Later

Cats and dogs, the rain. Hot tin roof. We were in the Sarah Lawrence cabin, the wind was blowing water horizontal. We had stayed too long, and there was no getting away now. Visibility was zero, I couldn't see the key in my hand. Zero. So I broke apart an end-table and spiked the pieces to hold blankets over the windows. It was really blowing. I figured the blankets would breathe and hold out some of the water. Electricity was gone, she had lit several candles, they flickered, but stayed aflame. At some point, after we'd eaten some crackers and potted meat, he pulled out a harmonica and played a blues thing that combined an old dying dog with a train that was leaving. I'd put some pickle buckets under the eaves, on the lee side of the cottage, to catch some hurricane rain to wash my hair. We all have a different life-list. A given day, a Pileated Woodpecker might be enough. Check out enough of these backwaters and eventually you find a body. When dawn broke, the worst seemed to be past, so I collected my kit and went home. At the time, a rented room, with use of facilities. A couple of times a week I'd cook, for the other inmates, and we'd share a bottle of wine. Awkward conversation. You can imagine. During the day, I stayed busy, mopping floors, whatever, but I remembered we had spent that night together. Wind blowing rain horizontal. And I wondered what you remembered. I hear snatches of conversation, isolated phrases, there's no context, so they don't make sense. Like an ad you'd hear on the radio. 'Go Home And Change,' is something I hear, in the line at the supermarket. Jolts me. A pregnant phrase. I chew on that through the day, cleaning. The new finish on the floor cleans beautifully. At lunch, John the manager, asks me to hang a couple of things for them at the pub, free dinner and drinks. Sure, I agree, after work. Finish the afternoon doing mindless chores. Take the hammer-drill and a five gallon bucket with the things I'll need to hang a Jameson mirror, a metal Harp sign, and an electric Guinness sign on a curved bracket. Anthony's there, to save the day, for a free meal and drinks; we hammer-drill holes for anchors, yelling out to the patrons 'A bit of noise, mates!', get the job done. The Guinness sign requires tap-cons and a trip back to the museum. Anthony, finally, with his greater mass, and potters arm strength, punches through the holes and hangs the damned thing. A poorly designed, piece of shit bracket. Still, later, when John runs the cord and plugs it in, everyone breaks into applause. You hang a Thomas Hart Benton, and there's barely a stir, you hang a lit Guinness sign, and you get applause. Some of these holes were through hard plaster, into concrete. No wonder they called in the pros. Also, the mirror hung on D-rings and they didn't know how to do that. Interesting evening after that, because Barb is reading "The Cistern" and has some questions. The recipes for cooking roadkill had mounted up for her, and she wondered if I had actually eaten all those things. I tell a couple of stories for a select circle of patrons. There had been a substrate problem, in one of the walls, and a guy sitting at the end of the bar recommended tap-cons. I wasn't thinking. I usually don't hang anything after 4:30, whether it's in the afternoon or morning. The perfect solution, from a by-stander, I don't even have control of my own text. I use a tool, a simple tool, called a 'drift', used usually to align things. I have one that's 6 inches long, maybe half-an-inch hardened Rockwell steel, the last inch-an-a-half tapers down to a conical point. I use it to start holes in very hard surfaces. It impressed the guy, at the end of the bar, that I used a drift to start my holes. We talked about irregular surfaces and miis-alignment. I usually just have a cup of tea and go to bed.