Slides Under

Slips by. Say what you will. A single swallow of that creosote single malt sends me spinning. I can't shake the idea of having a foot-long hot dog with some fried onion rings. I've only done this a time or two in the thirteen years I've lived on the ridge, but I actually drove ten miles out and ten miles back to get a footer (with sauce, mustard, cheese, and onions) and an order of those delightful rings. Ignoring all those warning about my heart, I also got an order of deep-fried cheese-stuffed jalapenos. The smell nearly drove me crazy before I got home. I would have stopped at the lake and eaten everything at a picnic table, but there were other people around, and I'm used to eating alone. So I got back home, spread everything out on a plate at the island and ate with that curious delight that one feels enjoying an almost sinful meal. There are a couple of swimming holes in Turkey Creek, one of them, the most popular, is right next to Route 125, with pull-off parking next to the road. There were a dozen vehicles pulled off, and on a Sunday, that means full-immersion baptism from the Fundamental Church down the way. I pulled off to watch, not that baptism is a spectator sport, but it is interesting, in such a public place, and invites observation. What it looks like, from a distance (I was probably fifty yards away), is a public drowning. Like something from the Inquisition. Most Christian faiths just sprinkle a few drops of water, but these Pentecostals go the whole nine yards. The baptisee clamps his or her own nose, between thumb and forefinger. This is an important point, I think: if the preacher did it for you, it would imply mediation, and the basic precept of Fundamental Religions is that there is no mediation. My grandparents, on my mother's side, were Pentecostal, and it was a shock to me, when I first went to church with them. I was 14, spending a couple of weeks in rural Tennessee, and I had no idea that people could behave that way. It could be argued, I suppose, that the glossolalia affected me more than I care to admit. Once you got over worrying about whether the people rolling in the aisles were dying or not, it was interesting. A lot of the 'tongues' sounded Hebrew or Ancient Greek. I never went to church again except for one Greek Orthodox Easter service, which was spectacular. Sunday, for me, has always meant a day in the natural world, fishing with my Dad, when I was a kid, then walking alone, as I got older; the outer beaches on Cape Cod, the woodlands of Mississippi, the butts and mesas of western Colorado, and, now this particular ridge in southern Ohio, where I've lived longer than I've ever previously lived in one place. Walked out to the cemetery today, I knew the shallow depressions would be filled from the recent rains, with a dark tannic water (leaves and acorns), and they were. I counted 18 graves, ten of them marked with fieldstones. No names or dates or anything, just a couple of rocks. Lucretius would agree, I think. Dust to dust.