I'm Hurtin' in an Old Familiar Way

"...Tonight your memory found me much too sober, I couldn't drink enough to keep you off my mind. Tonight the bottle let me down, and let your memory come around. The one true friend I'd thought I found .. tonight the bottle let me down."

-Merle Haggard



It was just one of those nights. A night for paga. I do not have many of those. Very few in fact. The last time I got drunk was with Tayco. That was a long time ago. But tonight there were just too many thoughts and listening to them was doing me no good at all. There was no one else to listen to them. Even if there had been I am not sure I could have shared them.

So I turned to the paga. I do not like paga. I do not like how I feel when I drink it. I do not like what it does to me. But there is one thing I do like. One thing that occasionally I actually need. That is the silence. The numbness of my thinking. The apathy for just a few blessed moments.

When the nagging of my conscious eased off other things started to fall into place. Other things I had said I would do. I took much of the fresh meat around my own wagons and took it to T'zuri and her mother. Enough to make their next few days easier. I also took some fresh vulo eggs from the Spex wagon. Pacu was supportive and knew why I was doing it and he said he would take Salu and Pei on a hunt for my wagons and for Maeda's. Next hand we are set to butcher one of the old cows who will not make the move. I was hesitant without the salt to preserve the meat but with two new mouths the meat will be used and I am sure there are others who will need some as well.

I also took a pair of boots I had a leather worker make for Ani. I had never given them to her. I had not had a chance and I thought perhaps they would fit T'zuri. When she told me she was walking around without a shoe because of me I felt a huge amount of guilt for not realizing and putting things together in my head. I would repay that. They were soft and black. They would fit close to the leg and high almost to the knee for safe walking in the tall sometimes sharp grass. They had supports around the ankle and the soles were good leather but not too thick. She could feel the ground beneath her feet still. That was important.

I did not see T'zuri when I left the meat.. eggs .. and boots at the wagon. Probably a good thing since I had been drinking. I wanted to talk to Maeda but I could not bring myself to enter her private wagon without an invitation. Pain and loss were thick around their wagons .. so thick I could taste it on my tongue. I wanted to leave and get away .. it was too much like my own. But I stayed long enough to make sure no one was there .. save for the troubled sobbing/breathing from the wagon itself. Then I made my escape.

Perhaps it was the boots. Or perhaps it was the paga .. I am not sure but Ani was there on the fringes of my mind. I miss her so much. I miss star gazing with her. I miss seeing her things. I miss ... her.

Tonight the paga let me down.