Jazz Riff

Little Sister stops on the way down the driveway to eat some opossum shit. The walk down is always pleasant, because it is down, and there is little real effort; but very nice this morning, as the rain had washed the pollen from everything and the colors were vibrant. Enough rain to settle the dust. Much more in the forecast, days of rain. Slight enough drizzle going down that I didn't use my umbrella, choosing to get a bit damp, so that my view would not be restricted. Excellent drive to town, 27 turkeys working the duff off Mackletree, a dead deer I pull off the road and open up for the crows and vultures; trout fishermen at the lake, fishing with whole-kernel corn, because these are Rainbow Trout raised in cages, fed pellets, and they go for corn. Miniature marshmallows are good. I'm at the museum early and open up, Tammy comes in early, we chat office politic; Pegi comes in and forgives my rant of the other day, I remind her that we've learned to not allow hysterics. We're all cool with me being a kind of heavy-handed janitor, the bad cop, in the good cop, bad cop interrogation. D arrives, I'm waiting outside, smoking a cig, looking at the buildings, town, also washed clean, and there some few flowers. We go to get our morning coffee, scone, and I can't help but notice that Erica's replacement (Erica joined the Navy) has spent way too much time in the tanning booth. She's darker than Tammy, who claims to be Black. Later, D, Tammy and I are huddled on the loading dock, having a smoke, and it's a drizzling rain that D and I ignore, and Tammy says, "Black women do not go out in the rain." I feel I'm being played, set up for a joke, knock knock. But I have to say, "What, does it wash off?" She punches me on the arm. She needs some work on the speed-bag. She says, "no, dummy, it's the hair." She did a kind of model slink, brought her right hand up and patted her very short hair, "I've just enough white blood," she said, "that it stays fairly flat." I'm so far removed from this that I don't even know what the problem is. I can parse it out later, but my memory of specific detail is blurring at the edges. D asked me specifically, what was not the desire path, and I said, "when you stay on the sidewalk." He didn't laugh for several heart beats, but then, in the elevator, he did. A done deal. Sense is an amalgam,
a combined consideration. I need to go, a line of thunderstorms. I'm not sure where we'll pick this up. I trust you with the thread.