Lillooet, B. C. September 3, 2022
Dear Reader,
Here is a lesson I learned that culminated in the writing of a letter to assert my stewardship over my own life, house, soul, spirit, marriage and family. It was one of the shortest letters I have ever penned and might have been one of the most important.
An Irishman I once worked with at Canada Post used to entertain me every Monday morning as we sorted mail side by side. His descriptions of week-end-family-group socializing were of great interest and usually full of mirth. He invariably referred to the other parties involved as our friends. After a hundred Mondays had passed and I’d come to know the habits and mannerisms of his friends via his stories, I couldn’t resist a comment.
“Timothy lad, I've been married three times. Let me point out something that I wish to clarify. Your friends are those friends of yours that your wife has approved of and our friends are the sum total of those she approves of and all of her friends since birth.”
He looked at me hard while he processed the information and then his face softened like a boy who had just succeeded in catching an elusive frog.
“You're absolutely right,” he grinned.
“Now, that's according to nature and, in my own opinion, it is wisdom. Who better to protect the nest from all unperceived perils but the intuitive mother of your offspring.”
The following Monday, I was again regaled with tales of the ski slopes, but the protagonists were referred to as my wife's friends. It got me thinking that it had taken me until West of the halfway mark of my life to fill up one hand's worth of friends, whereupon they had begun to pass away. It's different for many folks and some would need both hands and feet to count their friends. However, spouses are not infallible and once in a while it is the partner who must quarantine all of those who don't cast shadows.
There have been occasions in my married years when I disregarded my own feminine side and neglected to act on intuition and censor a potential friend. In two cases, I ignored loud internal alarms and deferred to a nobly perceived over-riding of innate common sense for the sake of my spouse. One such instance led to utter disaster which is a tale for another day. Another instance was recent by comparison and far less intense. I have found that the motto: better late than never, is generally true.
The situation that I will relate now, occurred in the early days of my current marriage of thirty-plus years. As I was being introduced to all of my wife's friends, there was one lady who’s presence repelled me. It was an inchoate generalized feeling, so I ignored it for the expediency of not having to have a negative discussion with my new wife about one of her friends.
Soon, that woman married a man with many psychological problems. I privately predicted what the next twenty-odd years would bring to their marriage. During those two decades, I suffered the awful discomfort of watching my sad predictions unfurl as two children were born to her. My wife and I had a child during this period and I already had a son from a previous marriage.
Our two families attended a child-centred cycle of reciprocal birthdays, cultural milestone feasts and holiday celebrations. Between those planned events, I recall only one single physical outing of our two families. It was a stressful day and an expensive camera ominously broke. I shared very few interests with the lady’s husband and hated to watch him spiralling downwards. I felt awful for his children and annoyed with his wife for her role in creating an unhappy family from scratch by choosing that unfortunate man. I had seen their story before and had lived some of it as a child.
In our daily speech, my wife and I referred to those people as our friends. For two decades, the lady phoned our house, either to brag about financial gains or to lament her miserable, tragic marriage. All those telephone hours took away my wife's ear and it was fortunate that I was a both a writer and an avid reader. The heaviest burden was the endgame that I saw brewing as inevitable as it was tragic.
Her man eventually died from alcohol and substance abuse as her children grew into young adults. Our socializing declined but her phone calls soliciting various pyramid schemes and her invitations for us to visit her newer, bigger houses, slowly increased.
After a long stretch without seeing her, we were invited to a party by a mutual friend. At that party, we encountered the new widow and were also introduced to her boyfriend. She explained that they had been seeing each other for several years as the man raced across the living room before we were fully inside the door and started pumping our hands. Though I had never before laid eyes on him, I had strong intuitive warnings at that moment. There are always some people at parties who avoid mirrors, which is why I rarely attend.
In the next few heated moments we learned that they were followers of the Seventh Day Adventist sect. It was at an SDA church that they had met. That particular religious affiliation was new to me. During all the years of my acquaintance with the woman, I had never asked which church she attended.
The party was over within a few hours because all the attendees were past fifty years old. The widow increased the frequency of her phone calls afterwards and talked about her boyfriend. One night the news was good and spoke of future plans and the next was a laundry list of wrongs that he had done to her.
One day my wife and I were entertaining some new friends at our retirement residence in Lillooet. We’d driven up from Vancouver, where I still had a few years left to work as a letter-carrier. We were sitting at the kitchen table chatting, when a truck pulled up outside. It was the widow and her beau. What came next was bizarre.
