I’m seated at a four foot plastic folding table and my elbows are crowded by things that I attempted to organize. To my left is a collection of hemp plants that I’m growing for an experiment at work. Next to this is a mini greenhouse tray with beet and pepper seeds in peat moss pods laying atop a warming pad to aid germination. My pistol is on my right and I keep bumping into it with my elbow. There is a pack of nicotine gum and a Stella, open and not so cold anymore. I took 2 sips. The point of all this is to write something every day, to be diligent about it; militant if I have to be. A person doesn’t get better at the things they think about doing, they get better at the things they do.
I moved these items into the spare bedroom because my in-laws are visiting, and our home is strictly a single-family dwelling. It’s not so much about space as it is layout. A narrow hallway leads from the bedrooms to a kitchen that shares light and air with the living room, where our couch and one leather chair comfortably accommodate three people. We prefer to allocate the living area to our visiting family, and we gradually drift toward the back of the house as the day unwinds.
I came here for the quiet and the dark, for a place to think and to get some words on paper. I ended up somewhere different.
Earlier today we watched a small, efficient team of workers unloading an impossibly large inflatable bounce house onto the dusty front yard of our neighbor’s property. We suspected that this day would inevitably transition into a night of prolonged festivities. Now, in the approaching night it is apparent that the festivities have found purchase in the waning daylight. A Mariachi band is playing a variety of canciònes 50 feet from my bedroom window. The music is celebratory and friendly, and each new selection presents with a confident introduction like a loud handshake from the salesman at a used car lot. No credit, no problem. The band members are dressed in bright polyester outfits with all of the buttons and stripes, and they break seldom to drink water and introduce the next song. It has already set off two car alarms and it’s only 8:42 on a Saturday night. This is what Hickman is, and it is what Hickman will always be.
I am immersed in the soundtrack of a party that I cannot leave, celebrating something which I know nothing about, at a concert performed in a language that I do not speak fluently. I possess an all-access pass that I did not purchase. It isn’t often that you can feel sound waves for long and sustained periods of time. It is strangely disorienting, and the effect is gradual but undeniable. I suppose I’ll have the option to escape, but that would mean leaving my home, where I had planned to sleep tonight. Most likely, I’ll wait for a heavy dose of Benadryl to make my eyes heavy. Then perhaps, as the party winds down in the early hours of the morning, I won’t notice the enthusiastic farewells, the assorted engines starting, and the flashing headlights of my fellow revelers as they retreat from their parking spaces across my yard and along the highway. I’m already hoping that everyone makes it home safely. Vaya con Dios, amigos.
