Wyohio
Far from where either wants to be, two lovers cobble together their own paradise.
He hailed from Youngstown, Ohio; she from just outside of Boise, Wyoming. While she’d looked up at a big, blue sky, he’d cowered under one of sooty grey. Somehow they found each other in Guin, Alabama.
Neither wanted to be there. Both had to stay, at least for now.
“We can hold on,” said Wayne, and almost meant it. “For just another three, maybe four years. We can do it.”
Canna tried to stop crying. Their plane was circling the airport outside of Birmingham. She’d requested the window seat, and now was doing this.
“Gooin isn’t that bad,” he said, using the pronunciation some residents used. “I mean, we can’t say we’ve really given it a real shot.”
“We have!” said Canna from behind the clenched blanket she held against her face.
Wayne thought about it. Yes, they’d planted a garden, a plot out back to which they’d attended until it got too hot to go outside. Then it was just a target into which to flick cigarette butts.
A few years back, Canna had opened a yoga studio just outside of downtown. The same two crazy women kept showing up, Tuesdays and Thursdays, fouling up the works and dominating the spotlight. Canna closed shop one Sunday, moving out with no forwarding address. One of the crazies stalked her on Facebook for a while until Canna sent her a middle finger emoji. The hubbub raised Wayne’s small-town Ohio dander.
“Think it’s time to go gun shopping?” he had asked.
Canna chuckled ruefully, thinking of her armory-obsessed father, who had recently moved himself and her mother out of Wyoming and into Idaho, a state slightly less likely to come for his guns. It wasn’t the ubiquity of weaponry and the looming threat of wanton violence that made her homesick for the west. Was it the vastness? The skies? The denim? She could never put her finger on the geographical allure, but felt it strong when she was back there.
Now, back from there, she faced another multi-month stretch of Guin.
Now she taught yoga and Nia via Zoom. (You could just mute people, she found.) Wayne bought a used backhoe and made some money digging and installing French drains, the surprising and ongoing rains softening grounds and dampening basements.
It was late July when something broke deep inside Canna. She was wheeling the recycling to the curb when she, barefoot, stepped on the only stone currently resting in their driveway. Hopping and clutching her foot, she lost her balance, hopped some more, and fell into some weeds protruding from a large fire-ant mound. “Fuck!” she screamed, getting up and giving the receptacle and good swift kick. It rolled and twisted, finally hitting the curb and spilling its contents just as an Amazon truck sped past. The driver swerved, barely missing the mess, and skidded to a halt in the middle of a copse of formerly magnificent azalea bushes Canna had planted in the spring. The driver, a lanky, ruddy-faced woman, got out and lit into her. “What the fuck, man!”
Canna just sobbed, allowing the ants to bite at will as penance.
Wayne, of course, pulled in just then.
After quickly surveying and accepting the scene, he helped his wife up and got her inside. When she’d composed herself and he’d brushed the remaining savage biters off her skin, she disrobed and stretched out on the bed, ceiling fan on full blast. He joined her, kissing each antwound lightly, until she breathed deeply, let out a sweet sigh, and pushed him off.
“Get me out of here, please,” she muttered.
“Okay.” He scooped her up and carried her out of the bedroom and toward the front porch. Expecting laughter, he was alarmed to find her suddenly sobbing; he transported her back to the bed.
While Canna napped, Wayne thought about his own day, which hadn’t been much better. The melicitic camphorater on his backhoe had once again frayed, then snapped — thanks to that good ol’ Alabama clay — and they were going to be out another grand for its replacement. One of his three employees, Wayman, said he was going to take a job with another trench digger who had more work for him.
True, Wayne hadn’t done much to drum up business, but then it had been steady for a few years now. He wondered now if this might be a good time to cut his losses. Up in Youngstown, his cousin was restoring old downtown warehouses for the aging hipster populations of Cleveland and Pittsburgh to continue being hip in until their hip deaths. Barry and Wayne had always gotten along, both the youngest of three boys in their respective families. Barry had shown Wayne his first pornography, a GAF Viewmaster series of photos of a woman taking off a pants suit, and for that Wayne would always hold a soft spot.