It was announced to all of us assembled, that God had spoken to the widow and had personally led her from her Lower Mainland home to our exact present location in Lillooet. Her beau exclaimed that he had just that morning attempted to purchase a property right across the street from our trailer. He was a tall, pale-eyed Métis that would string groups of three words together with the ligatures, Lord and Jesus.
I reacted by going out to my porch to smoke tobacco and silently begin to process the facts, to whit: A stranger and friend whom I disliked had stalked us to a town we had chosen at random for our retirement after we had conducted a four-year, wide-area search for affordable accommodations in response to the insane cost of living in Vancouver; and upon their arrival, had attempted to purchase a house right across the street.
Commenting on my initial reaction of undisguised shock, the Métis assured me that he had nothing to do with the divinely inspired doings that the widow had just revealed in the kitchen. He claimed not to have known the day before, that the Lord would lead them hither and he further assured me that the widow was the one who had received the highly detailed and location specific divine instructions.
“The Lord is always working, Michael. There's a reason for everything.”
“The Devil is too,” I replied, “He never rested on the Seventh Day and just like rust, he never sleeps. So, he's at least a full day ahead.”
Having diplomatically decided to attempt conversation because I had learned that the man was a hunter and a fresh water fisherman; I rolled another smoke and mentioned a place nearby where St'at'imx people have fished continually since before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. It was my considered attempt to guide our conversation toward things more mundane.
“Michael, the earth is only six thousand years old. My Pastor told me!”, said the Métis in a birch-rod voice that would suffer no disagreement.”
My initial and purest instinct was to grab two handfuls of his checkered shirt and throw him off the porch. Instead, I looked through the glass door and saw all the ladies in my kitchen busily talking, which quelled that impulse. When I openly disagreed with the Pastor's time line, the Métis raised his voice and I raised mine. The widow opened the door to the porch when our voices had reached a sustained crescendo. Her face had a horrible, anxious look although the worry lines on her countenance were already well worn paths.
I toned my voice down and went back inside. The man followed me like a blood hound. Meanwhile, at the kitchen table, our new local neighbours offered to help the widow and her beau to continue their holy house hunting. Their kindness was extended at least in part out of respect for my wife and I, based on four years of our being good neighbours.
The widow and the Métis did buy a house in Lillooet and my wife and I were invited to the blessing of their house. That day arrived and when we went inside there was another couple from out of town and the Hungarian born Pastor, who served a rural circuit of SDA churches in the surrounding area.
The Métis was in bed, laid low from something he had eaten. I sat in the kitchen and had a wonderful, animated conversation with the Hungarian, who had read many of the same esoteric books that I had. He seemed refreshed by our conversation and refrained from giving me a sermon.
The Métis arose after an hour and we all held hands while the Pastor mumbled a bored blessing by rote. Just before the Pastor left for his long drive home, he admonished our host to use his Métis credentials to bring as many St'at'imx into his sheep-fold of faith as possible. I pondered the chances of success of that mission. The St'at'imx people were well aware of the work of archaeologists on their own local ancient sites. Those sites happen to predate the SDA sanctioned date of the creation of the world. When I mentioned this glitch, I was politely told that Satan had maliciously scattered counterfeit bones and bogus potsherds in order to mislead ignorant and ungodly archaeologists.
The widow had learned from my wife over the telephone, that I intended to pursue hunting and fishing in my retirement. Since those were both things that her Métis already knew well, she saw a potential bridge between the two of us men. With her feminine engineering and my own selfish desire to apprehend those skills, an unlikely relationship began to take misshape.
I attempted to focus on his skills and ignore his annoying religious obsession. His knowledge of bush-craft earned him a fair degree of my respect and I resolved to make the best of my new kamikaze neighbour. Perhaps, I reasoned, we could fish and hunt together in peace and otherwise live separate lives.
Later, I learned that the widow had already decided to locate near us, before the Lord confirmed it, so she would have a safe place to go during any future domestic chaos and have my wife’s sympathetic ear to receive her parade of self-induced problems. I had no doubt that she was willing to continue in her traditional role of helpless victim, as long as other people were there to absorb her pain and anger. She was a person who prayed aloud eloquently before each meal and had never missed a day of church. After the Métis moved to town, the widow remained in her residence in the Lower Mainland. It was made known that they planned to eventually wed.
On a fishing expedition with the Métis, he talked of hunting and Jesus, fishing and Jesus, substance abuse and Jesus, alcohol and Jesus and his fiancée and Jesus. I tried to focus on river fishing. He gave me the fishing vest of his recently deceased father and taught me a knot for attaching the hooks that were used for salmon fishing.
