The Perambulator

I’ve often pondered the nature of time and space. Is it as my senses indicate? That the object is there and the time is now. Or is there a hidden topology masked by our patterns of interpretation?

Way back when I lived in a cabin in the mountains of Virginia. I worked as a reforestation technician planting trees during the winter and living off the proceeds all summer. I grew a considerable proportion of my own food and budgeted carefully to make my funds last. Nevertheless, I was usually broke before the next treeplanting season began.

I filled in the funding gap by taking assorted odd jobs but these were not always available. One year I was broke and could find no employment. I had plenty of food but the phone bill was coming due. So I searched the house for a money stash. I went through everything with no result.

Finally, in the downstairs bedroom, I found my copy of the Rodale Press classic Stocking Up. This got my hopes up. I had in the past stored my proceeds between the pages of that book. I flipped through the pages. Nothing. But I really needed some money and that book had had money in it. So I grabbed it by the ends of its spine and shook it hard. Still nothing.

There was nowhere else to look so I let it go. Often I would take a hike in the mountains at that point. This time I put on some Van Morrison and heated up some water to wash dishes. Within the hour the phone rang. It was a man who had stayed at my house the previous year and he had something to tell me.

I was away when this guy first came to town. He met one my neighbors at his woodworking shop down on the highway and had decided to stick around for a while. My neighbor was not known for his good sense and in a typical display of irresponsibility he moved the guy in on me. When I got back, he was staying in my house.

The guy wasn’t bad. His worst habit was that he liked to shoplift cans of tuna. I suppose that’s fine in the city but not in a small town with more churches than houses. So I didn’t let him stay long.

Anyway, here it was a year later and he was telling me what he did while I was away. He said that when he arrived he was broke and he had gone through everything in my house and in the downstairs bedroom, in a thick book, he found a fifty dollar bill and took it. He said, “I’m in North Carolina and I’m calling now because about an hour ago my conscience really started to bother me. I want to drive up and pay you back.”

No shit it bothered him! In some real sense the actual topology of the moment was not me shaking the book but rather shaking him. I imagine that I had him by his collar and his belt and he was about six foot four so it’s all stretched like a fevered vision but what are the odds that it was a coincidence?

What power are we capable of that I can go to get my money, find it gone, yet have it in my hand three hours later?