one dark night and one sure thing

Sunday April 5th, 2009

Have you been out-country a moonless night, when it’s all you can do to find your own hand in the darkness, and the coyotes’ howls bounce off the hills till you just know you’re surrounded by those mangy creatures? It’s a disturbing feeling, I’ll tell you, but here’s something that’s more disturbing still: It’s a sound, rising up like woodsmoke to curl around that howling, almost joining in, but not quite. It’s not Pilot, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s music, and it came to me through my open window last night–came real subtle-like, sneaking in under pretense of the keening coyote and revealing itself only later, when it left off the plaintive melody and started in on a riff.

You might think you know me– might think you know me so well as to be certain I threw back my covers without thinking twice and clambered out of my window straight into that dark night.

You would be right, if you were thinking of the imaginary me, the one I wish I was, the one who isn’t just a little bit scared of coyotes, the one who, come to think of it, would actually be sittin’ out there in the darkness blowin’ on that harmonica herself.

Nah. Me, I lay in bed while that harp turned the coyotes howling into a sort of accompaniment and when I woke up this morning I remembered it as a sort of concert, the harmonica and the coyotes and the occasional owl, and I wondered if I might be in attendance again on the night to come.

Meantime, the day was sunny and long with pleasures of its own. This week the apple trees hit the season of their blossoming, and suddenly there’s these blooms bustin’ out all over the place.

I tugged a branch down low this morning and touched a finger to one of those blossoms and I said to Aunt Kitty, “If you could only have one–just this here blossom, or the apple it’ll be in a few months time, which one would you have?”

“Well,” she said, after narrowin’ her eyes a bit till I was quite certain she’d as soon wash the breakfast dishes three times over as answer another of my questions, “I reckon I’d take the apple. Cause it’s a sure thing.”

Truth is, sure things scare me a bit, and not just ’cause they include meatloaf, dying and cleaning toilets on Saturday. There’s just something ’bout knowing what’s coming that sets my teeth on edge.

I’ll let you know if the harmonica blows again tonight.