But then came the onslaught of reasons not to relocate to Ohio: its deeply embedded blandness, the homeless problem, the slushy winters, the pressure for it to make Canna maybe pine for Wyoming a little less.
Walking down the steps into their basement — not quite a mancave, for he welcomed her down there too, and either of their kids was still welcome there any time — Wayne wondered how he should spend the next week or so while the backhoe was getting its replacement part. Looking around at the decor, a few Tom Petty posters, a trophy case from his baseball days, and a vast bookcase displaying his treasured VHS-DVD collection, he began planning a makeover.
A week of backhoe repair turned to two, then three. There were supply issues, said the nearly unintelligible gentleman manning the phones at Beau and Bo’s Equipment Service and Maintenance. “What?”
“Gom be a while,” repeated the fellow.
“Gumby…um, okay,” replied Wayne.
“Leas’ nuther week,” the fellow continued.
“Well, okay,” responded Wayne. “Thanks so much.”
For what? he retorted to himself after pressing the red, round image on his cellphone, thereby ending the call. Sitting there like a tub of goo, blurting “Gumby this, gumby that” all fucking day long. I could do that. But then Wayne looked deeper into himself and admitted to himself couldn’t.
Canna’s immune system, already compromised by the relentless sauna-like conditions of her in-home yoga/Zoom studio, was sapped by the ant bites and her skin’s five-alarm response. “Don’t come in here,” she said the next day, pressing on the bedroom door as Wayne tried to enter.
“Okay?”
“I just tested positive.” It was the bell launching her second bout with coronavirus.
Wayne knew the drill. The basement would (continue to) serve as his lair, as it had two previous stints when COVID had gripped the household and its natural flow.
He’d already begun collecting some things at thrift stores and a frame shop owned by a friend who needed a trench dug some time soon. He’d applied his carpentry skills and built a few things. He’d found a large block of Styrofoam.
He figured, well shit, if he was still convinced by the old Star Trek sets….
By the time Canna finally, after weeks of hacking and moaning, tested negative, he was putting the finishing touches on his covert basement project. His backhoe had been fixed for days — the voicemail message muttering, “Y’backhoe’s done” — but Wayne hadn’t time for such prosaic nonsense. Learning how to render a full, 8'x25' mural required concentration and commitment. Some redneck wanted him to pick up his damned backhoe? Philistine!
When all was completed he led Canna down the stairs, his heart pounding and his voice rising a register or two. “You said you wanted to leave this place?” he asked/pleaded. “Got us one-way tickets to our dream world.” Canna froze on the third-last step. She faced a wall, painted deep blue, of large photos depicting northeastern scenes: snow-laden downtowns, coal miners emerging from a mine, old warehouses lit by soft morning sunlight. Each was framed as if it were a window, complete with sills.
The carpet had been stripped, revealing composite board that Wayne hoped would resemble or at least evoke the dusty terrain of the American west. He’d puddied and sanded the seams. Feeling all that was somehow still insufficient, he’d carved and painted Styrofoam buttes and mesas, Gorilla-taping them to the floor. He hadn’t forgotten tumbleweeds; he’d dried some kudzu over a fire and bunched up the vines until they looked close enough.
Canna didn’t feel the full effect until she turned to see the opposite wall, a mural of what appeared to be and what Wayne hoped would be recognized as a western barn perched on a prairie before a vista of the Grand Tetons. He’d gotten the most intense blue he could find at Porter Paints for the big sky on a crystal-clear day. Wayne had no idea how to paint clouds, after all.
He’d rolled in two swivel chairs that faced the mural, each with cupholders holding cans of Coors.
Now, ceremoniously, he led her to her chair, but she didn’t drink. Moved as she was, she might have choked on the beer if she’d tried.
“Is it okay?” he asked.
She nodded, overcome — more by the effort than the result.
That night the composite floor seemed soft enough for lovemaking. It was then Canna realized Wayne had painted the foam-paneled ceiling as well, in that same intense blue. She sat up to take a more sober look at her husband’s artistry, and began to laugh. And then began to lose it.
