Chapter 2: Altar in the Outhouse

Bright sunlight shined through my bedroom window and woke me. I bounced out of bed, quickly turned up the furnace and popped in and out of the shower as the first step toward waking up. I dried off and hurried to get dressed as fast as I could except for my shoes. I padded barefoot into the kitchen to start the coffee maker. Then while the coffee was brewing I fired up my main computer.

Because of my chosen line of work, there are times when I write an ad for whatever it is I'm hustling on one computer while I do research on another. The second computer works through a dozen or more search engines as I seek whatever looks promising for a quick turnover. The third, older one is mostly used for printing, fax and as a backup in case either of the others goes out.

When I started out, I sold, for the most part, computers, surplus government whatever and electronics instruments. I'm not an expert on any of the merchandise. I do like the fast turnover.

More recent, the odd and unusual items, tiki gods, totem poles and kachina dolls, for instance. To the natural born entrepreneur there is always opportunity. Once I bought two hundred motorbikes from Russia for sixty dollars each and made seven times my investment in a month.

I checked my email and found nothing of interest. A flick of a switch and the house was flooded with Verdi's "Grand Canyon Suite." My favorite part, "On The Trail," began to play. It conjured a string of donkeys patiently plodding along the canyon rim. I went back to the kitchen, sat and drank coffee and scanned through yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News. After an hour of reading and relaxing I decided it was time to get busy.

I slipped on my socks and shoes and walked outside in my shirtsleeves to get yesterday's mail. With all that happened the previous day I had neglected to check the mailbox. The sun reflected brightly off the snow and the temperature was up in the mid twenties. A white van with the call letters of a Salt Lake City television station sat parked across my driveway.

"Hi," a bundled up guy holding a microphone in one hand greeted me.

"Yes?" I asked cautiously.

"I'm Jackson Parker," he told me pleasantly, "I'm sure you've heard of me and seen me on television." I had. He was a local TV personality who did man on the streets interviews and for the most was not overly obnoxious. Bland described him best.

"I'd like your permission to bring a camera up close and have a look at what all the excitement is about. And while we're at it, perhaps you would like to give your version of what's happening to my many listeners. Right now you're news and it might be better to talk to friendly me than to a whole bunch of less friendly reporters. How about it?"

I began to shiver from the cold so I nodded and looked in the mailbox. There was nothing. "Come on in," I told him. The cameraman got out of the van and joined us. I decided, maybe I could defuse the whole situation if I talk to this guy. I led the way back into the house and offered them coffee.

"Make yourselves at home, I want to check my email. I have customers who get antsy when I don't give them the sort of service they'd like to become accustomed to." I went into my den/office combination, sat down at the computer desk and accessed my email. I ignored my guests as I logged on. There was an acknowledgement from Ralph thanking me for not being too awfully late. He said the delivery date was acceptable and the check was in the mail.

"You're a writer?" asked a voice right behind me. It was Jackson Parker looking over my shoulder.

"Well, not the fiction kind. I write advertising copy for the merchandise I sell on line, mostly electronics gear. I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. I leave poetry, fiction and religious speculation to other people.

I sat back in my chair. The cameraman began to record as Jackson started the interview. "What actually happened out there?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the back door and the outhouse. "After all, you do have to admit wild roses blooming out of doors in the dead of winter is very rare, if not unheard of, even in Utah."

I shook my head, "Man, I wish I knew. This whole thing is beyond strange. In my world there are no unexplained weird events because everything is cut and dried and scientifically explained. Then this comes along and I have no explanation for it. Gases, underground hot springs, geo-thermal inclines, there's nothing even close out there in my back yard. It really bothers me. I have absolutely no explanation for it."

"Does it make you afraid?" he asked.

Macho me answered quickly, too quickly, "Of course not," my voice raised and almost became a squeak. I backtracked, "Yeah, it scares me. Something like this is outside the realms of any known science I've ever heard of. As I told you, I buy and sell electronics gear mostly. But this seems way beyond anything I have ever heard of before. I mean wild flowers just don't stick up out of the snow and begin to grow and thrive all by themselves."

