Joshua's Ladder

PART ONE

Chapter 1

I was curled up in the fetal position when I awoke in my cabin hugging a pillow. I was facing the nightstand. On it were my .22 pistol, an empty can of Coors Light, a book of short stories by Mark Twain, and a brown field mouse.

The mouse hadn’t been there when I went to bed. His ears twitched rapidly as it sensed my groggy gaze. I lay silently and we stared at each other for about half a minute. Then it spoke to me.

"Why do you even go on? You have the most boring, meaningless existence known to mankind. You’re alone, bitter and contributing nothing to this world. Leave it. Vacate."

My hands were tucked under the other pillow beneath my head. I clenched a corner of it and slung the pillow at the wooden stand, toppling it over. The mouse landed in the corner of the room and disappeared into a small crack in the floorboards.

I got up and brushed my teeth.

Chapter 2

Just as the festering edge of the morning sun began to tickle the peak of Crow Butte, I hooked my two Irish Setters, Archie and Edith, to their leashes and pulled a metal tub of rain water to a bare spot between them before beginning my six-mile hike into Spearfish. The long-haired hippies of the dog world cocked their burgundy heads as I ruffled their baggy ears. Both looked at me with empty stares that seemed to say: We kind of remember what it’s like to be chained up, but, really, you aren’t serious about this, are you?

I was, told them see you tomorrow and slipped on my backpack. Two hours later I reached the green sign with white letters that read: Spearfish, pop. 7,658 – coincidentally, almost exactly the number of beers I’d drank in that town.

I was born in this South Dakota town 45 years ago on Halloween, appropriately enough some would say. It was much smaller back then, having now blossomed into a vivacious college town tempered in daylight hours by an influx of wrinkled retirees drawn by the dry air, the lack of mosquitoes to annoy their golf game, and the reputation as the Banana Belt of South Dakota.

It was a great community for a boy to grow up. Nestled in the foothills of the Black Hills, it’s where my dad taught me to fly fish, hunt elk, play baseball and to read the classics. It’s where my mother taught me to be nice – an annoying habit I’d been working to vanquish.

The first thing people ask when they learn I’ve been living alone for 10 years in a cabin in the forest is: Are you crazy?

They have asked me enough times, quite rudely in my opinion, that it’s caused me to do some introspection and ask myself that same question more than a few times. Each time I have thoughtfully concluded that I am not.

I’ve also been called anti-social, a loner. There again, I don’t believe I am. I enjoy the company of others, but not every hour of every day of every week. While I have occasional visitors to my abode, I only choose to leave and partake of society’s revelry and rudeness on its terms about every six months, once in October and once in May. On those occasions, twenty-four hours is about my quota, and then my tank overflows with their triteness, egos, pessimism and selfishness and I return to my cabin.

Today is one of those travel days, Saturday, May 5, when I get my refill of society.

Chapter 3

I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I’m some burly mountain man with a coonskin cap, grizzly beard, muzzle-loader and big blue ox named Babe. I’m not.

I also hope you don’t think me some wild-eyed, enviro-fascist, sitting around his shanty, hugging trees and mailing letter-bombs to capitalist pigs. I’m not.

I’m a bit taller than your average shlub, a little more slender than normal, have longer hair than many, read a little more than most, and just like living with my two dogs enjoying the quiet of nature. I’m nothing odd to look at, pretty decent looking in fact, if I say so myself. So it was that I walked into town, wearing white Nike running shoes, blue jeans, Ducks Unlimited baseball cap and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Pretty darn normal if you ask me, though my opinion on matters usually differs from most.

Of course, the first stop a person has to make when planning to enjoy a day and night on the town is the bank. You can go quite a ways in life on good looks and a sparkling personality, but it won’t buy you a cup a coffee. Money is the oxygen of any heavy-breathing society like ours. For it, people will spill your blood, sop up the splatter with a piece of toast and wash it down with a glass of pulp-free Florida orange juice – all before 9 in the morning.

It was that time now and Betty Erickson was unlocking the glass doors of First Dakota National Bank as I arrived. Looking and serving more like an old doting aunt to me, she was actually my cousin, the oldest daughter of my mother’s oldest sister.

Then my head went goofy again.

"Just grab the old bitty, put your knife up to her neck and demand a pile of money. It would be fun. Do something fun in your life for a change. People admire the brave, clever bank robbers. Jesse James, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde. You could be one of them. Pull the knife. Give her a scare. Just do it. Live a little. Pull the knife."

