Shelf Life

My traditional Sunday, when, except for a small walk, I read all day. No phone calls, no visitors, no AC and the windows open, just cool enough for Black Dell. I heard a plane, mid-afternoon, and I had to think about that because I'm not on any flight-path. Small planes and helicopters occasionally track along the river, which must be five miles away as the crow flies. They usually fly patients to Columbus, where there's a great teaching hospital, and when they do that they fly right up about Route 23, which is a straight shot from Portsmouth due north, 100 miles, but that all happens 17 miles to the east. Sound-wise, I'm in a dead zone, by design; and the orientation of the house is a serious consideration. You don't have to build many houses before you figure these things out. In my building days, of course, if someone just had a lot and needed a house, there wasn't a lot of choice. In the last three places I've lived, I had 120, 80, and, now, 25 acres, on which to situate a dwelling. I like to get familiar with the place, if it's my own, before I start imposing my will. I make seasonal sun-track graphs and build models. The stairs in this house, for instance, I thought about for almost a year, before I built them in a week. Spoke too soon. I heard a vehicle coming up the driveway, I had just gotten a drink and smoked some very good weed and the house smelled strongly, and, naturally it wasn't B dropping off a book, but the deputy sheriff checking up on some gunfire someone had reported. I went out to meet him, hands held high, and he greeted me to same way, god knows we don't want to shoot each other, and yes, there had been some gunshots, maybe 20 of them, in twos and threes, spaced out, an hour ago. I had figured them as coming from a trailer enclave, over on the road that cut through to Sunshine Ridge, half-way between me and the river. Maybe somebody had either won or lost a bet on a sporting event, maybe somebody had a new gun, maybe she finally shot that son-of-a-bitch. The deputy said there had been several reports of locals poaching deer. Of course the locals are poaching deer; harvesting, it might be called. If a family is on hard times, the lumber-jack husband laid up with a broken leg, someone might shoot them a deer. The kids have got to eat. The locals are a tough bunch, but we get along fine, they know I live a difficult life by choice, and they have respect for that. They also know that If they try to dig my ginseng, I'll shoot them. A lovely staccato dripping rain wakes me in the early morning, I got up to pee and poured a wee dram, rolled a smoke. I don't have to be anywhere. I sit in the dark for a long time. The ridge above Low Gap Hollow is the place to be, it's never crowded, and the citizens talk in plain-speak.