Funny

I would talk about my failings, with hardly a backward glance. We all know where the beaten path mislead. The bifurcation at which. We're clear at what point things become illusion. I can tell, from a glance at the calendar, that I'm the butt of a joke. Goes with the territory, as a park ranger said: somebody is always on call. Doctors are the worst, because they're self-important, and reek of expensive after-shave. The truth is closer to the bone. Something to do with the actual reason you're standing in the rain without a slicker. I know, and it drives me crazy. The point is lost in the gutter. Where the four winds blow. I can't begin to express myself, a pregnant pause, and then a comma. Living alone isn't so bad, you can think about things. Actual expression becomes a riff. A Blue-Tick hound howling at your grave. No carburetion. I'm not sure that's a word, but you know what I mean. Holding a breathe forever. A lot of deer moving about, because of the hunters in the woods, so driving through the forest I limit myself to about 20 mph. Had to stop and pull two dead off the road this morning, within a couple of mile stretch. One was small and recent, still warm, so I took a hind quarter; just dragged him over to the shoulder and skinned just the one haunch. As I was finishing a park ranger stopped, agreed it was fresh, impact to the head only, little chance of bile from a ruptured spleen, and allowed he'd take the other hind quarter. I told him there was another one down the road, killed last night, and that I had opened her up so the scavengers could clean up the mess. He asked if I was Tom and I said I was. He'd heard about me and wondered how I was going to cook the hind-quarter. I'd already decided that I was going to de-bone it with a single cut on one side and a little finesse with a sharp knife, then I was going to soak it in several changes of salt water, to get the blood out (he hadn't been properly bled), marinate it in wine and herbs overnight, stuff it with cornbread/sausage/ cranberry dressing (cranberries go with venison) and grill it for several hours away from direct heat. The ranger took notes. Told him how to tie it, to blot it dry and rub it with a mixture of ground peppers and cumin, and to bard it with bacon. I keep a gallon of water, a package of hand-wipes, and a few other things, in a milk crate in the back of the Jeep, so we were able to clean our hands, then I rolled us both a cigaret, and we sat on his tailgate and talked about hawks. The Peregrines are back, on the roof of the Masonic Building, and when I tell him that, he sits up straight, asks me how sure I am they're Peregrines, and I tell him I'm absolutely sure, that I've watched them dine, on several occasions, from 15 feet away. I told him about the Red-tail Hawks eating the bull-frogs (Jenny says they're leopard frogs, and she's usually correct when it comes to flora and fauna) and about how I'd gotten interested in hawks when one fell out a tree, when I lived on Cape Cod, and the tribulations of getting it back to it's nest. I bear scars from a sparrow-hawk, an older sister, and a cousin that liked to humiliate me. Otherwise, I'm fine. A reconstructed geek, an aging hippy, I answer to almost anything. I spent the entire day going through Mary's scrapbooks monitoring Carter's career. And I'm not done, there are still file cabinets that no one has gone through. She kept everything, every mention of him, as if to prove to her parents that she hadn't made a mistake, marrying an artist. Which is usually, let's face it, a mistake. Broody awkward types that don't spend enough time in the sun; but Cartie, as his friends called him, often just wandered about, with his Brownie camera, snapping pics. Often with his Kentucky buddy, Jessie Stuart, who won a Pulitzer for a book that holds up pretty well, a bit sentimental, but I tend toward fights with beans at close range. The percussionist said the composer was obsessed with legumes, and that he never knew exactly what to do, how hard to throw them against what. I'm sympathetic, because I find life like that. What, exactly, am I doing? I have to grin, the same thing as before. Two mules go into a bar, a nun and a priest are talking in the confessional, a rabbi and a really hot young lady arguing in the aisle. That's three things, right? I'm trying to play by the rules. Three things make a list. Then a chorus, what condition my condition was in. The outside world is a pain in the ass.