“What, hon’?” Wayne asked. “What am I missing?”
She pointed at the left quadrant of the mural. “Is that a horse…or…” The laugh was losing any control it may have once had. “…a donkey, or…” More guffaws. “…a koala bear??” She gulped to catch her breath.
“Okay, okay,” said Wayne, a half-smile creeping across his face. “Think it’s easy for someone like me? I ain’t painted since the Smokey Bear contest in fifth grade. And I didn’t win.”
(Jim Frey won. It hadn’t been fair.)
She planted a kiss on a mouth that was just starting to frown with hurt. The hurt flew the coop. “You should take pictures and send this in somewhere,” she whispered in his ear.
“Yeah? Like where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.” She hadn’t thought it through; she was just trying to sustain gratitude. It really was sweet.
“Y’think?” Wayne looked at his work with new eyes. “Maybe I should touch up a few things. Maybe put some highlights on the koala bear.”
Canna chuckled, then advised, “Yeah, and maybe put in some better lighting. Cut down on the glare, maybe?”
Wayne looked around as if noticing for the first time how his masterpiece was lit. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I’ll swing by Lowe’s tomorrow, or some lighting, uh, place.”
That night, as Canna was falling asleep, Wayne sat in his office, looking up photo spreads from Home and Garden and Better Homes. And even Architectural Digest. Thinking small hadn’t gotten him very far; he decided to try its inverse.
“Send us your home makeovers!” urged one of Better Homes’s back pages. “We’ll print the ones that blow us away!”
The next day, Wayne continued to not pick up his repaired backhoe; instead he relit the Wyohio Room with clamped light cans — floods on the walls and spots on the buttes and mesas and tumbleweeds— then took twenty-three photographs from all angles. By the time Canna was done with her Zoom classes, he’d already submitted his photos not only to Better Homes, but no fewer than seven other magazines, whether they’d solicited them or not.
“How was work today?” she asked when she came down.
He was hurt that her first question was about work, which was the farthest thing from his mind. “Backhoe’s fucked, remember?” he said, which was one of those semi-lies he’d promised himself he wouldn’t tell any more.
“Oh.” She sat in one of the lawn chairs, but Wayne could tell she wasn’t really basking in the Wyohio vibe he’d created. She was just sitting.
“Let’s just enjoy being in our place tonight,” he said, half-wittingly steering conversation toward his new passion. He did a little western-style soft-shoe around her chair. “Wyohio baby, Wyohio,” he sang, in a kind of improvised melody that didn’t quite hold together.
Canna dug her phone from her pocket. “Oh shit,” she said. “Gotta take this.” It was her sister, Starla — Wayne could tell by Canna’s tone. He left the room and decided to try to draw his wife’s attention away from the usual plodding, sibling conversation. On his own cellphone, he called the offices of Better Homes. He thought that was the sort of persistence the situation called for. Squeaky wheel, he often coached himself, gets the worm.
It wasn’t quite 5:00, and a receptionist answered. “Oh, hello there,” he began. “I’m Wayne Babitski,” and to whom am I talking to?”
“Jergisin.”
“Jer…what? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, heh heh.”
“Jurgenson.”
“Well, hello. Can I call you Sonny?” Silence. “Anyway, I’m the one who sent that photo essay today, the one about the room I made for my wife? Wyohio?”
He had moved to the doorway, hoping Canna would notice he was talking to someone important, or, at least, someone with proximity to someone important.
“I didn’t see that, sir.”
“Wayne.”
“What?”
“Please, call me Wayne. But don’t wear it out!”
Silence.
“Anyway, I was hoping to talk to someone who might have seen the photos I sent today.”
“Do you have the name of the person you sent them to?”
“Um, I’m guessing it would be the basement editor?”
“Sir, we have no basement editor.”
“Hmm,” responded Wayne, really just keeping the exchange going.
“I’ll transfer you to the assistant managing editor,” said Jurgenson, who then did so.
