"Can I ask you a favor?" said the man, standing on the porch in the brilliance of freshly restored metal chairs, gleaming like a Guards barracks ready for inspection. "Sure," I replied, quickly calculating cash flow, "What's the deal?"
The deal was this, to help my friend move from his bucolic rural retreat into the county seat grandeur of this thriving farming community.
So, unlike the wicked priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan, I stepped up to the plate and off we went. "Just a bed, a refrigerator and a microwave, yessir," that's all it'd be. It wasn't, of course, but that was alright, we made the haul in two trips.
Move
During a lull in the firefight, I stepped off to inspect the treeline and stood still, listening. You know what it's like, first a kind of null then hearing sharpens, senses begin to live again and the countryside comes alive. Right at that point I heard a slight rustle through the brush and out padded a grey fox.
He didn't see me at first, just picked his way with a doggish grin along the game trail. The occasional shot echoed out in the distance and I wondered at the fox; gunfire didn't faze him. He stopped, as if on cue, while someone's rifle sounded off in search of deer.
A Typical Gray Fox
I looked at the fox and the fox looked at me with his comical face, his amazingly full tail gently brushing away. Then he trotted off in search of the next adventure and I finished off the move.
Part of that meant bagging a weirdly large amount of lights that'd been strung around the small compound. I told the story of the fox and got a spirited reply, explaining the light show.
Cat!
"Yes! Seen grey fox and red fox, bobcat, coyote, all kinds. There's a black cougar, yes there is. These lights here see him off. Don't want that puppy, nossir! Bag that extension cord. Cost me 68 dollars. Not leavin' that behind for no black cougar."
We left, truck loaded down with half of a man's worldly possessions. Not much when you think of it, two short-bed, tailgate-down loads to account for a life. By worldly standards a failure but listen up.
Ford
"No luggage racks on the top of a hearse" and, in the Gospel, "It's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle."
Comfort one another with these words.
LSP
