Cabbage Fever

Just read an essay/article about sweet tea. So well done, but I thought “Man, I coulda done that.”

Read a short profile of a woman whose husband died so she decided to pursue her dream and open an independent book shop. Neat little piece, but still I thought “Sorta wish my husband had died so I coulda done that.”

Listened to an interview of a sports writer who penned a great book a long time ago about baseball. I thought, “If I had gotten that job at the sports desk at TV Guide when I worked there in the late 80s, I coulda been a sports writer; I might’ve done that.”

A book about ghosts for adults, not so well written. A book for kids about appreciating life, total crap. Both floating around on my desk and in my psyche, raising an eyebrow at me, asking … “When?”

I’m looking for a word that combines the relief of finally paying the bills for the month and the dread of knowing you just don’t have enough to cover everything.
Denial?

It’s sort of like a rather large “F*ck You” in their front yard. A refusal of the expected. A what’s-it-to-you, if I ever saw one.

I first noticed it out of the corner of my eye in early spring on my way through this unremarkable neighborhood I pass through regularly. I have poor peripheral vision and tend not to trust things I can’t see coming straight at me. (As a result, I will often cut corners too close when walking through doorways or bump into people coming and going. This makes me appear thoughtful and distracted. Really my eyes are just squiffy.)

On a recent day, when I did turn my head for a direct look, I was pleasantly surprised to see a very well-planned vegetable garden, effusive from our rainy week, growing gloriously in the middle of a nicely manicured front lawn. Yep, in the front. I have not seen that before, here in the land of impatien-circled pin oaks and perfectly trimmed crape myrtles.

Giant squash leaves shield the lower half of leggy tomato plants. Some kind of vine creeps out from underneath the mass of what look like pepper plants edging the perimeter. The plot is rectangular, with no fence around it — no visible border. It just butts defiantly up to the perfectly predictable green grass of the lawn.

It’s obvious the backyard is stingy with its sunshine, so this family made the logical decision to till up a sizeable plot right out front, on what would normally be absolutely nothing but pristine sod. I like to think their neighbors roll their eyes every time they pull out of their tidy driveways.

It makes me want to do something equally and as sensibly wacky.

“That’s coming with us when we leave here,” he said.

As we pulled into the gravel lot of the restaurant, which was really just a shack a mile off the highway, the car rolled to a stop in front of a piece of fence sticking out of the ground at an angle. Attached to the post was a 4-foot wooden pig sign. Tattered, faded, a little beat up.

“What? That pig?”

“Yeah,” he said, staring straight ahead. “It’s coming with us.”

My heart started beating sort of fast. It was a pretty cool pig. “I don’t want to take that.”

“I do. Let’s go in and eat.”

We got out of the car, and as we walked by the fence post, he casually pushed the sign. It came easily unhinged from its post, wobbling but not actually falling over. “Easy,” he said, still not looking directly at me, as we continued up the path to the front door.

When we ordered our lunch at the counter inside, he turned to me and mouthed, “They can’t see through the front window. We’re good.”

I went to the bathroom to wash up. Looking in the mirror, I started to feel sick. I don’t ever steal. I don’t borrow things without asking. I count my items in the express check-out and meet my deadlines and color in the lines and do unto others. I’m a nice girl.

But, God, that pig was going to look good on the wall in the kitchen we were renovating. “Where’d you get that pig?” friends would ask. “Oh, wow,” I’d say. “You are not going to believe this …”

I could barely taste the barbecue. Could’ve been because I was distracted by the thwacking noise my forearms made every time I pulled them from the quarter-inch of grease covering the vinyl tablecloth.

“Should I drive?” I asked. “How’re we doing this?”

I was in. Committed. Sold.

“Let’s wait until these three girls behind you go. Then we’ll leave. I’ll drive. You just make sure the trunk is open when you get in.”

My legs were a little rubbery as we walked to the car. Anticipation battled fear in my gut. He took the driver’s seat and started the car. Next to us was an SUV and a man sitting behind the wheel. “What’s he doing?” “I don’t know; let’s just wait for him to go in and I’ll grab the pig and throw it in the back and we’re out of here.”

After three minutes, we looked over and the man next to us reached into the backseat and pulled out a laptop. He opened it and began working. He wasn’t going anywhere.

We exchanged glances with the laptop man and then each other. More people were pulling into the gravel lot. More customers were coming out the front door and making their way to their cars. Defeated, he sighed and put the car in reverse. We didn’t talk for almost an hour. I felt no relief. Only disappointment. I wanted the pig. I wanted to look at every car coming up behind us for the next hour to see if maybe it was the police, laying chase. I felt sad. Let down. I had tasted the possibility of criminal activity. And I liked it.

Eventually, he broke the silence. “You know the worst part?” I raised my eyebrows slightly. “We loosened the damned thing for someone else to grab.”