A. Blinken….Granny and Tally needed a ride down the canyon and over the hill to the County Department of Social Services. I hung a sign on the shop saying I was out doing emergency service, went up and got them. My knock on the door was greeted by Tally, dressed in a modest sweater, dark wool slacks, with her hair combed back and a little lipstick. She looked perfect, very professional. I said, "Is Tally here?" She laughed and shoved me and I almost stumbled back into a drift. "Come on Granny, the driver is here." I ferried them to the office. I wanted to wait in the car, but part of the point of the visit was an interview with a person to decide if Granny was decrepit enough to need help in her home. "No body knows how decrepit I am like you do, boy, and you’re good with words, too, so come in and testify that I can’t wipe my ass without getting crap on the mirror. Hey, bring your recorder thing, and we won’t have to take any notes." So, I followed Tally and Granny into the office. We had to sit in a small room with magazines about nursing and diabetes. The staff was visible but inaudible behind the glass counter wall. I handed Tally a magazine on nursing, and she said, "I’m not going to nurse, it will ruin my tits." "The article says it’s best for the baby." Granny laughed, "We’ll see what happens when the little larva starts crying, and your nipples flash like emergency lights on a big rig and itch like chigger bites." A young woman came to the door and said, "Mrs. Wise? Hi, this, way, please." We followed the young woman into a small office with a desk and only two chairs and glass for walls. "Please wait here, the social worker stepped out for a moment, she’ll be right back." She closed the door; Granny said, "A.B., turn your gadget on." I turned it on but left it in my shirt pocket.

Granny: There it is!

A.B.: There what is?

Granny: The desk! That’s the desk that makes a person an idiot.

A.B.: How does the desk make a person an idiot?

Granny: Well, not so much the desk, as what it represents.

Tally: What if they can hear us?

A.B.: What does it represent?

Granny: The system. See, this desk gets a certain kind of paper work. A certain kind of person sits behind it, and a certain kind of person sits in front of it. The purpose of the desk is to direct people this way or that as they work through the machinery of the agency. Anybody with the ‘credentials’ can fill this desk, it will work the same way. A "credential" is a certificate saying, "this person believes the official corn and will eat it with gusto." Really, the person sitting behind is kind of a bother to the desk. That’s why it turns them into idiots, so they’ll behave completely as the desk tells them too. They can think of nothin’ the desk doesn’t tell them to think. If you say something the desk doesn’t want to hear, they’ll politely ignore you, or answer a question about something else. This desk will try to turn us into idiots, too, you’ll see. The thing with a desk like this is to fool it.

A.B.: How does it turn the person behind it into an idiot, they’re just doing a job.

Granny: See! It’s working already! Sure, it turns the person into an idiot by controlling the flow of money, of the good faith of kin and the folks they work with. The desk, once you’re in it, controls your grubstake, and whether you’ll have enough money to live if you get sick, or if you get old and can’t work. The desk can give you all this, but only if you become its idiot. You can’t see it, but this desk is a little tiny desk, there are a million like it, and it is connected to a desk above it; there are a hundred thousand like it. That one is connected to another, higher desk, and there are thousands like it, and so on until you get to the top desk, wherever that is. Money flows from that one desk down through all the little desks, and the thing about every desk, is that it makes the person who sits there an idiot. This is a pretty common idiot desk here. The only thing lower than this desk is us. The system will bear down and all the desks will rattle a little bit and it will groan out a little tiny speck of dust, money, and we’ll raise Tally’s baby with it.

Tally: Someone’s coming! Stop talking like that, we’ll be in trouble.

(Door opens, a woman says, "Hi, I’m Helen Henry-Uris." (NHRN, but close) Door closes.)

HH-U: I have your application for in-home health services here, Mrs. Wise.

Granny: (squinting and holding her hand cupped behind her ear) What?

HH-U: I see you are still living in your home.

Granny: You seen me in my home?

HH-U: No, I mean, on your application it says you still reside in your home.

Granny: I still live at home, of course I do, where else would I live?

HH-U: Are you getting enough to eat?

Granny: I don’t eat much. Mostly soda crackers and anchovies. Woulda cut out the crackers but I need ‘em to chase the bones from the anchovies outa my throat. I used to open a can, but I don’t anymore, now the cat is gone.

HH-U: Is your house warm enough?

Granny: Oh, yes, most of the year. It’s only winter as it gets cold.

HH-U: I mean, is your does your heat work?

Granny: Oh, I haven’t fired a gun in years. Don’t need to, I quit drinkin’.

HH-U: Do you have any living companions?

Granny: No, no, most of the people in the house died years ago. They’re no bother, I think of them as company.

HH-U: (to A.B.) You and your family take care of your grandmother?

A.B.: Great-grandmother. Well, we try, but she lives way up the canyon. It isn’t easy to get up there in the winter. We try to bring her food when we can. She’s pretty frail. We have tried to get her to come down and live with us, but she won’t.

HH-U: Mrs. Wise, wouldn’t it be easier to come down and live in town, either with family or in a care home?

Granny: What? Move to town? No, no, I can’t move.

HH-U: Why not?

Granny: The greenshirts will come and explode my house.

HH-U: Explode your house?

Granny: Yep, blow it into a million pieces.

HH-U: (to A.B.) How long has she believed someone will destroy her house?

A.B.: Since 1998.

HH-U: Was there a trauma in 1998? A violent crime?

A.B.: Kind of. That’s when the Forest Service told us they would blow the house up when she died.

HH-U: Why will they do that?

A.B.: It’s the modern interpretation of the General Mining Act of 1872. Granny stopped paying on the mining claim, and she and granddad didn’t bother to patent it, because they didn’t figure they’d stay. We paid the back taxes in 1997 but the government stopped accepting patents in 1995. It might be possible to transfer the claim but the forest service wants the shack gone for liability reasons. They agreed not to throw her out in 97, but I don’t think they knew how long she would live.

HH-U: Oh, a legal matter? There is no value in her home, they probably need to know that in the front. OK. (To Granny) Mrs. Wise your application says you have no income. Is that true?

Granny: What?

HH-U: Is it true you don’t have any money coming in?

Granny: No, I haven’t worked in years. I’m too old. Besides, no one uses horses much anymore.

HH-U: Mrs. Wise, do you believe having in-home services will help you maintain your independence?

Granny: How would I know? You mean her? She’s a good girl. She’s been helping me out. Finally found that damn dead squirrel, died behind the dresser back before Christmas, I couldn’t move the dresser to look. God damned squirrel, he was always half nuts.

HH-U: Do you have any medical appliances or other special needs?

Granny: What? Electrical appliances? I have a toaster, but it doesn’t pop up anymore. They’ll blow that up, too, probably.

HH-U: Well, I’ll complete your application. This will only approve Mrs. Wise for assistance. You’ll still have to apply to provide her that assistance, Ms. Collier. They can help you with that in front. Goodbye, Mrs. Wise.

Granny: Huh?

HH-U: (loudly) I said, goodbye, Mrs. Wise.

Granny: Oh. Goodbye.

(A moment of silence.)

A.B.: (loudly) She means we can go now, Granny.

Granny: Oh.

HH-U: Just follow this hallway to the front lobby.

Granny: OK, Honey, you too.

(Footsteps; doors opening)

Granny: Well, did the desk turn you into an idiot?

A.B.: More like a liar.

Granny: Well, that’s the other choice besides idiot, but either way you act the same.

Tally: I have to get approved for my baby checkups.

Granny: OK, Boy, go wait in the truck. It’s better if you don’t help on this one, you know how bureaucrats gossip.