Coal Train

As I often do, after a day like today, I look around and can't believe that I got off my sorry ass and actually accomplished something. The wood situation is good. I walked out to the woodshed and was pleased it wasn't a dream, that I had actually gotten fifteen half-rounds under cover. I'll split them into quarters tomorrow, if I still have a body, then each of them into quarters, what is that, 120 pieces of wood, six or seven ricks, enough to see me through the winter. I'm beat, all in, collapse on the sofa and wrap up in a blanket, when I hear a train over in Kentucky. Such a lonesome sound. I wake up, four in the morning, go outside to pee, and the wind is warm, fairly howling through the stick trees. Winter isn't done, but I don't even stoke the fire when I come back inside. I've lived in this house for fifteen years, the longest I've ever lived anywhere. The ridge, it's seasonality, the fucking mud, the wild rhododendron, so many morels that I have to dry them, peace and quiet. And the wind, lord god the wind. In that way that the wind is the breathing of the world, the ridge is a great place to be. Content with a splash of whiskey and the sure knowledge that, later, I'll be eating stuffed acorn squash. I'm still eating squash that I liberated from Tim Horton's before the first freeze. I love those Thanksgiving displays. I don't grow anything anymore, I just harvest waste. There's so much of it that I've become a distributor, I thought about an extra comma there, but dismissed the idea. The isolated adverb. I reread the Nick Adams stories. Needless to say, I crashed early and slept late. Glad I pushed yesterday, got all the wood under cover before the rain. My body is a bit stove up, but nothing serious. I read the final volume, of six, in Frank Herbert's Dune series. It holds up pretty well. I loved them back when. I read a lot of British Speculative Fiction in the 70's and early 80's, Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, but then I've always read widely. I don't read romance novels. Linda calls and we talk easily; she's going into rehearsal with a new play. She's one of my best readers. I'm always shocked she knows so much about me. She was telling a friend of hers about me nuking frozen mice for the crows. The friend was incredulous but Linda thought it was just a good indicator of my personality. Which it is. Never hurts to have a crow on your side, even with those beady eyes they see pretty well. When the rain sets up a staccato beat on the roof, I pop a couple of aspirin, and pull the blanket over my ears.