Hello again, short time no see. Here is the “different approach” I talked about only yesterday. I’m going to try and put down a day’s work, every day, for the next couple weeks, months or however long– maybe until this draft is finito. This could mean 100 words, or a 1000. As it goes, so shall it be posted. I’ll keep at it, see how it works, and if it does, that’s how it’ll be…
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Will eased off the shoulder, and at the stop sign, he kept the wheel moving to the left.
Finish what you started, Willem. Finish what you started.
Will had been gone three hours by the time he pulled in. It felt like three weeks. The end of the drive was now occupied by three vehicles, Maartens’s truck, another pickup, and a van. Will parked on the grass. He stepped out to the sound of laboring small engines to his left—the native kids were hard at work defoliating the ground around the old orchard—and the dissonant chorus of power tools coming from the kitchen. Will understood this should be a happy noise, a cacophony of rebirth and renewal. He could only perceive it in bitterness, wondering how the guy next door could not interpret a racket that could be heard in Maastricht as a hint the landgrab was over. Asshole.
Outside the truck, Will looked toward the rising and falling two-stroke whine coming from the now clearly visible rows of apple trees. The kids appeared to be wading through a green fog, raking and tossing bunches of slaughtered vegetation into the bed of the battered four-by-four with pitchforks. He was immediately aware of the humidity. The air had been steadily increasing in stickiness over the course of the last few days. Standing there, not moving, he could feel the sweat forming in beads on his forehead and neck. Seeing those boys moving through a miasma of swirling chlorophyll made him itch. It also caused him to remember he’d fled Blom’s without talking to Ouilette. Seeing those youngsters heaving heaps of mown vegetation through a maelstrom of aerosolized plant matter, he allowed himself to wonder if, after a month of such labor and not even sharing a word with Ouilette, he could couple deadbeat with whackjob. Will had no choice but to show himself again at Blom’s, and he couldn’t put it off too long. Goddamnit!
He had to pee.
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And there ya have it. Tomorrow, there’ll be more…
‘Nother thing: ‘Twould appear there are a few regular visitors to this site that have just showed up in recent weeks. THANK YOU! Comments welcome, even disparaging ones. And a special greeting/thanks to what appear to be regular visitors from the other side o’ the Atlantic: BUIOCHAS LEAT IREANN! (Translation tomorrow, if requested.)
WHOA! No sooner do I send a greeting across the briny, a little further, across the Irish Sea, a visitor from the UK! (not the first), and a Cheerio, to you, mate!
eagerly waiting for more