Tobie normally kind of avoids my bedroom for his own reasons except in certain specific circumstances, like he needs the window overlooking the driveway or…
…Uncle Joel is washing dishes. When I do that he almost always makes himself scarce in the only other available room, and I really don’t know why. If I were giving off Bad Mood vibes I could get it but I really don’t mind washing dishes. It’s one of those relaxing chores where nothing serious is likely to go wrong.
It’s deep in Monsoon, with afternoons hot and often unusually humid indoors and out. But there’s one place nearby that’s almost always in the seventies, and it’s got a nice shower. And ice cubes!
And wouldn’t you know it – just when I would normally start spending more late-day time there just to keep the sweating to a minimum, for some reason the signal booster inside Ian’s Cave has apparently gone on the fritz. I can’t see anything wrong with it, but…
The Cave has so much grounded rebar that it’s basically a Faraday Cage. Without active assistance no device requiring outside radiation is going to work inside. So I’m just going to have to bring a book instead. Oh piteous me. And speaking of Ian…
Here’s what passes for Deep Philosophical Pondering here at the Secret Lair: Back in April I was talking to Ian about my reason for swapping my every-day .44 Magnum for a plastic 9mm. “Truth is,” I said, “This place has gotten kind of boring.” Seriously, it used to be you never knew what you were going to encounter around any given corner, or how hostile it was going to be. The question “Do I really need a big-bore pistol today” never entered my mind, though “Is this enough?” occasionally did. And I must admit I kind of liked it that way.
But it hasn’t been that way for quite some time. People have pretty thoroughly inhabited the Gulch for decades now and all the interesting animals have gone away. That problem with the pit bull puppy mill was resolved years ago. I found myself wishing for something lighter and less of a hassle than three pounds of iron and an assortment of ammo in speed loaders. I even – rather blasphemously, in terms of my own belief structure – found myself wondering if I weren’t being a little silly open carrying at all. With the exception of that one rude coyote two months ago I never shoot at anything but targets anymore. Is it really necessary now?
Not long ago two men came to my porch, which is very unusual, to discuss buying Ian’s tractor, and I greeted them dressed the way I always am in summer…
…and nobody said anything about it because it’s not that unusual and anyway this is a free place where you don’t have to hide your weapons if you don’t want to – but I did wonder to myself later if maybe somebody a little less local-flavor than these two guys might have found it off-putting. Maybe even rude? Maybe I’m taking this ‘armed all the time’ thing too far? Maybe it’s time to lighten up on that rule?
And then in the past couple of days I learned two factoids: a) my drunken loser acquaintance of two weeks ago, whom I had never met before, was identified as the infamous “Jay” who was quite notorious a few years ago for being a light-fingered troublemaker who went away for awhile when he got caught breaking into somebody’s home, and also b) He just went to jail for four counts of assault with a deadly weapon and will probably be going to prison for quite a spell. I did not know any of that at the time – the second thing hadn’t happened yet – and there’s nobody out here going to defend me from people like that but me. Which means Mattis’s Law still has relevance even in this kinder, gentler Gulch.
So I guess I’ll keep carrying the gun, and keep practicing.
