Gunshots and Basketball Thumps

November 23, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Right now, as I’m sitting in my office, Moi is playing fetch with Woody, who runs after a little cloth “mousy,” as Moi calls it, and brings it back for another throw, just like Mway does with a stick.  Moi says it’s a rare cat who will fetch an object like this.  This morning I have to go to the dentist again and have a bad tooth pulled, so I don’t have time for a walk this morning, then after that I have work to do.  We’ll see how the afternoon shapes up for taking Mway for a walk then – I don’t remember last winter having the pressure of worrying about getting home before nightfall.  I get home about 3:41.  I haven’t had a cigarette since I had my tooth pulled at 10:30, dentist said I risk getting a dry socket, very painful.  It’s hard for me to think, or rather it’s hard for me to make a transition from one thought to the next.  Moi is not here.  When I was unlocking the door, heard gun shot, sounded like just beyond the back acre.  The sky looks like it’s being directed by John Ford.  I hear two more gunshots while I’m sitting here – make that three.

State of the Path:  Grab the first stick I see in the kitchen.  Open the door – Squeak’s in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at me.  I call her, and she sidesteps around the approaching Mway toward the door.  First time I ever let her in the back door.  I decide to sneak down by the summer house, call Mway to follow me.  We scurry across the lane.  Hear the banging of a basketball against a backboard from McNeighborland.  Kick away bent stalks of goldenrod.  I don’t know how far to go.  Mway makes a sharp turn toward the clearing, but I say let’s go all the way to the creek.  Path soppy just before the ridge, is my foot getting wet? check my new boots for a crack, must just be my imagination.  I hope my yellow wool cap doesn’t look like the head of a turkey, but I think of Mway: her fur looks like the feathers.   Just inside the ridge, the sun dips under a strata of clouds and suddenly shoots a spotlight across the brown tangle of bug land onto the creek trees.  Mway scoots through the “chokeberries.”  I keep hearing in the distance a sound like metal clacking.  She fords the feed channel, we round the crest.  I at least want to see where Moi knocked down part of the creek bank.

State of the Creek:  I don’t see anyplace that looks like an unnatural indentation in the bank.  Suddenly I hear gun shots – six, seven, eight.  I curse loudly so anyone will know I’m a human being.  I tell Mway we should turn around and go back the way we came.  (Probably somebody just target shooting, but still --.)

The Fetch:  I toss the stick the opposite way I have been, behind another “chokeberry,” toward a honeysuckle near the sumacs.  More gunshots, more basketball thumps, and now Mway’s sharp barking.  Gray sky all around me, but the sun casts one huge beacon across bug land, which blasts its way up and over the countryside and illuminates the entire F___ O____ ridge.