The Odds

The girl at the library had blue hair today. I actually like it, especially compared to the neon red it was last week. TR is at the museum and lets me use his cell phone to call Frontier, he even dials for me, because I can't use one of the damned things. The usual phone company crap, yes it does seem to be their line, they can have someone out on the 23rd. A much needed beer at the pub, a great mushroom soup, and Cory unfolds the tale. A bear had torn Scott's car apart. Scott and Jenny live on Sunshine Ridge, a couple of miles from my place, as the crow flies, so it could be what I think of as "my bear". Scott is head chef at the pub and at Francesca's other restaurant, and the other restaurant has a much better kitchen, so he cooks a lot of stuff there for the pub. Lots of food in the car. Bear ripped right through the sheet metal, ripped out hoses. Their claws don't retract. It's difficult for them, to construct kites from rice paper. They don't see well but they have a very good sense of hearing. I make a lot of noise, when I go out in the morning. I use a piss-pot at night, now, despite the fact, or in addition to, having ringed myself in with hair clippings from the barbershop, and a band of piss, I carry a whistle that I can blow very loud. The chances are anything slinks off into the underbrush. Those rounds of skate wing are as good as any scallop I ever ate. Mouth feel and taste. I make a nice sauce, browned butter, with shallots and mushrooms. Winslow and I used cookie cutters and made fanciful scallops in the shape of ginger-bread houses. We used the off-cuts and waste to make what we called skate balls, bound with mashed potato and fried in lard. With hush-puppies, this is an incredible meal. I do hush-puppies now with minced sweet onion, which keeps them from drying out, and I cook them in peanut oil, which I can get very hot. Otherwise I just move around, naturally, I don't want an argument. Usually, I don't even talk about it, I might say something to Joel or Linda, but usually I just file it away. It's raining hard, in wavering sheets that obliterate thought. When thunder and lightning move in I shut down everything, get a drink and roll a smoke, sit in the gathering dark. Lightning strikes a tree out near the cemetery and sets an oak ablaze, but nothing could burn for long in torrents of water that more closely resemble a waterfall than rain. I bake (steam) a large potato in the microwave, so I'll have something to eat if the power goes out, and make a skillet of hash. More and more I tend to eat things at room temperature, or cold. I do keep a small grill in the woodshed, in the middle of a sand-filled barrel that I dampen to minimize the possibility of fire, so I can cook a lamb chop in case of an emergency. I made a wonderful red onion jam, with mint and watercress, to top an open-face chopped lamb sandwich. God damn it is good.