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The Curmudgeon
For the second time this week a man came up the driveway and asked could he fish the pond. I said no.
I was second coating the white picket fence around the pool and I heard the sound of car wheels on a gravel road and then a two honk blast. Yeah, let me just stop what I'm doing, it ain't important. The man drove a small truck and if every man has a theme song this man's song would have been that dueling bangos bit from Deliverance.
He stayed in his truck and I kept my distance, bare-footed and shirtless and armed only with a paint brush taped to a stick. My ribs glinted in the noonday sun. He looked me up and down once in that way that reminded me of lonely truck drivers from back when I was a kid hitchhiking. He said he was staying in the truck because he been bit by a dog once and I used that creepy manner I sometimes use and said "well we ain't got a dog but it's better to be safe."
He said he would only use a fly rod and would catch and release but I dismissed his hopeful intentions with an I don't care about all that. I told him he was the fourth person to come asking for fishing priviledges this week (a lie based solely on the fact that I like the sound of four better than two) and that I didn't see what all the attraction to that little pond was. "I fish it every once in awhile and only catch the same damn sun perch each time," I told him.
The gardener came by later to water plants that I had not only already watered but had also painted a bit. "I should have ripped those out of the ground, why you plant something before I second coat the fence?" I bitched. Sometimes I think she playing with me, pushing my buttons on account of she knows I feel somewhat friendly towards her and she bored with whatever else she got going on. I myself am not that bored. I intend to proceed along the path of respectful behaviour. But don't come over here bothering me with your can I fish the pond shit. This ain't Mayberry RFD and I ain't Andy. And if you come up that driveway and stop me from whatever I'm doing it better be cuz you bringing me some food or beer. The gardener and her boyfriend have both intimated that I should be more hospitable, get out more, invite more people in, become more in tune with Rappahannock ways. Yeah, well, in due time. Until then though, tune this.
Karma Gardner
All I said was I ain't getting enough calories and the next day this local chef who works a place that for breakfast pretty much only serves egg sandwiches brings me out this plate heaped high with his own version of mac and cheese with some homefries, edges blackened and sauteed, with onions and red and green peppers. I ran a chainsaw for a couple of hours after that and hauled brush for awhile and still had that mac in my belly.
But protein, where's my protein? So I go back to the place today, and not wanting to work the situation, when he asked me what today I just said I could have that egg sandwich I guess. He said you like meat, yeah, mushrooms, yeah--man I eat everything. I paid for a egg sandwich and my coffee and went out to the dining room and sat so I could see the baby robins up in that nest outside the window but I think they gone now.
Tourists from the city come in and I like a good tourist in a controlled environment because I am easily entertained. This dude's wife looks very healthy and happy and I enjoy being around healthy happy people even though I'm a little grumpy from being up late at Wolftrap doing that Ponty/DiMeola/Clarke concert last night. I had seats that were so good they wouldn't even let you drink beer in them so I drank my thirteen dollars worth of beer up on the lawn and went back and forth to my seat and the bathroom all night. Girls and boys wait in the same line and use a bathroom with one toilet and everybody in the beginning puts the seat down. If there's a dude behind you you soon realize it is not only impractical but obnoxious to put the seat down. People in the line ask you how you digging it and you, or, I rather, insult Jean luc Ponty but then go back to my seat and have him show me what an idiot I am. The three of them did short solo sets and Jean luc's was the best I've heard him but that's only comparing to once, twenty-five years ago. It was very much like liking Paul McCartney on the Concert for George dvd after not liking him for 35 years. Al DiMeola was ok and Stanley Clarke is phenomenal.
So the dude with the beautiful wife is himself beautiful, no other way to describe certain people. That dude, with his light French accent and perfect proportions and easy-going manner has never had a moment of self-doubt. The two beautiful people have in tow two ordinary people, one of whom gets stuck almost apologizing for a past life which included a non-glamorous job. By the time that happened though I was almost finished with today's treat, which turned out to be a steak and cheese and mushroom omelet, homefries, and a little salad with lettuce, tomato, and small pieces of marinated hammered chicken breast.
The beautiful wife leaned over the booth in front of me and apologized for her husband who she predicted was going to long for my meal. He did. He said he was jealous and I took a bite and said you should be. His pitiful little breakfast came out a few minutes later and he leaned over the booth again and I shooed him and his little girly sandwich away while licking the chicken marinade off of my lips.
The Karma Gardener came by and offered a bag of greens because she had too much and I took a bag gladly. My cup overfloweth so I offered half my greens to the pretty couple but the Karma Gardener gave them their own bag.
Lollygagging Handyman
Springtime in the country means baby bunnies, crisp clear blue skies, greenery, flowers blooming, bees buzzing, fawns in the meadow, and dead birds in the backyard.
I saw a dead bird in Mr. BC's backyard yesterday and sometime later, all of this occurring in bright broad daylight, the dead mangled bird was gone. Do bunnies kill birds and later cart off to some underground den their lifeless stiff mottled bodies? I don't think so.
Do baby deer leap flaking rotten fences (where are the ambitious handymen?) in the daytime, swat birds from the sky, and then hide in the bushes until that lollygagging handyman turns some corner so they can retrieve the ornithological carcass, take it into the woods and engage it in some primitive pagan ritual? I cannot say for sure, but I think not.
Do birds kill other birds? This would seem likely. But do they then remove the bodies? I could read up on that but I've got to get to work soon (the more I survey the fences out here the more I exclaim, to myself mostly, holy damn cow.)
At present time there are no cats out here, except for mountain lions and bobcats, and no dogs except for coyotes and hamster-eating gardeners pets, and no foxes except for foxes, no skunks except skunks, fish yes but none that fly or that I am aware of having mortal grudges against birds.
The sun rises, mysteries abound.
Pretty Nice Environment
Birds chirp, gentle cool breezes blow, green mountain ridges everywhere I glance.
The first time I came out here, last August, I brought with me a New Orleans Times Picayune photo and stashed it in the kitchen cabinet right over there in front of me. It showed the muzzle flare from a machine gun being fired at someone off camera at an NO area carwash, the scene caught on the carwash's survelliance camera.
The camera showed two guys pretty clearly, which aided the police in quick identification and subsequent arrest. As it turns out the shooters were mistaken as to the identity of the people they were shooting at and besides that, no one was killed. At trial last month prosecutors were not able to find any actual human beings to back up the id made by the camera and so the judge let the two guys on camera and a third guy go home.
The one guy, 19-year-old Antoine Johnson--"A man now considered the city's most wanted suspect is accused of shooting at a 13-year-old boy late Tuesday before slipping back into the obscurity that has shielded him since he allegedly killed a man and wounded a teenage girl two days after his release from jail last month." (tara young, notp).
Police note that gun violence has increased dramatically in the area surrounding Johnson's home and hideouts (in the BW Cooper) since his release.
A woman I like but not like that has asked me if she could ask me over for a home-cooked meal sometime and this she was asking me while I sampled again the fare at an area eatery, near to which she was doing her laundry, and slipping into for drinks. I said sure, even though in our brief conversation there was not even one exchange which implied the mildest simpatico between us, the most glaring example of which is that she almost had me wanting to defend Dick Cheney just for the mean-spirited sake of it. (The new bartender was playing Incubus on the sound system and I, ever polite, said, no, you don't need to turn it down.) Not that it is without precedent but it has been awhile since I have felt so totally un-got. Sigh.
I should make clear though, that this is a pretty nice environment in which to be alone.