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Brother Dreams Of Clifford
My brother has been talking to my dead mother and father in his dreams. I myself don't dream, or talk to anybody. My father, a full blooded dead Lebanese (which I only mention so I can get this off my chest--fuck Israel), apparently knows he is dead, whereas my mother hasn't quite hipped up to the fact of her recent death. My mom asked after me in my brother's dream. My brother thinks she should have the decency to only ask after him in his dreams. He said he may have to tell her what's what in the next dream. I said, well, break it to her easy.
The English Of Freddy
You can't hardly do any good slacking out here what with all that worker noise.Those guys are working 13 hours a day and the only break I get from them is when I go down and paint the outside of the cottage they are living in, which used to be the cottage I lived in. I will live down there again someday but for now it is Las Casas de Los Latino's.
The Latino's, there's five of them out here, they don't seem that friendly to Freddy from Honduras. He is always working by himself while the other four guys laugh and joke and work together. Yesterday they were calling out to him in Spanish and laughing. I was skimming leaves off the pool surface. Freddy said under his breath to his co-workers, fuck you. English very good, Freddy, I said.
Poem For Ira
Well, they got him last night at Massie's Corner, after a week of relentless man hunting, so there's one less pocket-knife stabbing murderous son-of-a-bitch roaming around Rappahannock County.
They were talking about it at the diner this morning but I'd already received the spoiler by email.
This morning every table at the diner had a big fat bouquet of hydrangea blossoms. I had fresh raspberry pancakes and bacon and eggs and iced tea and cranberry juice.
The geese have returned to the property. If they mess with those new hibiscus plants down at the pond, I'll be having pate for breakfast.
After receiving the news about the captured murderer I went around unlocking doors on the property, but they were already unlocked.
Caca Rica
A helicopter with search light looking for a toothless murderer was flying around last night illuminating the tops of trees in this bucolic Rappahannock arena while I smoked a cigarette and danced oddly like a marionette puppet on the front porch of this premier 40 acre property within walking distance of the Inn at Little Washington, which notably, other than the notability of the starter meals at $230 a pop, speculatively exudes septic overflow uphill from the pond here, and is why I don't eat the fish I catch, but throw them back, because that shit is just too rich for me.
Free To Go
Like the demented circus clown booted up with chunky peanut butter I smile at police checkpoints. I have all my teeth, see.
I think there is now one law enforcement person for every 15 of us out here. A pocket knife stabbing murderous son-of-a-bitch is on the loose and has been for 6 days. Helicopters fly over, brown trooper cars speed by in reckless pursuit of a man on the run in an area that offers above average hiding potential.
Rumors abound, he's been spotted, there was a shootout, they got him boxed in down there at Gid Brown Hollow.
With a half dozen tequila shots and who knows what else coursing through my bloodstream last night I slow down at the checkpoint on Harris Hollow Road and squint through the flashlights shining in my face. Some of the murderer's teeth may be missing but I have all of mine. "We need to look in your vehicle sir." I understand. After glancing at the interior of the Jeep and finding me guilty of nothing more than being less than fastidious, I am given pardon. "You are free to go, sir."
Holy cow, the power of those words. Free to Go. Free to go where? and what should I do when I get there?
The Legend
Yesterday at daybreak in the back pasture with its hay recently mowed I saw five foxes hopping playfully and running in circles, nipping at each others' tails.
Over the Independence day weekend a bat and a snake got into the bighouse. I received a call down at the cottage about the snake and when I asked where it was the visiting guest caller said--get your ass up here!!! And I rarely use exclamation points. The caller wanted me to remove the snake alive but I just killed it and threw it out. Some people are snake lovers and for those I report that there are probably three, count them three, giant man eating rat snakes in the basement, and if you love them that much I invite you for a visit and I will set you up with a pallet on the concrete floor near where I know their den to be. You may engage in any and all manner of snake loving ritual but don't teach those snakes any of your dumb tricks or engage them in political discussion, that's where I draw the line. I don't mess with the basement snakes and they don't mess with nobody. And apparently they know better than to come up into the living quarters.
I don't know what happened to the bat.
I was talking to a local named Steve yesterday and he will go see about getting on the kidney transplant list today so he can live another ten years and I said you could probably live another ten years on dialysis, without the transplant, and he said probably not.
While we were talking that giant man eating snapping turtle came plunking up the hill again, from the pond, and across the front pasture. Steve said, that's a big one for this area.
