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A Beast, a Storm and a Barbecue
Jun. 16th, 2010 12:03 amYes, yes... only an idiot would try barbecueing out in the rain, but damn it if I didn't promise Vee chicken hot off the grill when she came home tonight.
A man's word is always his bond after all... but never more so than when he has little else to offer. So I stood out there on the patio overlooking the backyard, umbrella cradled between shoulder and ear, looming over the fire as I slathered honey sauce on sizzling meat. The rain fell with steady indifference from a sky the gray of forgotten laundry water. A trickle sluiced off the umbrella's surface to cascade down the crack of my pants. Flames lapped through the gristled bars, engulfing the meat in a sudden crackle, instantly entwining up the prong of the fork until its dancing tips could leap off the handle's rim and lash naked heat into my fingers.
Still I persisted in the nebulous measurement seperating determination from outright stupidity.
Lightning flashed with the dull yellow glow of a blown bulb. Orange embers drifted off the coals, flaring out in the soaked shadows above... only to return to be reborn in a burst of bioluminescent green.
For a moment, one brief enough to stab and flip a breast through the scorching haze, I lived in a different world. A world where fireflies and lightning bugs were the children of storms and open flame. They were harbingers of their parents coming or passing. In their brief constellations amongst the darkened branches terrible omens and the birth of new god/desses could be conned.
Then the breast hits the bars and in a hiss I come back to this world.
Another bulb pop above.
I must've looked like fucking Doctor Frankenstein out there.
Still the smoke in my eyes and the scent caught in its draft (mixing delicately with the freshly mowed grass around me) was enough of a reward to keep me from shutting down the operation and moving the whole scene to the kitchen. I fumbled the lid back on the grill. Stepped back and was startled by a home-early Vee.
We stood out there overseeing the barbecue together. We smoked cigarettes and huddled around the umbrella talking.
Then, out there on the lawn hopping along and pecking at the ground, was a large unidentified animal. The size of a small brown dog or a very big brown cat. A smooth round head that flowed into the torso and confident enough in its prowess to pay us no attention. It took me a second to reference and access the mental index before I realized I was looking at an owl.
"Honey, look!"
And she gasped in that way children do when they first visit a lion in a zoo or witness, without warning, a whale gliding past the window of a subterranean aquarium.
The owl hopped once, twice, a last time... before taking off in flight to vanish quickly into the treeline out beyond the fence of the yard.
Thunder - followed by either early fireworks popping or the distant bark of a gun.
Bulb-pop and this time for a split-second we can see the world around us. The English Ivy rising up out of the mud to swallow whole the trunks of wizened oaks. The chest high chain link fence ripped open in the corner from a storm this time last year. Behind it the quiet creek that runs through the neighborhood invisibly.
Then back to the gloom.
We realized the rain had died down. Killed the umbrella. Checked on dinner to see if it was ready. With Vee holding a flashlight over my shoulder, I pinned a breast to the grill and sliced it down the middle. White all the way through. I nodded sagely to Vee as if we were playing doctor and nurse. Checked another one at the far end of the grill. The rain crept back down. I declared the operation a success. One by one I dropped the breasts on a plate Vee proferred. Sent her upstairs to the kitchen where I had a spinach salad prepped and a potato salad waiting.
Put the lid back on the grill. Gathered up the fork and tongs and flashlight.
Stood there, hand frozen on the door with my back to it... scanning the darkness in hope of catching the owl just one more time. Too late. The Proust-ian moment shattered and irretrievable. Nothing of its flight now but pale narrowtive and poorly shuffled memory.
I went back in to shut down and close the day.
A man's word is always his bond after all... but never more so than when he has little else to offer. So I stood out there on the patio overlooking the backyard, umbrella cradled between shoulder and ear, looming over the fire as I slathered honey sauce on sizzling meat. The rain fell with steady indifference from a sky the gray of forgotten laundry water. A trickle sluiced off the umbrella's surface to cascade down the crack of my pants. Flames lapped through the gristled bars, engulfing the meat in a sudden crackle, instantly entwining up the prong of the fork until its dancing tips could leap off the handle's rim and lash naked heat into my fingers.
Still I persisted in the nebulous measurement seperating determination from outright stupidity.
Lightning flashed with the dull yellow glow of a blown bulb. Orange embers drifted off the coals, flaring out in the soaked shadows above... only to return to be reborn in a burst of bioluminescent green.
For a moment, one brief enough to stab and flip a breast through the scorching haze, I lived in a different world. A world where fireflies and lightning bugs were the children of storms and open flame. They were harbingers of their parents coming or passing. In their brief constellations amongst the darkened branches terrible omens and the birth of new god/desses could be conned.
Then the breast hits the bars and in a hiss I come back to this world.
Another bulb pop above.
I must've looked like fucking Doctor Frankenstein out there.
Still the smoke in my eyes and the scent caught in its draft (mixing delicately with the freshly mowed grass around me) was enough of a reward to keep me from shutting down the operation and moving the whole scene to the kitchen. I fumbled the lid back on the grill. Stepped back and was startled by a home-early Vee.
We stood out there overseeing the barbecue together. We smoked cigarettes and huddled around the umbrella talking.
Then, out there on the lawn hopping along and pecking at the ground, was a large unidentified animal. The size of a small brown dog or a very big brown cat. A smooth round head that flowed into the torso and confident enough in its prowess to pay us no attention. It took me a second to reference and access the mental index before I realized I was looking at an owl.
"Honey, look!"
And she gasped in that way children do when they first visit a lion in a zoo or witness, without warning, a whale gliding past the window of a subterranean aquarium.
The owl hopped once, twice, a last time... before taking off in flight to vanish quickly into the treeline out beyond the fence of the yard.
Thunder - followed by either early fireworks popping or the distant bark of a gun.
Bulb-pop and this time for a split-second we can see the world around us. The English Ivy rising up out of the mud to swallow whole the trunks of wizened oaks. The chest high chain link fence ripped open in the corner from a storm this time last year. Behind it the quiet creek that runs through the neighborhood invisibly.
Then back to the gloom.
We realized the rain had died down. Killed the umbrella. Checked on dinner to see if it was ready. With Vee holding a flashlight over my shoulder, I pinned a breast to the grill and sliced it down the middle. White all the way through. I nodded sagely to Vee as if we were playing doctor and nurse. Checked another one at the far end of the grill. The rain crept back down. I declared the operation a success. One by one I dropped the breasts on a plate Vee proferred. Sent her upstairs to the kitchen where I had a spinach salad prepped and a potato salad waiting.
Put the lid back on the grill. Gathered up the fork and tongs and flashlight.
Stood there, hand frozen on the door with my back to it... scanning the darkness in hope of catching the owl just one more time. Too late. The Proust-ian moment shattered and irretrievable. Nothing of its flight now but pale narrowtive and poorly shuffled memory.
I went back in to shut down and close the day.
