The Bucket List Part 2…

View from the hallway to the two bedrooms.

We’re sitting in her living room by the big front window, the space heater plugged in under the old table left behind by the former owners. Early dawn light is pouring in over the mountain ridge, spilling light into the little valley, illuminating last night’s dusting of snow. We’re cold, our breath visible in the cold, unheated shell of a home. The plan is to head into town, wash up at a public restroom best we can, eat some breakfast, then head back up to the cabin to do some cleaning. For now though we take long drags from the bong, our hands chilled on the cold glass, the warm smoke filling our heads…

The bucket!

“We’ve gotta do something about the bucket too…” I laugh.

“Right,” she says chuckling… “We can bring the whole thing down to the transfer station and we’ll toss the bag in there on our way into town.”

I shake my head to show I understand. “Perfect then…. We can toss the bucket in the trunk and get it emptied out and ready for today…”

“I don’t think it’s going to fit in the trunk,” she says matter of factly, repacking the bong before handing it to me. “You might just have to sit with it in the front seat between your feet on the trip down…”

I’m expertly balancing the glass receptacle on my knees as I light it and take a long drag, warming my now booted feet in front of the little space heater, I slowly release… a thick blue gray cloud exhaled into the chilly home’s shell where it slowly dissipates in the morning sun, “Now listen,” I laugh, “I know that it would be really easy to just sit here and think, ‘Wow, Vanessa really has no boundaries whatsoever,’ and I get that… I’m a-ok with leaving all the modern conveniences of civilization… like indoor plumbing and electricity. My OCD ass is even surviving without washing my hands continually. For fuck’s sake, I am pissing and shitting in a god damn bucket in a room with absolutely zero privacy, in a freezing cold house… needless to say you wouldn’t be wrong about me and my boundaries, but I’ll tell you what… this bucket? This bucket is my line in the fucking sand,” we’re both laughing now… “And I absolutely REFUSE, adamantly REFUSE actually, to drive down the mountain with a steaming bucket, filled with our cumulative human and animal waste, for fuck sake’s there is literally a steaming pile of shit in the bucket… and I’ll tell you where that bucket is not sitting in proximity to me and the rest of the vehicle… So I’m going to need for us to make some fucking room in the trunk of the car before we go driving down this mountain,” I say, passing the bong back to her.

She lights it and inhales, we’re both laughing. “Ok,” she says, “We’ll make some room in the trunk.”

“Can you even imagine,” I say as we make our way down the mountain in her little car, the heat turned on high, the bucket wedged in between bags and boxes safely in the trunk… “Getting into an accident up on this fucking road with the damn bucket at my feet?” We’re roaring now, picturing the bucket and the bag and the human and animal waste and the litter all exploding upon impact throughout the cabin of the car, me taking the brunt of the fallout… “Fuck that shit…” I snort.

We stop at the transfer station, I make no moves to hop out of the car to dispose of the bucket’s contents, my one line drawn in the sand. She hops out and tosses the contents into a massive dumpster as a few cars slowly make their way in and out of the trash center, emptying their household garbage into various labeled dumpsters: Yard Debris, Construction Materials, Glass, Cans…

“Look for the one labeled human AND animal excrement in a cat litter filled, plastic lined bucket,” I had joked when we pulled in. Not finding that exact dumpster we settled on ‘household waste’ and pulled up alongside the large rusted dirty bin.

Now the bucket’s bagged contents have been dumped, the bucket unceremoniously tossed back into the trunk, and she climbs back into the car. We’re both laughing, wondering if anyone else here is literally throwing their own shit into one of the dumpsters before we drive off… me feeling the ever present need to scrub my hands.

Sunlight streams in over the mountain peaks and through the bare trees, their blue gray shadows cast on the windy paved road; on one side icicles hang precariously on the bare rock faces, and just over the guardrail: more trees and a long drop down the mountain to the banks of a bubbling river snaking wildly through the low-lying terrain.

