.Friday Firesmith

Aqaba Thomas, when he wants to be picked up, will run right at me, as if being picked up and carried around, is an urgent thing. He’s not allowed on the table, but if I pick him up he won’t be on the table, that message is clear, isn’t it? I bend over at the waist, he gets two paws on my right shoulder, and I lift, catching both his back paws in my left hand. We’ve done this before, he and I, and he knows to keep the claws in, knows I got him, and knows he gets picked up and carried around.

Some of this is heat. It’s early in the morning and he wants me to hold him close so he can be warm. Aqaba Thomas, the Cat Unexpected, leans in hard, and purrs.

Some of this is he wants me to carry him around to the windows, so he can see out while he’s being carried around. The back deck is nice, and he likes looking, the bedroom window shows the yard, but what he really likes is the front door. He likes to look out of the front door and see the porch. I turn my body, blocking his view and he bats me lightly with a front paw. I turn so he can see and he wiggles a bit, yes, right there. The body language is subtle, but Aqaba has trained me well.

He looks down at the porch at the spot it began. His first food bowl was there, and the water bowl, too. He was at eight pounds when he came in, and is at thirteen now. He was lighter when I started feeding him on the porch, and he would stop, look up at me, inside the house watching, and that is how we met. He knew who I was, and knew I was feeding him. That’s how it begins in cases like this. “Hi! I’m Mike and I’ll be taking care of you today.”

Aqaba remembers this spot. This was the beginning of home. He likes being here, at this spot, with me. I’ll hold him until he wiggles a bit, a sign to move on, and he purrs all the while.

He rubs faces with me before I put him back in the cat tree. This, too, is how we do it. It’s his way of showing he appreciates the ride, the warmth, and the moment. This is his way of saying he remembers what was, but this is what is.

The connection between an animal and the person who rescued him is undeniable and runs deep. Aqaba Thomas remembers being lost, and cannot forget being found.

Take Care,

Mike

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(Gremlins got hold of this, sorry for the delay ~ Mikeco)

Twenty years or so ago doesn’t seem like a long time anymore. I mean, the actual time is a chunk of years, but it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, even though I know for a fact it was. The Big Pine had dropped one of its lower limbs, still green, but just hanging there. Large and a protentional dog killer, I set about wondering what to do about the hanging limb.
I had a rope, three-fifths jute, and decided the thing to do would be to toss the rope up to the limb, pull the tossed end all the way over, and from there, pull one way then the other until the limb broke. Nothing says, “This will utterly fail,” more loudly than the plan going according to, well, plan.
Got the rope up first toss, pulled the end down, made a loop, pulled it tight, and spent two hours pulling one way then the other, and the limb did not break. I had no choice but to leave the rope connected, so I pulled and pulled and pulled, for weeks, nay, months, and the limb never broke, and it actually stayed green for the longest time. Finally, the limb fell.
Well, most of it, a three- or four-foot dead section was still up there so I tossed the rope again, made a loop, repeat, rinse, repeat. Even the dead part of the limb didn’t want to come down.
I had a plan.
My plan was to leave the dead section alone. But to get the rope down, I was going to clip the rope with a .22 and break it. I fired ten shots and got close two or three times. My neighbor came over to check out the shooting so I let him try. He got close with one out of ten shots.
My neighbor’s wife came over, carrying a small child. Her husband held the child and she brought the rope down one her first try.
That child is twenty-one years old these days. Her parents have long since divorced, but I don’t think the rope incident had anything to do with it.
Today I went out on the tree, which is still floating, to look at that limb. The part where the rope was attached is still there. It’s odd to see that limb up close. The lower part of that thing dangled for years it seemed, and blasting away at the rope to get it down is the most South Georgia thing I’ve ever done while sober. I haven’t seen the formerly married couple in years, and wouldn’t recognize the daughter if I saw her.
The tree dying is a great sadness for me. People have come and gone in my life, but large trees are supposed to outlive me. I had good times with my neighbors, but the husband was a hot mess and did things he should not have. It is not my place to judge a man in regard to what sort of father or husband he was, for no one knows but the husband and wife what has happened. It’s easy to hide hypocrisy and tell you only bad men lose good women, but I won’t. But I do think I have lost women who were good women, and like the tree dying, was at a loss as to what I could have done to save what I loved.
That makes me no better a man for losing the tree, or the woman.
Take Care,
Mike

+11

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Back in 2014, Jonco emailed me, and he asked if he could crowdfund the bill for my dog, Lucas, who had cancer. I was in pretty bad financial shape to begin with, just bought a new truck, and the vet bill was going to be more than I could come up with. But Jonco’s plan worked, and the people who donated money to Lucas and me saved me from having to sell everything I owned.

