PREPARATIONS

       There was this old guy who played music with Hank Roat down at Hank's Bar whose name I can't remember ... I think it was Bill. Bill went down to the river to fish and died there. I think about that more than I should. He died doing what he loved. Maybe Bill hooked the Big One and his heart stood still in awe.
       Leonard Sandstrom went hunting. The story has it he loved to hunt. When they found him it looked like he had decided to sit beside a tree and take in the view and hunt from the stillness and silence. I think maybe he saw the Antlered King.
       I dreamed I had disappointed the Spirits and I would rather leave it all behind than live with a broken heart. I leave the community and go down the stairs and outside there is my deceased Uncle Paul sitting in a big jeep. Behind the jeep there is a trailer with a fishing boat ready to go.
       I loved Uncle Paul Tillman although some women thought he did some pretty low-life things. You gotta remember he was just a man and women are always angry with men. He stood 6'4" tall and was always smiling and cracking wise. He shared Havana cigars with me although I was just a teenager. He said, "Wheat farmers should always smoke good cigars because when the ash falls, it's cold."
       I was supposed to unload a truckload of wheat; 240 bushels. The engine on the auger would not start. I fought with it all afternoon. I nearly lost my hand once when digging at the wheat in the auger and it auger spun by itself as the wheat ran and the weight shifted. The sun had begun to set and I was nearly in tears -- maybe I was, I can't remember that part -- when he arrived. He looked sad, too. Instead of chewing me out for failure, he just gave me a hug and a smile.
       Once I tried to run the 22' disk one pass closer to the wet gumbo hole in an 80 acre field. The diesel tractor tires were taller than me because all that horsepower was necessary to wrap that 22-foot one-way in a solid blanket of gumbo mud. He didn't smack me with so much as a word of censure, just got busy with that shovel.
       I saw him sitting on the wrench scattered-ground staring at a gearbox full of disaster. He was saying, "Son of a bitch, son of a bitch ..." over and over. So sad.
       I loved that guy.
       And when I ran out of the Tower of Damaged Talents -- all of us have eaten there, I believe -- and all the friendly Spirits gave me long eyes because I fled in disappointment to a sad place, there was Paul sitting in the big Jeep. He said, "Ready to go?"
       I always wanted, when it came time for me to die, to have some breath-takingly beautiful Native American women -- you know, one of the Wise Ones -- to come up to me in a canoe of excellent handiwork and say, "Let's go out upon the lake."
       But when it comes time it'll probably be Paul Tillman, or a trusted friend like Robbie Anderson, in the big Jeep with a fishing boat behind it.