Looking Close, Looking Far, Thinking Back to Where We Are
After two hours of close focus – splicing, stretching, spacing, replacing staples, clips, and stays, tending to the no frills aesthetics of a good boundary fence - you pause, straighten up, stretch, look around, then up at the clouds. You spot a silver tube with wings, trailing vapor. Your inner GPS guesses at the trajectory - might well be a flight from Chicago to Vegas.
Your mind stretches way out, reflecting on your station, your place now on this spinning orb - imagining those lives, sitting there in rows, facing ahead, dozing, sipping coffee, red wine, reading the WSJ, checking e-mail - maybe a couple of folks with windows still open looking down at you – wondering what it’s like down there, imagining too. You can almost see them…
Up in first class, a strip mall and trophy home developer being served a second whisky sour and gourmet nut pack, on his way to play a few rounds of golf with prospective clients with offshore money to invest in the West, put us all to the test, once again, making notes on his phone – best to avoid talk of drought, water scarcity or protests of gentrification.
And there, behind the wing looking out the window, searching for some green or a river, a Brazilian bull rider, his brother who works for JBS Meats has grubstaked his plane ticket and entry fee, he has his girlfriend’s locket in his pocket, mom’s Christmas “Aguinaldo”, his pouched per diem. Five foot nine, all sinew and muscle, dip in his lip, dusty black hat in his lap.
Then across the aisle, the 73-year-old blue haired lady on her way to play the slots, maybe a little roulette. Last time you saw her was before everything went digital – the bucket of quarters, extra-long L&M smoldering, gin and tonic sweating. Her routine: feed the machine, pull the handle, watch her spin, sip the gin, suck some smoke, do it again – wait for coins to tumble. You can almost smell the smoky casino, the carpet disinfectant.
In the back wrapped in engines throb, the young man from Joliet IL, (like your boot camp pal Zweres – now a name on dark marble), headed to Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. That never-ending job (like picking pickles), in the City Cemetery, trimming around every gravestone with a noisy weed whip that started hard then wouldn’t idle – drove him to enlistment.
And seated over the wing, the young mixed-race couple, eloping - on their way to some still undecided chapel, away from the invectives and reproach of disapproving families, tightly holding hands, one asleep on the shoulder of the other, their love burning so strongly all else has blurred. We likely all remember being captive, then somehow surviving such love.
Only a silver speck now, almost out of sight, just soft rolling thunder, dragging a white vector that will soon bisect the Great Divide.
Quiet now. The soft panting of your faithful cow dog, patiently waiting to resume the leapfrog work, draws you back and down 20 miles and 30,000 feet, back from these other lives, from your own history to this place, this land given temporarily to your care, to this fence that the slow, relentless winter drifts have started to pry apart with age-old forces. You take a deep breath, pick up your tools, the coil of wire, some stays and move on – looking close once more,
- glad to be here, feet on the ground, right where you belong.