Before the walk Terry shows me a table
he’s built out of salvaged redwood.
I tell Terry my pickup won’t start.
He suggests pulling a spark plug.
I say I’d sell the damn truck but it’s part of my identity.
Terry says you don’t want to be one of those
writers with clean fingernails, do you.
As we start walking I tell Terry a wolf spider
perched, real friendly-like, on the back of my hand.
Terry says there’s no water at his house
or anywhere on Memory Lane.
I say our friend James fell last night and with
his bad knees he couldn’t get up until I
lifted him, sort of like picking up a fallen tree
by one end and hoisting it upright.
After a mile on the steep part of the walk where beams
of sunlight stream down among the high redwoods
we pause to inspect an old wooden water tank
where the pressure reduction valve is screaming.
I say it sounds like cavitation.
Terry says it always sounds like that.
I say somebody has been monkeying with it —
you can see the evidence on the adjustment bolt
how the threads change color.
Another mile and we reach the top
of Haskins Hill. We sit on the gate
eating red apples I brought in my blue jeans.
Terry uses a curved stick to pick up other sticks
and flip them into a canyon, a game he plays.
Terry says he got a rejection from Poetry
Magazine, signed by the editor.
Coming down, we keep an eye out for pumas.
We talk about ways to help people
who are too proud to ask for it.
Terry says we’re both hands-on guys,
we like to fix things. I say sometimes
people are scared to let us into the house
because they’re scared of the wild:
pumas, plumbers. Which makes us laugh.
Half way down Terry pauses with a hand over his chest.
He says he has mild fibrillation, nothing serious.
He says his heart knows hidden things.
Near the bottom we pass a man with a shovel who is
searching for a leak. We say we’ll keep an eye out.
Leaks, pumas. Terry says there used to be a pipe spur
at this spot, probably capped now.
I say you must know every pipe in these mountains.
Terry says, Not quite.
Reaching the highway, we stop at an empty house
with a locked gate. I climb up a stump and over
the grape-stake fence while Terry
removes two stakes and walks through the gap.
We check the meter, no sign of a leak.
Two dogs bark at us through a fence as we
check another meter, again no flow, so no leak.
Crossing the bridge
I say there used to be a lake here
when the creek was dammed.
Terry picks up trash along the road,
he always does this.
At the end of the walk, Terry says we’ve
probably started about six poems.
We give each other sweaty hugs.
I go home to pull the spark plug on my truck.
Terry goes to the trailer park up the road
to see if they have water to wash his hands.
