The Franklin and the Huntsman

The Franklin and the Huntsman

It is late October and the desert sky spits snow down upon us. The wet flakes collect in the folds of my jacket and melt, darkening the brown canvas in splotches. Water drips from the rows of black piñyon logs stacked in front of our shack like a barricade. Peter and I are wrestling a large woodstove toward a lean-to made from pine poles and scavenged barn boards, stopping every few feet. With each rest, the Franklin stove is sucked a little further down into the red mud before we heave it forward again.

“Man, this thing is heavy. Are you sure you can’t use it?” he asks between heaves.

“Nope. I want a real stove.”

“A real stove?”

“One that doesn’t burn through wood like a locomotive.”

This is Peter’s property and his shack, so it will be his stubbornly guarded dollars which are parted with to buy a new stove. That is why we have dragged the old one out here; it is my hope that he will quickly come to appreciate what he does not have.

I have been telling him that the Franklin will not do since before the Gambel oaks lost their leaves and the rains turned the red dust to red mud. A Franklin is an oversized woodstove with an open front, designed for cheerful display of the fire on a cool Autumn night perhaps. It has large drafty doors that cannot be sealed and faux-brass orbs on top where a kettle should sit. It sucks warm air from the room like a vacuum cleaner, sending it speedily up the chimney.

Now the first snow is here, and instead of sitting by a cozy, airtight stove, we are hauling a Franklin through the mud. Where sweet piñyon smoke should waft from the chimney, nothing. This irritates me like cactus spines under a thumbnail.

I am perfectly willing to spend the winter in a 10x20 foot shack with no water, a questionable roof, and an outhouse which is really just old doors enclosing a pile of feces, but I must be warm. I must have 3 cords of piñyon pine and juniper, which is my problem. I must have a good stove, which is Peter’s.

Peter, however, will not spend any money unless forced to. A woodstove to him is an investment like jumper cables or earthquake insurance, something one buys and then hopes never to use. He has no intention of wintering in a ten by twenty foot miner’s shack in the high steppe of Colorado.

He tried it once. He fortified himself with blankets and books and Anasazi beans. He wrote to his girlfriend about the importance of quiet and contemplation. He built a sweat lodge in the mud, facing east toward the San Juan mountains.

For wood gathering, he had a bow-saw and a Volvo. After three weeks of feeding wet juniper limbs to the ravenous Franklin, the temperature dropped to five below. Cold seeped in through the tar paper and cracked windows, and under the blanket-covered door. He decided that Baja would be as good a place as any for quiet and contemplation.

So it is that he will be in California, and I will be his "caretaker." I use the word lightly because it implies something here needs taking care of, as in the maintenance of an estate. Hardly. My responsibilities consist of a green tar-papered shack, several lean-tos made with rotting poles, an Econoline van filled with beer bottles and sunk to its bumper in red mud, a well with no pump, and a collection of German picture books about the Southwest.

However, I do not plant to be cold.

“Peter,” I say again, “I must have a real stove.”

He considers that thoughtfully, as if I have requested something outlandish, such as a Cappuccino machine or a satellite dish. “Okay,” he says, “We’ll go see Phunque and put an ad in the paper.”

The next day we drive 14 miles through bean fields to Dove Creek. The snow has melted off into roadside pools. Blue Four Corners sky is reflected at us from every ditch.

A Want Ad is one way to find a stove, but Phunque is also a cartographer of the town’s junk. This is not a task he relishes; he undertakes it out of civic pride. Knowing where the junk is, he is able to direct others there—bargain hunters, scrap-metal dealers, can collectors—and thus be a catalyst in its removal.

Phunque is a tall wiry man with thick glasses and the muted voice of a librarian. He is, in fact, the living library of Dove Creek, Colorado. He is also the town’s chief economist, booster, historian, and civic voice. He can predict Autumn bean prices in the spring, recommend a realtor, remember the boom days of uranium mining, and convince the citizens to vote. His job title, though, is simply Editor and Publisher of the Dove Creek Gazette. He is finishing a cheese sandwich when we arrive at the Gazette office.

