The Reticent Caretaker
In this rural area in which I reside are slackers (ask me how I know this?), and farmers and ranchers and artists of various stripe and retired newsmen and politicians, a magazine publisher, members of the working class, visiting statesmen and presidents, and felons (and by mentioning felons here I intend no conjunctional reference to statesmen and presidents) and there are tourists who come to hike the Shenandoah trails or eat at the one famous restaurant. In the fall they spend hours stuck in traffic to come out here and look at leaves.
I live on a somewhat exclusive property amidst all this, as caretaker, and perform various chores, when I am not neglecting them by doing this. The chore I am neglecting now is the removal of the kitchen wallpaper in the caretaker's cottage and repainting of the walls, which, we might assume, is not of terribly high priority to the owners, Mr. and Mrs. BC, who when they visit out here, reside in the bighouse, up the hill, and have no doubt various chores they would be pleased to have me perform up there. Have I run out of chores at the bighouse you wonder? Oh, I daresay not.
I don't get out much or talk a lot, except when Bernadette visits. I was up visiting her in NY last week and then I drove her down here in an ice storm. It was insane. Don't ever do it. You are a moron if you do. To the dozen or more people who skated off the highway into ditches I am sure my advice will seem redundant. This morning Bernadette and I talked about a very important case before the Supreme Court--the right to make 14 foot banners in Alaska that say, Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
On those rare occasions when I do get out I might sometimes fall victim to that motor mouth syndrome that reticent people are known to suffer. Babbling on and on and on to someone as if I were a person who really liked to talk and actually believed myself to be quite good at it.
I had to leave the property recently for a six pack of beer. I could have walked to the store but I drove. I even drive from here to the bighouse on most occasions. I like to drive. Getting in and getting out of the vehicle are my favorite parts, which makes the 300 yard drive to the bighouse a natural choice for me.
At the store the cashier greets me warmly, as is befitting the cashier of a small country convenience store. I do not get greeted warmly at the store up on the highway. I am just another person off the highway. The cashier is talking to two local farmer gentlemen about snake handlers in the Pentecostal church. This snake handling thing is an unfortunate association for the Pentecostals. I used to pretend or actually feel an adversarial relationship with the Pentecostal church in New Orleans, near my home there. They were not, to my knowledge, snake handlers. Over time though I put aside my petty differences with the church and even came to feel a meager kinship with my Pentecostal brothers as I watched them rebuild their church, sometimes running the generators 24 hours a day, after Katrina.
Routinely, there is not the drama or stimulating subject matter going on out here in rural Virginia that I may have experienced in New Orleans. So this chance to talk to the friendly cashier and the two farmers about religion and snakes got my juices flowing and I thought about a way to insert myself into the conversation, experiencing that rush of excitement that often proceeds the onset of motor mouth syndrome. As I worked this out inside my head the cashier said to one of the farmers, somewhat defensively, that the church she had gone to definitely did not handle snakes, and I was happy for my reticence.
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