It is one of those days. A deejay on my headphones jokes that one second he's tying his shoes, then he looks up and there's leaves on the trees.
I intended to run at Crosby Farm, on the east side of Pike Island, but it was so flooded I sought higher ground, by Fort Snelling on the west. Not Old Fort Snelling, which is fixed up as a tourist place, but new Fort Snelling, built between the wars, and is mostly abandoned. A few offices are still open, but mainly the barracks and dorms are boarded up, and grass grows in the broken streets.
There is black smoke above the airport, and I wonder if some plane has smacked into another one. I run down to the airport fence, but the smoke has dissipated. I'm standing at the airport fence, by a huge sign saying stay the hell out, U.S. Air Force, looking for smoke. Wjat if there was an explosion, and some camera sees me standing there, hands on my hips, satisfied on look my face? Will I ever see my kids again? Figuring someone, somewhere is watching me, I act natural -- coughing, tightening my shoelaces, stretching out those shin splints, scratching my butt.
I'm running down the drive to one of the military offices -- either the Coast Guard Reserves or the Marine Corps. A few soldiers are standing on a platform, looking at the black smoke through binoculars. I don't want to look like I don't belong here, so I try to jog in a military fashion, briskly, frowning, with my stomach pulled in. For a second I forget I'm 43 and have a big stomach and big ass, and imagine I am bounding my these guys like GI Joe.
There's a bookcase on a pile of garbage that looks pretty bad, but not unusable. I picture it in my basement at home, with some of those books my stepbrother sends me every Christmas, like Vineyards of Italy, on it. Can I fit it in my trunk? What if the MPs or Shore Patrol spot me putting it in? Is it illegal to steal garbage?
I see a white car parked by a dormitory house, and I look up at the house. Can anyone be living there? I see one window that isn't boarded up, and imagine some poor military guy has to live up there while awaiting a transfer or something. Rain coming through the hole in the roof, water shut off, the sound of the jets coming in low and loud every minute or two.
But the car is just some lady's. She's sneaking back to it now, with an armload of white lilacs she cut from an overgrown bush. She looks at me like I look at her -- guiltily.
I run behind the dormitories and come across a hidden path, with a creosoted utility pole barring the way. I follow it anyway, into the trees, and come to a wall, and a dump, and a smaller path, that leads to a little brick house, swarming with vines, and the front door swinging open.
If I was ten years younger I know I would tiptoe in that door and look around, and it would be empty inside, with busted up junk lying around. Now I'm not so sure. People need places to live, even right next to the landing strip. Maybe some nighttime prowlers find their way here after dark to drink and discuss their good luck. Maybe there is someone in there now.
Not far away is the foundation of some old building, as big as a gymnasium, no walls or roof, just this long white floor, with weeds growing through. Once a hundred men might have worked in here, back during the days of World War II. I'll bet there were charts all over, and dozens of black telephones, and the coffee was black and hot and bad.
Just beyond, I circle round to the back of dormitory row. Every door says No Trespassing U.S. Air Force. One wall has a sign, Psychological Operations. What in the world was that about -- giving IQ tests to reserves, or something dire and terrible, that it's best we never learn about? Did it succeed? Is it still working?
There's a pair of birds on the ground. One is standing over the other beating its wings. The other, oddly, is on its back. Are they fighting or having sex? It occurs to me I still don't know about the birds and the bees.
As I get back into the car, I see the black smoke again, and decide to drive around to the other side of the airport to see what it is.
I drive around the airport, by the veteran's cemetery. A big expansion is underway. The white graves keep creeping outward -- now you can just see a couple rows streaming down a little slope, to a chain link fence, and a slag parking strip where all the divorced dads have brought their kids to watch the jets take off. There's not a trace of black smoke anywhere.
When I get to the car I notice a long black wasp on the inside back window. I consider shooshing him out the door with a newspaper but I'm too bushed. Come on home with me, I tell him, and I'll show you life on the other side.
August, 1996
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