Safely Home

Something didn't feel right, driving down the driveway, and when I stopped, at the bottom of the hill, to get the mail, I realized I had left both my wallet and my list at the house. Went back up, since I needed both of them. Then to town. The timing has been perfect this month. Two trips to town, when I needed them, and the weather allowed me fair passage. It was a long list, including stops at the library and the Goodwill Bookstore. I get first pour at the pub which means I get a second glass of mostly foam that settles down to a third of a glass of beer. Watched ESPN for my random update of sporting events. The sound is always off (they play Irish music, softly, as background) so I make up the commentary. I amuse the wait-staff with my complete lack of knowledge. Then I go to Kroger, the main thrust of this trip. A huge shop, for me; I'd kept a list of what I'd used from the larder, and I picked up a few extra things. God damned Pistachio nuts, an avocado, some watercress; some remaindered pork loin chops for a pork fried rice, a steak and a sweet potato. Drinking water, whiskey, tobacco and papers. Stopped at B's on the way home and he had a pile of The London Review for me, weeks of reading, I'd gotten books in town. And though B and I agree there is severe weather ahead, we both know it's finite. Leave his place, feeling high, anxious to get home. Loaded with supplies, feeling secure in my accomplishment. Bottom of the hill, there was a car coming the other way, my mail person in her handsome right-wheel drive Jeep, so I waited for her to pass, but she stopped and looked at me strangely, asked if I was waiting for a package, no I said, I was just waiting to get up my driveway. But she did have a package for me. The odds against this are staggering, usually she'd leave a note in the box and I'd have to drive to Blue Creek (my mailing address) to get whatever it was. It's from Montana. I know it has to be from Sarie, a reader via Mac, because I don't know anyone else in Montana. Curious, and a crowning tribute to an interesting day. When I get up to the house, I back in close to the door because there is so much to unload. Maybe ten trips in and out, put things away, rotating the stock, get a drink and roll a smoke. The package was from Sarie, a wonderful pair of house slippers (leather and sheep fleece) to replace my duct-taped current pair, and a copy of the 1936 Pulitzer prize for fiction winner, Honey in the Horn, which I knew about but had never read. A great package for the hermit in his digs. Leaving the ridge for a few hours is always interesting, that there is a world out there, with people in it, and they're all doing things. It's so busy it's disconcerting to me, but it's always interesting. Fragments of conversation, particular physical gestures, sirens, not unlike three crows with a ukulele, in my fantasy, squawking for a micro-waved mouse with Alfredo Sauce. Coming off a James Lee Burke, and the latest Lee Child novels, I'm struck with the importance violence plays, stirs the ancient brain. My sword will shatter yours. All things being equal, where did you buy your shoes?