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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.
Freddy And The Pool Monster
The landscaping crew packs up and leaves for the weekend but this time they left Freddy from Honduras behind to water the plants, and spread some mulch.
We have about equal understanding of each other's native language and converse with long pauses while looking either to the sky or to the dirt for answers to our transliterate deficiencies.
We get along pretty well but I thought I might have to bury his ass under the hydrangea bed when he ask me--are you a woman? Pendejo better not be hitting on me. I had just the other night watched TransAmerica so I was sensitive to the question and just kept repeating incredulously his question, "Am I a woman? Am I a woman? Am I a woman?" He looked to the dirt. I tried to help him. Did he mean do I have a wife? Si, una espousa? No. Ninos? No. He has a wife in Honduras and a baby. Had he considered bringing her up? No. Too expensive. Five thousand dollars. So I wanted to know how, what, who. I just kept saying "quien" and then "bring," with hand motions that were Freddy an American football fan, would tell him that he was probably being penalized 15 yards.
But Freddy was getting the hang of my not so unique communication skills and finally gave me the answer I was more or less fishing for. He said--Coyote.
He asked me about Spanish TV and I said no TV out here yet, but maybe soon. Later I took down to him one of my hard drives and the 17 inch flat panel and rustled up a handful of DVDs. I could not find too many that actually offered Spanish as the dubbed language. If extra languages were offered at all, French seemed to be the most common. But Casino with Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone had dubbed Spanish so I set it up for him and after driving to the Quikie Mart to get him two gallons of drinking water and a twelve pack of Coca-Cola, wished him good night. I myself this night watched Walk the Line, which was a lot better than I thought it was going to be, and also has dubbed Spanish, so next week the crew can enjoy that if they want.
This morning he is out watering again and I said, te gusta la pelicula? and he apparently liked it very much, making knife marks across his throat to show his appreciation of Robert DeNiro and also that the woman...the woman...I said, Sharon Stone, he said, yes, very beautiful. I agreed with him. I mean I can see how some men would be attracted to that raw and rude over the top come hither sexuality she seems to exude with little or no effort. I mean, you know, intellectually, I can understand that.
The pool monster came up sick this morning so I disemboweled it and although not sure of what I actually did, learned a few things about the inner workings of the Polaris pool sweeping device and got it working again.
While Freddy was watering this morning I put my Rio player and speakers out on the porch and played for him the Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack. Not wanting him to get too comfortable with only hearing his native language (or the Cuban version thereof) I am now playing for him a rather extended playlist of Jimi Hendrix.
The Curse Of The Hydrangea
It's finally raining here in Virginia, so I'm stuck inside, caretaker without a cause, too wet to paint.
I have made stellar progress with the disconnecting of the suck ass Direcway satellite Internet service and also site assessment and near hookup of Adelphia Cable. With Direcway I just lied to them and said I was leaving the country for a year. I was afraid of what I would say if asked for my real reasons for disconnecting. Suffice to say it was a frustrating relationship with the Hughes Corp. I have just located the two cable plug-ins in the bighouse so really I am still working my ass off.
I am supervising in hands off fashion the installing of the new trampoline surface, which I can see happening out the window if I crane my neck like Linda Blair.
Filled up those sample bottles this morning with tap water so the town can test them for lead, which they do every year at the same six properties in the area. I'm exhausted just thinking about my work load.
There is a Latino landscaping crew of five men out here living in my cottage while they complete a rather ambitious project, over a 3 week period. I would help them move around those 200 pound slabs of flagstone but it intimidates some people to see someone as skinny as me sling gargantuan stones around like they were pieces of styro-foam.
I am stuck up here in the bighouse, killing mice by the bucket load, and at night sipping a wide variety of hard liquor while watching movies. I have Netflix resumed but the first batch was mostly unremarkable while the little notebook full of DVDs from Mr. BC have all been pretty good watching, including Syrianna, Jarhead, Junebug, and TransAmerica. .
Yesterday I got a sandwich and a bottle of water at the quaint, sparsely stocked gourmet grocery in town and paid almost nine dollars for the privilege. Then drove to Culpeper for more paint, sanding discs from the Lowe's, and some frozen food from the Walmart. At Walmart I got two regular deluxe pizzas from my friends at Red Baron, a french bread pizza, two chicken pot pies, a hearty and delicious meatloaf dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans, and a pint of juicy and sweet cubed pineapple, all for 18 dollars.
The pool area is really going to be elegant thanks to these kickass landscapers. The good news is those hateful hydrangeas by the far end of the pool got dug up, the bad news is they replanted them closer to the house, the worst news is 10 or 12 new hydrangeas have been planted, near the pool and elsewhere. I am cursed by hydrangeas.
It was hotter than crap out here yesterday but today, not really. At the gas station down the hill a tractor driver was talking about the rain last night. A waitress at the diner talked about the lightning.
My Home New Orleans
My Home New Orleans
My Home New Orleans
My Home New Orleans
My Home New Orleans
My Home New Orleans
Breakfast With Petula Dvorak
I was at the diner just now having breakfast near the mayor and that family that is always in there, and their little girl is just cute as can be, if you don't have over the top standards regarding cute. That crusty old wizened woman, who rules her small universe with an antiquated lack of charm and cash donations to various local organizations, came in to talk to the mayor, but he was just getting ready to leave, didn't have much time for her because he was going home to take a nap. Then I overheard a conversation about how it might be possible to get that sulfur smell out of the water at the bighouse without an expensive filtration system. I will have to talk to the waitress tomorrow because I didn't want it widely known inside the diner that I am an eavesdropper.
I perused the Washington Post between bites of scrambled egg and who shows up writing crime reports for the Post but my old friend who used to write crime for the Times Picayune, Petula Dvorak. She's not really an old friend, it just felt that way, seeing her name. I can imagine that some old school journalists might have found Ms. Dvorak a little too poetic for crime writing, but I always found her word wrangling appropriate to the subject matter, and occasionally, outrightly stupendous.
Somebody is offering me a possible ticket to Mark Knopfler in DC tonight, might drive in for that.
Ok, back to work on the cottage. Have cut all those giant bushes down, painting now.
