Cobbler

It started raining two days ago. I really didn't mind so much. The pollen had gotten almost unbearable and it seemed like everything including myself just really needed a thorough rinsing. Good spring rain. The kind where the drops are big and cold. From the car to the door and you might as well have stepped into the shower with your clothes on. Soaked to the core, shivering. It washed over everything, turning the street into a yellow river. Rinsing away the worries and the fatigue.

The rain was followed by wind. It blew all afternoon today. Pushing the rain on into Georgia for the farms. The wind carried the cold away with the rain and brought warm, still night. I walked out onto the porch right as the moon was coming up, huge and silver like it owned the sky. It almost seemed as if it was calling out, whispering.

I took the top off of the jeep, I don't know why I even bother putting it up. The thing is so old and worn full of holes that there was an inch of water in the floorboard. I like things like that though. Worn through, used and lived in. Like a stuffed bear, loved on until the eyes and nose are gone, ugly to see but soft and full of warmth to the touch.

I started the engine and drove off toward the moon. The air had totally changed. Warm now from the wind but still cool every time I found the bottom of a hill or hollow. Spring air and summer lakes share that property. Warm and cool spots, living up against one another but neither willing to change.

When I finally started paying attention I was all the way out of the city on a quiet two lane, the road turning and dipping. The jeep seemed to be enjoying itself and I didn't really want to stop. An hour crept by before I even thought about turning back and finding my way home.
I stopped at quite possibly the most run down gas station in middle Alabama to buy fuel and see if I could find out where I was exactly. It didn't really come as a surprise when the attendant didn't seem to have any better idea where here was than I did. He did suggested I go next door and "Ask the colored girl, she knows where here is better than most."

Next door was supposed to be a café though it would really be a stretch to call it that. Really nothing more than a wide hallway with a counter running the length of one wall. The "colored girl" look tired and probably was at this time of night but when she smiled it was genuine. Older but I wasn't sure how much, she looked to be fifty but could have just as easily been seventy. She carried most of the extra weight she had in her chest and through her back making her seem almost round, as if she might have a hard time lying in bed without rolling out onto the floor.

A simple request for directions turned into a three and a half hour conversation about everything from the right time to plant tomatoes to the islands she longs to visit if she could stand to be away from her late husband's grave for more than a day. Oh, and cobbler, the best damn blackberry cobbler I ever put in my mouth. The warm thick syrup washed down with ice cold milk, heaven.

It was one comment about her husband that really struck me. "So you're saying that Love is looking at someone and seeing them as perfect?" She sighed, "Nah child, dat's infatuation. Takes more time dan dat. Love is when you know dem flaws, when dem is bad tempered, where dey carry the weight, how dey weak, and broken. See it and den you choose to be infatuated anyway…dat Love."

If you ever find yourself on highway 37 in eastern Alabama in a little place called Fuller's Pike stop and fill your tank at the gas station, there's only one. The cobbler is worth every mile.