“Greetings, Mr. Phunque!” Peter shouts.

“What can I do for you?”

“We’re looking for a woodstove, you know anybody who has one?”

“Stove. Hmm. Might try Enis Weatherly on Colorado Street; he’s got a bunch of junk in his yard, might have a woodstove. He’s got just about everything else.”

Before leaving, we take out an ad. At five cents per word, Peter is extravagant in his copy writing. He claims there is no point in being too specific because half the fun is in taking the phone calls. We put down anything we might want for the shack:

Wanted

Used or salvage building materials. Woodstove, windows, Pro-panel metal roofing, lumber, water pump, etc. 677-2599

A lot of yards in Dove Creek have piles of junk in them. Some of it is good junk and some of it is bad. Good and bad are, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Good junk is anything which might be reusable. Bad junk is something completely worn out, utterly without possibility.

To me, a rusted out truck with a surviving engine is a treasure. Coils of bailing wire, no matter if rusted, can always tie something together. Unbroken single pane windows can be made into cold frames in the spring. A rake or shovel head can be fitted with a new handle.

Bad junk is warped plywood, rusted out bed frames, cracked cinder blocks. Bad junk is wet lumber which leaves a shadow in the grass when lifted. Bad junk is deflated basketballs and burnt out headlights. Old tea kettles with no handles, pickup canopies with no gate. Lawn-mowers without wheels. Televisions, dead or alive, are junk.

Of course, someone else might find these things useful in one way or another.

But to Peter, junk is a matter more of ownership. If it is his junk, it is not only good, it is valuable. He will not part with the bald tires littering his property like sores; they are actually planters which will one day be filled with vegetables and herbs. The rotting Ponderosa pine poles strewn everywhere will someday be the roof supports for his Indian style dugout house. It does not matter that he knows nothing about either gardening or construction because Peter dwells only in the future. I now suspect that these projects will come to be built; he will convince someone else to build them.

Not long after I arrived in Egnar, he was throwing out an old watch and so I asked if I might have it. “This is my uncle’s gold watch, and you may use it but please don’t break it,” he replied solemnly. Every so often he casually asks if it is still working, and so has made me responsible for turning his junk into something useful. By this skill he is at home bartering for the marginally useful contents of the yards of Dove Creek.

Today, of course, there is only one goal in our search. There is only one item which I will identify as good and that Peter will spend his money on. It must be a woodstove functional enough for the cold winter and cheap enough for Peter’s wallet. All else is worthless.

By that measure, Enis Weatherly’s yard is full of bad junk. To be precise, it is full of rusted and broken propane tanks. It does not contain anything remotely like a woodstove, unless I were a welder.

“Now we can’t be too anxious here or they’ll think we are easy targets. It’s also best to not talk much,” Peter whispers to me, as we get out of the truck.

I scan the yard, trying to see a Vermont Castings Defiant stove with no rust, or a Jotul with a glass door. I will the propane canisters to reveal a decent Norwegian airtight. But the tanks remain tanks. “I don’t see anything here. Let’s go,” I say.

At which point Enis Weatherly appears from behind a 50 gallon tank in the back of the yard. He walks past us with no greeting or sign of recognition and sits upon the open gate of his battered Ford. He is a small man with white hair as thick and straight as broom straw, capped on top by a new Stihl chainsaw cap. His skin is sallow and his eyes tired. There is an oxygen tank in the cab of his truck. He pulls a pack of Generic brand cigarettes from his blue coveralls, and the three of us contemplate his propane tanks like Japanese poets counting cherry blossoms.

When about half of his cigarette is gone, Enis asks, “You lookin’ for something?”

After a pause, Peter says, “You got a woodstove? Phunque at the paper said you might have one. We’re looking for a stove,” in his best imitation Okie voice.

“Stove. Hhm, don’t have any stoves. You might try the dump. Might have a stove there.”

Another long pause.“That’s a good idea.”

We sit a little longer then leave him, smoking and staring. Driving back to the shack from Dove Creek, Peter asks, “Did I sound all right back there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, like a local?”

“No one mistook either of us for bean farmers if that’s what you mean.”