I gave him a DVD movie. It was a true story about a Cherokee boy who learns the hard way about Christian charity and Residential School. I was subsequently gifted with a salmon rod that had belonged to the Métis’ father. I reciprocated with an antique Belgian wardrobe. He countered with an old oak coat rack he’d borrowed from a church. I came back at him with a music CD.
Back in Vancouver, a three hour phone call came from the Métis, complaining about his fiancée. She was described as a suicidal, fickle Jezebel. My wife received multiple calls from her, complaining about the Métis. Evidently, he was a selfish, compulsive, manipulative control freak.
My wife and I decided to not take sides. They both had the Lord, after all, to guide their affair. Hunting season was looming and I was very busy in preparation for it. I decided that a sober hunting partner would be good to start out with and relatively rare to find. I forgot, however, to consider the difference between a non-drinker and a reformed drinker.
Another three hour phone call came from the Métis, complaining about his fiancée. She was described as a morbid, bi-polar temptress. My wife received multiple calls from her complaining about the Métis, who was an obsessive, passive-aggressive bully according to her. My wife and I decided to not take sides. They had the Lord, after all, to guide their affair.
Hunting season was looming and I was very busy in preparation for it. I decided that a sober hunting partner would be good to start with and relatively rare to find. I forgot, however, to consider the difference between a non-drinker and a reformed drinker.
When I had time, I drove to Lillooet and joined the local firing range. The Métis and I went there together to sight in my new deer rifle. He was gifted in that regard and within three shots he had my gun zeroed in at 100 yards. I tried shooting while standing, crouching, sitting, left-handed, right-handed, with one eye open and with two.
Those experiments revealed that I shot best while standing with both eyes open, using my left shoulder. In such form, I was able to place 50% of my shots into the vital area of a deer at 100 yards, on my first day. A salesman at my Vancouver gun shop had taught me about the two eyes method and had also encouraged me to shoot left handed. When using one eye, a person lost much peripheral visibility and could not follow a moving target.
I shot forty rounds on my first week. Three days were spent with the Métis spotting for me. On the last day, I went alone. Each day, the borders of the firing range were visited by big mule deer, who appeared to be immune to the noise. Each morning, one or two eagles cruised several thousand feet above and called repeatedly.
On my last day at the range I wore a medium sized K-Bar knife in an old leather sheath. While I unlocked the gate and got set up, an eagle circled overhead and several mule deer came up to the fence to watch. After I had shot only three rounds, a truck pulled up and parked next to my vehicle.
A pretty woman with long raven hair hopped out and I noticed was that she also wore a K-Bar knife. The second thing I noticed was that she seemed vaguely familiar. She produced a twenty-two pistol and a deer rifle. I stopped for a drink of soda while she set up some balloon targets at twenty-five and fifty yards. Soon, she was happily blasting away. When she stopped to reload, we spoke.
I mentioned that I was retiring soon from being a letter-carrier in Vancouver and that I had bought a place in Lillooet. She grinned and said that her father had also been a Vancouver letter-carrier. I asked his name, fully expecting to draw a blank. She told me his name and then we were both smiling. I had indeed met the man thirty years prior, when she was probably still a child. Her father was a great guy and a mentor to me at work during my first year.
The young lady told me that she had bagged her first deer only a few days prior and had started to have recurring visions of a big buck, when she fell asleep. I had one dream vision of a particular doe, which I later saw in the flesh about fifty kilometres from where we were shooting. I had only recently learned that it is not polite to ask where a person had taken their game. I mentioned this to the lady. She grinned and told me that she had bagged her deer up on Secret Mountain.
The Métis explained to me later, that the woods were a big larder for some people and hence they were reluctant to tell you where their own personal meat-locker was. I understood and quit asking people. I also learned not to heed to that type of information, if it was freely offered. The Métis was a canny individual and by using such unsolicited information, he instructed me to scout in the opposite direction. We planned to go hunting together in a few weeks time.
I went the way he directed and found a plethora of tracks. Many tracks of all sizes. Then I saw droppings that were massive, ubiquitous and fresh as a daisy. They occurred near a handy Forestry campsite and so I hurried back to Lillooet with this scouting news and congratulated the Métis on being so wise. I was asked about the size, shape and colour of the scat. It was determined by him, on the strength of my description, to be none other than genuine moose poop.
