― Ursula K. Le Guin
I resent the way I’m feeling right now.
I came out to Big Sky country because Melody, my literary agent, thought moving to the countryside with ts slower pace would help increase my literary output. It made sense since there would be more money for me—or so I thought.
I didn’t figure on having moronic neighbours with backward ideas hating on me because I’m a city boy and more ‘woke’ than they are.
How the hell can anyone oppose green energy and having windmills on your own property? These guys are from another century—they're lame Luddites who want to turn the clock backwards.
And to make matters worse, Jim Crow, my hired hand, narcs on me to my nosey neighbour, Stella McKinley, and now she wants to inspect my new electric fence.
Who does she think she is―cop of the neighbourhood?
Yeah, maybe I should just let her poke around and get zapped. Hey, it might scramble her brain waves and rearrange her outlook on things…
Or, more likely, it’ll just make her detest me more and end any chances of my starting a relationship with her.
Too bad, because she’s pretty easy on the eyes but otherwise hard on my flesh. It’s good thing she’s not a magistrate because she’d probably re-enact something akin to the Salem witch trials and light a fire and roast me over my old outhouse pit leaking methane.
Yuck!
Anyway, twenty minutes later, I’m at Stella’s farmhouse and it’s coming down like a blizzard. I beep the horn and wait for her to come out.
She’s thirty, a year younger than me, and lives alone on a farm her parents left her. She’s beautiful, university educated and a total pain in the ass. I might have even considered asking her out if she were half-ways civil. I think she’s one of those feminists or something.
She finally comes out in jeans, boots and a lumberjack coat. I can never figure out how she can look stunning dressed like that, but she manages. She gets in and shakes the snow from her long, blonde hair.
“Better keep to the main roads.” she offers as her free advice.
“I wasn’t intending to go as the crow flies.”
I put that in as a snide way of reminding her I know who’s been sending her smoke signals.
“Yeah, not a great day for off-roading without snow tires,” she quips back.
I drive the long way round to my back twenty and park beside my woodlot.
“We’ll have to hike in from here,” I tell her.
She shrugs and hops out into two feet of icy water.
“Damn! Why’d ya park so close to the ditch?”
“Did you want me to park in the middle of the road?”
She stares at me as if looks could kill—and believe me, in her case, they could. She’s got these soft brown eyes that go black as coal when she gets mad—and right about now, those eyes are about as black as Frosty the Snowman’s.
We wander around a bit—more like flounder around. It’s snowing hard and the usual contours of the land are hidden. I’m looking for markers and then—ZAP!
“Urgh!” I fall backward over a pile of logs and get my leg jammed.
“Jed, Are you all right?”
She’s hovering above me, her fragrant hair cascading into my face and I look up into those soft brown eyes.
“I’m okay,” I lie. My right arm feels numb and my right leg is wedged tight beneath a heavy oak log.
“You idiot!” Her eyes flash fire. “Didn’t you mark and sign the fence?”
I blink. I want to make an excuse—we didn’t have time—or were coming back tomorrow.
It’s useless—no use in lying.
“Naw, I didn’t mark it. I’m an idiot.”
I am and she knows it. I feel a total loser.
Could this half-ass adventure get any worse? I muse, and then the truth dawns.
Oh, I’m sure it will—like they say on the local Farm Report news—
Stay tuned.