Undertow

Driving carefully through obstruction not clearly marked, with folks wandering over the roadway and gazing in different directions, as if there was an accident or construction at some undisclosed location. 

An old brevet cop walks right into my path, and a soft contact is made with my left front fender. He continues on down the road, oblivious. 

Here's a spot off the main traffic lane. I park, exit my vehicle, run after the rent-a-cop. 

"Hey, excuse me, but - are you hurt?"

He stops, considers as if it hadn't occurred to him. 

"Maybe a scratch ..." He pulls up a trouser to show an abrasion.  

I look back up to my car to see - it's being towed! I rush back up there. 

"Hey, you can't - I was talking to a cop!"

There is a slender raffish sort with a deprecating perpetual grin. He is apparently in charge. My vehicle is towed away. 

I see well the gambit now. Extortion like in one of those failed states ... Nigeria, Mexico, the US. 

I ride with the smirking cop to a large building, barren and unkempt inside, with lots of milling and no clear mission. I wait. The tow cop is quite content to do nothing. He sits and then ambles. Then he leans against a counter. 

The kids are coming today. This no time to be arrested. (I understand there will be a ransom for my auto and a fine for illegal parking and I am under restraint until both are paid.) I'd better call home. 

My iPhone is transforming as I hold it, marveling. It unfolds a keyboard, then continues into a classic SLR camera, then retracts these extensions and presents others. I cannot make a simple phone call. 

I've had enough of this. I slip away from the shoddy cop and head down stairs. I am accosted by another agent. He is bland and young and telling me I must wait. 

I push him into a closet. Close the door. He opens it, tells me I am not free to go. I slam the closet door and am gone by the time he opens it again. 

Home now. Ah, my favorite cereal. It's home, but an inchoate setting, with plenty of dark space towards the corners and voices from other rooms. Someone comes in and goes out. 

I recognize the one from the closet standing near the edge of my breakfast room. And then, stepping into the dim light from a little further off, the shoddy tow cop. 

It looks like I won't finish my cereal. 

Tim Bowden is twiddling his thumbs on his  iPhone 4S!

Here and There

A portion of my income was left off inadvertently last year, and resupplied in a later transfer. It's all the same. 

But I must document for taxes. I look for the pay stub, or the voucher. 

There are lots of old papers here in this public desk. Here are references, but I need the specific items which authorized or effected the transfer, and the shortage. 

I walk among many who are less and less interested in my problem. Perhaps it is somewhere else, suggest the keepers of the present domain here and now. 

It is considered my best policy to seek assistance somewhere beyond wherever I might be, no matter where that is. They should be able to help, over there. Not doing their jobs if they don 't. 

I find direct references here and solid leads there, but for the actual records themselves, that's the responsibility of someone not here now. If you would kindly consult another time and place?

You Should Help Her More

I catch a glimpse of Lady outside the window. She is walking very fast to the utility shed from the basement door. (None of these settings corresponds to any waking experience.) She is dragging flattened cardboard. 

What's she doing? Why does the cardboard belong in the shed instead of the basement?

I make preparations to go and assist, grudgingly. Is this necessary? I am lacing boots by the back door. 

A grandson, not Peej but one who plays a grandson in our play, approaches. 

"You really should help her more," he says. I know he's repeating what my son has said, but I pay it no mind. These aren't really my own family. 

I walk beside Lady now. I'm telling her my adventure. 

I tried to find you, I said, but opened the door of the shed and there was a miniature football stadium where the storage building should be. There were young boys playing football. The ball flew out the window. 

Nobody knew what to do about it. They mostly stood around and waited. With great shrugs and nods, an adult, a coach or parent of one of the boys, is trying to indicate to me it would be nice we're I to retrieve the football. It was almost expected of me. 

I went around the corner. I guess like magical fairies, none of them in the shed could leave it. I'll bet someone has the ball by now. 

Around two corners, the side of the shed opposite the only door, the ball lays in a lot like a horse pasture. Approaching is a group of boys. One of them just ahead of two others bends to scoop up the ball and they stride up away from the pasture. I watch them go. 

This is what I want to tell Lady, but she shushes me. On her other side is a blonde lady, smiling through crinkly make-up and gazing straight ahead through eyes that do not see. I am to understand she'a an old friend of Lady's and she's been talking and I interrupted. 

Okay, I think, and I bolt away. I won't be going to the car to drive home with Lady then. She can look for me. 

Where am I? It seems to be the bare underside of a huge stadium. Over there is a ward. I enter it and lay down on one of the beds. 

I remain there. That should fix her! Don't want to hear about the lost and found football, well, I son't care about the glazed blonde neither. Bet she wasn't even there in the flesh. 

I jump up as spontaneously as I entered the ward. It was the time to enter now it's time to go. 

On one of the other beds is my list brother Reloj. He isn't leaving. 

Tim Bowden is twiddling his thumbs on his  iPhone 4S!

Journey

On a bike, a long down, going so fast vision is bleary, my helmet blocks vision ahead. I see another start up the hill, worry we might collide in my partial blindness. 

I note how I'm able to bounce uphill with ease. 

I stop at Dr Jim's. His lady says, oh, wait. She retrieves an insert from a window. It's a rectangle out of four 1 x 12" planks of unknown construction. It's open, so I have no idea what use it might be. I also do not remember loaning it to them. I do not recognize it at all, but I accept it. 

Dr Jim says, confidentially, "You really should go by and see Boss." This is an actual dim soul from my home town, given over to alcohol. I'm really too tired for Boss. Dr Jim reminds me he's my cousin. "Fish doesn't write to him anymore." This is another from the old days, a guy I was raised with of loony habit and imbibing nature. 

So a highly educated pair from my online acquaintance connects me with my meager hardscrabble past. 

Tim Bowden is twiddling his thumbs on his  iPhone 4S!

The Mountain Daily

Hut's Hunches
Renouned column in
Bonham Daily Favorite

It isn't daily, of course, or even weekly. After all, says the editor, nothing changes from day to day in our little unnamed village high in the Anonymous Mountains.

But when anything does happen, we all look to the Daily. And something has.

It was the only topic this day, and many after. A high wind at the peak. Much snow, presaging a flood of Something River, which runs through our village. Or perhaps it's one of those mine disasters. (We were reassured on that last point by the lack of mines or anything to dig out of Anonymous Mountain.)

What could it be? Surely, we all knew, something had gone wrong somewhere. We waited until the Daily could be printed.

The only distribution point was the Coffee Shop. (There was a contest one year to name that establishment, but nobody entered.) We roamed by the open door of The Coffee Shop all the day long.

The price of each issue was $5, which we paid, because each edition might carry months of incidents, and we were able to pay once for all of it, unlike the big city paper subscribers, who must pay a daily rate for their gossip, which amounted to a great deal over the year.

Here it is, freshly printed and in the bin. The paper flew out the door.

Something had happened, we read. Either a big snow at the peak, which would bring floods down below, or a mighty wind somewhere else.

We gathered in knots to discuss the news. Someone from time to time would take out her rolled copy of the Daily and slap it for emphasis with the back of her hand. It says so, right here, she would say.