When I got back to Vancouver, I learned that a plan had been set in motion by the Métis, to have my wife cook a turkey dinner, which he would provide the bird for. The widow had called my wife while I was away scouting and had related all the details and instructions she had been given by the Métis. We two couples were to eat the dinner at my place on the eve of the upcoming hunt. Without consulting anyone involved, the Métis had planned and delegated everything down to the last detail. I was told to drive the widow to the dinner in Lillooet from her home on our way up.
On the appointed day, using an alternate route that the Métis had suggested, I got a speeding ticket. My irritation was offset by the anticipation of filling my freezer with fresh venison. After the turkey feast, while I was washing up the dishes, my sink hopelessly clogged. I remembered that the previous time the Métis had been in my house, my hot water tank had suddenly stopped working. Now, I was stuck with a prodigious pile of greasy dishes. My wife and the widow were directed to go back to Vancouver on a bus because us men were leaving to occupy a camping site that we had scouted.
I poured various drain-clearing products down my sink and nothing happened. I gathered all the hunting gear that I had acquired over the previous year and got my Suzuki ready to roll. I met my teacher at his house and we convoyed out. The route we took was along Lost River, three quarters of the way up Secret Mountain and over to Lake St. Nowhere.
We gathered some firewood at an abandoned camp and settled on a campsite chosen by the more experienced Métis. My education in sawing logs, splitting logs and quartering split logs, was begun. I helped my maestro set up his canvas tent. I learned which types of wood were good for campfires and which were not. I split logs until I broke the head off of his old maul, which I sadly learned had belonged to the Métis’ father.
My hunting teacher proved to have a very restricted diet due to a debilitating bowel disease. We hadn't previously spoken about provisions. I prepared my food box on the basis of feeding myself for a short duration trip and assumed that the other man would do the same. The things I brought were chosen from my own mountain-climbing experience of years in the Lynn Watershed. The first night, I was duly and sternly lectured under the aspens by a man my junior in years, on the importance of the sharing.
Everything my mentor shared was busted, rusted or close to the end of its useful shelf life. Everything I shared was either new or well cared for and in good repair. My chosen food provisions were declared to be incompatible with his tender bowels, except for the turkey dinner left-overs and my Scotch porridge oats. He shared a case of nearly expired No Name Vegetable Soup. We were at five thousand feet elevation and the ambient temperature in the sunlight was minus three Celsius.
We ate cold turkey sandwiches for dinner with tepid vegetable soup. In the mornings we had coffee and oatmeal. I found myself devouring a Landjaeger on the sly, after the second day. On the third day, I was nibbling a stick of butter that I'd brought. The deceased father of my mentor was always with us in the equipment that the Métis hauled out of card-board boxes that had obviously been long in storage.
The Métis measured everything with the precision of an OCD pharmacist. From the amount of salt in the oatmeal to the water with which to dilute the soup. He had a zipper-bag of medication trays and many reams of toilet paper. His gear also included a large heavily thumbed Bible with dozens of book markers hanging out like dismal lark’s tongues.
I had assumed we would both sleep in the canvas tent and I was told when we arrived that we would instead take turns. One man would sleep in the tent and one man would sleep in my Suzuki. I refused to ask for what should have been offered, so I decided to sleep on the ground outside by our fire.
I put down my air mattress and mummy bag right next to the ring of stones. I was instructed to keep my rifle nearby with the clip in and the bolt open. After a dangerous scare from criminal night-hunters in his past, the Métis refused to camp without a weapon within easy reach. I placed my rifle beside me, as instructed, in its frosty case and as the fire glowed out, the stars blazed brighter in the cold air.
Things went well until a hungry little vole decided to chew a buckskin lace that I‘d tied around my wrist. It was intended to be used to tie off the bung when gutting the deer that I intended to shoot. The voracious creature chewed through the leather and decided it would like a little salt off of my arm, as well. I slapped it over toward the picnic table.
The next morning, I discovered that all my packaged noodles had been ruined by the spurned rodent. I went off scouting for deer when some government Wildlife officers came to visit our camp. I could see the Métis showing his hunting license to the young man and woman in uniform. As I approached, it was clear to see that he was very upset by their intrusion. I walked up and shook hands with the young male officer.
“I wanted to meet the man who slept out here in the open. How'd it go?”
“Good, until the voles started chewing on me. Also, I discovered why they call them mummy bags. Warm, but you cannot move around if you have to, without taking the whole shebang with you. I think I'll be swapping that bag next year.”
“I hear you. I hate 'em too. Can I see your rifle, please?”
“Yes, Sir.”
I took the weapon from its frosty case and handed it over after doing the ACTS-PROVE procedure I had learned in school, to make it safe. The man hefted the rifle and admired it.
