I wondered why, after so many years of ever since,I was thinking about Shelly -- Shelly with the long black hair and heavily made up eyes -- Amy Winehouse eyes! Her death must have triggered this memory of the beatnik chick who worked the audiences of the coffee houses after I read my poems with a bread basket intoning "Bread for the poet. Bread for the poet." It was the beginning of my career -- I believe we made seven dollars one night -- and I thought she loved me. It actually was, I realize, the beginning of my career(nowadays seven bucks a night is looking good again), but Shelly, ah, dark-eyed, black haired sorceress, ran off to South America with a drummer. Is it a half a century now? More. Is she even alive? My guess is she's not still with that drummer in South America.
So I'm thinking about Shelly and Amy when Max comes by all pissed off and huffing in a way I've rarely seen him. Now, you'd have to search far and wide to find a guy as nice as Max. He makes a mighty effort to be fair and tolerant to all comers, but his new neighbor pushed him to the limit. You see, Max has a pot bellied pig among a variety of critters on his farm: cats, goats, horses, chickens, the pig, maybe a parrot (though I'm not sure about the parrot but wouldn't be surprised). And the pig crawled under a fence onto his neighbor's property. His neighbor is a newcomer from the city unused to the pace and ways of life here. He's also a drunk -- loud, pugnacious, intolerant, and as full of himself as he is with the whiskey -- the worst kind of urban invader who comes to these parts to drink himself blind until he needs to go back to the city on Monday morning. This is a specific breed, an invasive species in our corner of the Catskills. He arrogantly signaled for Max to come over on his property to talk, and Max said, "You wanna talk to me? Come talk to me," and plants himself in place. The guy's eyes bulged like an old cow's. He stood and stared like a slack jawed dummy, but that's all he did. If you've ever seen Max mad, you wouldn't move either. His body is hard work powerful with a low center of gravity, and he favors Harley t-shirts and tattoos. Of course, Max has a heart of cream of wheat, but you wouldn't know this by looking at him. So far, Max's neighbor has not taken him up on the offer of a pow-wow on Max's side of the fence. a good thing, too, because Max is near mad enough to..."If that guy comes over here," fumed Max, "I'm gonna kick his ass, drag him into my house, call the police and tell him the guy broke in drunk. You're a witness, right?" he said. "Gimme a call," I said. That's what neighbors are for.
Then we stopped talking about this bullshit because Max wanted to get off it. He didn't like feeling this way and insisted I follow him to a back pasture so he could show me how beautifully he had mowed it with the fallen grass arranged as if it were a hay field before bailing. Max was proud of how he had done it, and, indeed, it was as beautiful as a Brueghel painting. We stood there in silence. There was a breeze and a blue jay in the apple tree. "Well," he said after awhile, "Cheryl's gonna want me to start dinner. Burn 'er, bub," which is how Max says goodbye. "Burn 'er, bub." He walked back to his truck, and I stayed in the field. The aroma of fresh mown grass was intoxicating.
