Old Friends

Jugged Hare. A phone call that there was a rabbit in my mail box. I walked down to get it. I needed the exercise because I'm in terrible shape, physically, from a year of reading and writing, and winter is coming. The rabbit is perfect, skinned and gutted and cleaned. Elected to go with the jugged hare because I didn't know how old it was. With rabbits and squirrels (and chickens and almost anything else) the young are cooked differently from the old. I cut it up and put it in a brine/pickle. 48 or even 72 hours. I made a note to get a bag of apples, because I want to have stewed apples as a side, and maybe turnip slaw. In the meantime I have a wonderful stir-fry I need to eat, and tomatoes running out of my ears. I'm making a kind of pizza, in the toaster oven, roasted tomatoes and onions on store-bought flat bread with stinky cheese. Good stuff. The French certainly do enjoy their cheeses. It's a different mind-set, I like stinky cheese, and I usually try to stay in shape. Several fat people noticed I had lost weight. How dare I do that? I was already skinny. Chuck, at the Ace Hardware, has been spreading the rumor that I have a tapeworm, black ops, Burma. These guys (the hardware crew) are very funny. They have their own ice-cream chest, they buy ice-cream sandwiches by the carton. They've all gained weight. Very heavy people, in bumper cars at Kroger, are becoming a problem. What is with all these fat people? It's appalling. I usually wouldn't say anything, but the last time I went to the store, everyone was obese: mom, pop, daughter, son, an infant that looked like a couple of soccer balls, and I couldn't help but notice, I was waiting behind a lady who couldn't bend over, her stomach got in the way. A new category, 'People Too Fat To Check Out Groceries'. I don't know what set me off. Actually I do, a very fat woman ahead of me in line, she couldn't reach the back things in her shopping cart and I got them out for her, she said that I was a saint. I had to grin at that. Because I can cast into the far reaches. Frozen peas, give me a break. I don't like peas, actually, I'll eat them, and lentils, but I'd rather peel fava beans. Or cook chick-peas with kale and chorizo. A major ruckus wakes me in the wee hours. Feral dogs and a bob-cat by the sound of it. I made a little cradle, two blocks of wood, on the back deck, that holds the four cell flashlight so that the very strong beam hits the compost pile, because it takes two hands to shoot a slingshot. I've been shooting the slingshot a fair amount since I discovered the cheap marbles at Big Lots. They're sold as some sort of decorating item. Marbles in a crystal vase with back light? Whatever their function, they are the cheapest marbles I've ever bought. $2.99 for a gallon plastic bag, which is a great many marbles. I've gotten pretty good; actually I was always pretty good, and I'm somewhat better than that now. Neco Wafers at 25 feet. So it's easy enough to hit a dog in the ass. My legacy is hundreds of marbles spread across a ridge. That dog howls and I have time (I practice this, keeping the second marble under my tongue) before the alert, to hit a second dog, a pit-bull / hell-hound cross, in the shoulder. Everyone scatters; the dogs tear ass down the driveway and the bobcat slips away. I've successfully defended my territory. Completely awake at this point, so I roll a smoke and get a wee dram, it's either five in the morning or nine at night, late August. I don't really care. A wonderful conversation with a woman in India who was trying to sell me life-insurance. It was hot there, and she had five kids. She didn't have running water either. Period, space, it could have been a comma, and I'd run on, goddamn semi-colons, Roy Blount Jr. said something, then ten of twelve seconds of dead air. Silence can be a good thing, often uncomfortable, but nonetheless.