Perry - Truck: a love story

To all who hold the world together

including

the shaman girl

2006 by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann

MICHAEL PERRY is a registered nurse, humorist, radio show host, newspaper columnist, freelance writer, and the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including the memoirs Population: 485, Truck: A Love Story, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting, and a novel, The Jesus Cow. He lives with his wife and two daughters in rural Wisconsin, where he serves on the local volunteer fire and rescue service and is an intermittent pig farmer. He can be found online at www.sneezingcow .com.

Perry came to writing relatively late, having first obtained his nursing degree. His book Off Main Street includes the essay Scarlet Ribbons, in which he wrote about the interplay of nursing and writing: Practiced at its best, nursing is humane art, arisen from intimate observation and expressed through care. Nursing is based on human assessment, says Perry. What is writing, but human assessment? On the other hand, Perry has also written that he is grateful for a childhood spent slinging manurethe metaphorical basis for a writing career.

As a freelance magazine writer Perrys writing assignments on behalf of the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Backpacker, Outside, Runners World, Salon, and Mens Health have taken him to the top of Mount Rainier with Iraq War veterans, into the same room as the frozen head of Ted Williams, across the United States with truckers and country music singers, andoncebuck naked into a spray-tan booth. Perry tours regularly with his band the Long Beds and has recently been involved in several musical collaborations including as lyricist for Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Geoffrey Keezer, and (with Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon) as author of the liner notes for the John Prine tribute album Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows, and the Blind Boys of Alabama album Ill Find A Way. Perry also collaborated with Vernon and Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne on a project that began when Vernon approached Perry and said, Say, youre a nurse... The results were bloody, but then that was the point.

Of all his experiences, Perry says the single most meaningful thing he has ever done is serving twelve years beside his neighbors on the New Auburn Area Fire Department.

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MY PINKIE FINGER has gone numb. I am still honing my diagnosis and have yet to pinpoint a cause, but the three leading contenders are a desk, a hill, and a chain saw.

My wife found the desk in a local Goodwill store. Its a solid block of lumber apparently dating from the 1940s. Although I am irrationally attached to my previous deskan L-shaped particle-board monster swathed in peeling wood-grain contact paperit is the size of a small aircraft carrier and does not fit the dimensions of my new writing room (we have moved to the farm). I have slouched at the old desk for something like fifteen years. Theory Number One: the numbness may be due to some change of position.

The new writing room is located above a garage (the same perch where my brothers and I watched guests arrive for the wedding). The garage is built into a hillside, and there is a footpath leading down the hill to the house across the yard. Last week I tried to traverse the snowpack in a pair of three-dollar flip-flops and took a cartoon-quality tumble, landing smack on my elbow. As a long-term flatlander used to shuffling about, I need to upgrade my respect for gravity on an incline. The impact was bone-rattling, but I felt no immediate effects Still, the finger went numb within twenty-four hours. Was there a connection?

The chain saw is an orange Husqvarna belonging to my mother-in-law. She left it behind when she moved away, and I have been using it to make firewood. The Husqvarna has a maddening habit of killing at idle, and I have been unable to tweak the problem, although for the sake of accuracy I must report my only intervention thus far has been to yank the cord in the vicious manner of a man attempting to snap the head off a rattlesnake. The woodlot echoes with inexcusable oaths. The ability to become enraged at inanimate objects is what separates us men from the animals. Its possible I have yanked my pinkie numb.

We made the move to the farm in Fall Creek, choosing the coldest week of the winter to do so. Weve been here seven days, and each morning the blue strand of mercury in the thermometer tube is drawn deep below zero. I begin each day with a trip to the woodshed, bringing in enough split oak to keep the fire stoked. At some point later in the day I wander out with the Husqvarna and section up deadfalls. Between cussing fits, I chop what I have cut and stack it for next winter. Based on prior experience, I realize this will likely soon become a chore, but for these first few days it feels hardy and germane. Each morning Amy descends the stairs and makes a beeline for the rug in front of the woodstove. She hugs her knees and soaks up the. warmth. In that moment I feel as if I am Providing. Providing health insurance, lunch on time, or useful guidance regarding the boys of tomorrow is another matter entirely. But for now numb hand or numb brainI can chop wood.

When the snow clears, I hope to haul wood with Irma. She has been running well, although if I let her sit too long I have to pull the air cleaner and nurse her to life with little dribbles of gasoline down the carburetor, an activity that always makes me feel like one of Louis LAmours cowboy heroes tipping a few drops of canteen water down the parched throat of an unlucky compadre left for dead in the desert. Cant give em too much too soon, youll kill em, or so the thinking went, and I treat Irma the same.