Tales From The Dark Continent: The Hippo

hippo

It seems weird now, seven years later, to return to the Dark Continent for these stories. I wish I had never gone there but people wish for a lot of things. The past tense of wish is regret.

I was talking to my former employer the other day and he told me that he quit hunting and sold all his trophies, and by trophies he means heads. He sold them all. It doesn’t seem right to kill something just to put it’s head on your wall but at least you can say, “I did that. I killed that thing and now you see it’s head there on my wall.” No one wants to say, “Aren’t all these heads beautiful? I bought them!” Now that I think about it though, it really is splitting hairs to differentiate one statement from the other. When a white man goes to Africa to hunt a wild beast, a team of baby sitters take him out, track the animal for him, point his gun in the right direction and tell him when to pull the trigger. After that they wipe his ass and present him with an invoice that ends in six zeros. So I guess it really doesn’t matter how one acquires their African animal heads; one way or another, they were all bought anyway.

The first big score of our safari was the Hippo. They look docile but the 7,000 pound, wickedly territorial, sea bull is the undisputed king of the water. Even the crocodiles and venomous water serpents leave them alone.

On the first day, we went out to the Hippo pond and waited around, and around, and around. My employer got off a few shots, injuring his target which, when describing a Hippo hunt, means that he pissed it off and then it disappeared. To get a kill shot you have to shoot them right in the brain and that is difficult because they sit submerged in the water with only their eyes, nostrils and ears exposed. To kill a Hippo, you have to hit a target that is 50 yards away and roughly the same diameter as a beer bottle.

On the second day, a wild gun battle ensued. The injured hippo, having gone mad from it’s wounds, ran from the water and charged the camera crew. A few more rifle rounds to the ole noggin’ put ‘er down but not before it ran back into the pond, dieing in the water as a final act of vengeance.

When your Hippo dies in the water, it’s a little bit of a fucking problem. For one thing, it’s Hippo brethren just witnessed the massacre of their patriarch, which they find both frightening and upsetting. They’re not coming out and they stand guard in such a way that suggests you shouldn’t go in.

It was getting late, the sun was going down on the Dark Continent, and the Hippo I was supposed to photograph was at the bottom of the pond. I don’t know who thought retrieving it from the water with a helicopter was a good idea but, sure enough, a helicopter arrived all chop chop chop and gail force winds, to hoist the Hippo onto dry land. A discussion was held with the land owner, the trackers and the pro hunters who were actually in charge of this adventure, and it was decided that Crazy Barefoot Man would climb in his tiny canoe, that he paddled with his hands, and paddle on over to the fallen Hippo, wrap some chains around it’s feet and then hand the loose ends up to the helicopter. I never caught Crazy Barefoot Man’s name but he was there with his Crazy Barefoot Kid who probably called him Dad. Both of them were white and ran through the bush in their bare feet, somehow avoiding the giant stickers that carpeted the ground.

The sun was setting on the water and it looked lovely with all the ripples from the helicopter wind and the silhouette of Crazy Barefoot Man hand-paddling his canoe across the surface towards the family of Hippos, one of whom had sank to bottom.

The bulk of a Hippo’s 7000 pound body is not comprised of it’s brain and, because of this, they operate primarily on instinct. What little brain power they have is allocated to their senses, which are very keen.

This whole canoe scheme seemed like a bad idea but no one asked me and off he went. As the little boat approached the middle of the pond, the surviving members of the Hippo family saw, smelled and heard the intruder. They sounded the alarm and silent, angry water tanks mobilized in the direction of the hand paddled boat. I saw then that Crazy Barefoot Man could actually paddle backwards a hell of a lot faster than he had been paddling forward. He made a hasty retreat and the helicopter was sent home.

On the third day we left the lodge at 5:30am and sat in the back of a pickup for half an hour while we were driven back to the scene of the Hippo. During the night, the smell of death had permeated the water, choking the surviving Hippos until they forgot about being sad and grew more concerned over being grossed out. They were too disgusted to eat breakfast so they left the pond in search of greener pastures.

As the first rays of golden sunlight spilled over the horizon, we arrived at the pond ready to do battle, and by “we”, I mean an army of 15 Africans had been assembled to wade out in the water, tie chains to the now bloated and floating dead Hippo’s feet, and tow it back to the sandy beach where all the Americans and white Afrikaners waited patiently. Crazy Barefoot Man was there too but he didn’t bring his canoe.

