Camping Trip
The air in my yellow kitchen is stifling. Even the English ivy framing the windows above the sink is drooping as if to say spray me or put me out of my misery. I wipe my brow with the hem of my apron. “Life’s a bunghole,” I say to Dodger as I dislodge the last little bit of lemon cookie dough from my Kitchen-Aid mixer.
“What’s that you say?” Dodger asks. He lifts his head from yesterday’s newspaper. I stare into his hazel eyes.
“Did I stutter? Did I mumble? What part of ‘bunghole’ do you not understand?” My tone is mocking but not unpleasant. I scrape the sides of the stainless steel mixing bowl, carry it to the table, and roll the lemon flavored dough into identical little balls.
“Tear off two pieces of that parchment paper, will you, and fix it so it fits on the cookie sheets. Use the scissors to even it out.” Dodger shoots me a look of amazement as if I had asked him to fly to the moon. He’s a bachelor and although he knows his way around an outdoor barbeque, he’s never baked a cookie in his life. Like me, he couldn’t find anyone willing to take him on permanently. Unlike me, he has no children whereas I have a lovely teenage daughter.
Dodger and I don’t see each other very often, but he loves my darling Teffy. He’s more affectionate to her than her biological father who lives in California and works for a major pharmaceutical company. Dodger’s in my hot kitchen on this beautiful July day instead of at Alcott Beach in Brimley swimming in Lake Superior’s icy water and drinking wine with his buddies. He came over to play Monopoly with Teff, but she’s not home. She’s at the beach where anyone with an ounce of sense would be on a day as lovely as this one.
Dodger obediently picks up the parchment paper. “There’s no sharp edge,” he whines. “How am I supposed to tear it straight without a sharp edge?”
“That’s a problem in your hands. The future of America does not depend upon parchment paper cut to perfection. Do the best you can.” Dodger and I have been friends for years, but sometimes I feel like his mother. Maybe that’s the way it is with all bachelors. They’re basically helpless. Be that as it may, we’re probably more comfortable with each other than most married people. We’re non-judgmental, keep a safe emotional distance, never make demands, and our friendship will most likely follow us to the grave.
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to bite off my head,” he says. “Now, what do you mean about life being a—what’d you call it—a ‘bunghole’? What kind of observation is that from an educated woman?” He rips off three times as much parchment as necessary.
“Hey, go easy on that stuff. It costs a fortune,” I chastise him. “To answer your question, I was merely commenting on how I feel this afternoon. Give me a couple of hours, maybe even minutes depending upon how these cookies turn out, and I might feel differently. But for this moment, which is certainly not suspended in any kind of time warp, my opinion stands. Life is a bunghole. I dare you to deny it.” I continue rolling the dough into balls, place them on the sheets, and press them down with the bottom of a shot glass dipped in yellow sugar.
“I like my life,” Dodger replies. “If you’re not happy, that’s your fault, but to make a sweeping statement without any thought as to how it sounds to others, well, that’s not right. What would Teffy say if she were here? You’ve got to set an example. What’s this stuff?” He finishes his mini-lecture by asking about the lemon zest in a ramekin.
“Does it look like the zest of a lemon or a dead chicken? Does it look long and stringy and yellow or does it look like a nut that fell from a tree? I forgot to put it in the dough, and it’s too late now. I’ll freeze it for next time.” Dodger hands me the ramekin. “I like you,” he says. “But I think you’re crazy.”
“Well, I like you, too, old buddy, and I know you’re crazy. You’d have to be, hanging around this hot kitchen when you should be at the beach. I have no idea when Teff will be home. Probably not before ten tonight.” I flatten the last cookie and slip the sheets into the oven. The heat hits my face like a blast from a furnace. “Lordy, I’ll be glad when this hot spell’s over.”
“Why’d you pick the hottest day of the year to bake?” Dodger asks. I take the chair opposite him. He looks the same as he did when we met thirteen years ago except now his hair is totally gray but still as thick as a lion’s mane. He wears the same dark rimmed glasses, the same plaid shirts, smokes the same brown cigarettes, and still smells slightly of mothballs even in summer. Dodger never changes which is another of his endearing qualities. He loves his wine, his long-dead and never-known Civil War generals, his flower and vegetable gardens, his many friends, but most of all, he loves my daughter the way I wish her father loved her. Dodger is Teff’s pseudo-dad and I thank God for him. I take a sip of the cold lemonade in front of me.
“I wanted to bake cookies and I didn’t even think about the heat this morning because it wasn’t hot at 6:30 when I got up. I just thought about how good a lemon cookie would taste dunked in a cup of hot coffee. Once I decided to bake, I didn’t care about the heat, just the cookies.” I stir more sugar into the lemonade. “And then I didn’t put the zest in the dough and the zest has all the flavor. How dumb is that?”
“Well, I guess it’s not as dumb as drinking hot coffee on a hot day or calling life a bunghole,” Dodger says. He sticks his nose back in the paper. “Say, did you see here it says someone got killed on Six Mile Road near Brimley. Says his Tracker tipped over and crushed him. Now that’s a bunghole.” Dodger shoves the paper in my face.
“I read that article yesterday and conveyed my condolences to the fellow’s widow. She told me to save my sympathy for somebody else because she was in the process of divorcing him and didn’t give two cents about his death—that it actually worked in her favor because now all his property and chattel belong to her. She said he cheated on her with any female who would have him. Such is the way of life and the inhabitants who people the earth.”
“Well, I’ll be,” he says. “You never know about people, do you?”
“Of course not. As I said, life’s a bunghole.” The buzzer sounds so I get up, open the oven door, and take out the cookies.
“Will you stop saying that,” Dodger pleads. He lifts his head from the paper so I give him my full attention.
“Bunghole is not a bad word. It’s an essential part of a barrel. How would wine tasters know when that liquid you enjoy is ready for bottling without the bunghole? How would Jack Daniels know when his whiskey is ready? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m cursing life, but I’m not.” I put my elbows on the table and stare into Dodger’s kind eyes. He stares back. “It’s like this,” I continue. “Yesterday I took my seven year old nephew and his friend to town for an outing. As the air conditioning in my Blazer is on the fritz, the windows were down. Every time I stopped at a light, the boys had a blast yelling at the car next to us, ‘Life’s a bunghole.’ I asked them to stop, but they paid no attention. By the time we reached Taco Bell, I, too, was yelling their chant out my window to the delight of the boys and the horror of strangers. So you see my friend of many moons, I will not stop saying what you want me to stop saying because it reminds me of the utter rejection of civility by two little intoxicatingly happy boys.”
“You might be on to something,” he says. “I haven’t yelled out a car window since I could afford air conditioning. Next time you take those boys for a ride, let me know. Now, bag up some cookies, and I’ll head home. Be sure to tell Teffy I stopped by and she owes me a small Monopoly fortune.”
“You got it,” I say. “See you later.” After Dodger leaves, I put my lemonade and a few cookies on a tray and go to the back porch. Even without zest, the cookies are tasty. Life really is a bunghole, but if you know it and don’t expect much from it, you’ll make out just fine. I watch the dust from the gravel road settle as Dodger drives away. Through his open window I hear him shout, “Life’s a bunghole.” Although he can’t see me, I raise my glass in salute to the best pal a gal could have.