“Okeedoke, then,” said Wayne, though pop music had already replaced her.
He stared at Canna, who was deep in the trance she got into when talking to Starla. “It’s worrisome,” she said, then sighed.
“This is Dory,” a voice suddenly blared from Wayne’s phone.
“Oh! Yes, hello, this is Wayne Babitski, I sent something, or emailed something, to your establishment earlier today, was checking to verify on its arrival?”
Silence.
“So….” continued Wayne.
“Did you submit it to our submissions address? Info at better homes?”
“I think I did, yes.” Wayne began to pace through the Wyohio room. Canna’s call came to an abrupt end.
“We eventually look at all of the submissions, but sometimes it takes a few weeks, even months.”
“Oh, so you get a lot of them?” Wayne was aware of coaxing the conversation into something larger than its natural shape for the sake of his wife, hoping to garner some possible admiration — a ploy he’d been married long enough to know has never worked anywhere for anyone.
“We do, sir. And we’ll get to yours, and then we’ll contact you if it’s something we can use.”
“So, is there anything else you need from my end?”
“No, we’ll be in touch if it’s…something we can use.”
“Good,” said Wayne, smiling at Canna. “I’ll wait to hear from you then.”
“Okay, bye.” Jurgenson ended the call.
“Excellent,” said Wayne. “Very pumped about this.” He pressed the red round image and thrust the phone into his pocket. “That was none other than Better Homes,” he announced to Canna. “They might be into the whole Wyohio craze.”
“What? No!” gushed Canna. “Like, they’re gonna put it in their magazine?”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Wayne. “It’s all in the early stages.”
Weeks turned to months. Wayne finally got the backhoe from the shop and resumed work on the French drain. But it just wasn’t the same. His two remaining employees, Terrell and Timone, noticed first. “You all right man?” asked Timone, a compact, genial fellow from Mexico.
Wayne had been in the cab of the backhoe for ten minutes, idling. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Que?”
“I don’t know,” he shouted, “yeah, I’m fine. Whatever. Pushing fifty and I’m still driving this fucking backhoe around.”
Timone looked around as if to say something like, “Uh, you’re driving and we’re digging with shovels.”
Terrell laughed and stuck his shovel into the softened ground. “Wayne’s gone whole gummy today.”
Wayne wished he’d never told them he took Delta 8 before work most days. He wanted to strike back. He did it his way.
“Look, guys,” he began. “Thinking I want to scale back for a while. I got a lot going on and I think I need to take some time to take a breather from all this.” Both men looked around.
“Anywho, I think I gotta let you fellas go, at least for now. I gotta get my shit together.”
“You owe me for yesterday,” said Terrell.
“Me too,” added Timone.
As Wayne went to his truck and wrote out checks, the men shook hands and gathered up their tools. Wayne paid them. Their parting was perfunctory, decidedly unceremonious.
Driving home, Wayne decided pass the French drain job on to his former partner, Billy. This Wyohio thing was going to need all his professional attention. It was true, what they said: The art profession was one part creativity, two parts publicity.
Canna balked at first at the idea of an open house, but soon realized how much it meant to Wayne that she get behind the idea. Only four people showed up. After cleaning up their refreshments, he fell into a funk, grunting one-word answers and eating an entire bags of Fritos. He snapped out of it a day later, when a local TV news producer emailed him about doing a piece on Wyohio. When the crew arrived, they set up without even taking a good look at the diorama. The reporter seemed condescending, almost dismissive. The station ran the piece during the 11 o’clock news’s closing credits.
Better Homes finally responded; it was a form rejection. More of its kind followed from the other magazines. Worse was when Canna began using the room for overflow storage. Tumbleweeds lodged under coffee tables and vanities seemed incongruous. Wayne stopped talking to Canna; Canna repaid in full.
One early March day, she left for the west. Her son Keith and his friend came for the heavier stuff; they didn’t take the buttes and mesas. By then Wayne was living full-time in Wyohio, a sleeping bag and a small fridge for beer his only furniture. That’s where they found him.
