17 aug 2023 A Long Walk Home. August 2005

 Walking Home: August 2005

    A flat front tire on the tractor ‘way out here! Shit! Of all things he hadn’t thought to bring was a jack. He could’ve secured the Handyman to the tractor. He thought of bringing everything else: bug spray, tool box, camera, asthma inhaler, rain jacket, even a cooler with four beers in it for those particularly hot moments on those little fields enclosed by trees. 

    Why hadn’t he thought to bring a jack or at the very least his spare tire with its multiple bolt pattern rim? For dumb! The Massey has a six hole rim and so were the rims on the John Deere AR that had been sitting with a flat rear wheel for almost a year. He wondered if he could use the AR wheel on his Massey, but without a jack all was conjecture now. 

    And he didn’t have a cellphone. What he did have did have was a long humid northeasterly walk ahead of him of about four miles, less if he cut diagonally through the woods and across two fields to reach the county road. He hid his box of tools under the old John Deere for safe keeping. He took the beer he had left and put it in his camera bag. He tied the sleeves of his rain jacket tightly around his waist then sprayed himself liberally with mosquito repellent. He sprayed a puddle into the palm of his hand then applied it to his dog, Cubby's head. She sneezed. It was after three when they started off; the Labrador happily running ahead.

    Mosquitoes and flies bombarded him but careened away as they encountered his protective barrier of repellent. Deer flies buzzed on by thwarted by his invisible force field and it pleased him for biting bugs make a walk miserable in the heat of summer.

     The cushioned shoulder pad of his camera bag was perfect for this walk. The the camera, the can of bug spray and two sweating cans of beer were hardly expedition pack weight. The beginning of the trail was overgrown in high grass; its ruts full of water from the repetition of thunderstorms all that summer.

     

     A deer looked up in surprise from the trail, her fawn beside her. She looked directly at him her ears held wide for sound before she leapt from the clearing and into the woods with the fawn following close behind.

 

A deer looked up in surprise from the trail

     

    The man heard the wisp-wisp noise of long blades of grass against his pants legs and the schlop-schlop of his boots in the mud as he marched north toward his home. The county road to the east had little traffic on it in the best of times although it was regularly maintained. No one lived north of the line where he was for three miles. In addition to that, he had to start out a half mile farther west. People who drove the county road were generally just passing through toward Thief Lake Refuge, so hours might pass before a single vehicle would even stir the dust on it this time of year.

     

    The old hay field the man entered from the trail was was a tangle of red clover, brome grass and timothy. It was thick to walk through, its long stems and blades rasped like sandpaper against the legs of his jeans and he found it difficult to walk. Each step was an effort in the heat of the day. His perspiration ran into the corners of his eyes, and stung them. He used the neck of his tee-shirt to periodically wipe them dry.

 

    The deer had made well-used trails through the field end to end and these he followed. He found a shallow ditch that Cubby had gone down. He left his tracks beside her tracks with directional similarity. The dog would leave the ditch with olfactory purpose, then return, then disappear again, always coming back to him walking the cooler bottom of the ditch, a welcome respite from the jungle of the hay field.

 

     He liked walking in the ditch where there was no debris. He discovered another ditch perpendicular to it and took that trail instead. The dog found him. She had tracked him down and then disappeared always on the go, her nose to the ground. She was busy hunting.

 

     Laying in a clay-lined puddle to cool her belly off she lapped the yellow-green water as he walked steadily toward her. “Good idea,” he said. “I’ll take a break too,” and set his camera bag down on a dry spot to dig out a lukewarm “Cwikla Beer.” The man had learned long ago from two old Palmville bachelor brothers, Elmer and Curtis Johnson (now deceased for one reason or another), was that warm beer is still wet beer. It doesn’t matter if its cold or warm — its still beer, it’s still wet, its still good going down, so that’s what the man thought as he opened the can, “Puhsst!” and took a long drink the beer running into his beard at the corners of his mouth. “Whew-eee, it’s a hot one today!”

     

    Smashing the can down into a pancake with his heel, he gave it a shake and put it into his bag, walking down the the ditch again, one step ahead of the other,  Cubby in the lead again deftly navigating the terrain. Before they got too far, the mud and water became too deep to negotiate and appeared like it continued for some distance ahead. There the deer tracks slipped and slid along the low banks as they chose to avoid the watery gut and disappear in an enveloping sweet clover forest almost as high as a man’s head.

 

    At some point the man began to think of his reality as he trudged along mindlessly. The man envisioned himself moving across an uneven surface of small rocks, mud, high grass, and trees through pestilential hordes, ever toward a somewhere-goal of a distant gravel road; his sweat-soaked tee-shirt pasted to his back, his eyes stinging, his crotch so hot that he so wanted to remove his pants!

    

    Butterflies and dragonflies on wing arose from their places on the long stems of grass and blossoms the man parted with each long stride.

 

    He left the cover they’d been walking. Cubby had joined him. They stepped onto the road as that was absent of vehicles to the north as it was far south, knowing their journey had really just begun. He re-positioned his camera bag strap across his shoulder and started walking toward home, Cubby ranging far ahead, with not another human being in sight.