Beer Bellies and Babies

                                                                                                                               2,264 wds          

At 9:30 pm the telephone rang, and Lillia had just put the baby down. What? An old buddy coming with a six-pack? Now? Who is it?

Not only did this old buddy arrive with a six-pack, he brought a woman and a dog. They all needed a place to stay. 

“You couldn’t say no?”

“No, no i couldn’t” Pete said. “They drove all day.”

“From Virginia?”

“No, from out west, they’re traveling.”

“A good friend of your’s?” Lillia asked and her husband, hesitating, made her uneasy.
“We worked together, he’s a good guy.” 

They looked at each other.

“When we decided to move, he said he’d never been to Maine,” Pete said. “I told him to look me up if he ever gets up this way.”

“And he took you up on it, that’s unusual.” 

Then Lillia said what she instantly regretted saying. “Did you ask him to bring the six-pack?”

“No.”

“Okay, i’m sorry.”

“He’s okay, really, a good carpenter.”

What disturbed Lillia most was Pete losing control of his world. He is easily knocked off track. Something like this happens, he wobbles and lets it go on. Where is his nerve, his grit to say no? Some day, Lillia feared, he’ll be knocked off track and too heavy to pick up. 

“Let’s get ready,” said Lillia, “Unfold the couch so he can get right into bed soon as possible.”

“Good idea,” Pete said, “When he sees it. . . “  

The doorbell rang before Pete could move. 

They came in; the man loud, as expected, and the woman cowed, wearing a tortured expression. The dogs didn’t get along either, of course. It took a long time to quiet them. Everything went wrong fast; the guy handed Pete a beer.

The two men, Ernest and Pete, ‘set up shop’ in the kitchen, all ready to put away the six. Lillia took Ernestine, “Call me Ernie,” into the bedroom to see the baby. The baby was sleeping so they didn’t pick him up. 

“Oh, i want one,” Ernie said and it broke Lillia’s heart because she still thought, at that time, Ernie was as boorish and intrusive as Ernest, who they could presently hear talking in the kitchen. Ernest and Ernie, the same name, after all.

Baby Henry was one reason they moved to Maine, another was available, cheap housing. Lillia was pregnant and this time wanted the baby. Pete was happy at work but willing to leave his job, so they took a “new path.” Lillia’s sister in Maine invited them to move there and live in their parents’ old house in need of a tenant.  A kind of mystical minded person, Lillia’s sister burned some kind of native grass, meditated and chanted, and wheels were rolling. 

At first Pete suggested they were not ready and they should abort. Lillia refused.

“It’s something we would have to live with for the rest of our lives,” she said.

Pete was angry, he demanded they find someone to adopt the child. Lillia refused. She gave way on one point; they need not be formally married. 

Now when Baby Henry wakes mornings with a chortle of joy and a giggle or is so pitiful with colic, the memory of how Pete felt and behaved before stabs him straight to the heart. In Maine, Pete and Lillia had made more than a mere physical beginning.

Looking over the child as the men made noise in the kitchen, Lillia’s only complaint to Ernie was how the baby stretched her out so she still feels like she’s going all to sludge at her core, pivotal area, like she might fall apart. 

“Like from depression?” Ernie said.

“Not so much now.” 

Lillia thought, ‘Maybe she has sisters.’

“That’s why i power walk or run every day,” Lillia said, “and do a very specific flexibility routine, without fail. I mean, you have to go at it every day.” 

For the first time Ernie sounded strong saying, “I know, i feel sludgy on the road, unless we hike. You’re right about the excercise!” Both knew they were talking about more than physical conditioning. 

At that moment a warm feeling grew up between them. The guys echoed away in the kitchen, it was not clear who was getting an advantage over the other in their exchange of banter. It sounded like they were trying to shout each other down and laughing at the same time. Lillia had to stick her head into the kitchen several times and say “Baby sleeping!” 

The women went into the living room to work out the bed arrangements. “Pete didn’t tell me you were coming at all,” Lillia said. 

“Ernest didn’t tell me either, until about an hour ago. I thought he wanted to come through Freedom to look at some historical something.”

“Yeah, something to do with the Civil War happened here.”

  Ernie said she didn’t know that Pete had invited Ernest, a co-worker from the old home town, to visit. Pete made the invitation more than half a year ago while they were drinking on one of those pay-day late afternoons when they left work straight for a bar, no matter that they were covered with stinking, dry sweat and construction dirt. They were proud of their strength and skin roasted and tightened in the sun and oozing the stink of heavy work. The trouble with the world in general, they agreed, in their elbow-and-shoulder-bumping-mute exultation, is that strength, raw, direct, unambiguous (whatever the hell that word means) strength, is no longer respected. 

   Drinking became like work enthusiasm; they put all their effort into it, into seeing who can

stack up and knock back the most ‘dead soldiers.’ How much can you drink and still think clearly? The beer stretched them out and they appeared to be proud of their beer bellies! 

Lillia and Ernie agreed on this point, too. Don’t they know women like flat bellies? How handsome a flat-bellied man is standing strong below, standing strong, as they say in the south “in full glory,” without that shed roof overhanging. This ability to deliver the seed, the life, that’s real strength! Plus, a man standing up with his proud one in the shade of “Dunlap’s disease” looks so funny. It seriously reduces core flexibility and they don’t know it?

The biggest, personal problem, now that Pete  had left that world behind, was a belly full of beer went straight to hiis head. He still drank beer, but now he had a son. 

