|
|
The Calm After The Storm. The payback was late in the afternoon... waiting out the storm on the front porch. A freshly-opened bottle of XX on the table, a newly-lit one perched between my fingers, my legs stretched out to gather the occasional waft of cool... letting the blackness pass,thunder barraging away to the south like endless artillery. Taking a real breath, for the first time in days. Like a cat that had just used up a life. How dramatic. Amongst us country folk, a storm is like an event...everything stops, at least on this hill, 'til the hammering stops. And they damn well must go to bed right after that... not a soul stirs. There'll be no grain alcohol parties, on this lane. Now a luau, or a Fez party, CAN happen at THIS house. As long as I'm breathing. Can't type for shit, tonight. Just before things got interesting, atmospherically, I decided it was time to do some manly-man stuff. Sharpening the chainsaw, should the time come I'll have to disassemble the locust trees about to topple on my Mother's (actually, my late Grandmother's) house. Then on to the bushaxe. Took serious dings when last used for hacking through the wilderness. I shoulda stopped there. Filing, polishing, bringing the edge back to shape (Slingblade, I am not ...MMM-Hmmm)... I notice a stream of blood from my right hand. Oopsie-daisy. There on the opposite side of the blade, also quite keen, was an ever-so incidental dollop of hemoglobin... the point of carving. As Monty Python's Black Knight would say, "t'is but a scratch." More like a quarter-inch of knuckle skin, the muscle visible past the gap and the welling tide of my precious fluids. Dumbass. So now I type with my center digit sprung out like a prolonged Johnny Rotten salute. Except he used two of them. Silly human. Woke up this morning (only just) burritoed into the sheet so tight I had to roll twice to get loose. Must've done some dreaming, to say the least. Like rolling down a hillside. Dee up for hours, big into her daily routine... reading a mountain of newspapers, waiting for me to do something. So she can follow. It always seems like she's got something on the tip of her tongue, that she just won't say. I ask what's up without interrogating, but only get the "nuthin'" answer. "What would you like to do today?" "Nuthin'." "Watcha been up to with me passing back-and-forth the past three days?" "Nuthin'." And on and on. Then I tell her how I have resolved the migrant crisis. By agreeing to stay at "Elly's" in her spare room. No response. I've worked with her for as long as I have known Dee (when she was living with my brother, before his suicide, and our subsequent moving-in together). North Carolina girl. Shapely. Healthy. Funny. Living. Inquisitive. Alone. I apartment-sat for her, last year, when she took a summer-long sabattical in New Mexico, at the retreat. Interesting, how someone lives seems so different from the face you see at work. Actually, I was glad to see it. The arrangement of furniture, the pictures on the wall, books in the shelf, the plants that I tended... spoke of a deeper person than first meets the eye. I was comfortable. I read a pile of books. Did some drawing that wasn't spurred on by a deadline. And though she invited me to stay when she came back, knowing the situation at the Ewok's, I declined... and I'm not sure why. And now, I'm back. There have been sparks between us... among them, the beer party I missed at the Enya/Trekkie's house, when I was staying there. When I came back that night, her lacy bra was fastened around my sleeping bag. Now that was a nice visual, especially considering her taste in undergarments. But we passed it off with a smile and a wink. Of course, my return favor was stuffing one of her pillows with a pair of my (CLEAN) boxers, 'til the corners stuck out like legs. Always teasing. So now, we'll be under the same roof. Her hours are different enough from mine that we may rarely see each other there... yet I'm sure the rumor mill at work will already have us in every position imaginable. We shall see if truth is stranger than fiction. I have lived my life with the goal of inflicting no damage on anyone, at the very least, and Doing The Right Thing... mostly, to my detriment. And a challenge, this situation will be. First, and foremost, the bullshit of the past year will be a memory. That's the bottom line. What else happens... we'll just have to see. I don't want to be a RatBastard, to anyone... but I have got to start making something out of all this breathing, and with my life. The rut has been too deep, for too long, with only one person scratching to get out. If nothing else changes except my own attitude to get on with things, so be it. But I cannot just sit and wait to see which direction the winds push me in. Though it may be the calm before the storm. |
|
|
