he doesn’t mind.
Peace.
Mark
