Last Rites of an Old Warhorse.

     

    I was busy decomposing on the edge of the driveway and had fully accepted that I would become part of the dirt when the impossible happened.  It’s true that I had lost hope and that I was feeling sorry for myself.  I had just settled into the soggy funk of the wet Autumn rot when he appeared from around the woodshed.  He had two tires in his hands.  Suddenly there was light where before there was only dark and it felt like I just might make it.

         The master has always had a hard time throwing things away plus I think he’s alway liked me.  I over-heard him say that I might make a good planter to his wife.  Planter? Really?  Luckily the wife begged to differ.  In fact she begged to differ on whether I should be kept at all but the master stuck up for me!  I knew he wouldn’t let it happen;  After all I have yet to fulfill my destiny and I think at some level he’s always known that too.  So, over the years, I migrated further and further away from the family, from sight, and most regrettably from my calling.

    I was in the beginning stages of losing faith in the mission.  I felt that I was destined to melt into the earth.   I even prayed for more rain.  Everyday he would pass me to do other things. He moved me next to the woodshed last month but it was six months since he’d moved me before then.  His son’s bike leaned on me for nearly a week last spring.  I hated that but not as much as the twenty three times the dog urinated on me between April and November of 02, or the time the tractor carelessly ran into me breaking my right handle off.  (When he burned it in the woodstove; I mourned for a week.)   

    It’s true I’m no spring chicken.  The bright gleam of my doug-fir beams has long been gone.  Instead I am fifty shades of grey.  Alas, my main purpose for the last two years it seemed has been to serve as a framework for the spiders webs and grassy sproutings.  The Rusty Tussock caterpillars have been awful this summer ; I think I’ve got seven cocoons tucked up in my ribs.  Yech!  The grass tries to push me around and the fireweed are incorrigible, but it’s the moss I despise.  The moss have taken root in my lower cracks effectively sealing-in the beginnings of wood-rot from the outside-in.  Less pervasive but equally fowl are the Boletes.   The recent rains have facilitated the transformation of these obtrusive mushrooms near my starboard joist:  Upturned by the rain, the exposed fly-larvae wriggle and writhe in the slimy undergoo of the Bolete caps. I have had a front-row seat to its disintegration coming full-cycle right under my nose.  Lucky me.

      Aside from my pessimistic musings and whimpering tendencies I am not all gloom.  Although my nail and screw heads have rusted badly they still hold and they aren’t complaining.  You won’t hear a peep from my crossbeams either.  My axles are solid and I have benefitted from the addition of extra gussets , so I don’t wobble or creak (much).   I’ll confess that over the years I have taken a beating, it’s true, but I know in my soul of souls that below the rust and the rot,  I can still ride.

     He’s walking closer.  What’s he doing?   The days are getting shorter and he must be getting ready for the hunt.  He’s looking at me.  Oh my laws he’s lifting me onto the trailer, oh my lands it's really happening!  

     “Come on old girl.”  He called me old girl!

     He carefully slid the tires onto my axle and it felt like I was sliding into my favorite pair of slippers. A few washers  and the slide of the cotter pin had me fundamentally operational. He gently flipped me over and escorted me into the garage.  My gracious!  I can’t believe it, I’m going to the show!  Is there a remodel in my future and maybe even a new handle? Criminy, I’m going to the show!

     Thank my lucky stars.  I always knew the master was a good and true master.   Oh wonderful joyous day,  I have been recommissioned.

Warhorse