The Hills Have Eyes

Life in our country village is quaint, remote, charming, and sometimes outright terrifying. Like when you're running down the road at five in the morning, wearing only your tighty whities, waving a heavy caliber semi-automatic handgun at a fox that just tried to raid your chicken house and your neighbor drives by on his way to work.

“There was a fox, see?” Pointing to the woods where the only thing visible is tendrils of mist rising from amidst the trees.

“Ayuh.” He replies, and drives off.

And you pinch yourself to wake up, and don’t wake up. You’re already awake. And standing in the middle of the road in your underwear with a pistol and all you got from your neighbor was an "Ayuh."

That’s the terrifying part.

But even scarier than that is how closely the other villagers are watching you. They don’t stress enough in anthropologist school the scrutiny you’ll face when you move into tribal lands and adopt native customs.

Every village has a busybody, too. Ours is named Kathleen, but we call her the Town Crier. She spends each Saturday and Sunday visiting everyone’s teepee, peering into their homes from the threshold, and then gossiping about what she's found out with the neighbors in the next teepee.

She just called me on Sunday to find out what she could do to help us. Why she was calling is beyond me. The last time I actually spoke to her I was chasing her off my porch, gesticulating wildly, and making exaggerated claims about how much money I made. Evidently, it is customary in this village to dump large black garbage bags full of discarded clothing on the doorstep of any family that has three or more children. Obviously these breeders must be unfit parents who cannot afford to keep said offspring in clothing, let alone feed them.

So she calls because it is quite evident to the rest of the village that I have taken to my death bed. They hadn't heard any power tools running or seen me on the roof working on the addition we’re building, so something tragic must've happened.

I politely let her know that Theresa was out of town, and that I’d been riding herd on this gaggle of children of ours. Hence, -no work. Just Barney, puzzles, getting my can kicked at chess by a six year old, lots of Tibi and Kom Putii worship, and endless treks in the minivan of wonders back and forth to Girl Scouts, basketball games, church, etc.

Allegedly she and her husband are moving up north, and there is in fact a for sale sign in front of their mud hut. I'll miss Steve. We've spent many an hour commiserating over a bottle of fermented goat beer. But I don't believe she's leaving. I can't imagine any man patient enough to spend the remainder of his natural years stuck on a mountainside in Bethlehem alone with that woman.

She vexes me.

Oh I am terribly vexed.