We make it into town just as the last hints of dawn slowly fade, the sun rising steadily, beginning to melt last night’s dusting of powdery snow. My boots are cold and caked in thick mud. I stomp them repeatedly when we get out of the car and walk into the McDonald’s. We’re immediately met with a blast of warm air as we make our way, toothbrushes and toothpaste tucked into our jacket pockets, to the restroom. Before anything I wash my hands, steaming hot water, as hot as I can stand, and I expertly wash them before using the toilet and then again after, before brushing my teeth and once again after… ‘I gotta get part of my quota in’ I joke to myself.

I spit a frothy bit of paste into the sink as another woman walks in, staring at us both washing up in the McDonald’s restroom. My friend dashes out of the restroom, her toothbrush still in her mouth, me drying my hands for the third time.

I make my way back to the car where she’s sitting in the driver’s seat still brushing her teeth, she spits her spent paste into the slushy parking lot. I laugh and ask her why she’s out here brushing her teeth instead of finishing up in the bathroom, and she shrugs her shoulders, “That lady was making me feel weird…”

“My friend, we just shit and pissed in a bucket, tossed our waste into a transfer station dumpster, we’ve got to absolutely reek of weed, and we’re now brushing our teeth and washing up in the McDonald’s restroom… that lady had to be feeling OUR weird aura. Unless she’s got a fucking head in her refrigerator back home, I can guarantee that WE are out weirding this woman today…”

Again we’re laughing, me putting my toothbrush back into its storage container, slipping both the container and toothpaste tube into my backpack, her looking around the car before deciding to slip her dirty, unrinsed toothbrush back into its container… Me horrified… “Holy shit you are just gonna raw dog that dirty toothbrush into that container then?” She shrugs, “I don’t know what else to do…I’ll clean it when we get home…”

“We are fucking monsters and like by ‘we’ I mean you mostly…”

“Don’t forget who pooped in the bucket and who didn’t,” she chides in jest.

“Fine, we’re both fucking monsters.”

We laugh.

We walk back into the McDonald’s sans the toothbrushes and paste and hurriedly order our egg McMuffins. We sit at a long island counter on thick padded stools bolted to the floor. I spin myself around on the stool that doesn’t pivot, but the fabric of my leggings allows me to twirl myself, my short booted legs dangling over the side. She sits still on the other side, staring off out the windows. I take long swigs of orange juice, I taste the creamy orange American cheese and the crispy bits of English muffin, a hot meal tastes divine.

When we finish I leap down off the stool and toss my trash and hers into a bin. “I’m going to use the restroom one more time… and wash my hands a few more times…”

“Good idea,” she says and we both walk back to the restroom.

In the car we make our game plan for the rest of the day. We decide that we will head back to the cabin and clean it as best we can. Around dinner time we will head into town to her new friend’s house, an AirBnB owner who lives just ten minutes away and has opened her home to us for hot meals and even better yet, hot showers.

We pull into her driveway, a slosh of mud, the ground once stiff from last night’s cold, has grown maleable in the day’s warming sun. Our boots slurp and slap in the thick red muck, large swaths of the viscous clay clinging to the edges of my waterproof boots. We grab more bags and walk to the cabin before I’m distracted by her creek just up ahead, scampering off to wade through it to clean my boots, I quickly realize my folly when my boots are quickly covered again as I trek back to the house.

Inside the house feels only slightly warmer than outside, yet there’s a cozy comfort, the smell of dried earth worn into the unsightly sub floors, the unmistakeable and intoxicating scent of sawdust, and the pungent aroma of what’s left of nearly a pound of bagged weed sitting next to the glass bong. We close the door behind us, and toss our bags into the bedroom, careful not to cross the threshold with our muddy boots. “I’m smoking again before we start this shit,” I say and she agrees.

We stare out of the big living room window. An old dog barks somewhere up in the mountains, a truck’s loud exhaust fires somewhere not too far away sending an echoing boom through the hollers and peaks, the creek bubbles and carries on, water dulling the sounds of the mountain coming to life with the morning sun. We pass the bong back and forth, not saying much as we watch her yard in content silence, thick plumes of smoke swirling up to the old popcorn ceiling where they become one with the dust and errant cobwebs, an amalgamation of lives past and present in the old mountain cabin.

