The sun hung high and mean in the western sky like a crooked cop leaning on a blackjack. Eighty-seven degrees in mid-February—an atmospheric felony if there ever was one. I was out there working the forest compound, sweating like a whore in church, mostly because sitting still leaves a man alone with his thoughts—and those are dangerous company.
I’m playing the waiting game these days, which is the lowest form of sport known to mankind. No rules, no scoreboard—just a slow, grinding stare-down with the unknown. So I keep busy. Chop this, haul that, rearrange the deck chairs of my own restless mind. Anything to keep from staring too long into the medical abyss.
Every little twinge in the machinery makes me pause. Is that it? Is the rat bastard back?
Hard to say. The body has developed a whole orchestra of minor complaints now—creaks, pops, mysterious electrical impulses that feel like someone flicking the wiring with a greasy thumb. One thing is certain: I am not as young as I once was, and the warranty expired sometime during the Reagan administration.
Still, the calendar is filling up like a booking sheet at a crooked casino.
First up: the Prostate MRI on the 14th, followed four days later by the grand unveiling of the results—like waiting for a jury verdict delivered by radiologists. Ten days after that comes the Freckle Census, the annual dermal inspection where a professional squints at every square inch of my hide looking for signs the rat bastard charlie might be planning a sneak attack through the skin.
Then a month of uneasy truce before early May, when the labs and the CT scan roll in like federal agents kicking down the door—looking for evidence the rat bastard charlie might have planted roots somewhere in the territory.
This, apparently, is the new rhythm of life:
Looking. Waiting. Worrying.
It’s a tedious business. Tires a man out fast.
But the sun still burns down on the ranch, the woods still need tending, and until the next medical telegram arrives from the front lines, a man might as well keep moving—if only to confuse the enemy.
And anyway, that begs the question, is a moving target harder to hit?
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