Flies Sitting

Flies Sitting

       By Douglas Bunyan

          File them away

          And they’ll come back

          Dragging their logs behind them

Jonsered. Do you know what that is? I bet you don’t. I bet you’ve never heard of it. I bet you’ve seen it on a billboard and that’s why you knew it was a chainsaw. I know what a Jonsered is because I used to think cutting wood in the winter in the woods for the next year’s supply for the woodstove was a valid occupation. I, too, had read and absorbed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I, too, had inspired myself with issues of Harrowsmith and Utne.

       But I care little about myself these days. Much like before, only I had not then learned yet this fact about myself. Now I am more interested in nothing. I am not a nihilist but someone interested in nothing. I am not disinterested in nothing, or in fear of nothing, or worried about nothingness. Nothingness attracts my attention. Therefore, I will tell you the following story.

       “If I die before I sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” So sang little Soledad to herself as she toiled up the hill toward her grandfather’s house. She was alone. No one accompanied her or helped her struggle with the steepness. She had no friends. No one lived nearby and what she knew and understood she did so from out of her own resources. That and what she got out of nature.

       Weather permitting, she intended to stay up mountain for two weeks and then descend to home and school once again. The Easter break gave her this opportunity. She did not see her grandfather from one year to the next except for her stays at Easter. She wore a print dress of gingham with red objects on it and a wide red belt. On her head a straw hat with a blue ribbon kept out the sun. Her mother taught that sunshine must not touch a woman’s face for it modified the features and stained the cheeks. Freckles spread with the generosity of dandelion seeds about her nose and under her eyes. The hair on her head was short and curly, but neither the color of hay nor of willow bark.

       Her brother bore her to school when they went, on his shoulders. A great giant of a man-child, he weighed more than a small horse, and could thrash a couple of grown men if he should choose to. He had done that more than once. He performed feats of strength now and then at recess to impress the other boys who needed now and then to be impressed to keep them honest and good.

       At thirteen, her brother still stumbled over small items before him because he had not yet achieved the balance that a grown man takes for granted. He stumbled, he blushed easily, he made unnecessary noises with his nose and mouth, and he tugged at branches and grass beside the road as he walked. He let himself be distracted by every sort of event and thing on his way anywhere. That was the nature of his youth and the toil of his relative maturity. One day, Soledad knew, he would grow out of his imperviality and then she would have to walk herself to school each day, not perch forgotten on broad shoulders that thought of her weight as little as of a fly sitting.