Wall Raising

B calls to remind me to come over and help raise the tall wall (12 feet, big headers up high, very top heavy) on the addition at their house. Four of us and a boy, get the wall up, braced and nailed in short order. Coffee and discussion after. On the way home I stop at the lake, two crows under the picnic table at the spillway. A loud place to eat. Ratty fucking crows, matted feathers, they've been into something, ketchup or grease or machine oil. I'm not sure they can fly because they just hop away in that awkward crow walk, like drunks on stilts. Tattered luncheon remains under the table, greasy fried chicken bones explain the crows condition; I pick up trash, leave the organics, head home. Already sweaty, in work clothes, I sling blade for an hour, then bathe on the deck with buckets of tepid water and shave at the kitchen sink, late lunch of homemade sausage, eggs shirred in wine, shredded potato patty, sourdough toast, and as a special treat, a little nip bottle of Glendronach single malt that I remember Glenn bringing when he was filming here, that I found yesterday, looking for whatever it was that smelled bad in the island storage (an bad onion, like a bad apple only worse) and moved things around that hadn't been moved in a while. You find the damnest things. Hours later, I'm thinking about the ratty crows, remembering a fishing trip with my Dad, after I had left home, on a trip back, so I was older than 18, but I don't remember when it was, after Bass Boats and really large outboards came on the market. He tolerated me smoking dope when we were fishing, had eaten hash in chocolate bars when he was on Sea Duty in the Med. We were powering in to a place that was normally unfishable because of shallow bars that guarded entrance to anything drafting more than a couple of inches. Some daredevil had discovered that if you blew through on full plane you could get to these fishing grounds up Salt Creek. Scariest boat ride I was ever on, but it was the Anhingas I was getting to. Once we made it over the bar, Dad slowed to a crawl, the water so clear we were watching specific fish, I took a three pound Large Mouth Bass on a very light fly-rod, four-pound test, probably the best fish of my life, we were drinking a lot of beer, suddenly, smeared against the bushes that lined the creek were these birds, Anhingas, and they don't have any oil or lanolin or whatever in their feathers AND they are fisher birds, so they get wet, and dry themselves by splaying their bodies on a bush. Doesn't seem like a good survival technique but there they are. The crows reminded me of them. I think about what they might have to say to each other. A Crow and an Anhinga go into a bar. They say to the bartender, -Tom sent us,- and the patrons move their chairs to the back of the room, get out their opera glasses. The Anhinga says -the audience was terrible tonight- and the Crow says, -no, we were terrible-, they proceed to throw back shots and argue performance. A Post Modern Moment. Ratty birds remind me of ratty birds, it's not really a large step, but I take it, any movement is probably good. You probably heard that blond joke. I had a fan on, blowing on my black Dell, then it was cool enough to turn the fan off and the silence was deafening, suddenly nothing, I sat back in my chair and thought about that. I love what passes for silence, which was Cage's point. I could be a real control freak about the River Wrack show, but I don't want that, I want a free flow of information.