Secretly, though, I’d like to think that I might have been. I’d like to think that my faded Carhartt pants and my short hair and my muddy irrigation boots are like skeleton keys into rooms that are locked to Peter. Maybe Phunque and Enis took me for a ranch kid they didn’t recognize, and Peter for my demented city cousin.

The next day we load up my truck with the remains of the shack’s walls and drive to the dump. We have torn down all the funky sheetrock and the false ceiling made from green plywood so I can insulate. There is no question that the mess is actual garbage, fit only to be buried.

If country people in general don’t throw away much, poor country people throw away even less. Consequently, the Dolores County dump is a small dump for a very large county. The seven dollar fee (twelve for non-county residents) is collected by a smiling old woman who wears a faded ski jacket in every weather. She rarely leaves her plywood kiosk.

The pit itself is a square hole dug into the soft red rock. It has none of the elaborate liners, methane relief pipes, or heavy machinery of municipal dumps. No one supervises the dumpers to make sure they are not throwing away reusable items. There is no need; poverty and sparse population being much better social engineers than recycling posters or government incentive. Practically nothing in the pit is useful anymore. Much of it, I suspect, is here only because it would be too messy to burn or too difficult to give away.

The refuse is ancient sheetrock, dirty brown couches without cushions, moldy phonebooks too wet to burn, old plastic toys, slabs of green linoleum and subfloor, mangled curtain rods, old rowing machines and musty mattresses. Diapers.

The contents are so utterly rotten and forlorn that one look into the pit convinces even Peter no useful items will be found there. He is standing on the back of my truck wearing a respirator as we pitch shovel loads of rat shit filled vermiculite and decayed wasp honeycombs the size of soccer balls into the pit. All of this was once in the walls of Peter’s cabin. The respirator is worn as a reasonable attempt at protection from Hanta virus, the killer disease carried in the feces of deer mice.

Staring into the pit, I am convinced that nowhere in this county or the next will we find a used stove of any quality whatsoever. Probably there are some rusty old box stoves to be had or more drafty Franklins. No, anything that can be used has been. A dark thought crosses my mind. Perhaps we will have to go to Cortez and buy a new stove.

The wind is blowing over the high mesa through the pit of refuse. Forgetting that Peter's ears are not covered, I shout into the respirator’s plastic shield, “Peter! We have to find a stove!”

No response.

“Take off your mask!”

He does. “Don’t worry, man. Maybe someone left a message about the ad.”

Yeah right, I am thinking as we drive back out to Egnar. The day is cold and clear, Lombardy poplar leaves blow over the highway at the end of Dove Creek where we turn off toward Egnar. Across the oak and bean field table top of land, the Abajo mountains in Utah rise in fresh snow, imposing and lighthouse-like in their command of the country. It is a good thing for me, these miles of light and vista between town and home. They let me see why I have come here for the winter, come to watch this crazy man’s property. This beauty is the only compensation, and it is ample. Peter rambles compulsively in the passenger seat.

“People always answer ads around here. Mostly they don’t have what you want, but they call anyway. Maybe they have a better item or their brother-in-law has what you want. Lots of people just call to find out who you are if they don’t know the number. One time I ran an ad for a tent and this Indian guy in Egnar called up and said he had one.

“When I got to his place he insisted I drink beer with him. We drank one beer after another and he told me stories about flying saucers and sorcery and a great big hole in the ground over by Moab where the Spirits live. He was a Cheyenne—not from this country—and he lived in a little trailer. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and asked what about this tent. He looked right at me for a long time and said, ‘You can’t have my tent because I don’t have one.’ I started to get pissed off because I’d driven a long way and spent the whole afternoon with the guy. Then he says ‘But I do have a teepee and I ain’t gonna sell it to you. No I ain’t gonna sell it to you because I am gonna give it to you.’ So now I know to be patient,” he glances at me, “And I always carry a six-pack.”

Oh great, I think. We’ll never find a stove but we might get a good deal on a ton of coal, or a free car battery, or a book about the Spirits. I might be cold all winter, but at least I’ll be amused.

