Days and nights in Nashville.

It has been slightly more than a year since our hasty, poorly orchestrated Saigon-at-the-fall escape from the Greenwood Man-Lair and its array of insensate horrors. For those who do not recall the sundry evils that were to be found within and in its environs, allow me to refresh.

Black mold in levels that one would generally associate with, oh, graves that had been hewn into a flood-prone riverbank. In Equador.

Immediate proximity to one of Greenwood’s busiest suburban intersections – a four-way stop that, during rush hour, backed vehicles up for half a mile in ALL FOUR DIRECTIONS.

Adjacent proximity to a fire station that serviced not only Greenwood but also many of the southernmost Indianapolis suburbs. All day and all night. All night, I tell you, ALL NIGHT.

Neighbors who, in their own savage way, meant well; it’s easy taking obsessive care of one’s lawn – complaining vociferously to all who’d listen about the two fairies living next door who let their yard go to shit – when your dugong of a wife no longer has the wind in her to squat down on your man-pike.

The sixteen dead nursing interns in the crawlspace that were absorbing far too much lime.

Just when all seemed lost and I had begun to plait a noose of my own nose hair to hang myself with, Keith came home one day to tell me that he’d been released from his bondage at a nameless living history museum in the Fishers, Indiana, area.

And so, after “packing” and having the majority of our home delivered in a massive truck by three gentlemen who, while competent and friendly, made us feel a little squirmy inside, we began to settle into the community of Nashville, Indiana.

Population: 750.

That’s right. That’s not 7,500. Oh hells no. Seven-hundred-fifty full-time residents.

I’ve lived in smaller places in the past. As a child, I spent many summers in Renick, West Virginia, which – depending on how much bathtub-distilled moonshine the census-taker had consumed – had between twenty-eight and forty-two residents. But I was a child then, and lo, never did I once lust verily in the stark of the night for decent Chinese food only for it to be cruelly denied to me, so the innocence-factor wins out on that one. However, I’ve also lived in vast, thundering cities, both domestically and in Turkey. You know, places where it is possible to, oh, I dunno, see a movie. Or shop in a department store. Or have more than seven places to dine when the mood set me (four in the winter).

At first, my New Jersey “it’s nunna ya fuckin’ business, pal” upbringing – tempered a bit by living in boreal New England for more than a decade – caused me to distrust the local folks and their breezy questions. So no, Small Woman at the Circle K Counter: I’m NOT going to make idle chitchat with you while my debit for $4.37 for a bearclaw danish and Mountain Dew (the manwhore’s breakfast) goes through. No, Creepy Elderly Man Who Owns the Antique Place, I’m not going to sit down and have some “tea” with you on a rainy Saturday afternoon. No, Lady Who Owns the Strange Doily-Encrusted Store That Smells a Little Like Pee, I’ll not tarry long to tell you why I am looking for Boyd’s Bears that are dressed up as other animals.* No, Old Man Who Runs One of the Gas Stations, I don’t care that you saw a twelve-point buck on the way to work. Riiiiiiight.

After about two weeks, I began – like a pat of butter laying out in the death-heat of an Indiana August afternoon – to turn rancid. No, I began to soften to the idea of living in quasi-isolation, and began to view the locals with something akin to kinship. After all, they too could be waking up at midnight on a Friday and have nowhere to get some good Pad Thai. I got a library card. I became a local at the gas station on the corner where I often would procure my sad and, as aforementioned, prostitute-like breakfasts. But perhaps most crucial, I began to develop a close relationship with area merchants. And by “close relationship” I mean “I began to partially sustain several businesses single-handedly based on my purchases.” Is it mere coincidence that I live in a town whose favored artistic expression – primitivism – makes my heart soar? Is it coincidence that I live in a town where I can easily procure – with a local discount! - baleful Byzantine icons, homemade jar candles with soy wax and twisted wicks, gourds fashioned into masks and sassafras tea? Hardly. Is it coincidence that I live in a town where the nearby woods muffle the screams of the – yes. Nice little town. Mmm-hmm.

Just when I think that I know all that there is to know about town, someone tells me some delicious, horrid secret. Or a new steak place opens and is just sitting there, out behind the gas station, making delicious meaty treats without my knowledge. Or stores open and close nearly instantly, fluttering moths briefly alive inside a hot Mason jar. Or I finally find out what that hellish, accident-causing bend in IN 46 above town is ACTUALLY called by the locals (“Witch’s Curve”, but to me, always “The Juggernaut”).

Now that I adore it here, maybe, just maybe, I’ll open my mouth and let slide some idle gossip with the small woman behind the counter for once. And I’ll be on the lookout for that twelve-point buck, because damn.

Until next week, I remain,

Domonic


*Because they are goddamn cute, that’s why.