CAUTION Men in Trees

There's Too Much News

T H E R E ' S T O O M U C H N E W S e moved to the woods ofsouthern Ohio this summer, the backside of the Appalachians. Family phoned from Nevada, and we kept saying fall came, the leaves dropped, and we learned we had neighbors. That's a good one, they said. One or the other of us on the extension, we said, "Trees here, there, and everywhere, like in Red Riding Hood and slasher films. Like one of those gangster movies—you know, the place where the bad guys take the snitch to rub him out so no one's going to find the body for a hundred years." Yeah? they said. Before, we sent photos. Gorgeous, they said of the colors. Don't judge a book by its jacket, we said. Take the deer hunt. Hill-jacks, five of them flushing whitetails along a draw and out of the woods, into open territory along Township Road 41, two of their buddies stationed in a field. Those two, they aimed, fired, and brought down a doe and a W housewife who'd stepped into her backyard for a smoke, it being a fine sunny day and there being a baby inside. The numbnuts— clueless—were gutting the deer when the police arrived. Some guy shotgunned his neighbor and dragged what was left of him onto the berm along Country Road 14. Another upstanding citizen stalked two hunters into a ravine and, using his own deer rifle, nailed them between the shoulder blades, a dispute having to do with a meth lab. Police found the men's dogs tracking along a dirt road. Report was, this was a repeat. Same thing happened last year. Two nights ago, across from us, a hothead named BillyFix beat up the woman he lived with. Paramedics, the paper said, found her in the garage, her car door open, keys in the ignition, radio on, engine off, a quilt thrown over her legs. May, my wife, wasn't here for that. A couple of weeks ago, right around Thanksgiving, she said, "There's too much news," and she asked me to drive her to a place her psychiatrist recommended in West Virginia. Next day we drove down. Crossed the Ohio River at Pomeroy,took 62 along the river to Point Pleasant, and from there we followed a map they'd faxed us. On it were scribbled instructions about some place called Flat Iron, about a stone wishing well and drinking fountain at a crossroads where we'd havethree choices (all ofthem eventually getting us to where we were going), followed closely by a narrow bridge where we'd have one choice. We pulled into a dirt-and-gravel parking lot, not sure we'd found the right place, no sign, but we'd followed directions to a T. The main building was a historical-looking two-story brick house, could easily have been your neighbor's. It was surrounded by a park. Cottages. I said, "I guess we made it," and May said, "Bythe skin of my chinny-chin-chin." No phone calls for the first week, and afterward only every other day. Every third day would be most therapeutic. No visits There's Too Much News 53 for twenty-one days. Both mandatory commitments. For the sake of the patron. All parties had to agree or we might as well climb back in the car and drive home. I asked if twenty-one meant I could comeon daytwenty-one. "After day twenty-one,"Dr. Clemens said. "It takes twenty-one days for wounds to heal." He capped his pen, said, "After is better." May said, "Wounds?" "It's a metaphor," Dr. Clemens said. "Afactual one, though." Patrons didn't ten-step or twelve-step. They springboarded. Here to here to here. May's issues preceded us, a sweetheart teenage marriage, annulled . Darkness hatching guilt and crossbreeding into revenge. There was the usual stuff with her mother, only add a ton of intractability to each complaint. Loneliness, even at parties, particularly at family gatherings. Drinking, supposedly a thing of the past. Some OCD, spoon-stacking, toss rugs whose fringe must be splayed, chairs spotted up in rooms. Her feet, in conversation, set at eccentric angles. May's father, a pharmacist, in order to teach her that life is chaos and must be tamed, painted object lessons on the...