We’re up and I’ve grabbed an old broom, expertly with the intensity that severe OCD brings to my cleaning, I’m combing every square inch of the living room, trying to pull and sweep the long dried red mud from the subfloors. Within minutes the room is being overcome with earthy smelling dust, we cough before she tells me we’ve got to try something else… and then she’s gone to the car to dig my husband’s gifted shop vac from the trunk.

She plugs it in and begins to haphhazrdly vacuum the dirty floors, missing large swaths with each pass. Uneasily watching the missed spots I ask if I can vacuum, she laughs knowing that I’m dying inside, knowing that ‘it won’t be right if I don’t get every millimeter of floor under the nozzle of the vacuum,’ she knows me too well, all my hangups and weird odditities, “Have at it!” She insists, thrusting the plastic hose into my hands.

I turn the shopvac back on, the loud hum echoing through the nearly empty home, the smell of dry earth fills the room as the dust I kicked up with my sweeping is sucked into the hose, bit by bit the floor is made clean with each obsessive pass. Every so often I stop to stand fully upright, stretching my back, massaging the small of it with my free hand.

We take breaks to smoke more weed and eat the pre-packaged Boba bites I bought in town with the buckets last night. I’m careful not to touch any of the food with my unwashed hands. I wear a thin pair of cheap Dollar Tree gloves to not only keep my hands warm, but also from getting too dusty or dirty knowing I can’t wash up till dinner time. I’ve removed them to eat.

When the floor is finally vacuumed we admire our handywork, the house already feeling a little less dingy… slowly we’re expanding the “clean zone” of her bedroom to include the rest of the home. We let her cat out now, allowing her to explore the empty shell. She runs back and forth with the excitement of it all. We decide that from here on out we will leave our muddy boots right by the front door and switch to ‘house slippers’ now that the thick caked dirt has been thoroughly removed from the floors.

Late that afternoon, the sun beginning to dip lower in the sky we pack up our clean clothes for the night and grab all of our showering supplies before heading to her friend’s AirBnB to eat dinner and clean up. She has a nice and large double wide trailer on the bank of a tiny babbling creek. She’s not home when we get there but has made her place accessible to us, leaving the back door unlocked. Her house is warm and tidy, no red mud or cobwebs. I shower in water as hot as I can stand, immediately feeling better. We eat from steaming tinfoil packets on white dinner plates, stuffed with flaky pink salmon and wild rice with mixed veggies. I gulp down fresh spring water, taking huge bites of the tasty fish. Our bellies warm and full, our tired bodies clean, we wash our dishes, gather up our belongings and hop back into the car to trek back to the cabin.

When we make it back to her place, the sun has already set and the sky is nearly pitch dark. The mud has begun to thicken and freeze, no longer giving way under our heavy boots. We bring in our bags of shower supplies and dirty clothes, dusty from the day’s floor scouring, and we kick off our boots, by the front door, expertly removing one at a time to slip our feet into our waiting house shoes. We flip on lights and turn the little space heater on. We clear the table and play Rummikub, passing the bong between us as the tiles click clack on the wooden surface. When we’ve grown too tired to think, we grab the gallon jug of water and crane our necks on the mucky porch, doing our best to spit the toothpaste as far from her front steps as possible and into the inky dark of the moonless night. It begins to snow again, little frosty crystals dance in the light of the one bulb still on in the living room, its light illuminating a small swatch of darkness on the porch.

“It’s fucking freezing,” I say stating the obvious, and then we’re both back inside getting ready for bed. Sleep comes quickly in the pitch dark cabin, the only sounds the gentle electric hum of the space heater, her cat purring loudly by my head, the occasional howl of the dog we heard this morning…. There’s an odd connectedness in the mountains; physically separated by peaks and valleys, tumultuous rivers, icicles clinging to weathered stone, the thick skeletal trees of the forests and yet we’re all one, blanketed by the dark, void of much of the unnatural light that illuminates her former world… slowly the lights in each neighboring cabin click off, and we all sleep as one, no moon to set the baren trees aglow.

TO BE CONTINUED…