Scenes From A Small Farm

A fly got into the house tonight and bedeviled my wife for the better part of two hours. She kept attempting to kill him by using her tried-and-true method of fly mesmerism. I’ve seen her do this many times — she holds her hand over the fly when it lands, lowers it slowly and steadily, and then WHACK! She rarely misses. But tonight, the trick just wasn’t working. After a while, we were sitting and reading when the fly landed on my right hand. Sotto voce, I alerted my wife to his location.

“I’ll put my hand down on the chair, and you whack him.”

She stood carefully and approached with her murderous stealth. As she neared me and raised her hand, she whispered, “I don’t want to hurt your hand.”

I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, but I had to address this slight. “Hurt my hand? My love, I used to slam these hands into pine boards!”

Her palm snapped down like a copperhead striking, and the fly was no more. She picked it up between two fingers and gave me the Very Patient Smile.

“But you’re not the same anymore!”

***

Later, the silence was marred by a curious yowling squeal. I looked up from my book. “I think Purrl  [our ancient cat] might be barfing up a hairball.”

“That was my stomach,” she said.

“Oh.” I paused for a full minute and then added, “You’re not the same anymore.”

Somewhere nearby, a curious yowling squeal rose into the air of the dusk.

~ S.K. Orr