Believe it or not, 7000 pounds of floating dead Hippo really doesn’t weigh anything. They towed it along effortlessly until it’s bloated sides started to drag the bottom and then 7000 pounds suddenly weighed a lot. A safari outfitted Toyota Hilux pickup, the same one we had just ridden in, was backed up to the shore and the chains were attached to the come-along winch on the back bumper. Moving dead animals is serious business in this part of the world.

Once freed from it’s watery grave, the carcass of the Hippo ceased to pollute the water and began at once to pollute our air, still seeking revenge for it’s untimely death.

The same team of men who were sent into the pond were now assigned the task of making the Hippo “photo ready”, which meant doing things like cleaning all the blood from it’s orifices, scraping barnacles and other unsightly debris from it’s body, prying it’s jaws open with a hydraulic car jack, thereby releasing a terrific stench into the morning air, and cleaning the swamp out of it’s mouth so that my employer could stick his head in there and tell me to take his picture.

I was supposed to wait until the Hippo was officially released from it’s hair and makeup chair to commence photography but I shot every detail of everything, all the while my employer saying “Just wait, you don’t need to shoot that.”

When the Hippo was finally deemed ready for it’s 15 minutes of fame, my employer knelt behind it, Pedorseli 45/70 hoisted over his shoulder. He looked straight into the camera and said “Isn’t it magnificent!”

Forgetting

Many times during my nightly ritual of washing my face and brushing my teeth, I’ll zone out and change the way I think about the passage of time. Instead of dwelling on what I have to do tomorrow or counting the shopping days until Christmas, I start to ponder my life in terms of the products sitting around the bathroom sink.

I’ll look at a new bottle of facial cleanser and wonder what news worthy events will happen during the time it takes to use it up. I’ll look at my tube of toothpaste and wonder if I’ll be rich by the time it’s gone. That bottle of hairspray is about half used up, maybe someone I know will die before it gives it’s last squirt. This mineral makeup seems to last forever, I wonder if I’ll still have it when I retire?

I pass long minutes mindlessly sawing a toothbrush back and forth across my teeth and wondering if the apocalypse will be upon us before I run out of dental floss. For all the time spent doing these meaningless calculations, I’ve never been able to say “Yeah, see there, I knew Grandma wouldn’t make it to the end of my eye liner”, because, despite all my hard work, by the time I walk out of the bathroom, I’ve totally forgotten what I just spent the last 15 minutes thinking about. For that matter, never do I even remember that I’ve contemplated such things until the next time I’m standing there, removing my eye makeup, and I start to wonder if I’ll still be driving the same car by the time I run out of eye shadow.

The only reason I’m able to think about it now is because something unexpected happened, an evolutionary twist of fate. I was debating whether the next Haley’s Comet would appear before I swished my last mouth full of fluoride rinse and I wondered why I only thought about this stuff when I was standing at the bathroom sink. Why don’t I wonder about it the rest of day?, I thought, and it was then that I realized: the rest of day I didn’t even know I had this weird habit because I forgot about it when I wasn’t doing it.

That got me worried about other weird things I might do and then forget about. What if every time I chewed gum, I compulsively stuck it to the inside of car door handles and then forgot all about it the moment I walked away? What if I like to sing The Star Spangled Banner at top volume in the grocery store? Do I give it a second, mortified, thought on the drive home? Nope, forgot all about it by the time my butt hit the driver’s seat.

Oh my, I thought, shit! How will I ever know what I do all day? I still don’t know what happens on my drive to work but this afternoon I caught myself standing in front of the fridge wondering: if I broke my arm right now, would it heal before mold grows on the cheese?

 

Tales From The Dark Continent: International Ass

South Africa is the queen mother of all brothels.

When you talk to a man with soft hands who claims to have killed an elephant, you have to wonder what reason a man with soft hands has for doing such a thing. Unlike Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes, elephants are not high on the 1st world list of threats to humanity.

My job was to portray the gentlemanly sport of big game hunting as genteel and aristocratic, which is not at all like it really is. What it is, is paying for pussy. I mean how else does a man with soft hands end up with an elephant head on his wall?

My employer wanted me to make him look important and distinguished. He wanted to make sure the world knew of his international exploits, so long as they met the first two criteria. My photographs of him have been published in prestigious hunting magazines that are read by tricks everywhere. I guess that makes me famous.