When we arrive home, the red light on the answering machine is winking off and on. Two messages are from the neighbor, asking if we have seen her dogs, but the third is promising. “Saw your ad. We’ve got a stove we don’t use anymore. You can have it if you want, Johnny said to ask seventy five dollars for it...”

At least she doesn’t mention the name Franklin, and I sleep that night cold but hopeful.

The address she gives is a trailer in the town of Dove Creek. When we arrive the next day, the first thing I notice is a complete absence of any junk, good or bad. The trailer is white, and is not stained red from the dirt as its neighbors are. The driveway is newly graveled and the mailbox has daisies painted on it.

When we knock on the door, a great howling and barking ensues. The sound of a woman scolding dogs, and then the door is opened a crack.

“Hello?”

“We came about the stove,” I say.

“Oh yes. Now you stop that Charley! One second. It’s in the back if you want to go look. Johnny said I was to ask you for seventy five dollars, if you want it that is. Charley down! Anyway, its in the back there.”

At the back wall of the trailer, its front legs sunk tipsily into the mud, is a rusty but dignified Atlanta Stoveworks Huntsman. It is a squat, no-nonsense stove with three over-sized draft control knobs, heavy doors, and complicated smoke baffles that add weight and heating mass. It has two flat shelves to boil pots of water, cook vegetable soup, or heat tortillas on tin foil. Emblazoned on the front is a flag-draped bald eagle sitting proudly on a rising sun, as if to proclaim an end to cold and discomfort everywhere. Across the doors, a cheerful domesticity is professed by a log cabin puffing smoke happily from its chimney—smoke certainly produced by the honest sweat of a PaulBunyan-like wood chopper and his faithful companion, the Huntsman stove. It looks very, very cozy.

It is perfect. It is more than perfect. Were it not slightly rusty, were its rear left leg not wobbly, its value would be obvious and its price certainly higher. It is a stove worth several times the asking price, a stove so clearly able and well suited to heating the shack that its purchase is to me a duty.

“Seventy five dollars for that thing! Does it even work?” Peter breaks my rapture, shaking his head in exaggerated dismay.

“Peter, its perfect! Its worth several times that, we’ll never find another in the whole county.”

“You think?”

“Yes! I’ll fix the rust and the leg and it’ll be perfect.”

“Well, maybe.”

Behind us the woman appears at the gate, her lips freshly drawn up with red lipstick. “Do you like it?”

“Well,” Peter says. “We’ve seen a lot of stoves lately. It’s kind of rusty.”

“Oh. Johnny said I could take fifty for it.”

“Fifty," Peter thinks for a second, "Well, we’ll go look at a few others and let you know.”

As soon as we get in the truck, Peter turns to me and smiles brightly. “What did you think of that?”

“Of what?”

“Of knocking her down twenty five dollars without even asking, that’s what.”

“Peter, it’s worth twenty five dollars plus two hundred more. Why didn’t you buy it? It was perfect.”

“We might get other calls.”

Driving past the Abajos, through Egnar, I see a bald eagle perched upon the setting sun as it sinks behind the cold white peaks. I see a little cabin with Paul Bunyan inside huffing frantically at dying coals. I consider severing our phone cord when we get home.

All of the next day we cut firewood in the burn down toward Slickrock. I am gruff with Peter, felling trees distant from the road. He hurries along, oblivious, carrying the rounds back to the truck. When I stop to sharpen the saw or eat lunch, he rummages in the oak brush for tin cans and beer bottles left by the fire crews and uranium prospectors.

This land is awash in energy sources compared to which firewood is quaint and crude. Amongst the charred piñyon and leafless oaks, tin signs on burnt posts mark uranium claims. A few locked oil wells wait on a future of higher fuel prices. On the canyon rims above, homesteaders once dug their own coal.

Having never dug coal or drilled for oil or scoured the hills with a Geiger counter, I am partial to piñyon and chainsaws. The clear Autumn weather, the smell of wood chips, the groan and snap of a falling tree, these are the aspects of a ritual, a ritual of survival. I wonder if the prospector loves his burning rocks the way a wood-cutter loves wood?

