The List

I’ve bumped into Phil at Idylwilde, at Skip’s, at our breakfast place on Main St. (he calls it the “deli”), and at the rookery. On my first rookery walk with Diane two years ago, Phil showed us the beaver dam that created the swamp. Phil told us he walks from his house across the street from Idylwilde, to the deli to the rookery and back to the deli every morning. Yesterday, as I was headed in, warm in my truck, I passed Phil, on foot, bundled against the cold. He strode down Littlefield Road, parallel and away from the rookery . I waved, but his eyes sandwiched between the bill of his hat and the scarf over his nose, were locked straight ahead.

I turned right, off the pavement and into the deep snow. I drove with my left tire a foot away from the iron rail, and the passenger side of my truck bounded by steep banks of snow. I followed one set of fresh tire tracks all the way to the trail that leads to the nests. I parked as far from the tracks as possible, got out and walked past the now-buried refrigerator, under the snowy overhanging branches and onto the ice.

When I returned, there stood Phil, peering into my truck.

“What a day,” I hollered against the wind.

“What?”

“Great day, isn’t it?

“Yes, but cold.”

“Not so bad back in the trees.”

He’d spoken to me the day before at Skip’s, but I’m pretty certain he didn’t remember.

“You walked back in? In all that snow?” I liked the compliment.

“I sunk to my knees, but the workout kept me warm. I see you walked in my tire tracks.”

I guessed he had turned to see me drive off the road and had decided to investigate.

“I walk here every day. With the deep snow, I was happy to see the tire tracks . I saw four blue birds … .”

“I’ve never seen a blue bird.”

“…a mockingbird, a cardinal, a red-tailed hawk…I think that’s what it was.”

“And you walk alone? No wife?”

I can only stand talking about birds for so long, and besides, I was tired of my own stories about Phil.

“No, no wife” he laughed, “I’ve been alone a long time.”

“You must have been married, what, thirty years?”

A complete guess on my part, but given his age, his eyes… .

“Thirty-two years, thirty-one…no, thirty two.”

“And you’ve been divorced for a long time, maybe twenty years… ?”

“Over a decade. I like being alone. Lots of men get divorced and jump right back into marriage. It can be catastrophic.”

“Catastrophic?”

“I have a friend, Ron, who lives in Houston. He got divorced and was thinking about remarrying. I gave him a list of things to consider. I think there were eleven items on my list.”

“Words of caution?”

“First, do you want to provide food and shelter for the woman? Secondly, do you want to be responsible for all her medical bills?”

Phil wore gray woolen mittens with a flap that allows access to your fingers. He pulled the flap off so he could tick off his list. The thumbs of his mittens reminded me of my father’s. They were wrapped in masking tape as if to repair tears. I didn’t interrupt him; I laughed out loud. He is not so much older than I, but still trapped by that old-time view of women. I grew up with that, not in my home, but as part of the social fabric.

“Do you want to network with all her relatives? Interact with her cousins and aunts and uncles, and her parents?”

“I’m pretty sure the correct answer is, no.”
Phil
Another nest photo