Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley

Chapter 10: Alternative Lifestyles

10 Alternative Lifestyles O ur poverty was carefree, I was discovering, so long as I didn’t care. Money was not a problem for Depty and me. We never had any. “I hate to have it rattling ’round my pocket,” he would declare. And the whole time I was with him, I never heard that sound. Our life in the tree house was governed by simplicity, not lack. Who needed television, a dishwasher, or curtains, when we had spiders for company, no dishes, and a delicious amount of privacy? Groceries, beer, and Depty’s Kools were all we needed money for; that, and enough gas to drive to Opal’s to get them. The way we figured it, the less we had, the less we were responsible for, and we had nothing, except Ethyl. If we were broke, it wasn’t because we didn’t work. Soon after taking up residence in the tree house, I got hired to cane chair seats at Mule Muzzle Antiques on Main Street in Whitesburg. For fifteen bucks a chair, it was not exactly lucrative work; one seat could take two days or more to weave. Still, I came to love how the pattern slowly emerged in a symmetry of bamboo hexagons. Now that he was a Zonko-trained carpenter, Depty Dawg sometimes hired out on his own. A new friend in the county was putting him to work. Billy was a computer whiz of Greek ancestry whom we’d met at the Mill. At forty, he was pear-shaped and swarthy, with eyes the color of Kalamata olives, and hair long enough to sit on. His well-told tales of growing up over the Second Avenue Deli in Manhattan enthralled two homegrown southerners like ourselves . I knew a little about Brooklyn from visiting my grandparents; Manhattan was always that shining island across the water, sharper, less friendly, and therefore more glamorous. Besides being a deft weaver of urban myth, Billy could also play a mean set of spoons. He and his wife, Margery, were another pair of aspiring home41 42 | Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley steaders in the county. They had just purchased a house outside Whitesburg, commuting daily to their jobs as statistician and researcher, respectively, at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta. Recently, they’d acquired four pregnant ewes in the hopes of selling spring lamb chops to local chefs, and Billy had hired Dep to help him put up a new sheep shed behind their house. I’d been meeting Depty there once I was finished at the Mule Muzzle. At five o’clock, the unused canes were hung on the wall to dry. Georgia sweltered in late June; I was looking forward to a beer and a cold soak in the creek with Depty Dawg. Pocketing my pay, I inched Ethyl down Main Street, aware she still bore her Virginia license plates. Sooner or later, Police Chief Hightower would figure out we were here to stay, and we’d have to come up with enough money to make her state legal. Slipping by the cops’ greed trap, as Depty called it, I turned onto Old Black Dirt Road. Billy and Margery’s modest, one-story bungalow was perched on the edge of an oak-shaded pasture. At its far rim sat a patch of one-hundred, newlyplanted blueberry bushes. The dogs barked my arrival; Margery was nowhere in sight. Heading toward the sheep shed—which just that day had gained a roof—I overheard Billy say, “Yeah, sure, everybody talks about the poor, but who really cares?” “Artists maybe,” Depty replied. “I’d like to think so.” The two grimy carpenters sat in the shed’s shade, airing their armpits and drinking frosty beers. I was surprised; for once Depty wasn’t wearing a shirt. He could be so modest, I often wondered if he still thought of himself as fat. I fell into his arms. His blue eyes glittered. “Hey, little Sybil.” “Hey, big Dep,” I said back. Pressing my face to his shoulder, I turned to sit between his knees. “Careful,” he cautioned, handing me his beer. “I stink.” “She don’t care.” Billy wagged a finger at us. “I know this dance you two are doing. It’s soul-nabbing.” I tilted the bottle to my lips as Depty whispered in my ear, “They gonna have a baby.” Out sputtered the beer. “Really?” Billy swiped playfully at Depty. “I said we...