   Pete needed some prodding for Lillia to coax him away from it all. Rough framing; banging and tearing up his hands and neglecting mental skills for so little money; in reality, that’s not Pete. He loves, as he says, the physical clash of raw forces, yet this destroys the finesse of his fine woodworking hands. He knew it, he said so himself.   

Lillia grew sad for this woman, Ernie, who must feel trapped as Lillia once felt trapped by a man’s thirst. She said so and Ernie replied, “Oh no, not at all.” 

Denial, how typical. 

“Not to worry,” Ernie said, “i let him get a nose-full now and then and he knows i don’t like it. The stretches between are getting longer and longer.”

Noise from the kitchen and they both glanced at the door. 

“He’ll hear about it,” Ernie said. 

Since the move he scarcely had a drink other than the glass or two of wine she poured at dinner. They had not lived in the town long enough for Pete to meet new drinking buddies. By the time he did meet them she would have another child and enough of everything else; a place in the community, children, her own work. Pete could then decide for himself what to do with his health. She had pulled him from that distance to grow anew. Would he survive the transplant? Putting down roots in Maine; that was funny, considering the layer of stone right below the topsoil.

Coincidentally, both of them had suffered a recent loss. Within the last year both buried their mothers. Lillia and her sister inherited this house and 12 acres of stony soil. This windfall of her Mother’s death allowed her to scoop Pete from an alcohol sodden sweat shop treadmill a thousand miles away and transplant him in rocky yet richer soil. So far he’s taken root well. Pete was at first interested in farming, until he was told all he could grow in Maine is ~ not much. 

Being in Maine was also a first for Ernie. On this trip they had been all the way to the west coast and back. This two month long camping trip was escape from legal troubles the family suffered for the past year. Then Mother died. Now that dismal year was behind her. 

“Fortunately mom was only ill for a week,” Ernie said. “I mean, so there was never the grinding routine and sadness of sitting by a hospice bed, in addition to everything else.”

“My mom was never very well,” said Lillia. 

“Let me go quick!” Ernie said, balled up a fist and punched the air. Lillia thought, ‘this gal has some country in her!’ and liked her more.

Still, a residue of resentment lingered, because if Ernie’s sister had not had the legal problems that had beleaguered the family maybe her mother would not have worried herself into an early grave. She was only fifty-nine. 

And what else might happen on this trip? Could it be that Ernest would pop the question? Typical male behavior, he’d popped everything else. If he asked, Ernie had an answer which hinged on certain conditions being met. They would discuss it. 

Lillia did not hesitate to ask what these conditions might be and Ernie said, “Yes, only if . . .” and Lillia completely understood.

Instead of a weepy, frail sister, Lillia found in Ernie one in full possession of sound judgment open to possibilities. 

“You sound like you can handle him, but it’s tough,” said Lillia. 

“Yeah, but he has talents.” Ernie provided examples. For instance, a few days ago they passed through Quebec where he was intelligent and sophisticated; not a good old country boy at all. In fact, he pulled up some schoolboy French and used it well; he remembered what he tried not to learn in high school; he has something in the top drawer besides underwear. 

In all, Ernie turned out to be worth knowing and Lillia was sad when the evening came to end. 

It ended when the men finished drinking their beer. For a long period they were silent, then Pete came into the room. Lillia was surprised by his serious expression. 

“Bedtime,” he said, and behind him, over Pete’s shoulder was Ernest’s red face and smile saying, “Good night all.”  

It was almost two hours past weekday bedtime. 

Peter’s buddy looked like he was about to fall on his face. Ernestine helped get him into the living room and onto the fold-out bed of the couch. In parting Ernie said good night and thanked Lillia and with her eyes Lillia thought she said, “That’s the way these guys are.”

Pete helped them get settled in and when he came into the bedroom Lillia was sitting up in bed nursing the baby. 

Pete undressed and got into bed beside her. He said, “Sorry, that was a mistake.”

“Sounded like fun.”

“It was fun for him. I drank two bottles of beer in the time he drank four.”

“Maybe they had a hard time on the road. Maybe he needed it.”

“That could be. Was his woman very bad?” said Pete.

“Oh no, she’s an angel.”

“well, he kinda suggested that she was difficult.”

“He must have a problem.” 

“Not the woman or the dog, definitely not the woman.”

“I don’t see how it can be the dog.” 

The next morning, a work day, everyone got up at the same time, early. Ernest was bleary, Ernestine was crisp, wanted to help with breakfast and baby. Lillia decided to cut it all short, get Pete out the door and go to her sister’s for breakfast so their guests would have coffee, maybe toast, and leave quickly. She told them of a cute boutique café in town, hurried and bustled about to create an impression that this was their normal routine. Pete and Ernest went out to walk the dogs. She hated to hustle them up but Pete had work so she packed extra food with his lunch so he could eat breakfast on the way to the job. 

They said goodbye on the driveway. Ernest was mostly silent with grumpy sneaking into his attitude and Lillia felt bad for Ernie, her new friend. She felt like telling Ernest to grow up and act like a man. She knew from experience and family history harsh is no way to treat an addictive personality. Certain there would be a situation in the future, Lillia hoped Ernie was prepared. 

The women hugged each other and Lillia and Pete wished them good luck on the road to Boston. 

To Ernestine alone Lillia whispered, “Good luck getting the question,” and they smiled into each other’s eyes. 

“I’ll let you know.”

They promised to keep in touch but one thing leads to another and Lillia never saw or heard from Ernie again. She often wondered how things had turned out for her ~ for them. 

                                                                                                          end of “Beer Bellies and Babies” 2,264 wds