I did my job perfectly. He knew I would and this is why I got the gig, but I wasn’t happy.

My employer, who usually looked to me for council, had become deaf in both ears and was making an international ass of himself. An adolescent boy with a rifle; spending big money to kill big animals, running his mouth like a fool and fucking his mistress who was a carbon copy of his wife. I would have let all this slide, had he been nice to me, but seeing as how that was evidently not part of the plan I decided to show him what big game hunting looked like to me.

I shot his photos, the ones he wanted, and then I shot my photos, the ones I wanted him to see. For every one magazine ready portrait, I shot hundreds of gruesome images: tongues lolling from bleeding mouths, heads with lifeless eyes hanging from the back of flat bed trailers, pools of blood in the sand, ripped skin.

Tales From The Dark Continent: Smothering Silk

I was commissioned to photograph an ego maniac’s big game hunt in South Africa. It seemed like a bad idea, but it also seemed like a free trip to Africa.

What kind of idiot fool would say no to a free trip to Africa?!                                                                                                                                                           On the other hand, what kind of idiot fool would say yes?

It took 27 hours to reach our destination on the dark continent and, even though our crew rolled in at 4:00 in the morning, we were greeted at the lodge by a cheerful welcome committee. They presented us with snacks and tall glasses of a fruity potion that tasted like air freshener. I sipped at my Glade Hawaiian Breeze and thought of motel rooms with pineapple bed spreads and torn curtains.

Other workers gathered our luggage and toted it to our cabins. “Be careful walking on the lighted paths at night”, they warned us, “The light attracts insects and the insects attract frogs and the frogs attract Black Mambas, so watch where you put your feet.”

There were some other things our hosts failed to mention, like what to do about the palm sized spider poised directly over the bed. It was working a crossword puzzle and knitting a sweater while waiting for the perfect moment to repel from the ceiling. Spiders have lots of eyes so they are good at multitasking. Arachnid motives, however, are difficult to discern. This one wanted to turn my face into a cocoon, or maybe not.

“Cocoon” – a 6 letter word for Smothering Silk.

Too tired to care, I fell asleep and was not bothered by the twinkle of round lemur eyes peering through the window.

Tales From The Dark Continent: Baboons

The dark hills of South Africa are filled with baboons. They hide in trees, scanning the landscape with human eyes, barking monkey messages to their monkey brethren and smiling broadly so the sun glints off their razor sharp lion teeth. To hunt a baboon is both murderous and futile. While a human predator camps out in the bush, waiting for an unsuspecting beast to wander in front of his gun, the baboons are stripping his truck and using the parts to build a spaceship.

Troops of baboons crowd the shoulders of the highway; making obscene hand gestures and waiting for food scraps, live chickens or unwanted children to be thrown from the VW Buses rattling non-stop up and down the wrong side of the road. You never, ever see a dead baboon in the road. They don’t get hit by cars. The same cannot be said of dogs or boa constrictors but baboons understand traffic laws. A baboon always knows who has the right of way.

While it is not uncommon to see unemployable men camped in front of the general store; cooking fowl meat with a butane lighter and pissing in a Coke bottle, this is not a fate that would befall a baboon. They don’t smoke dope, grow delirious from malaria, or live in shanty towns. A baboon does not call plywood and a tarp with a house number a house, nor is it a master of exploitation. A baboon knows it’s place in the scheme of things.

A successful predator in any environment, this intelligent, albeit ugly, lion-monkey is a marvel of nature. If I were you, I wouldn’t fuck with the baboons. They know where you live.

Dead Ringer

My Mom called me this morning to ask about the dead body I found last night.

“Yes, that is what I found, right in the middle of the road.”

“How do you know he wasn’t just sleeping?”

“Really?”

“Well…”, she pressed on, “you’re not saying much, how do you know he was dead and not just passed out?”

“Because his legs were on backwards” I told her.

“Yeah, but how….”

“ He was dead”

“But…”

“Dead”

(silence)

“Why don’t you have anything more to say about it?”

here we go

“Because there’s nothing more to tell.”

At 3:00 this morning, while speeding along at 75mph, I swerved to avoid hitting what I thought was a laundry bag of clothes, but what turned out to be a clothed bag of meat, sprawled in the middle lane of I-16.

A man wearing all black, who was apparently walking down the middle of the highway, was struck and killed by a passing vehicle.  Not my vehicle.  The cops checked my car for guts and hair. They didn’t find any.

