Gravity Creeps

 

Ever have one of those mornings where you just can't get out of bed? That's me today. It's after 10:00 and the gravity of the futon has me pinned horizontally. My inner cat is purring, curled into a furry circle, paws placed over closed eyelids. Last night we let the dog sleep in the veranda. It had been evicted from its home next door for poultricide. Our neighbor, Dino, had caught it suffocating and burying small chickens. The mystery of the missing hens had been solved. She must have killed a young rooster, too. Its body was found hidden under a bench like a discarded chew toy. Recently the rooster had been best by a sickness. Always in the morning he'd be sneezing, looking weak and wet, walking unsteady on his feet. Rooster > turned runt > turned rotting corpse. That's the thematic arc for most living things.

But because the dog was inside, at 1:48AM she started barking and growling and making a commotion, signaling some dark intruder. There's a unique displeasure about being woken up in this way, to a bestial terror. The sound of the dog's stress reflecting off the corners of the walls, glinting off the glass in the still hours of the morning is not the best part of waking up. It's something like waking up to a nightmare. A doomed sense of dread and foreboding stalk the darkness. My mind began racing, wondering whether there was someone outside. Or worse, maybe more than one person. Where's the nearest knife? Are there other weapons in this house? What's the address here? Will the emergency operator speak English? What if what's outside isn't human? These kinds of thoughts at 2AM aren't exactly the kind that let you sink gently back into sleep. As you might imagine, my night was a restless one, spent listening, waiting, one eye open, with bated breaths, constructing scary sights from sounds as though gifted with an insomniac's sonar.

Earlier a rare beam of rising sunlight had announced itself through the east-facing window. The day seemed to swell with possibility then. Now the sky has returned to its muted grey color. On my way to the bird coop at 7AM the air was hard and thick, unpleasant to breathe. Which is odd because the night wasn't especially cold. People shouldn't have needed to burn big fires to stay warm. There was only a thin frost spread over the ground, glimmering in the dim light like granulated sugar, suggesting a temperature around zero. Not nearly the coldest night we've seen here.

Soon we have to embark on a journey to the nearest town to gather supplies. We're out of butter. The chickens haven't laid any new eggs, despite the introduction of a new rooster. Maybe we'll even stop at a local restaurant for lunch. After that we'll go to the store to pickup vegetables, yogurt, cheese, snacks, stuff for dinner to last us for the coming week. Yesterday we received notice from our honeymooning friends that they will return on the 23rd. This means, like the dog, we will soon be evicted. We'll leave the spaciousness of the small house and retreat to the much smaller trailer. Still, the trailer is much larger than our van. A comparative luxury. 

Aren't they all?