He is Artie, Hear Artie Cook
by MARSHALL PIOTROWSKI
by MARSHALL PIOTROWSKI
Arthur Smonteloson may well be the most beautiful man in the whole Boise River Drainage, and is certainly the most beautiful above Lucky Peak Dam. He is big, brawny, burly, bearded, brainy, bisexual, and big. 41. Not married. Never was. He is genuinely nice, and not in an overdone or annoying way. He’s not exceptionally, saintly nice either though. Arthur Smonteloson has been looking better every single year for twenty-two years running. He was none of those b adjectives (except for brainy and bisexual) as a kid. Tonight, he walks a dirt road, a road of grey-tan, dusty, fine, dry dirt, a road of such dirt carved into the side of a steep mountain, a mountainside descending from the very sky above to the so-called North Fork of the Boise River below. The sun is setting behind a mountain peak, which he can now see up at the far end of the canyon in this west-east segment of water’s fall line. It’s August, and what’s on his mind most these days are wildfires. Arthur is ten months through what he planned as a one-year stint in a cabin in the woods about sixty miles away from the nearest town, which itself is small and sixty miles from the next nearest town. That is to say: this cabin is remote. The cabin is in a place you can’t build cabins anymore, on land now protected (somewhat, from some things) as USDA Grade A National Forest. That is to say: this land was violently stolen and poorly re-named. But it is gorgeous, and Arthur’s old boss at Tiny Little Technologies (Boise’s fourth largest employer), Bert Appleslinger, liked Arthur, as did everyone, and because Bert’s great-great grandpa, Bernard Appleslinger, was one of those many white men who ventured to Idaho after the worst of the massacres and during the Gold Rush, and Bernard found himself some nice gold up in those hills which Arthur now walks and inhabits, and Bernard was one of those burly, racist motherfuckers who built a whole poorly-built but somehow still enduring cabin in the woods with his hands and his body and his man-knowledge and when it, the land, was eventually protected from any more residential development, and technically now owned by the federal government, they, the federal government, allowed the Appleslinger family to sign a 100 year lease for the cabin, making the Appleslingers one of those lucky Idaho families who still, in the early 21st century, have a truly remote cabin in some truly magical woods. So after many years of near-perfect employee performance, when Arthur put in his six-month notice of resignation, citing reasons of social escape, Bert jumped at the chance to offer up his family’s cabin for a whole year to the most beautiful man at Tiny Little Technologies, Inc.
Arthur—a man whose face doesn’t change in any off-putting way on the rare occasions he gets overwhelmed by an emotion (which rarely happens anymore)—upon deciding to escape the society he’d always known, decided to start off with the toe-in-the-water equivalent of hermitudinal isolationism: one year in the woods. He could commit to this and decide whether it suited him after that. He ridded himself of nearly all of his worldly material things, not by selling—he didn’t need to, he had good money from fifteen years of hardly tiny or little TLT paychecks—but by donating everything to the nearby thrift store and took only a few trunks-full of clothes and tools and books and cooking materials and painting supplies from Boise to his new wild haunt. He’d saved up more money than he knew what to do with. He had expensive hobbies—skiing and kayaking being far from highly income accessibly—but he was incredibly thoughtful and careful and meticulous with his gear and home and car. He had a maintenance schedule for everything. He treated his body this way to, so naturally he was in incredibly healthy health.
Tonight, on his sunset walk, Arthur is swimming through a torrent of memories. A dusty red pickup truck comes rip-roaring down the dirt road, hurtling from behind, passing him on the left. The pickup carries two ragged-looking rural white men and one of their sons. Who knows where they could possibly be headed to or from out here. When Arthur gets back to the cabin tonight, he’ll make the best and first saag paneer this cabin has ever smelled. A.S. spent about half of five years in the early 2000s living with Tiny Little colleagues in Delhi, and he now has the most varied and valuable spice rack of any white person in these woods. The spinach and cheese dish he’s about to make is so delectable, so nourishing, that the cabin could hardly believe it. The cabin is not the Lincoln Log cutesy shit you’re imagining. This thing was first built in 1860 by a single racist and so has required quite a few life-saving interventional renovations in its 160+ years of life. It is essentially one large room on the inside. The furniture and fixtures are the only indicators of which part of the room is kitchen vs. dining room vs. living room vs. bedroom, the last of which has been cordoned off with drapes. Arthur’s favorite part about the cabin is the little window above the kitchen sink that he looks out of while doing the dishes. Tonight, as he washes them after making and eating delicious saag paneer, the last light of the summer night might linger, might seem to pause its final minutes of fading yellow into a half-hour, before finally working up the courage to bid this place goodnight. A fox might roam outside. Arthur might decide to roam forever. Lucky few people might ever see him again.
Oh! And how could I forget of Arthur’s one great love? Of Michael DiAngelino? Of high-school beginnings and college endings? Of young Mikey and Artie? Of scary, fearless Idaho gayness? Of the sweet circling of fingers around small, cold nipples? Of a desire to please sweet Michael that transcended Artie’s slight asexual tendencies?
So what is there to do with the beautiful, isolated Arthur Smonteloson? Kill him in a wildfire, or a freak accident, or lurking unknown illness? Bear attack? Cougar attack? Put him through an impossibly horrific personal tragedy which inexplicably leads him to a sure or implied suicide? Or should he be allowed to live? To fall in love again? Or should I send him on a journey? Or should he live out in these woods until his 105th birthday? Bert Appleslinger would gladly fork over the whole place out of repressed homosexual feelings. Should Arthur celebrate his 105th only to realize he’s lonely? Or maybe alternatively he’s happy to be left alone?
I don’t know. I don’t know this man. It is not my place to make these decisions for him. I know what you’re thinking right now. I’m sorry. All I am sure of, when it comes down to it, is that the saag paneer was so fucking delicious, so absurdly splendid that even the fox maybe roaming outside might have smelled it, might have wished it could scavenge for some spinach.
For now, listen to the spinach sizzle in its own boiling water, hotly secreted. Hear it wilt in the cast iron skillet. Hear Artie softly add more spinach to the vanishing mass.