Some folks really know how to ring in the new year.

Auld Lang Syne.

Farewell stranger.

Girl Business

I’m pretty sure a mule kicked me in the back while I was sleeping. I had designs on today and they did not include hoof prints or unleashing the viscous mega-bitch within. My plan was to meet Dean at a seedy and undisclosed location for a little quality time, e.g, uncensored conversation and a roll in the hay, while pretending to be “at work.” My work is complicated and, you know, I have needs.

In the past, I rarely gave much thought to this kind of unplanned interruption. I was on the pill for 20 years, having devised an impressively ingenious plan for convincing my mom to let me start taking them at the age of 14. My gears turned like clockwork and life was good until one day, two years ago, when my hair started falling out. By the handful, by the brush-full, by the drain-full and by the trash-can-full; it wasn’t funny. In a blind panic, I rounded up all the prescription drugs cluttering my bathroom sink and banished them to the trash. While continuing to shed like a cancer patient, leaving a sad trail of hair everywhere I went, I decided that a copper IUD would be the best solution to maintain my lifestyle without the risk of coming home with condoms in my briefcase. Ten years of no-brainer birth control; for a $1000 it seemed like a steal. Babies, after all, cost way more than that.

The doctor warned me that some things would change. “Most women complain of heavier periods and more severe cramping” she told me. “Good, fine, whatever”, I said, “When can you get me in?”

I honestly had no idea that she was being serious or that I could undergo such a freakish transformation without ending up in the hospital. What used to be a minor, two day annoyance has now become a week long blood bath that descends on my lady parts like a chapter from the Old Testament. It comes and goes with the ferocity of a biblical plague, showing no regard whatsoever for silly little things like my plans. I never used to worry about rescheduling my shenanigans but now I would surely leave any motel room looking like a crime scene and I certainly wouldn’t want to go swimming in shark infested waters.

Gone are the days of being carefree, here now are the days of living in constant fear of a mortifying “incident”, a tampon failure, an unexpected disaster; the kind of thing I used to fret about in middle school. I drove to Boulder a couple months ago and 7 hours into the trip, while inching along through Denver during rush hour traffic, I began to suspect that trouble might be brewing. Two hours later, when I finally made it to the Days Inn, I practically fell out of my car and, to my horror, realized I was sitting in a saucer sized red puddle. I had driven nearly 500 miles, my back was killing me, I was dizzy and hungry and now I had to try to speak coherent English to a hotel desk clerk with what was sure to be a matching stain on the back of my pants. I was tying a jacket around my waist and Carl was like “ummmm”, I cut him off in mid-mumble, “You say a word about this to anyone and you’ll be hitchhiking home!” The desk clerk was rambling on about the pool and continental breakfast while little birds tweeted around my head. As the world started to black out, I snatched the key from his hand, staggered to the elevator and collapsed on the floor of my room. This is my life now; wearing bloody clothes in public and complaining to my friends who look at me like I’m embarrassing them. On the upside, my hair grew back and has now returned to it’s former unkempt glory.

When I first told Dean about the IUD, I said “Don’t worry, the brochure says you shouldn’t even notice it.” “I bet I can dislodge that fucking thing”, was his reply. Turns out he was almost right. While nothing has officially been “dislodged”, he routinely complains of being jabbed. I suppose I should feel a degree of empathy for his ordeal but, being a bit of a sadist, it really turns me on so I order him to fuck me harder. He’s a big boy, he can take it.

The Rose

A stranger walked into the woods and away from his life. He had given up on the world of the living. He walked with an empty heart, deeper and deeper into the forest, paying no attention to any compass; there was no reason to go back the way he had come. He walked until the sounds of the city fell away; until the sun faded and the moon shone with a fierce white light. Wolves howled and night birds screeched. The sounds of water could be heard, madness descended on the land and into the stranger’s mind. He found a place to sit and wait for the forces of nature to take him to another plane.

He sat on the damp ground with the tendrils of a vining weed curling around his boots.  Footsteps of nocturnal predators surrounded him and bats flew silently overhead. He sat and waited, knowing that the claws and teeth of a hungry beast would be upon him soon enough. A tri-colored snake sat coiled on a branch above his head. He beckoned to it with his broken thoughts. A lightening fast strike from the serpent would be followed by an eternity of peace. He waited.

