Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

8:28 a.m.-

"Don't forget your bag," Joe warned wagging his deer antler cane while out on his walk and seeing me off in the mist at 7:15 a.m. It was he who rescued my briefcase several weeks ago. He pointed out hundreds of blackbirds perched in the wild rice across the narrow channel and told how he usually sees eagles and ducks and baby geese with a mother when he stops at the boat landing on his daily four-mile hike.

The shortcut stump's top is again fully underwater after showing its brown mucky tip for the past two weeks. We idled upstream toward Summer Office, an accommodation against low fifty-degree air that gets colder when I go too fast. Curving into Sonbeam's Secret Channel I notice the sand lip along shore is also back under water. The river is high as July again. The sidewalls have sunk under water and we ride tall over the gatekeeper trees and get great views out over the meadow. Spider webs fifteen inches across reflect dew-dazzled sun.

8:59 a.m.-

Marching band drums are accompanying Roll Out the Barrel in the southeast, though as the crow flies the high school is still five miles away. A hammer is nailing something down at a new house a mile behind me; a crow at the north is choking. A tiny bug bounces off the water like a ball. It rebounds fifteen inches and plunges again, like it's trying to break through into an alternate realm. Is this maybe how it drinks? EZ's up, sitting, watching two withered amber leaves floating near shore, curved up like bowls. Here comes another three, stems reflecting perfect symmetry.

"Where's the cheap paint," asked a gaunt man yesterday, who'd told a small, terrier-ish white dog to stay outside, then squeezed himself inside through the outer hardware store door. Tall, wearing a ratty plaid over shirt, he said he wanted a dark green shade to paint a shed in his yard, "but not too dark," he warned or his landlady would "regret a reckless haberdasher inside his closet," or something like that.

I backed up slightly (to avoid smelling odious breath again) and pointed to a shelf under the paint chip display, telling him that gallons of mis-mixed color were five dollars, quarts one. He went off to rummage. The boss hurried over to me from behind the muffin tin display and, between passionately gripped teeth, bitterly told me to watch the man closely as he'd been arrested seventeen times for shoplifting around town and had even been caught previously stuffing an extension cord down his trousers and some weeks later performing an old-fashioned reel-type lawnmower heist out the back door, right there in our store.

"Don't let him out of your sight."

I then recalled seeing his mug shot in the newspaper, grim and wickedly maniacal, inside a series of odd display advertisements, not for consumer goods, but as a court-ordered scheme to warn community businesses of this man's proclivity toward kleptomaniacal misdeeds.

Paint chips are free. But, I couldn't imagine his exercising an obsession to steal real paint by concealing a gallon, or even a quart, inside his urine-scented trousers.

"Hey, clam dip! Whatta' think of this for starters," he held up a gallon of gone-wrong Obsidian Blue spar varnish. "Though, that-there Monmarte might look good on the shutters," he concluded faintly. "Or this-'ere one ... is that blue or green?"

"It's called Precious Day," I told him. "Hey, how about New Hay or Lofty Ideal, with an extra squirt of Eventide to even it out with a nuanced and relative response. You know, a spruce up, not to mention a smidgen of startle."

He wheeled toward the door with a gawk, caught his cute white dog looking in through the glass, "mewed" at it like a cat and gave it the finger.

"Yeah, pardon me, that's right. It is almost quite competent, professor. Not too dark, but with smooth glimpses toward noontime's brake. The landlady will like that, I know. Yup, motions moving through it hover toward nine. It's fine. Shake it up, and I'll take it too."

I did as requested, then handed it over. He paid the girl at the front with a twenty-dollar bill, mumbled affection into her eyes, and pocketed his change. Out the front door, he put his gallon of paint on the front floor of a scooter, picked up the dog, held it under his left arm and motored away, white tail wagging behind.

An hour later he was back, negotiating the boss for a new gallon to replace his first, which his landlady didn't like "too wow."

"Mix whatever color he wants and give it to him at the last sale price," I was told. "Then kick him in the nuts."

"A darker green would be accurate to soil, but 'no hunter green!' She alerted the cops."

I gathered a half-dozen color charts and laid them out for the man to peruse, and studied his face while he scanned the choices.

The man muttered loudly, poked a finger at one color, then another, splaying digits--1-2-3--across paint chips, holding his place many many times, then changed his desire to one color named Forge.

"This hue is pretty. It has a preposterous, though cuddly, flavor of exuberance. Of course it can't compare to that-there brown down there--is that brown or mauve, that Taffy Twist one right there. Hue, though of course, is different than shade and never can classify the way kids these days think. But shade is good when effective children sway at the sundown along Mendelssohn's meaning."

I had leaned in to help, but backed away and leaned back on a shelf. His hands and arms had been moving constantly. I noticed the paintbrush display behind him was badly in need of re-stocking and thought to alert Chad to get on that when I had a moment. Too, as he murmured and beckoned a reasoned paint color decision ... the paint pad replacements and roller covers and packets of mildew additive had surely sold out faster than I'd noticed lately. In fact, the section of Cabot stain was markedly depleted--and so was the Prestige Paint shelf, which, though a slow mover, was properly faced, and full an hour ago.

"I'll have that one named Sensorium Beige."

I rolled out the keyboard computer shelf and typed in S-E-N--

"Wait. Is it too late? I'm not sure that hue is best for the shoe. What do you think? Babies with stutters cry funny, so I think, in the inclination of boast, we must decide on this one called Toast."

He stabs a finger onto Aztec Lace, a yellowish pink.

"That's it for sure. My mind's made up. Complete smart Beckle who's no one looking at the deal."

An hour later was criticized by the boss for paint department losses exceeding two million. He was forbearing of my oversight, and gross inattention to consumer fraud, though has told me I must immediately enroll in a Shoplifting Sensitivity course.