cellini's Diaryland Diary

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Chapter Whatever

I felt the slightly crushed soft-boiled egg in my shirt pocket and laid the fishing pole down on the grassy bank and I stood up. I walked to the edge of the woods to look for onion grass.

In the first week of March, very little had grown. I found some thin, young onion grass and gripped it tightly very close to the soil and pulled slowly but firmly. The stalk broke off in my hand, leaving the bulb that I sought still underground. Then I found another clump and tried it again, digging my fingers a little ways into the soil so as to grasp the plant as close to the bulb as ever I could. The whole bulb came up in my hand like a tiny onion.

The thin paper around the base of the stalk peeled off easily and I pulled this all the way down over the bulb, cleaning it. I laid the onion bulb on the lid of my tackle box and minced it up very finely with the big hunting knife on my belt. The brown egg shell peeled away, like the skin of the wild onion. I sliced the hard-boiled egg in half and sprinkled the minced onion on each side and I ate it that way, between swigs of the beer I had laid down in the cold shallow water.

The onion tasted sharp and pungent on the egg and the bitter froth of the beer in my mouth accented the onion.

I heard the hollow, woody cooing of a dove in a tree on the opposite bank and I thought of how good the dove would taste with the egg and the onion and the beer. Then I thought that it was maybe a shame that I can no longer enjoy the sound of a dove for its own sake, although as I thought about it more I decided that I liked the taste of doves more than I had ever truly liked the sound of a dove absent the thought of eating it.

On my way home I stopped to buy some leeks and some bay leaves and some red wine. It was cheap red wine, but I have never thought of it as cheap since a $4 bottle of red wine tastes no different to me than a $30 bottle of red wine, once it has been opened and half a glass has been drawn out of it and once it has taken the air for a half hour or so.

When I came home I began to make a stew with the vegetables and with some venison I had butchered the night before and had soaked in lime juice and olive oil and pepper. Trish took up chopping the vegetables and I sat down at the table and drank a glass of red wine and then another glass and I asked her to let her hair down from the severe-looking pony-tail on the back of her head.

She refused and I went back to my wine and reading my email.

My agent, whom I had been trying to convince I had fired, had forwarded something promising from an editor who wants my new book but would like it a little bit differently and if its all right with me he will be taking it to the next editorial meeting. And then there was an email from my current publisher about how much they want the new book but for some reason after hemming and hawing about it for the last seven weeks they still need a few more days to put together their offer. Someone in Florida whom I had never heard of wished to take me pig-hunting with his pack of staghounds. I forwarded that one to Bob and replied to the gentleman that I was very much interested.

I ate my stew at the dinner table with the red wine that was mellowing out nicely, and she carried hers into the living room and then it was time for the children to go to bed. She took them into our bedroom and laid them down in our bed and laid beside them and about a half hour later they were all asleep and so was she.

The quilt and blanket were already folded on the back of the couch with the pillow on top of them and it was no trouble at all to lay everything out on the couch. No trouble at all. I laid down and read from a book for a few minutes before placing it on the coffee table, turning out the light and then I fell asleep.

12:44 a.m. - 2011-03-03

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