"Are you saying this is supernatural? Do you believe this is something outside the realms of known science?" he asked eagerly.

Oh no, I was not going to have the dudes with the tinfoil hats and dowsing rods wandering around out back, not on my property. "I do not believe in the so called 'supernatural.' There are only the laws of nature we have discovered and those we have yet to discover."

"Oh, then you don't believe in God?" This guy was trying to push my buttons and I did not like it, not even a little.

"Look, I believe there must be a Supreme Being. It's just I don't claim I know enough to say I know who or what form said Deity takes. It's perfectly okay to say 'I don't know' when I don't."

"Oh, then you're against the Mormon religion?"

I took a deep breath and told him with exaggerated patience, "Look, my fiancé, whom I love very much, is an active member of the LDS church. She firmly believes her church doctrine, but I can't buy into it. Isn't it all right to say I don't know if I don't?"

Just then my cell phone started its chirrup and twitter sound. I pressed the "phone" button and said, "Hello?"

"Oh, Forrest, did you mean it when you said you love me very much?" It was Rachel. "I've been watching you on the TV and you sound so very..." Her voice trailed off. I could hear her breathing over the phone.

"Ah, TV?" I asked blankly, "How do you know what I'm saying, here? Oh," I paused as I suddenly realized the interview was going out live. "Ah, does this mean you can see me on TV holding my cell phone."

"Yes, and what's more I can see the silly expression on your face." She giggled.

"I guess I better look unsilly since I'm on television." Okay, I'm not the brightest one in the world when it comes to thinking fast on my feet.

Then reality in the form of Jackson Parker intruded. "Are you talking to your fiancé?" he asked.

I resented his unwelcome interruption. This guy began to bug me. "Yes it is and this is a private conversation."

"No it isn't, Forrest. You are talking to me and just about everybody in the Salt Lake City area is listening in to your side of the conversation." She laughed and it sent tingles up my spine.

What I did next was so out of character for me I still wonder how or why I did it. I grinned at the camera, wiggled my eyebrows and waved. I said, "Hello, everybody out there in TV Land. I love Rachel Nelson very much and I want to marry her as soon as possible. I'm tired of waiting."

She gasped. "Forrest, what did you just say?"

"I love you and I was very wrong the way I talked to you and I am sorry and if you want to, let's get married next week." Then I added in a very small voice, "Honey, I love you." Okay, so I sounded a little whiny. Right then I realized for the first time since we started going together just how much she meant to me and became more important with each passing day.

"Do you plan to get married in front of your outhouse?" Jackson Parker asked as he held the microphone of his close to my face. Right then I had the strongest urge to snap at it and bark like a dog. I'm not a violent person, but this guy seemed to go out of his way to say things to irritate me.

"Look," I told him, "Would you marry your fiancé next to an outhouse? You don't seem to have much respect for her, do you?"

"I don't have a fiancé," he laughed. Perhaps tittered would be a more appropriate word to describe his nervous giggle.

"Well no wonder, if you want to marry some poor girl in an outhouse. It seems awfully disrespectful, to me." There, I thought I would throw him off stride. Not even close.

"Well, if the outhouse is a place where miracles are taking place I'd make an exception. I doubt there are many women who would refuse to be married right next to where a miracle had happened, outhouse or no outhouse." He smiled at me as if to say, "Your turn."

"Well, you're the one saying there is a miracle out there. All I know, something strange is going on; and until God Himself tells me it's a miracle, I'll consider it a simple unexplained mystery to be investigated."

"Forrest, you shouldn't talk like that," Rachel admonished me. "You're being almost blasphemous when you say such things." Rachel is a devout church person, not obnoxiously so, but firm in her convictions. Her engagement to me instead of some nice, bland Mormon boy is as far from the church teachings as she ever got.

"Honey, I am not ridiculing God or intentionally committing blasphemy. It's just I don't like to jump to conclusions about things when there is no real proof." I grinned at the camera and said, "I gotta go now; I shall escort my guests out to their miraculous outhouse." I turned the phone off and hooked it on my belt and led the way to the back door. I grabbed a parka off the hook by the door and put it on.

