zip tie

warning: all dog eyes have been left red in photos to help establish the terrifying nature of this story.

we bought a headboard for our bed. not generally the sort of stuff a person finds important enough to dedicate a blog entry to, but this is the first time ever in my life i've purchased an actual headboard. and footboard. most beds have been futons on the floor or on wood shipping pallets that i've dragged from one student apartment to the next. but we are grown ups now, people who own a car that nobody else has owned and a house. a real house with a basement and two chimneys that work and storm windows. so it's only right we should have a bed with a headboard. civilization demands it. so we did what we did the first time we bought a car together. we visited ebay. and on wednesday evening we drove to new jersey and crammed an iron bed frame into our car and then drove back with our seats scooted all the way forward and a rattling that sounded like a thousand ghosts clanking chains in the back.

bringing this precious pile of metal upstate started the worrying part of my brain. we couldn't put the dogs in the car with the frame in there, so the frame would have to travel on top. now, our sassy little car has rails on it for attaching a luggage rack or pod but they say right there on them that trying to attach something else directly to the rails will result in tragedy. i believe this because the folks at subaru told me right there in sticker on the rail, but the sweetie just laughs. he has a plan. "if this doesn't work, it's your dad's fault," he says. he has not called my dad to run this plan by him. he just knows my dad would approve. his plan involves zip ties. they are to film school geeks what duct tape is to the rest of mankind. he brings home thirty or so zip ties and on friday afternoon we get to work attaching the headboard to our car with what looks like plastic twist ties. when i say "we" what i mean is i help the sweetie put the headboard on the rails and then i stand there, looking horrified, as neighbors glance out and nobody says a word.

i know these things will fall apart on the road, sending pieces of metal that look suspiciously like ancient cemetery gates from childhood nightmares spiraling into the windshield of the car behind us. we will be murderers. i tell the sweetie this. he looks concerned, but his concern is more for my mental state than for these would be murder victims. he knows i am a paranoid person and he's worrying it's getting of hand. he shrugs and we get the footboard. if there are victims i will be as guilty as the sweetie because i have figured out a way to put the curved footboard on the car without having it prevent the doors from opening. this is the sort of stuff i scored well on in those tests in 8th grade. spatial relations. and now there will be blood on my hands.

i tell myself i've seen cops use zip ties to secure criminals on occasion when handcuffs were in short supply. this helps a little, but the day had been ugly at work and my mind was set to wallow in ugliness. i begin hoping our victims will be few and the type who deserve to have metal crash into their car on a dark highway at night. you know, like maybe serial killers would tailgate us. hopefully not a bus full of orphans. because it was shaping up to be the sort of day where we would wipe out a bus full of orphans. orphans with some special disease someone had just found a cure for.

we crammed the rest of the frame, the long bits the bed itself sits on, into the car and up between the two front seats. i won't mention how many times i hit my head on the headboard getting into the car or how many times i cracked my elbow on the stupid bits of frame jutting into the front seat but it was too many. the dogs in their dog bucket came next and then our bags. now, max hates to ride in the car and although i had already given him his car riding medicine, he began his whale song as soon as the car started rolling. and the headboard, which has hollow openings at the feet, began a lower, more ghostly wail. great, i thought. at least it's not as loud as the jet engine sound that hovered outside my classroom for four hours earlier in the day while i tried to teach over it. road work. maybe it will drown out the ringing in my ears. but it was not so bad. it was like having a little fleet of ghosts hovering around us as we drove, like guardian angels only creepier.

the rain at first was soft, more like a fog that required occasional wiper blade use. in the brooklyn battery tunnel max's whale song turned to a more high pitched whine. it could be he hates those orange lights in there. but the little collection of ghosts changed their tune in the tunnel as well. shoving a tunnel through another tunnel does something bad to the world swirling around them and the cheerful little "wooo" coming off our headboard became the hissing of a monster. it is a long tunnel. i watched in the rearview mirror, knowing if the stupid headboard chose now to fly off, we would be trapped in an already crowded tunnel with broken cars and probably somehow the rain outside would pick up just enough to flood everything. the odd thing about the rearview mirror was that i could see the headboard and its ridiculous companion, the footboard, weren't moving at all. not even to jangle against one another. they were pretty firmly attached to the car. i did not mention this to the sweetie. we weren't yet on the highway.

but the highway didn't change things either. the cheerful flock of ghosts came wooooing back and max showcased a variety of dog distress signals, weaving them smartly in and out of the constant tune of the headboard. we arrived at the house just before eleven at night in the dark and in the rain. we brought in dogs and bags and jackets. then, we brought in bits of frame. the sweetie snipped the zip ties off of the headboard and footboard and we dragged everything through the house and up the stairs. max, disgruntled by almost everything at this time of night, did a lot of glaring and looking blankly around. guthrie stood his little stovepipe body right where we wanted to put whatever we happened to be putting down. still, the bed took very little time to assemble and when we tossed box spring and then the mattress onto the frame i was surprised how grown up i felt. "wow. we really do need more pillows," muttered the sweetie.