Firth of Jelly

Early this morning, Bluebelle went to the patio door, huffing and rumbling. I didn’t look outside to see what might be causing her displeasure, but instead let the dogs out into the backyard. Then I returned to the patio door and looked out through the blinds. A young buck was feeding with quiet deliberation among the young grapevines and tiger lilies between the trees lining the driveway. I managed to get a couple of photos of him, marveling at his movements, delicate and powerful, and also shaking my head at Bluebelle’s ability to hear this silent creature at least thirty yards from the front door, with Americana music playing in the living room.

We have several chipmunks on our property. Mrs. Orr named a large one “Theodore” some time ago, and now they are all Theodore, like the thousands of Santas out on the streets and in the stores during Christmastime. Last evening, I was taking all the potted plants from the porches and placing them in the yard so that the rain (which never came) could water them. Carrying a rather heavy pot of begonias, I almost dropped it when a Theodore ran out from beneath the crape myrtle tree and skittered right across my foot. I was in that gauzy reverie that so often takes me when I am puttering around outside, and the contact of a living creature with my foot convinced me, for just an instant, that a murder hornet-spitting cobra with a prison record had just run up my leg. These exquisite little moments of terror are what I live for. And they will certainly one day be my undoing.

A fox has taken up residence on our property, and he is a magnificent fellow, rangy and red and full-brushed. I have seen him several times, usually around dusk or dawn, trotting across the driveway or the yard. So far, the dogs haven’t seen him. But I know they catch his scent from time to time. The sharp, wild odor that lingers in his passing is enough to turn them into statues with snouts lifted, tasting the air and trying to decipher the code. When I say “dogs,” I mean the heeler twins, of course. Poor Dixee, half-blind and mostly retarded, lives in her own small world of mealtime and naptime and I Hate Jinxtime, and doesn’t bother much with the wild things that parade across our smallholding. Except for squirrels and rabbits. These she hates with an intensity only matched for the deathwishes she sends heavenward every time Jinx saunters through the room with his Gene Simmons leer aimed at her.

As I mentioned before, the rain never materialized. The technology-dependent meteorologists are promising it once again, starting about noon…we shall see. If it doesn’t come by sundown, I will water everything myself. I was able to skip an entire week’s mowing because of the drought, and the grass is as crunchy and brown as a fried catfish fillet. The tomatoes have required more water than usual, and are producing steadily, if not as abundantly as we’d hoped by this point.

I stood and watched two of the hummingbirds courting, and it was a poem. The female sat in the branches of the Japanese maple while the male swung back and forth in the air before her, his path tracing a smile, his needle-tongue snaking out in the closest thing to lascivious behavior in the avian world. What I wouldn’t give to find one of their nests. Just to peek inside, to marvel at the tightly-engineered construction and gaze at the Tic Tac-sized eggs. To be a close observer of the tiny wonder, the small awe.

And tomorrow is a holiday, but it is not a holy day. The masses of people who benefit from living in this country do not love her history. They care nothing for how her sons have bled. They are either indifferent or deliberately hateful to her and to the remaining people who trace their bloodlines back further than a perfunctory swearing-in ceremony. And most of those genuine Americans are quite busy, trying to get the scornful invaders to like them, busy planning a tailgate party, busy shopping online, busy letting the media do their thinking for them. They will crowd into public places to watch fireworks displays but they don’t know what the whump of an impacting mortar round sounds like, or the flat crack of a 5.56 mm round traveling directly at them. They have never held a radio in a sweat-slicked and trembling hand and tried to call in a fire mission while watching a comrade curl into a blood-painted ball in the dirt. The young men cannot fight and do not want to fight. The young women cannot cook. They cannot sew. They don’t want to raise their children to noble adulthood. And they are completely uninterested in knowing how to do these things. Americans are now an ugly collection of overgrown children. Like children, they talk too much and too loudly, and they want their precious little needs met immediately, or a wall-eyed fit will be pitched. Americans will watch the fireworks tomorrow and fly their flags from their custom decks and burn meat products on their computerized grills. But they will not allow themselves to remember that the day is worth remembering because a group of men said to the King of England, “We will no longer be your subjects, and we are willing to kill your men and risk being killed ourselves in order to reject the status of being your subjects.” The Americans who will overeat and overdrink  and “celebrate da Fourth” are the same ones that think it’s just fine to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, because hey, cheap margaritas down at Los Estados Gluttonous.

The holiday means nothing to me anymore. I’m not the American I used to be. Some see me as traitorous. If I don’t vote and I don’t get misty-eyed at lounge singer Lee Greenwood’s emoting, there must be something wrong with me. Yeah, there’s something wrong with me, all right. But I don’t argue. I wore the uniform and served with distinction and carried a rifle for these fat, cargo shorts-wearing , sportsball-watching, glaze-eyed consumers. They don’t get any more from me, not ever again. Not even lip service just to keep the peace. I go my own way, and they can wear their Ukraine pins and their pink knitted hats and their heavy, heavy virtue. I hear it is its own reward.

But it’s good to be at home with my wife and my dogs, knowing that all the kids and grandkids are healthy and reasonably safe. It’s good to sip coffee and nibble on my wife’s peach cobbler and watch the hawks glide over the cornfields, making mental bets with myself about how long it will take Jinx to see the large birds and start barking at them, as is his practice. It’s good to read books and listen to yee-haw music and chuckle at the small battles being fought at the bird feeder. The summer air sits lightly on us, and there might even be a nap tucked away in the latter parts of the day.

~ S.K. Orr