By the afternoon my bad mood is dissipated with the sweat of good labor, smothered by the sweet smell of cut piñyon.

When the sun drops behind the Abajos, the temperature falls quickly. The ruts of mud and dirty snow freeze and crunch. I am bucking a little tree, cutting up the limbs when I hear Peter shouting behind me loud enough to overpower chainsaw and earplug.

“The truck! The truck!”

On the road beneath us my truck is tilted into a ditch, the rear wheels held high above the road, the transmission grounded on the dirt.

“I was backing up and I didn’t see the ditch in the grass and next thing I know...”

Peter rambles crazily replaying the scene over and over. I laugh at the upturned truck. I want to smack Peter so he will shut up. What am I doing here on the edge of winter with this fool?

“Should we dig it out? I’ve got some gloves if your hands are cold. I think we better hurry up, it’s already cold.”

Peter’s wool hat is pulled down over his ears and his eyes are bright with adrenaline. I realize that he is scared. It is freezing and we are miles from the pavement, which is itself desolate. We have no food, no water, no sleeping bags. We have no means of communication and no one knows where we are. As far as the eye can see, the only signs of human activity are some aging telephone poles down toward the ghost town of Slickrock.

I promise myself that when we get out of this I will buy that stove myself. I will make at least that part of my existence stable. Then I will sell it to Peter at a profit when I leave. It will be my reward for getting out of this.

“What are we gonna do?”

“It’s elk season; we’ll walk down the road until we meet some hunters with a winch and they’ll come haul us out,” I say, and walk away before he can remember that we’ve never seen anyone else on this road.

“Oh man I am so sorry,” Peter repeats as we walk. He is bundled in his jacket and ripped pants. His pockets bulge with extra gloves that he offers to me every few minutes. The light lingers in the west, and the ground crunches beneath our feet. During the rare moments of silence, when Peter has exhausted his entreaties and offers of extra clothing, I feel a camaraderie towards him. Only his talking infuriates me.

“Hey, you’re taking this really well.”

“No big deal. We’ll find some hunters.”

“You think so? Maybe we should make a shelter before it gets dark.”

"We’ll find some hunters.”

And we do. We hear them first, the guttural sound of diesel in low gear. Then they appear, two orange-hatted, red faced men in a Dodge flat bed truck. Mounted on the front bumper is a big Warn winch, the kind for hauling dead elk up steep ground.

When our truck is pulled out and inspected for damage, Peter offers them a beer. The hunters refuse and drive off, shouting, “No problem at all!”

“Peter,“ I say, “I am going to buy that stove tomorrow if you won’t.”

“Stove? Oh yeah. You want that thing?"

“Need. Need that thing.”

“Well, go ahead then.”

We drive slowly back to the shack, drinking Milwaukee’s Best and watching the road for elk.

The next day I phone the stove lady as early as I think polite.

“Hello I am calling about the stove.”

“Oh? Oh yes. Do you want it?

“Well we really like yours but we like another that is forty five dollars.”

“Johnny said not to take any less than fifty.” Apparently I am not much of a bargainer.

“Well I‘ll give you fifty for it. See you tomorrow then?

“Okay. I’ll tell Johnny you said fifty.”

I am elated. I can picture the little smoke puffs from the chimney. I can smell the incense of burning piñyon in the yard. I hang up the phone and stretch out in a lawn chair, imaginary radiant heat warming my backside. I am almost drowsy when I remember: the stove has to be moved here first.

“Peter, ah, how’s your back?"

“Oh not good man, I’ve got this vertebrae that goes out. Why?”

Never mind.

When I get to town, the stove lady has a hand written receipt ready. She counts the two twenties and the ten carefully.

“Fifty dollars just like we said. How you gonna move it?”

“I was hoping I could drag it over to the truck myself.”

She laughs, “Well, good luck.”

I walk around to the back and behold the Huntsman. It looks impossibly heavy—the thick iron, the big knobs, the complicated baffles. It leans into the mud like a tilted tractor. I give it a tentative push forward. Nothing. I pull to the left, nothing. I pull to the right, nothing. It is stuck in the evil mud. I remove the fire bricks and stack them in the back of the truck. Still, it is heavy as a lead piano. Help is needed.