I used my left hand to shoo the annoying voice off my right shoulder, a reflexive action it had become.

A couple years supposedly from retirement, Betty smiled so broadly at the sight of me that the edges of her grin disappeared behind her sagging ears. Oh, Joshua! she exclaimed and embraced me around my rib cage so hard that it felt good.

Easy now Betty, I said as we stepped back, holding hands stretched in front of us. Ever since I was kid, I thought Betty looked like a squirrel. Her body was thin and lanky, with arms that seemed shorter than they should be. A slight overbite on a smallish mouth gave her a nibbling kind of look; and she topped that off with brown hair that swooshed back over her head, like she’d stuck it out the car window all the way to work.

Oh how I’ve missed you, Betty said. It’s so good to see you. I’ve been thinking about your mother and father and Jacob since the second I woke up this morning. So, of course, I knew I’d be seeing you today. It’s the only bright ray on this gloomy day.

Ah, but the sun is out today, Betty, I tried to reassure her.

This day will always be a gloomy day for me, she said. I can’t help it.

Thirteen years ago today my parents and twin brother were killed in a car accident. She hadn’t forgotten, never would – and neither would I. Betty had spent the resulting years in a deep depression before slowly recovering thanks to a kindly priest and a good psychiatrist with a thick prescription pad. For me, the resulting three years had been filled with beer, whiskey, brawls, debauchery and more whiskey, before taking my bottle to the woods. Wounds heal, or at least scab over, with different treatment methods.

Is Big John in yet? I asked.

Why yes. This is his Saturday morning to work. Let’s go find him.

We walked through the lobby and I gave a two-fingered wave to a pair of tellers at their posts, Jenny Michaels, who had been a year behind me in school, and an older chubby lady who looked like a recent transplant. They smiled politely.

Betty stopped at John’s glassed-in office and opened the door for me as he looked up from behind one of a half dozen piles of papers stacked chest high on his desk. The phone was at his ear, like always, and he pointed to a wooden chair in front of his metal desk. I took a seat. John lifted his free hand and made a flapping motion with his fingers that meant: Yak, yak, yak. I presumed it to be his wife, Jill, an annoying little stub of a woman who harangued him from dawn to dusk and probably even in his dreams.

Big John was personal banker/public relations manager of the bank. His genuinely happy, joking personality was the reason 95 percent of the customers banked there. He could charm the pants off Squeaky From and get her to deposit her life savings without her even bothering to inquire as to the interest rate of the CDs she bought.

Big John and I had been best friends since birth – literally – as he was a day older than my brother and me and had shared the same hospital nursery room. I still say Big John was the one who convinced me to pee on the nurse changing my diaper and had a hand in every bit of trouble I’d gotten into since.

His nickname was not one of those ill-gotten ironic names, like every school had a fat kid named Tiny. No, his was genuine. John was Big. At 6-foot-7, 285 pounds, he also had big feet, big hands, big ears and a loud voice. He was the catcher and I was the pitcher when the Spearfish Spartans won their one and only state American Legion baseball championship our senior year. Ah, the glory days.

He finally took advantage of his wife yawning or drawing a deep breath to inform her: Joshua’s here! Gotta go. And hung up. He would undoubtedly pay later for that curt indiscretion.

Big John, whose curly black mop of hair was as untamed as he was, took two giant steps around the desk and shook my hand like a rancher driving in a fence post. He sat down on the edge of his desk. It squeaked. He practically bellowed: How the hell are ya?!

Good John. How about you?

Another year of that damn woman and I’ll be moving in with you.

You’ve got a heart of gold.

And she’s already got dibs on that now that gold is over a grand an ounce. It’s the only thing of mine she hasn’t spent – yet.

You complained about her when you were dating, you complained about her when you were engaged and you still haven’t stopped.

But you never heard me complaining about those huge titties of hers now, did ya?

Can’t say I have, John.

Gotta have your priorities, he laughed and returned to his chair.

"Go on, tell him. Tell the big lug his wife is a slut. He thinks he’s got it all and is better than you. Put him in his place. Tell him about that night she got drunk, unbuttoned her shirt and asked you to touch them. Tell him how she took your hands and tried putting them on her chest, but then you chickened out like a little pussy. Tell him how she invited you to eat at the big breast buffet and you bailed. You know she’s shaking them all over town to other guys. Other guys who are real men and don’t turn down free offers like that. Tell him about his Jilly, the whore. Tell him!"

I rubbed my shoulder, erasing the voice.

How’s life in the hills? John asked. Still making the sheep nervous?

