I went for a run to the town dock. My foot has been aching for days. I tried to start running again, and overdid it a bit on my first two days back. After a few days of rest, I was feeling pretty good and gave it another go.
My foot was feeling better. I ran a bit past the dock, and down the old gravel road to a white mailbox and turned around. On my way back I was confronted by a black lab. He is always out and about, and lives at an old cabin on the side of the dirt road leading back to the farm cottage.
He stood in the middle of the road. I tried to make friends by holding out my hand for him to sniff, but he would walk within inches, give a startling bark and then scamper back down the road. I advanced further, and finally his owner who was cutting the grass on top of an old red riding mower stopped in the middle of the road.
When I started my run I ran into a guy named Charlie who lives next to the farm cottage with his wife. I stopped and we chatted for a bit. I asked if I could still borrow his log splitter. He said his offer stood, and I was welcome to come by to use it in the morning. Once, I start running, I don't like to stop, but it was really no trouble, and I was off again in no time. However, on the way back, it looked like I was going to stop again, and I must admit it was in begrudging fashion that I felt obliged to offer some friendly island conversation.
Over the past few summers, I have run by this old cabin many times on runs around the island, but have never before seen the inhabitant. He is a barrel chested old man of about sixty or seventy years of age. He was dressed in old blue jeans and a flannel shirt, on this particularly cool afternoon.
We started talking about all manners of things. I always enjoy the conversation of complete strangers. I am eager to hear about what they do and where they're from, trying to assemble the pieces into a picture of their life.
Rick lives on Grindstone year round. He hunts most of his food and heats his small cabin with wood through the winter. He stopped at one point in our conversation meticulously eyeing a bird down the dirt road on which we stood. He sat atop his red tractor and told me stories of his life on the island, and his years spent in the mountains of Montana in a small logging town.
'Nice and peaceful here on the island. In the summer there's a lot of traffic, or what I would consider a lot of traffic, but otherwise nice and quiet,' he mused.
He told me of his back troubles and his upcoming surgery when I inquired about the 'for sale' sign on his lawn.
'I can't move ten feet without it hurtin' real bad these days.'
'My dad just had surgery on his neck, and he came out alright,' I said as I tried to offer some assurance.
'My brother lives on down the road. We don't talk much though. He's an overbearing doctor, and I don't take well to people tryin' to tell me how to live my life.'
I sympathized with him. I don't either I thought. I hate when people try to tell me what to do about anything. I could not help but think though that if his brother was a doctor, what a shame it was that he lived down the road and they did not speak. It seemed likely his brother might help him with back.
'What kind of doctor is your brother?' I asked.
'He is an orthopedist.' Oh, the crushing irony. His brother, who coincidentally turned out to be the man I stopped to speak with on the start of my run, was an orthopedist. Here I was speaking with his brother at the end of my run who had a bad back and needed surgery, but they did not speak and it was highly likely the one brother even knew about the plight of the other.
People are complicated in such peculiar ways.
I took a glance at the old white pickup truck on the side of the road with a snarled tire falling off a battered silver rim leaning in the dirt. He noticed me looking at it.
'Been there for three weeks. Can't move around so well, so I can't work as well as I used to. Havin' a hell of a time gettin' that thing off.'
I inspected the tire and looked carefully at the rim.
'I could come and give you a hand if we can jack it up.' He was pleasant enough and I liked his black lab, Tucker, who seemed to finally take a liking to me and was licking my hand. I felt a drop of rain on my forehead.
'I best be going. I will try and wander up in the morning to give you a hand.'
'That sounds good,' he said.
I jogged down the dirt road. A few more rain drops splashed down. I could not help but feel a bit fascinated by the story lurking beneath the surface about two brothers on a small island in the middle of a huge river, separated only by a few hundred yards of dirt road and their unwillingness to speak with one another.
I thought about my grandfather at home in Virginia. I thought of his ill disposed attitude toward my parents, and his stubborn, unruly, wayward, and wrongheaded attitude toward life. It is a shame the pickles people work themselves into in life.
Yes, I would definitely travel back tomorrow to help Rick remove that hub. Perhaps, it was the sense of comradery I felt with Rick, or some internal sense of reaching out to my stubborn grandfather vis a vis this old dirt road man on Grindstone Island. I am certain of one thing.
You never know what you'll find on a dirt road.
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