George Washington was a dick

I was in the stately home fixing a display of fake plants and looking for my cat. My neighbor was a refined older woman, a genuine patrician. Her gray hair was parted in the center and ended in curls. She wore a black pant suit with large white buttons and a string of pearls. She stood erect and less walked and more glided across the plush white carpet. Yet she was friendly enough to me as she moved between rooms.

She announced the arrival of her husband. Holy shit, I thought to myself, it’s George Washington. I’m about to meet George Washington.

The two front doors opened in unison and Washington strode through them. It was almost as if he opened them with a wave of his hand.

His gray hair was pulled back into a tight knot. He wore no wig. He also wore a modern navy blue suit with a golden chain from one pocket on his vest to a pocketwatch in the other. He nose was thin and sharp, as were his limbs. He had a stern feel to him, like hardened steel just after being plunged into ice cold water.

Our eyes met as he walked through the room. His were full of contempt. I could almost hear his thoughts. “Are you trying to f**k Martha? Good luck, you little sh*t,” his eyes said.

I gathered my stuff. I was down with the fake plants and the cat had returned. With an eyebrow arched, he escorted me to the door and stood in the doorframe as I walked out. The cat scampered ahead of me and fell into an open-air sunken kennel. I could hear it meowing.

“How do I get my cat,” I asked him. With his eyebrow still arched, he wordlessly shut the door.

The tree

I met the governor at the end of a two track. Our destination was an abandoned cabin in an area flooded to knee depth.

Well, the cabin was the human landmark. We were really looking for a tree. It was a special tree, but it was difficult to pin down why.

We found the tree after a short hike. I marked it's location for her with a stick. Soon, other people would show up. Her staff, police, scientists.

The tree was barely the size of a shrub, sticking above the wat only about a foot. It was shaded by other, full-grown trees but you could sense its qualities. You could feel them.

Those qualities flowed through the area, affecting plants and animals. A large fish poked around near the tree’s roots, oblivious to me standing next to it. I poked it. It swam away as if in a trance. I could see deer gathering, watching, on a small hill just outside the flooded area.

“There’s a black bear over there that won’t move,” one of the other people called to us as they arrived.

I knelt down beside the tree, my knee resting on muddy ground. The air was full of dust particles slowly floating around and up.

The others set up equipment. We were going to stay a few days and needed to set up cameras and audio equipment to observe the area, and places to sleep. I rolled out my sleeping bag under the collapsed roof of the cabin’s bedroom.

Everyone else left. The governor and her staff had official duties, the guides to get food. That left me and a small child. I boiled water from the flooded area and when cooled, bathed the child.

I became aware of what can only be described as a low hum accompanied by the sense that something was aware of my presence. The dust danced to the tune of the hum and continued its slow drift up.

The hum got slightly higher; the sense of presence increased. The child and I looked at each other.

Pigeon, Missouri

The propane salesman had bright, red gums and wire Tim glasses. We’d walked into an open door to find him cooking breakfast.

He knew the short, curly-haired man I was with. That made one of us.

They talked about the health problems of Mr. Gums and Glasses. From the stacked boxes of insulin injectors, I took it that he had diabetes.

There was a third man sitting on a stool. He didn’t say a word. There also weren’t any propane cannisters. There also wasn’t a parking lot. No sign. And the doorway we walked in was in the middle of a non-descript brick wall behind a couple of corn silos. We’d walked a winding, worm path through the post-industrial waste of Pigeon to get here.

The curly-haired man gave me started giving me directions as if I was from a neighboring town. He asked if I knew a landmark. He got a look on his face like he thought I was maybe from Mars when I told him I couldn’t even begin to describe where I was. That shocked me. I thought I oozed that I wasn't from around there from every pore.

The only thing I was certain of, as I woke up, was that I was just in the company of two of the fullest people I’d ever met and that we were all in Pigeon, Missouri.