wordsworth

Ellen: Do you remember reading a story together about a bunch of guys jumping in and out of a river during a thunderstorm never finding the woman they thought had drown but catching a bunch of fish nonetheless? I think it started with two foolish guys after a night of drinking. One fool, finding that his wife is not at home waiting for him, convinces the other fool there’s only one explanation – his wife has drown. And from there the story unfolds. The two go looking for a drag line to use in dragging the river for the woman’s body. I believe it was a southerner who wrote it. A southern woman. But it sticks in my mind. We were together. Reading about foolish men.

Dr. Camm is too young to be the Little Princess. The Little Princess, I think, is surely gone; if she were nine at the height of World War I, she’d be a hundred now. But Dr. Camm was about that age at the start of the second World War. And she really was a little princess in Alabama.

Last night she told me about her ‘five-gait’ pony, half Arabian, half Quarterhorse. Three gaits are natural – walk, trot, canter. The rest must be taught. She’d have to tell you the names of the other gaits. I was too busy last night trying to eat my frozen yogurt without shocking the tooth that’d become sensitive just that afternoon. Eating frozen yogurt together at the corner of Park and Morse downtown Dr. Camm transported us into the shadows of the Great Pyramids where she surprised the bedoin with her ‘horsemanship’ atop a camel. Imagine that!

Anyway, just bottled water for you and me tomorrow. And our imaginations.

Dad