9:30 a.m.-
Our
first deerfly of the season is enthusiastically here, blown north on warm wind
currents from Costa Rica. It briefly landed on my hat, hummed a gleeful, "good
morning" in my ear, and is now welcoming EZ who is shuddering her back.
We
are pulled up on the Grand Sandbanks beach under a milky blue sky floating
fluffs of burning-off fog. A bug is bouncing up and down off the surface of the
silent current. I relented when we arrived and sprayed myself with Repel --
otherwise we wouldn't still be here. Long soaking rains came and went during
the past week; the woods and meadows are healthy again. Though the water level
is still the same as last trip out, it's not as low today as it could've been.
EZ,
sitting restively on the stony shore, just produced horrid urping sounds and
disgorged a slimy clump of yellow bile interwoven with grass. My coffee cup is
whining louder than usual with a mosquito echoing deep down inside.
Swallowtail
and Monarch butterflies are back too, describing random distracted flights.
Still no audible presence of tree frogs and peepers yet -- oh my, there's one
now, trilling in lowlands to the west. A hundred or more 3/4-inch long minnows
between the boat and shore are wiggling their tails in shallow water. Crickets
in the wide sunny field above me are bringing back memories of hot summer
nights on front porches when hurry is done for the day.
News
accounts of fifty Israelis killed during the past week -- incited by Devilish
George W's get-tough middle east summit ten days ago -- seem more meaningless
out here. Rumsfeld keeps warning of imminent terrorist attacks to be loosed
here home in our land, and American soldiers in Iraq are being killed off one
by one now that the war has ended. Hillary's book is selling wildly, though no
one can find it to buy and all the talk about her is what a good senator she's
being and speculations run rampant whether she'll seek the presidency in '04 or
'08 despite being a liar--as some say--though not as bad-a-liar as our present
president who hasn't yet found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction but keeps
assuring his subjects that they'll show up soon.
10:04-
We
have been parked in the shade across from Glitter Beach for ten minutes. Glory
glory, the bullfrogs are chugging in the sun over in the western marshland.
Yesterday
morning at work we heard sirens.
"Sounds
like a big deal," said EMT Bill who turned up the volume on his hip
scanner and started trembling involuntarily from excitement. Within five
minutes shoppers recited rumors of an accident east of town, maybe at Faust
Lake road. A man wearing a snazzy floral necktie had inside information and
told Georgette the cashier that the appalling crash involved a semi truck and a
small car--quickly covered with a blue tarp by first responders to conceal the
displeasing scene.
Boss
Brian reported hearing that officials at the scene were vomiting on the highway
and removing body parts in pieces and employing firehoses to dilute the blood,
and were chasing away carnivorous forest scavengers which were rushing out of
the trees and dragging severed limbs back into the woods.
Then
a woman shopper said she'd come by the scene but "... seen only a blue
Plymouth Horizon parked on the shoulder and a boy running down the ditch flying
a purple kite in the sky," and, "a lady in leotards near the trees
squating by a rock."
An
hour later Mike from Island Bay said he'd heard about the accident and wanted
to know more. I told him what I'd gotten directly from my eye-witnesses. He
went away saddened.
Somebody
said that the semi was parked out in the big Wal-Mart lot. I told that to
Eldyn. His eyes turned rapturous and he headed for the door.
(February.
Snow is falling outside and the house is breathing and sighing and flipping
high papers taped to the walls as I review June 12 video--windows and door open
and mild air moving through, and the man-child who lives with his eldery
parents in the house down the street is whooping and hollering as he regularly
does from whatever instigating catalyst triggers his retarded brain. Such a
change is summer from winter. Not just domestically but foundationally, in the
soul. It's freedom. To move and slow down and be connected to everything, not
just interior living when the world is reduced by 75% and my options constrict
and I nearly die inside.)
The
semi was indeed dented on the left front side and raised for transport by a
wrecker's powerful winch. Eldyn was there waving animated hands and talking
with a State Trooper who kept trying to motion him away. I swept up a birdseed
spill in aisle 41 as the radio clipped to my back pocket blurted Eldyn's voice
to everybody in the store: "Really a wreck out here people. Youse should
all see this. Wow!"
An
hour later I overheard a plumber engaged in serious conversation with a
customer at the cashier counter, where everything important gets discussed. "People
were killed there today."
Mike
from Island Bay called late afternoon and told me that he'd talked with Pastor
Pranque -- the volunteer Early Responder who'd actually driven the ambulance--and
wanted to reassure me that the Truth Of The Crash was less excessive than first
thought. A pickup truck with highway construction workers was somehow involved;
two men accepted neck braces before heading back to the work site. The Jaws of
Life cut open the blue Plymouth, freeing a teenager with minor scratches, and
the toddler running a kite beside the highway was a Wal-Mart sack caught in the
wind on a tree branch.