What He Thought

More of Angie and the Man

When a man thinks you are asleep because you are still and he can't see your eyes, he’ll get ideas. He might come to steal from you. Maybe he’ll justify it to himself because you have two guns and he has none. It’s not safe out there. He might come to take one of yours because he is sure you are asleep, because you have not moved for what is a long time to a desperate man.

I watched him come. I was laying on my side. He came down off the road on the other side, at the other end of the bridge. The grass was tall and dry and he fell a little getting from the side of the road at the top of the slope to the cement platform opposite the one where I was laying.

His hair was matted and dirty and he was fat like Babe Ruth- barrel chested with spindly little legs. There was a little grey in his beard, but he wasn’t old. His cheeks were smooth and round under his tired eyes.

There was a little dawn light.

He scooted down the steep cement to the road below me on his ass with the palms of his hands down and his knees bent so the soles of his feet met the slant. He crossed the road then came up the cement slope up to where I lay. I lay still. I had my rifle in my arms and my dad’s rifle laying next to me.

The man came up to the platform and stood feet away. I stirred a little, like a sleeping man might stir and hugged the working bits of my rifle into my hand. He froze. My face must have looked like a child’s face to him.

He said, “Gimme one of them guns.” And leaned in toward me. I levelled my rifle and shot him once in the sternum, near the top. Some of his blood splashed on me. He stayed stood there for what seemed like a long time making a sour face so I shot him again where I was pretty sure his heart would get hit and he fell and rolled down the concrete slant to the outside of the roadside guard below. He made a few grunting noises as he rolled and he coughed when he came to a stop. There was a pattern of wet blood dappling the incline from when his body was front-side down in his rolling descent.

He was the first person I had seen in a couple days. I had heard some and thought I heard many individuals out in the world that I chose not to consider. I remained still and breathed purposeful breaths into my frame. It made my mind, the language in my mind get quiet to have something to do.

My dad recognized it in me when I was a kid. He saw me troubled by the world. I was interested to check all the way out so my feelings about the world didn't break me.

I had night terrors.

My dad told me he came into my room once when I was seven and I was systematically destroying all of my toys one at a time. He’d asked me why I was and I'd told him, “It’s all wrong”.

He wasn't sure I'd be able to grow up if I thought the world was all wrong. He didn't even disagree. He just started to try to prove to me that it was at least alright.

He taught me that breathing was the simplest thing you can do. It’s the simplest thing to do. There’s a lot to it if you really look into it, he said. He was right.

It's a good thing to know that you can get unstuck, if you have time to take an easy breath or two. It's good to know that when you start to feel out of control you can get it back by just breathing calm breaths on purpose. It’s worse to know that it’s an advantage, but it’s still good to know. Advantage is a burden.

By the time I left home I knew we were very different people, my dad and I. I keep learning how right he was about things. I'm older now than he got to be, but not by much and I continue to find things out that he showed me or told me that are right.

This morning I left Angie asleep and rode out. I went down along the river east of where I used to work to see if it had started to get out of hand.

It was quiet. The morning light was winter warm.

A row of geese, maybe a hundred strong, was flying high up and straight north, calling.

Spring is full of all kinds of hopeful signs.

When it's cold cold and the river ices over, eagles gather in the trees over the falls. When the ice breaks they scatter both ways down the valley, their heads and tails white as the winter sky and wings the color of trees, huge and tipping slow on the thermals.

My mind returns to that night in that bar and that man shouting in my ear. I was new in town and I was already as bad as I am now. I grew into my occupation. I got less cavalier without having to be taught a lesson.

The field as it were, of men doing what I could do for a living got smaller and younger. Or maybe I got older.

I quit drinking. I quit going out. I quit being anything to anyone but the men who paid me to solve their problems.

I dug in. I built this place. I came and went from here and no one was even able to bother me.

People who worked against the interests of the men who paid me in the controlled area on the other side of the river rarely crossed the river and if they did it was to go to the bars.

My view of the world got smaller and simpler

I went years like that. I could do the math. I’m 53.

When that guy yelled in my ear I was 19.

“Did you ever spend any time down in the bars, Angie?”

“I never saw you.”

Sometimes she doesn't answer me. It might be because she’s not listening. It might be because she doesn’t feel like talking. I definitely don’t know what it means, but I do wonder when she sits or lies there and doesn’t respond. What if she just stopped all together and never responded or moved again?

“Do you want to go down the tracks and just see how far we get? Somewhere we can use the money?”

She turned in the bed to face me. Her eyes were open.

Sometimes when you look at someone they look more beautiful. It might be the shape or the angle or the light, but more likely it’s something inside you both, agreeing. She wasn’t smiling, but I could tell she was happy and it gave me no end of comfort in that moment.

“You gonna be my baby when we get there?”

Now I was silent. This question didn’t have anything to do with anything.

“If you don’t kill me, I guess.”

Now she smiled. She liked that I was butt hurt to have been shot by her before, and that I wasn't mad.

She said to me once, “Strong is when you don't get mad.” My dad had said something similar.

It is and it isn’t.