Mr. and Mrs. BC and their youngest, little BC, came for the night and day of the 3rd/4th. Little BC was in a funk when he got here, after realizing he had been tricked into coming to a gathering of stupid adults. He pouted in quite admirable fashion, waiting in the car, for his ride home, whenever the hell that would be, however long it might take. Mrs. BC went out once and then looking out the window I saw her giving him a stern but loving good talking to, down by the old well, which I can only guess he had run off to in an attempted escape from a mother he realized was not coming out to start the car and take him the hell home. I was pretty much done with my burger and chicken and so decided to go out and just trick the 5 year-old Little BC out of his funk, which is an easy thing to do for a 47 year-old man who has the emotional development of a five year-old.
I started up the jeep-like vehicle we have out here and drove over nearby the well and just waved him over, bored, you know, daylight's burning, come on, let's roll. He wasn't sure what was happening at first but then he made a mad dash and got all strapped in (Mrs. BC said be careful and I said what's the fun in that?) and we took off across the yard and then the pastures of freshly cut hay. We drove down by the pond and I said hey let's go fishing and he seemed keen on that so we went up to the shed and got two fishing poles and I gave him the one with the best lure and said, be careful, and stepped away from him to catch my own fish. He caught one right away and then three more and as we were just about done I snagged a catfish come up from the depths to eat my ridiculous top-water popper and he gave first hellacious top water thrashing and then under water fighting which did not at first bode well for the 4-pound test line. But I got him up to the shore somehow and showed him to Little BC who was frankly enthralled with my fisherman's prowess and while I belabored over whether or not I really wanted to touch this slimy looking pond catfish, he thrashed once, broke the line with yellow popper still in his mouth, and swam away. Little BC remarked--you caught The Legend. I said, well, you know, actually he got away. But Little BC insisted--no, you caught The Legend. It was nothing I really wanted to argue about.
The Marmot King
There was an awful lot of caterwauling up in here at the bighouse last night but it was just me, waking me up to prove my existence.
After several days of incessant rain there is this morning nary a clown in the sky.
A cold fog drifts down from the mountains to settle in the hollows.
A fox just loped across the meadow. I think foxes are creepy.
Someday the marmots and foxes will wage a war against each other.
Someday the believers of extra-terrestial intervention will wage war against the believers of nature-intelligence and the one that stands tall afterwards will, I believe, be defeated by the marmots, and the marmots shall rule supreme.
Mrs. BC came out yesterday with a giant Englishman and showed him the work of his Latinos. He seemed a little perturbed that Mrs. BC was not fall over drunk deliriously happy with his landscaping scheme, but he should have listened to her, the stupid giant. I think he will be able to get his guys to fix everything and even the formal circle garden, which is a little more formal than Mrs. BC desired, will in the end be very nice and appropriate to this setting. All of this will mean very little when the marmots rule the planet. Of course, when that happens, I will then be just one small step away from next best thing to a marmot, so be advised, be afraid, be very afraid.
Mrs. BC brought out to me a belated birthday gift from Mr. BC. It was a crudely wrapped rectangular package which due to Mr. BC's uptick of a year as east coast business mogul, I thought might contain hard cash. Some people would be offended by the thoughtlessness of a cash gift but I am not one of them.
When I unwrapped it, with some difficulty (because Mr. BC had used that clear packing tape), I was a little letdown that Mr. BC had actually put a modicum of thought into the gift instead of just crudely wrapping a wad of hundred dollar bills. It was a wallet. With no money in it. Shit man, I already have a wallet with no money in it. But ok, really, Mr. BC is a very thoughtful guy, and I needed a new wallet, and this one is a nice brown genuine Italian leather wallet. Maybe I'll get a new tie for Christmas. But it was when I turned the wallet over that I realized Mr. BC had not only put forth more than just a modicum of thought into this gift, he had in fact summed up my very essence, for the wallet has a sort of embroidered monogram on it, which although obviously somewhat hokey, because it now becomes a product derived from a popular cult movie, still, how very appropriate, how very thoughtful. Embroidered largely on the one side are the words BAD MOTHER FUCKER.
This new wallet is a thing which will prove very useful to me in that future ruled by giant rodents. When I make cash bribes to the Marmot King, he will know easily, and without the aid of reading glasses for the letters are large, just whom he deals with.