- jimlouis 6-12-2009 3:27 am [link]
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The Lacking Of Probability
After driving the 950 miles northeast he was still in the South, but a cooler, breezier, more mountainous and decidedly more rural South. There were fewer sidewalks here and they were not coated with black dots of gum or broken glass or steaming gobs of spit. Having made the drive in one sprint he was not so removed from that former place as the mileage would suggest and in his mind the two places clashed as he made the turn into the long gravel driveway. He drove uphill past the pond and surveyed the 40 acres that would constitute his new territory. A crooked smile replaced what had been the firm cast of his mouth and he heard from afar a cackling, hysterical laughter. It seemed to be coming from the lush green foothills which surrounded him on all sides. It closed in too quickly though and he realized the laughter was his own, and, not particularly comfortable with the sound, he shut himself up.
But the former place was less a memory than part of his makeup so that over the first few months on the hill, while sitting on the back porch of the bighouse enjoying the gentle breezes, or floating in the cold swimming pool, or hiking in purest isolation the nearby mountain trails, he found himself transported back, way down the hill, all the way back to that thick heat and dark night where he had spent his last ten years.
That first Fall on the hill was hideously beautiful as the leaves on the trees all around him burst forth those vibrant colors which precede death and became like snapshots from a perfect life; postcards he would speak of but not send because he could never find a stamp.
After the leaves fell he found a replacement to look after the two houses and loaded up a few tools and his shotgun and drove back down to finish what he had started, his own porch, on his tenth of an acre, which looked out over a cracked driveway more dirt and grass than concrete and beyond that a buckled sidewalk and potholed street and the ramshackle abode with no electricity occupied by mostly agreeable but still practicing drug addicts (his own home had been just like it a few years previous). And next to that the sculptors' residence and next to that the perpetual work in progress, the chauffeur's home.
He found it highly illogical that his house, left untended, had not been breached in his absence, not a single broken window, no floorboards pushed up from the crawl space, no walls stripped of sheetrock for the valuable copper wire and pipe inside. All the appliances were still in the kitchen. The temporary electrical pole which powered up the place not just during construction but during his illegal lodging the previous few years still had its meter, another valuable commodity on the local black market. Even as his life here was one of lowest profile, avoiding to the best of his ability the exposure which welcomed racial slurs from passing teenagers and even though on foot he could not leave his house at night to walk two blocks to the nearest store because of a prevalent criminal intent among some of the town's youth, he still knew and felt deeply that he lived a blessed life. And while the thick humid air allowed deep breathing only at risk of drowning, he still sucked it in with great satisfaction. We are all drug addicts in one fashion or another and for him the addiction was perhaps the rather obvious thrill of surviving a single day in this environment, but he knew he was addicted to something less describable than that, and after each abysmal attempt at speaking out what that was, he willed himself silent on the subject, imagining against all probability that he would succeed.
After driving the 950 miles northeast he was still in the South, but a cooler, breezier, more mountainous and decidedly more rural South. There were fewer sidewalks here and they were not coated with black dots of gum or broken glass or steaming gobs of spit. Having made the drive in one sprint he was not so removed from that former place as the mileage would suggest and in his mind the two places clashed as he made the turn into the long gravel driveway. He drove uphill past the pond and surveyed the 40 acres that would constitute his new territory. A crooked smile replaced what had been the firm cast of his mouth and he heard from afar a cackling, hysterical laughter. It seemed to be coming from the lush green foothills which surrounded him on all sides. It closed in too quickly though and he realized the laughter was his own, and, not particularly comfortable with the sound, he shut himself up.
But the former place was less a memory than part of his makeup so that over the first few months on the hill, while sitting on the back porch of the bighouse enjoying the gentle breezes, or floating in the cold swimming pool, or hiking in purest isolation the nearby mountain trails, he found himself transported back, way down the hill, all the way back to that thick heat and dark night where he had spent his last ten years.
That first Fall on the hill was hideously beautiful as the leaves on the trees all around him burst forth those vibrant colors which precede death and became like snapshots from a perfect life; postcards he would speak of but not send because he could never find a stamp.
After the leaves fell he found a replacement to look after the two houses and loaded up a few tools and his shotgun and drove back down to finish what he had started, his own porch, on his tenth of an acre, which looked out over a cracked driveway more dirt and grass than concrete and beyond that a buckled sidewalk and potholed street and the ramshackle abode with no electricity occupied by mostly agreeable but still practicing drug addicts (his own home had been just like it a few years previous). And next to that the sculptors' residence and next to that the perpetual work in progress, the chauffeur's home.
He found it highly illogical that his house, left untended, had not been breached in his absence, not a single broken window, no floorboards pushed up from the crawl space, no walls stripped of sheetrock for the valuable copper wire and pipe inside. All the appliances were still in the kitchen. The temporary electrical pole which powered up the place not just during construction but during his illegal lodging the previous few years still had its meter, another valuable commodity on the local black market. Even as his life here was one of lowest profile, avoiding to the best of his ability the exposure which welcomed racial slurs from passing teenagers and even though on foot he could not leave his house at night to walk two blocks to the nearest store because of a prevalent criminal intent among some of the town's youth, he still knew and felt deeply that he lived a blessed life. And while the thick humid air allowed deep breathing only at risk of drowning, he still sucked it in with great satisfaction. We are all drug addicts in one fashion or another and for him the addiction was perhaps the rather obvious thrill of surviving a single day in this environment, but he knew he was addicted to something less describable than that, and after each abysmal attempt at speaking out what that was, he willed himself silent on the subject, imagining against all probability that he would succeed.