No, actually have my eye on a couple white-tailed does, but they’re so darn quick.

He laughed at the same joke I used every time I saw him.

Suppose you’re not just here to see little ol’ me. I know you only want me for your money. He pulled a manila folder from the top of a stack on his desk. He’d been expecting me too.

You’ll be happy to know that while you were up communing with nature, your stocks were communing pretty well too. In fact, they went ape shit the last two quarters. Good thing you didn’t take my advice, he laughed and continued, running his index finger down the columns and across the rows. You’re the only dumb sonuvabitch I have who puts all his holdings in the high-risk crap. And by God it did ya for a 22 percent increase.

I honestly didn’t care, but it was nice to know a guy could still get lucky.

Last time you were in, October, you had a value of $804,902. As of close yesterday, you are worth $981,980 and 44 cents. Jeesh, you’re damn near a millionaire.

Don’t feel like one, I said.

Well how do you feel?

I feel pretty good, but a little melancholy today and super horny.

Well, that’s what it feels like to be a millionaire!

We both laughed.

I used a counter check to withdraw $1,000 in cash and signed my income tax forms (for which Big John had filed an extension on my behalf) and filled out the accompanying check so I could keep the snowplows running and ATF agents in ammo for the next year. John and I agreed to meet later that night for supper at the Wild Walleye.

You might think a grand in my pocket for one night on the town is a tad ostentatious, but hey, I don’t get out much.

Chapter 4

Occasionally I am tempted to talk to somebody about this voice that tends to taunt me from time to time – as you've no doubt noticed it. The trouble is I don’t want to sound like an idiot. For all I know maybe everybody has a voice or voices in their head, just like we all have eyes, ears and lips. I tend to doubt that scenario though, as I think people would be openly talking about their various voices.

So, assuming everybody doesn’t hear voices, then there is a very real chance that there is something pretty darn kooky about me. Kooky enough to put me away? I don’t know. So I don’t risk it.

The voice I hear is a slow, deep one – John Wayne-like in tone and tenor but without the cowboy drawl. It’s very matter-of-fact, sometimes sarcastic and demeaning and usually vicious, but always trying to make me do something bad or to feel badly about myself.

While I can’t remember ever doing what the voice commanded me to do, I’ve still done bad things in my life – just not specifically told to do them. More than anything, it just wears on me, beats me down. It’s tiresome enough to tackle the day-to-day challenges of life without having someone on your shoulder or in the body of an animal taunting you, teasing you, denigrating you.

For lack of a better understanding of whatever or whomever this thing is that has been haunting me since my family’s accident, I consider it to be the devil. I don’t call him Satan because that seems a bit lofty of a title to bequeath on a voice that just follows goofy ol' me around. So I dropped an a and gave him the name Stan. If nothing else, it makes him seem a little more manageable and less threatening.

At times when Stan comes to me, it sounds like he’s sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear. At other times, when there is an animal nearby, Stan chooses to speak through them. It’s not like the squirrel or deer or bird’s lips move while Stan speaks, but the sound comes from them and their eyes always pierce into mine.

Take it from me, it can be quite off-putting to have a gopher tell you what a miserable failure you are or prompt you to kick a guy in the balls.

I don’t know what the intentions are of this voice, but it desperately wants me to either do bad, mean things to other people or to just kill myself. I am certain it is playing a game with me or testing me somehow. I also get the feeling that this thing is not the smarter of the two dueling deities in my conscience, because if it were, it would know that I don’t like to lose and that I seldom listen to other people. For that reason, I don’t give in to its demands. I fight it, ignore it, swat it, and it actually makes me feel better at the end of the night to know I’ve beaten the son-of-a-bitch another day.

What I fear is how long I can fight, how long I can go without getting worn down, and what will happen if and when I do?

What I contemplate is how to make it stop. What is the end game? Is there a puzzle to be solved? A pill to take? A riddle to answer? What, what, what? So many questions, so little mind.

Chapter 5

When it comes to May in the northern Black Hills, the weather is a bit of a grab bag. You could get lucky and be basking in 70-degree warmth, which felt like 85 after coming off a long winter. Or you could find yourself with snow shovel in hand disposing of Mother Nature’s final gasp of icy breath and spittle.

If nothing else, Lady Luck seemed to be winking at me this trip, as the warm air was already giving the tulips a chance to stretch their legs. I wandered out the bank and down Main Street enjoying the early red and yellow blooms plucking their heads over the top of store front window planters. They, like many of the townspeople I passed, seemed to take extended peeks at