One of the biggest donors was a guy I had never met or even heard of, who called himself XOXOXOBruce. I offered to pay Bruce back for the money he sent me and he scoffed at the idea. “You’ll pay it forward,” he told me, and since that point in time, I’ve pitched in where and to who I could, anyone with an ailing dog, or cat. Bruce was like that, I would learn, for his generosity was boundless. Bruce billed himself a curmudgeon, but the truth was found in his heart of gold.

Bruce and I began an email conversation, which led to him sending me his “Daily Dose” of funny things he found on the internet and shared with a small group of friends.

Bruce, and his real first name was Bruce, and I became friends. He lived in Pennsylvania. He liked World War Two stuff like I did, and we talked about a lot of weird stuff. He commented on nearly everything I wrote here for a while, but as time went on, Bruce apparently had some health problems, and I started hearing from him less. One day, the daily dose stopped. And on the 27^th of January Mike emailed me to say Bruce had died on the 17^th.

I didn’t know Bruce’s family. He had a girlfriend for a while, and she and I were friends for a while, but then they broke up.

Bruce liked cars and stuff like that. He knew a lot more than I about guns. He would send me random emails about odd things that somehow, he knew I would like.

One day he sent me this pin. No warning, no conversation about it, the thing just showed up, and Bruce was like that. He did things because he was thinking about his friends.

You will live one of two lives. You will die before the people you love, and never know the grief of loss. Or you will outlive the people you love, and you will know grief. Grief is made not of sorrow and loss, no, not at all. It is made of love and of life.

Or it would not exist.

And neither would you.

I miss you, Bruce,

Mike

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There’s time to think during the forty minute drive, and time to prepare. I’m meeting with a young writer who has never written a word in his life, but wants to write a book. It happens like this, sometimes, and this time, I actually think he has a book to write. The death of his father, and the grief that followed calls to him to write. I’ve spoken with him twice about it, and I think he can do it.

The meeting room at the local coffee shop is occupied even though I have it reserved. The barista offers to ask the people to leave, but the young writer isn’t here yet, and neither is the other writer I invited to join us. She’s young, too, but her organizational skills and her knack for stories are needed here. I tell the barista the people can stay until my people arrive.

As I enter the room the two interlopers offer to leave, but I tell them they can keep working until my people show. I intend to write quietly but the man is a talker.

One of my favorite stories is me working in the garden when a man appears and wants to talk. I ask him if he’s a preacher or an insurance salesman, because those are the only two classes of people who will interrupt a man working in the yard. The guy stopping me in the garden was a preacher. He fled eventually.

This guy is both a preacher and an insurance salesman. His name is Mike. It’s too weird of a coincidence for me not to talk to him.

Mike has a ready stack of business cards that he fumbles and drops as he tries to hand them to me because I don’t reach for them.

“No thank you,” I tell him.

“They aren’t insurance card,” he assures me.

“No thank you,” I repeat.

“Oh. Okay.” And Mike is a little put off by my tone of voice.

His daughter is with him, and she never speaks a word. She’s young, high school maybe, but she doesn’t look at me, smile, or speak the entire time I’m there.

Mike doesn’t ask me what I’m writing but does ask what our group writes. This edges into AI because he knows preachers who use it. I tell him if you’re looking for an expected story from an audience who sees it coming, AI is perfect. But if originality is key, a writer, or a reader, can tell AI immediately.

“It has no soul,” I tell Mike, and he agrees but I can tell he’s a little unnerved by the idea AI is detectable.

Mike and his daughter are writing thank you notes to his insurance customers, and he does them all by hand, writing in cursive, and licking the stamps himself. “It’s a nice touch,” he says without a trace of irony.

My organized writer friend arrives, and Mike and his daughter pack their stuff. They were nearly through anyway.

We shake hands, but he’s not unhappy to get away from me. His daughter doesn’t speak. I tell my friend who they were and what they were doing, and she asks why I was in a small room with a preacher, and no one left pissed off.

I’m civil to anyone who will allow me to be. Neither Mike nor his daughter were pushy or rude, and most importantly, they didn’t waste my time, which I cannot tolerate. Mike had something to do in that room, I had no reason to interfere, and we were able to have a decent conversation about a subject that will trouble us both.

I think Mike has no time to waste, either, and likely he’s got to get ready for a sermon this weekend, and find something to write about. I hope I have helped him as much as he helped me.

Take Care,

Mike

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