A Waste Of Gunpowder and Sky

4 July Simply walking.

National independence. My sun faded division patches from the 82nd pull me on down the road like large weather balloons today. Another afternoon of thunder moving heavy tables behind black clouds. How can I sweat this much? My face melts into my shirt.
In a gas station that sits under a fine new layer of dust, I shrug off my pack until it stands on it's own inside the door. Stepping away from Crowdog I am disappointed that my soaked back doesn't feel cooler. They are cooking too much catfish. The air is damp with cooking oil and steam. A barrel of a man with a tree for a neck stands between me and the restroom door. He is leaking testosterone into a puddle at his feet he thinks I can't see. Unimpressed, I aim my wobbling legs around him with one rudder out for balance. It's no good. He's not having any of it. He wants to talk to me, to question me about pounds, miles, bundles of time spent and the intention that drives me on.
"Twenty five miles a day, give or take..take really" I throw this out to his eyes that are looking too hard into mine. "If it is this insane heat then I walk less. Amount of water carried, food, rest heat, mountains, people to engage with, rain, it all ties in." He continues to eyeball me for softness. Any pissing contest I want part in waits for me behind the stained unfinished door with the word 'ME ' on it, because the N fell off. There is no weakness in my face but he keeps searching. There is only a red heat rising through dirty wet hair and brow. He smiles without his mouth, more of a fist becoming simply a closed hand. The hulk gives me an offer of a bed, shower, food served hot at a place he shares with his wife sixty five mile away, fifteen mile left of course. He is doing simple math in his head that already has the hour I will be at his door. Before I can think it through I have said no. It would not be enough to walk these miles on the furnace rim at my pace of rest and pondering through swirling waves of sun. No matter how fast I walked it would not be fast enough. I could only walk that fast away from him and his puddle of mannishness.
A deer doesn't jump a fence from a run unless pushed. Always I must save something for the fight, something extra to swim to shore with if the wave of the current reaches up for my mouth. I walk around this fence to the bathroom as the conditioned air takes my sweat.
Thinking Robin may visit me on one of her free days keeps me to the road even though a large shade oak flirts with me from flourishing field of blue green grass. Sitting on a slope of the embankment against a large deadfall branch. Boots off I watch the rain come for me. Leaving people physically is easy enough usually--mentally leaving people is walking very slowly always uphill.