Freight Train

The wind is howling, and my fingers are so cold I can hardly type. I've learned. I'm a student of wind, I've lived in windy places, I face into it, count the tears, bleeding from my eyes, multiply by three, divide by two, add a zero, then just guess, based on how quickly my nose-hairs freeze. I hold hypothermia at bay with chicken broth. The cookstove is maxed, oven temp over 600 degrees, I decide to make the ham and bean soup now, because it's so cold over where I write. I cooked a pound of beans last night, Great Northern, and had bought a pound package of ham scarps cheap, caramelized an onion and orange pepper, two cans of chicken stock. It was thin, so I thickened it with acorn meal. This is the soup from heaven, manna, it rests in your belly, still warm, saying yes you can. I had been writing longhand, the power was out, and suddenly it came back on, completely unexpected. I'd better go back to the beginning. A long and serpentine day. I've learned to not plan. Big wind storm all day, precip early and Turkey Creek is running spate. Mackletree Creek has escaped its banks and Booby's yard is flooded, it's not so much the water as his chickens that bother me. I'm going to kill that fucking rooster, that stands in the middle of the road, and defies the sure knowledge that me and my truck weigh way more that him. Stupid shit. When it's slaving over a hot stove, and that's the hot end of the house, I'm game. The oven is too hot, but I open the door and cook some corn sticks. I eat seven, the last two with molasses. Death by corn sticks. I eat what I must, mast. I make very little of this up, I mop as a matter of course. Fix a hole and the rain gets in. Finish cleaning the floor at the museum by scraping gummy things off with my knife and re-mopping, Then, I had forgotten, a local artist, arrives with two huge, heavy, pieces that we're supposed to hang in the back hallway for an Artist's League 'Art Walk' Friday and Saturday, 5'x7' and 5'x8', half-inch plywood with a doubled 2x4 frame, fuckers must weigh a hundred pounds, and they've never been hung before, so we must invent a method. We do that, and hang them, but it takes all afternoon. Outside, the wind is blowing 60 mph, bark is blowing off the trees, whole shacks are being dismantled, but inside we're hanging art, which we do very well. I know my power will be out when I get home. Gusts so hard, it's hard to drive. At the bottom of the driveway it's not so bad, but when I crest the ridge, it is fucking brutal. Hits you like a wall, and you have to reconsider everything. That nature could be so violent. Hurricane winds, I have to lean to walk. Learn to talk. Use a cane, whatever. Of course you're getting older, time passes; saw wood, carry water.