The stranger waited for death to find to him but on this night he would not be found. He laid down and did not object when spiders crawled onto his face. Sleep came over him and when the first rays of morning sun touched his eyes he was startled by the presence of a tiny rose. An unlikely plant to be growing there, it was barely alive from being choked by the vines but, even so, had managed to send up one tiny bloom that glowed red in the sunlight.

The stranger stared at the tiny flower, his face reflected in a single dew drop clinging to it’s petals. He sat up and cleared away the vines so that the little plant could get more light and air. It rained often in the forest and all green things grew very rapidly, especially the vining weeds. By the time the sun was setting in the west, the tiny rose had become more robust and vines were once again curled around it’s base.

The next morning, and for countless mornings, the stranger awoke on the ground next to the rose. He would tear the vines away to give it room to grow. With the help of the stranger, the rose flourished; turning it’s velvet blossoms towards the warm rays of sun.

The stranger no longer waited for death to find him and he became intent on serving the rose. Though it never thanked him, the stranger desired only to sleep under the stars looking forward to watching the rose unfold in the morning light.

The rose did only as it’s nature intended it to do. It fed on the sun and the rain; growing stalks of deep green leaves and razor sharp thorns, topped by silky red flowers. The rose never knew the perilous nature of it’s existence nor did it give any thought to the assistance that made it’s life possible. It did not feel for other living things, it knew only warmth and growth, it did what roses do.

Seasons passed and the stranger grew old. But even in the autumn of his life, with gnarled hands and bent knees, he fought the strangling vines; tearing them from the ground so that the rose may live.

One morning the sun burst over the horizon, illuminating the rose and filling all the dew drops with rainbows of refracted light. The forest shone like a cathedral but the stranger did not stir. Light fell on his face but his eyes did not open. His chest did not rise and fall. He did not wake from his slumber and clear away the vines.

As the sun moved across the sky, the vining weeds wrapped their tendrils around anything they could reach. By noon the stranger’s face was obscured and his arms bound securely to the ground. Carnivorous insects marched to him in straight lines. The rose continued to flourish and bloom even as the vines began to curl around it’s thorny stalks. It did not know to be afraid or to mourn for what had been lost to it. It knew only to grow in the sunlight and so it carried on. By the following day the strangling vines had wrapped themselves through every stalk of the beautiful bush yet the rose felt no sadness. The great stalks began to wither, leaves turning brown and perfect red flowers falling to the ground as the vines choked the life from the rose.

The rose did not grow angry at it’s fate. It simply was and then it was not. It did what roses do; returning to the forest floor with all the living things that had gone before.

Pactiser Avec Le Diable

Look it up if you don’t know what it means. I would also like to point out that French is the language of skunks. No joke, it really is. I once knew a skunk and, while many people mistook it for a kitten, a brief interaction, and a translator with a keen nose, is all that was required to pick up on a refined sensibility and impeccable manners.

Hello Tribe.

I thought I would dish up something nice, something to get you inspired to go bleed some ink; to splash your thoughts across a page that, in an unnamed time frame, will be retrieved from a landfill and cataloged as evidence of our great demise.

Is it working?

I don’t write in notebooks because I live with people who can read! Think about that.

The truth is; I don’t have a method, I don’t write a certain number of words per day and I certainly don’t write them on paper. I did, however, take English in high school, so there’s that at least.

I type with three fingers and, whatever gibber jabber comes out, it doesn’t come from me. I consult the tarot, commune with the dead and channel ideas from other dimensions.

I once recounted the details of a horrific murder to which there were no witnesses. I knew the victim and, after her ghost scared the shit out of me in the middle of the night, I spent three days asking her what she wanted me to say. At the end of the 3rd day she started talking and I tapped out 3471 words on the screen of my iPhone while laying in bed. You can read that story here if you like.

I am of the opinion that practice makes proficiency but it doesn’t make art. Genius can be facilitated but not taught. Don’t take my word for it. I’m just a smart ass with a sinister gift, after all. Try it for yourself. Forget all that brain-space wasting shit that you know and let a dragonfly alight on your finger.

The Way Down

   There is a painting of us somewhere. We just don’t know where. And it’s not really of us. Well, it sort of is. You’ll see.