"Look out!" Jackson Parker shouted, as I opened the door, "A Skunk!" he tried to back up and collided with the cameraman. They both went down in a tangle.

I looked down as the mamma skunk limped across my porch toward me. She walked on three legs, her right forepaw was held in the air. Without thinking I squatted down and she limped up to me and showed me her hurt paw. There was a goat head sticker in it. I scooped her into my arms and stood.

The goat head was stuck between her toes. It looked painful. I gently took it between my thumb and forefinger and jerked it loose. I stroked her for a moment, and then deposited her back outside the kitchen door. She walked away as if nothing had been wrong in the first place. The cameraman and the reporter looked at me as if I had suddenly grown two heads.

I found out later, even though he was tangled up on the floor with the idiot reporter, his (the cameraman's) first instinct had been to keep the camera pointed at me. He got the whole thing with the skunk holding its little paw up to me. The perspective of the camera aimed upward at me from the floor gave the whole scene a surreal appearance when viewed on televisions across the Salt Lake Valley.

"Look, that mamma skunk won't attack you. She had to get back to her babies. She's quite nice." I tried to reassure my two guests.

"Ah," the reporter groped for words. Then he asked slowly, "Do you usually pick up wild animals and lay on hands and heal them?"

"Oh, get real," I told him. "All I did was remove a sticker from her paw. Then I sent her on her way. She and her babies live out there in the woods behind the house somewhere."

"But ... but ... she just walked up to you. Wild animals don't do such a thing with most people." I decided this guy was a prime candidate for the Hare Krishna recruiters.

"Look," I explained, "I saw her and her babies for the first time yesterday. They were hungry and I fed them. It's no big thing."

"You mean you just met her once and the wild animal decided you are her best friend? I don't think so." There is nothing worse than someone who is desperate to believe. If you doubt this, just watch Southern TV some Sunday morning or listen to late night radio when the way out crowd invades the airwaves.

"Come on, let's go on outside," I told him. I led the way down the slick back porch steps with a "careful there" admonition and headed toward the outhouse.

Just then, my favorite two mooches, the pregnant does, came quickly up to me and began to nudge my right hand. I laughed and patted them and dug a couple of chunks of dried apple out of my jacket pocket and fed it to them and rubbed their ears and under their jaws. "No more for you, now go away," I yelled at them and they bolted for a few feet, and then came back.

"Are you getting all this?" the reporter asked the cameraman who nodded yes.

The outhouse was covered all over from front to back and top to bottom with not only the rambling rose, but also sumacs dotted red with berries. Even a few delicate morning glory vines flourished and blossomed as if it was springtime. Whatever happened seemed to spread every time I touched anything out there. I wondered if there was any danger in all this. Right then my biggest problem was the unknown. I had no points of reference to guide me. I looked toward the road. Cars were parked along both sides and a bunch of people, perhaps twenty or thirty, stood there gawking.

This was all too much. "Look," I told the cameraman and the reporter, I am going back into the house. I feel like I'm part of a freak show and I don't like it."

"Wait, there are more questions I would like to ask you," he protested.

"Sorry, I just ran out of answers." I clumped back into the house and hung my coat up. As an afterthought I locked the back door. I had enough of everyone for the day.

I went into my den/office and checked the email. In big letters almost filling the screen was a message from Ralph, "What is going on out there in Gooberland? It's a slow news day here on the east coast and you're on every TV here from Manhattan to Boston and beyond. Whatever it is I want in."

I tapped out an immediate answer, "Ralph, I don't know what is happening here. It started when I went to the outhouse for all the usual reasons. Stuff just seems to be growing even though there is snow on the ground. Please believe I am in the dark here too. As soon as I can get a handle on things you will be the first to know."

Less than a minute later he emailed me back, "Don't worry about handles, just give me the story. I want to break it first. Remember I own a newspaper. You owe me."

"I'll write some pure speculation and give it to you tomorrow or maybe even tonight." There, I figured it would keep him off my neck.

I figured wrong. "Give me what you have right now. I'll puff it as necessary. You are news, you and your rustic restroom." He was excited and tried communicate his excitement to me.