THE HERMIT AT THE CORNER LOT

46. THE HERMIT AT THE CORNER LOT - (an excerpt from 'The Man Who Killed the Turtle'):

So it seems like there's always a weave to things - some weird fabric by which they connect or gain meaning and it reminds me in a way if I dwell on it of when I was young - about 10 or so - when one of the remaining large estate homes which once ruled over the properties on which our tacky subdivisions had been built was still standing at the top of the hill and at the back corner of this huge place there lived - in a small one-room isolated wooden cabin - a lone hermit who resided there with no apparent connection to anything of the present and who carried himself in his own way oblivious to the modern world or the housing which had grown up around his area - a small squat man always in gray work clothes some sort of khaki uniform to which he was attached and wearing a matching gray cap and sporting a long white beard dirtied and discolored yellow around the mouth whether from coffee or food stains or merely his pipe-smoke we'd never know - and we'd taunt him mercilessly whenever we could which wasn't I suppose really that often as I now think back on it maybe on Saturday mornings or something and not much else - but we'd throw stones and pebbles and rocks at his cabin or run up to it and bang on the door or kick a pail or something stupid some brazen act of idiocy for which newcomer neighborhood kids are known - usurping his presence and power and acting as if we'd always been there and he had not - until finally at the breaking point one day he just began responding to our taunts by firing a salt-gun or salt-rifle at us - not real bullets not buckshot nothing like that - just some strange salt-like substance which did and would sting if it hit and to which we generally grew wary and shied from rather quickly and then he was gone LIKE THAT one day no more cabin no more corner no more hermit no anything and we never knew who'd won or lost and probably still to this day not one of us knows what happened but something turned over something took the new place of the old and the world notched another change into itself and he was gone and we were gone and so was all trace of what had been there and now if I go to that spot it is housing and more - peoples' yards sheds garages bicycles pools lawnmowers - the entire gamut of living and it's like that everywhere with every story I'd guess no matter what the farm or the river or the building or the bridge or the shed or the friend's sister beneath your loins - whatever - there's little apparent sense to little apparent anything yet we go through this life blind as a bat and enfeebled as much by the events we transcribe and GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY!! somehow live to tell about it all (if we do so choose).