““Yeah, they’ve been selling like hotcakes, not sure why” she quipped, totaling up my bill for peat moss, stove gasket & a pair of navy blue suspenders. A bit of impulse shopping, but hadn’t I honestly been researching them just last year? Trying to suss out button suspenders, from the clip-ons, width, leather vs. synthetics, & color ... I received a few compliments. From my daughter-in-law, from my gardening assistant, & from one guy who said that when he saw them, he was, like: Wow. I guess I’ve already got my money’s worth. The right rear clip gave me a little trouble the first week, but I must have readjusted something, and now it’s staying put. I’m bending over, and over, and over: with impunity. This is classic “Plumber’s Crack” stuff. Why I like to work alone most of the time, so my clothing malfunctions are not on display or in the public eye. This spontaneous, hardware store purchase of the cheapest suspenders I’d ever seen, flowed like the purchase of a tool, like a shovel, or a rubber tub. I don’t know, really, how old school hardware stores are still hanging on, but the Paris Farmer’s Union did me right, did me in peat moss on the same trip. Let me write a check, and told me how to drive behind the building for pickup. I sat up at the one end of the metal quonset hut warehouse for a while. I figured, I mean I’d heard her, walkie-talkie up to the guy. He musta known I was coming.. I tried to be interested in feed bags, soil products, and wire, idling the truck, feeling sure he’d at least see me, and make a gesture, if I was on the wrong end. Do you ever feel like you have a knack for ending up on the wrong end of stuff? Like, you do everything right but then you’re at the wrong gate, the wrong date, the wrong city, even. I did that once. That’s kind of the big win, as far as I’m concerned. I signed up for a master class at Berklee on some engineering topic, and drove all the way there, even though I’m exponentially allergic to city driving and mentally incapable of understanding how it works anymore. I was so relieved to finally find street parking, and then the street, and the specific address. And then, not so fantastic, that creeping, sinking feeling, walking into an empty office building, with no relevant signage, and absolutely no human activity. Maybe I did sneak in behind someone else who had a key code. Criminal, without even trying, having to fudge and fake, to pretend I wasn’t paralyzed with fish-out-of-water syndrome, begging to be released back into my natural habitat in Vermont. Get me out of here!! I even had fancy boots on, I think ... I did want to appear cool, since I wasn’t. Reliving this now in my mind makes me want to laugh, and curse, and strip off my Carhartts. To lay down on my back up against the wood stove, and roast myself, on one side. Listen to the air, running its game through catalytic converters, iron baffles and steel pipes. To groan, and twist, and heave my muscle-tired body over in one well practiced maneuver, and let the other side heat up. A little bark in my hair, a cat offended by my taking up so much space, a damp, inky darkness just outside the windows, working fall into the earth. Some days it’s like the Bonnie Raitt song “Yeah, I know ... I been drinking ...” and that counts for how deeply the day has been ingested, or sometimes may indicate a beverage or two, but however one comes to rural drunkenness, its mostly about being comfortable to be who you are, to the point of inebriation. To be holed up on a road, where people won’t be visiting much or at all tonight, as your soul fully expands into the raw, and the real. As you haul in logs you should have done earlier in the day, from a pile that shoulda been stacked and under cover months ago. Checking to make sure the axes and the push mower are not being rained on, or anything that might rust. Making sure Carl’s bed on the porch is dry, & he’s fed what he likes, even if he doesn’t spend the night. Part of the poet’s code, as stated on page 101: east of the sun, & west of the moon, anyone who travels here on a cold, rainy night, soaked to the skin with loss & love, confusion & longing, without question will find a warm welcome, within.”
