that meet, protect and greet each other.
― Rainer Maria Rilke
So, here we are in the woods where the coyotes roam and we’re stranded in my truck in the snow.
Neither Stella nor I have a cell phone handy—well, I do, but the battery has died.
She’s pissed, of course, and ignores the fact that she forgot her cell at home.
“You’re a man,” she growls, “you’re suposed to take charge and protect me.”
I want to ask her if that squares with her feminist manifesto, but I think under the circumstances silence is the best policy.
Two hours pass.
We start up the truck every fifteen minutes and let it run long enough to pump some heat into the cab—by morning, we figure she’ll be able to hike out to the road and walk the four miles back to her farm to get help.
Maybe by then the coyotes will be gone. Maybe, not—and that possibility is scary.
“Do you have a rifle in the back of the truck?” She asks.
I shake my head sadly. I know what she's thinking and that scares me too.
Yeah, I’m totally unprepared for country life not to mention emergencies.
Funny, just the other day Jim Crow, my local handyman and native American indian, asked me if I had a rifle in case of wild animal attacks.
I told him I disn’t and quipped that I also didn't have a Confederate flag draped over my truck's rear window either, like some of the local Morlocks.
I don’t think he got the allusion but I don’t care because he knows believe in guns either.
Needless to say, Stella and I don’t talk much. She’s not a happy camper.
Any possibility of romance with her has died and now I get the feeling that just being civil with me is an ordeal that demands the last shreds of patience she still has.
About midnight though, we hear a roar and then the snow-covered windshield’s illumined by lights.
Stella cranks down her window and cranes her neck to get a better view.
“It’s Jim Crow.”
Despite my relief at seeing him, I groan inwardly, already anticipating the whispered jokes at my expense in the local café and general store.
He comes up to the driver’s window smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary.
“Phoned you guys to check up on you and no one answered—kinda figured you’d come out to see the fence and I knew Jed didn’t have snow tires.”
“That’s not all he lacks.” Stella replies testily, giving me hell eyes.
Well, I won’t bore you with the details of the rest of the night—the six-hour wait in the Emergency ward and then Stella driving me home and helping me into bed.
Strange thing about interruptions though—they kinda dictate the direction your life takes.
That night with the coyotes was a watershed incident for me—and also for Stella. We’re going out now. She still figures I’m a jerk and maybe she’s right.
But everybody’s gotta change sometime though.
Anyway, that night we faced life and death, but between those two possibilities we found a way to live and move forward and reconcile our differences.
I still believe my life’s a Morse code of long and short pauses—the universe is telegraphing a message to me I find hard to comprehend...
But I think I’m finally beginning to figure some things out with the help of Stella and Jim Crow and a wild crow who's Jim's totem and is guiding me to understand the deeper meaning of my life.