I go to the only place I know to get help in Dove Creek, the only place where asking odd questions is expected. I go to see Phunque.

“Move a stove? Hmm. Don’t know anyone who moves things. You don’t have any help?”

“No, I don’t know anyone here.”

“I can’t think of anyone.”

I try the Lonesome Dove bar, intending to offer ten dollars for help. But one look into the midday gloom, and I am convinced no one is sober enough to lift anything but beer bottles. I try the feed store, but I get the same response as at Phunque’s. I find Gladice, Peter’s neighbor who works at the gas station.

Gladice sits at her stool looking out on the parking lot, screwing a cigarette into a plastic filter tip.

“Hey Gladice.”

“Hello Josh,” she says without looking at me.

“Say would you know anyone who could help me move a stove?”

“What’s wrong with Peter?”

“Bad back.”

“That’s a good one. No, I don’t know anyone.”

I am weary from the blank looks and the puzzled expressions of Dove Creek. The town is a closed door to an outsider. It enjoys rejecting me. I decide to return to the trailer and tell the stove lady that I will have to come back tomorrow. The temperature has dropped and the streets are icy. They fit my mood: muddy, treacherous, and full of potholes.

When I get to the driveway, there is a man in a black motorcycle jacket standing in the gravel. He comes around to my window.

“Do you need a hand?”

“Well, I guess I do. Are you Johnny?"

“Yeah. Loraine called me at work. It’s a heavy stove to move. Burns real well though.”

I am embarrassed at having offered forty five dollars.

“Are you sure you don’t mind moving it?”

“No problem at all.”

Even with two of us, we move the stove in stages over the frozen mud, dragging one side then the other. When we get to the truck, Johnny throws some boards up and we heave the mighty Huntsman into the bed. The rear springs sink low over the wheels.

“Hey," I say trying not to get too excited, "thanks a lot.”

“No problem. It’s a good stove. I’m glad you can use it.”

He has a warm smile on his face, and he looks me in the eye when we shake hands to close the deal.

By the time I get home, the air is very cold and Peter is bundled up lying on the couch. The couch, in a former life, was a Chevy Bronco bench seat. The stereo plays Latin dance songs on the public radio channel. I was prepared to grudge Peter his idleness, but he looks rather pathetic lying there.

“I got the stove,” I announce.

“Good! Gladice says zero degrees tonight.”

“Well it still has to get from the truck to here.”

“Gladice brought a dolly.”

“She what?”

“She brought us a moving dolly. It’s by the door.”

Sure enough, there by the grace of Gladice is a bright red dolly with one flat tire and a bent handle, as welcome and unexpected as a fresh tomato in February. Before I can react, Peter is putting on his gloves and a wool hat, ready to lend a hand.

“What about your back?”

“I’ll be careful.”

Outside, the sky is clear and still. The stars burn like white coals in the cold air. Peter and I lower the loaded dolly down a ramp of plywood and two by fours, both tires flattening under the strain.

When the Huntsman is out of the truck, we reverse the ramp, pointing it into the shack. We roll the stove over the threshold without ceremony and into its place on the plywood. The bad leg is propped up with bricks. I am mildly surprised that the floor does not collapse.

Peter hooks up the old stovepipe, a rickety thing that will have to go later. I put in the liner of bricks, which clank warmly against the thick iron fire box. I brush off some of the dust, wishing I had time to clean and polish the rusty sides.

It is a fine stove, even wobbly and stained. It has a dank smell like the red mud, like something brought out of the ground. It is cherubic with its broad belly and cheerful cabin emblazoned on the front.

I crumple a few pages of the Dove Creek Gazette (an article about a mysterious plane crash out by the Utah border) and cover them with dry splits of juniper. On top I place small logs of piñyon and dig out a box of red Strike Anywhere matches.

Peter digs out two cans of Milwaukee’s Best. “Not exactly Champagne!” he says with a laugh.

“Not exactly the Ritz,” I reply, and set the fire alight.