     During the spring of another era, I bled to death in a cabin east of the Mississippi. My unborn daughter drowned in my womb and an owl flew down from it’s tree in the middle of the day. I never knew the person my child might have been. Apparently, she wasn’t anyone at all. A midwife was there but rags with ointment and hot water were no match for a breech birth. Dean looked on but there was nothing he could do. Finally the nurse turned to him and said “it’s no use.” She packed her things and left him with the mess. It wasn’t fair. Across the way, a young girl lived alone. She was crazy and blind, both her parents were taken with the fever. Her name was Unfortunate and she would sit in the dirt singing songs to herself. As the midwife walked away sad words floated in the air “that’s the way it goes, that’s the way…” Some endeavors just aren’t meant to be. It’s not true what they say about catching a cold. It’s children that’ll be the death of you.

     Dean, I don’t know what his name was then, turned to booze and whores to calm his despair. Five years later a woman with no last name woke up next to a man who had died in the night. She took his wallet on her way out the door. There was nothing in it.

     My car is little and efficient. It has front wheel drive and I like to take it places where it shouldn’t go. I snapped out of my visions and realized I was driving too fast down a steep mountain, on a winding dirt road, in the rain. Willow trees slapped the windshield. The voice from the stereo was mine but coming from someone else entirely. Her name is Gillian and, like me, she is the spawn of a midnight pact between a young woman and a drummer. “Some girls are bright as the morning” she sang “and some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind.” The wipers swiped at the rain and then snagged a wisp of willow, smearing green across the glass.

     In Oregon the ocean washes jellyfish up on the beach. They are nature’s gooey land mines. Even the dead ones will sting you and the stringy fuckers are see-through. The crabs aren’t afraid of them though. Tiny hermit crabs, swimming in puddles around starfish, are not even the slightest bit concerned for the watery Christmas-light tentacles of the jelly. You can walk on the beach, down the line where the water meets the sand and see any given metaphor. I was walking and came upon a shell. The idea that one can hear the ocean in a shell is rhetorical. With the tide splashing salt water in your hair, what else would you hear? I picked it up anyway and, to my surprise, didn’t hear the ocean at all. I heard rain and wheels on dirt. A tired voice told me “Step into the light, poor Lazarus. Don’t lie alone behind the window shade” It may have just been my own thoughts but, in any case, the ocean had nothing to say about it.

     No matter how much rain falls, you can’t drive your car off the mountain until you get to the bottom. In the meantime, cars full of lonely guitars and dissonant thoughts only go down the mountain.

     Deserts are places where oceans used to be. They no longer have a line where the water meets the sand because the water left, leaving the sand to it’s own devices. When the moon shines on the desert, scorpions grow restless and break into a sweaty panic, often stinging themselves to death for no good reason. A scorpion is equipped with an arsenal sufficient to win any war, even if it’s grossly outnumbered. It’s a shame then how many scorpions fall victim to their own poison. My car rested on a sand dune, parked in the desert for so long the paint had turned to rust and the seats were wire skeletons. Once I had slept in the back but now a wild dog licked her wounds in my stead. A coral snake slid down from inside the bumper and caught itself a scorpion. Headless and squirming, the scorpion’s tail flew up and stung the snake in it’s eye. Two of god’s creatures died there under the rusty car on a moonlit night. From the dashboard came a tiny glow, static crackled and the voice of someone who wasn’t theremused “of all the little ways I’ve found to hurt myself, well you might be my favorite one of all.”

     I thought I should really pay more attention to the road. Being perilously close to the soggy shoulder, one false move could send me cartwheeling over the edge. I would still be going down the mountain, technically, just not the way I had planned. It was all so hypnotizing: the rain and the wipers with the songs and willow trees. Perhaps it was the altitude or maybe the Indian cigarettes. Someone else probably should have been driving, but who? I hummed along with the music “sunshine and sorrow, yesterday, tomorrow…” The car drove itself home.

     A southern woman I’ve never met keeps a painting in her attic. She keeps it because it was there when she moved in. The painting depicts a man and a woman sitting on a bench by a window. The new resident of the home believes this scene takes place in what is now her breakfast nook and that the people in the painting used to live in the original part of the house. Once, when the woman’s father came to visit he asked her “whatcha hanging on to that ol’ picture of them niggers for?” “Hush now”, she told him, “it’s not right to call them that and besides they look like half breeds to me.” The old man clacked his dentures with his tongue “sure are a lot of clouds in here. I think it’s gonna rain”. “Dad!” she knew he would never change but still… “can’t you see the woman has green eyes?”

** song lyrics in italics by Gillian Welch