Wednesday, November 11, 2015

glue

As you might recall from my post just over ten years and one month ago, mosquitoes were a fixture of summer life at the cabin. And as you also might recall, one harrowing night, I killed nearly 30 mosquitoes while writing a postcard to Carl. I have no definite recall of the exact number, but for some reason, 26 pops into my head as the final tally. This is the kind of thing which doesn't really matter much; whether it was 28 or 35 or even 24, it was a lot. But it might be possible even now to verify this number. As I killed each mosquito, I put a drop of Elmer's glue on the postcard, on the parts I'd already written, and entombed the fallen mosquito for posterity. Or at least for Carl. I had a few chuckles thinking about Carl receiving the postcard, or perhaps a too curious postal worker being disgusted at the miniature graveyard, but forgot about the postcard soon after taking it to the post office in Phillips on my bike. Some years later I visited Florida and found out Carl was living there again, or still, and tracked him down. He happened to be moving some boxes in his garage when I drove up. While we reminisced, Carl reached into one of the boxes and pulled out the very postcard. I read it and ran my finger over the tiny smooth transparent burial mounds; modern day accelerated jewels of amber punctuating sentences complaining about the scourge of mosquitoes. Maybe he put it back in the box, and maybe he still has that box. Or maybe he gave the card to me. If so, I might have put it into a box of my own. In some box, if it hasn't gotten too wet over the years, might be the means to discover the number of mosquitoes killed during the span of the writing of a postcard.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home