Stone Overcoat - September, 2004
September 2004
August 2004 moved so quickly I do not remember much of it. Usually there are a handful of things that happen where I can remember them but that was not the case in with August. What had once seemed out of the ordinary became ordinary. I went to the bingo hall less and less because I won more and more. I did not win more money except in a few cases and all of the regular people even the ones who were nice to me started to curse when I walked in. I did not play with Lotus anymore because she seems to be coming around less and less. When I spoke with her last she told me I seemed to be winning more and more at bingo and winning more and more money and things were really seeming to be turning my way and she did not want to get in the way because my name around town was beginning to make a bit of noise as someone who had good luck and seemed to have everything coming to him. In a lot of ways I never would have thought that sort of thing would be a problem but I know not everyone likes when someone else is getting something and they are not. I worried Lotus would have a harder time being friends with me because her life would get harder because of the success I was enjoying. My farming was going better than I expected and I kept seeing bigger yields than I expected and the prices I was setting did better than expected even when other farmers seem to be selling their harvests that are just as good as mine or better at a lesser price. I know that probably rubbed some people the wrong way and I was sorry about it but I know it is also business and if someone is buying something from me and I am not forcing them to do it then it must be because I am selling something nobody else is selling. What worried me most is if Lotus saw problems because she was friends with me and people did not like her already for nonsense so hurting her would be a way to hurt me and to hurt her. I wish I did not have to worry about that sort of thing.
At times I wondered if keeping on my farm to myself was something that caused more problems in town for me. I wonder if people got bothered by me coming in and leaving and whenever I came in I seemed to win whatever I played and luck seemed to come my way no matter what. The pizzas I got for free were not the first things. I won a contest for a new barbecue and I won a 50/50 raffle with the fire department and even though I donated the money I won I still saw all the dirty looks. It hurt a little bit and I did not really understand why anyone would be jealous of me because those same people did not come anywhere near my cabin when my brother was dying or when my mother was dying. If anything I remember people in Screaming Ridge looking down at my brother when he was ill and looking like bathwater and looking down at my mother when she was sick and saying she had wasted her life caring for a sick son and burned out so much of herself she had nothing left and that was why she was dying. I remember those things. I remember all of them and I try my best not to let it bother me but it is hard when the same people scoffed at me for my bad luck and then scoff at me for good luck. I never thought much about luck in my entire life and certainly never thought I had bad luck while I was living a life without good luck.
Of course I kept it to myself about the casket I found because I started to think that had something to do with what I was experiencing and I think it was because I took the high road and hid it. Maybe if I had told everyone what I found and made a show of it I would have been seeing a different result. I have a feeling I know what that result would have been because I have done some reading on things like the pyramids in Egypt. I read about the Earl of Carnarvon who died not long after King Tut’s tomb was opened and everything in it seemed to have ended up in museums around the world. I think if someone broke into my grave I would not want them showing off what they took from me. I do not think I have the guts to kill someone for stealing from my grave but bad luck seems like a small price to pay for that sort of things.
I started leaving the basement door open when I went down to look at the box because I knew I would end up neglecting Townes again. It seemed to get worse some days and better other days. I would come in from working on the farm and I would feed the cat or I would forget and either way I would end up in the basement and before long the clock would be heading towards midnight and I would be exhausted. My sleep had not been suffering too much over that last while I do not think but I was not 100 percent sure because days and nights seem to be blending together and each one seemed longer than the next. When I got up from sleeping in the morning my eyes felt so heavy when I thought about the work I have to do on the farm but as soon as I thought about the box in the basement my mind perked back up and I was ready to get back to work so I could go into the basement.
I looked into the mirror for the first time in a while and I saw my hair had grown long and it turned grey and my face was getting thinner and even the beard I grew covered my cheeks and chin so much I could not see them. I thought it was probably because of all the work on the farm that my face had gotten thin. I had not thought about cutting my hair or my new beard in months and it showed and I figured I would book an appointment to get both cut so I could feel refreshed again. When I flexed my muscles in the mirror I was somewhat disappointed because they did not appear to be any bigger though I appeared to be thinner or at least to not have as much fat on me and I thought that was a good thing because I know carrying fat around the trunk can lead to heart problems later in life so maybe my work in the field was just paying off. Whatever the case might have been my body was changing and I figured it was because I was getting old and I know usually people are putting on weight when they get older but because of how much work I do in the field I was staying fit and strong.
It was a good time to feel strong anyway with September being when I needed to harvest as much as I can. I did not have a lot of concern about my first harvest because I felt like I worked so hard that first year and put the time in on the crops and I would see the results I wanted to see. Besides I thought the coffin in my basement was helping with my luck and so long as I continued to pay the right amount of attention to it I would continue to see good things come my way. It is so funny to think about luck now because I had never thought about it for almost my entire life. There would come a time when someone would ask me about my secret and they would say something like “You seem to have all the luck in the world. What is your secret? Will you share it with me?” and I knew if I shared it they would to my plot of land and they would try and dig it all up. I did not know if it would be like Lotus said and it would be the oil companies and the gas companies or our government but I would not be surprised if it had been some of them or all of them.
If I can be honest I have to say it felt good to be lucky and it felt good to win things and it felt good to feel special and like maybe the stars were aligning for me. It was the sort of thing that did not happen very often for me and I needed to think of a way I could make it happen for me and also a way I could try and spread my luck around. Maybe I could talk to Lotus and she would be interested in some extra luck. I knew if I called her I could see if we could find a time we could get together and I could try to tell her about about I found out back.