“That's a beautiful rifle. I wish I had one like it. Did you put that eagle feather on it?”
“Yes, Sir. That is not a decoration. If it's pointing at me, my quarry cannot smell me. If it's pointing at my quarry, I'm in a bad position. If it swings out right or left, I need to adjust for the wind. I chose that rifle because I waited fifty-six years to buy it and it is the one that will be handed down to my sons. I am part Swedish and I know that the next best metallurgists in the world, after the Swedes, are the Finns. That's a Finnish, cold-rolled, stainless-steel barrel and that's why I bought it.”
“Have you ever hunted deer before?”
“No, Sir. This is my very first time. This fellow here is a long-time hunter of deer and moose and he is showing me the ropes.”
“Well, I wish you lots of luck. A deer is an amazingly smart animal. Don't get discouraged. It'll come. When you're walking the roads and looking into the brush, look twice or three times, even if you have already scanned that area before. All you might get is a tiny flicker of an ear before your brain can furnish up the rest of the picture, so well do they hide.”
The Métis and I walked abandoned logging roads dawn and dusk for a week. We saw tracks, deer beds, piles of scat and acres of chewed vegetation. The only deer I’d seen was at the firing range and on the way to our campsite, in an area that was off limits to hunting. That was the deer that looked just like the doe in my dream. It stood a few feet away from my vehicle and stared at me for four minutes before very slowly walking into the pines.
On our second night, I slept fitfully in my car, due to my long legs. On the third night I was inexplicably invited into the comfortable tent. There was enough room for the two of us and my rifle. My tent-mate murmured, snored, mumbled and gibbered most of the night. He rose first and cooked the oatmeal. Domestic camp chores and incessant, paint-stripping talk of God completely took precedence over my deer hunting education.
Before much longer, I wanted to pull three large nails and two spars from our empty meat pole, drive to a nearby motel and ask the Korean lady to put me up for the night. When my ears had swallowed enough Jesus talk, I informed the Métis that if he had harboured any ideas that my wife and I would eventually join his church, that he could summarily forget it. That news clearly incensed him, but he fought down expressing it. I believe that his anger was mostly stored in his stomach.
On our last day of hunting, I saw a fresh moose track broken through the thin surface ice of a puddle in the road. We followed the track to a swamp. I learned that we had located the animal’s Wintering grounds. Not far away was a pristine creek which spilled down from an alpine lake, a few hundred feet above. I was told that the lake was probably the moose’s Summering place. We both got very excited and decided to return next hunting season to bag that moose.
During all of our many dawn and dusk patrols, I had been cautioned to not smoke until we were back at camp. It was because of the strong scent. On our last slow walk back to camp from the moose trail, I was fifty yards in front when I heard a horrible, tortured, retching sound. It was clearly human in origin but somehow alien to my experience. I spun around. There, silhouetted against the old growth firs, my mentor was bent over the road with his pants to his ankles. A stream of steaming waste arced out into the moose habitat on the down-slope side of the road.
I turned back around and stood guard for the stricken man. When his noises ceased, I began to slowly walk until I heard the sound again. I felt sorry for that man, but softly laughed at the ridiculousness of our overall situation. I rolled and lit a smoke. Hopefully, I reckoned it would help the sensitive nose of the moose from being overwhelmed by human stench. It might draw in a grizzly however, innocently thinking that something big had died there.
We packed up our gear and I was instructed to meet the Métis at a gas station in Lillooet, so I could pay my half of his gas, although we had each brought our own vehicles and had also used mine for two of our scouting trips. I was further instructed to help him set his trailer hitch up onto a new pine stump back at his house. As we packed up, I commented on our fireside chats and apologized, in case I had talked too much during them.
“I tell you Michael, I only take in twenty-five percent of what you say. It's from all the drinking and drugs.”
I drove behind him, to give assistance if he got stuck before we got on a safe road. On the return journey, I showed off the tracks that I had scouted a week prior. I now learned that they were cow tracks! There were free-ranging bovines in the Yalakom valley and I had driven over the cattle guard myself on my way up, dreaming of a buck. I was thoroughly embarrassed, but it had, in truth, been forty years since I'd seen a cow track.
After we were on asphalt, I pulled over for a smoke. I knew before I’d finished it, that I must tell the Métis and his fiancée, adiós. I drove to his house, helped with his trailer and paid him the gas money he felt was due. I went home and worked on my clogged sink for the balance of the afternoon. A bottle of hydrochloric acid gel, a funnel, a turkey baster, some safety goggles, surgical gloves and a tactical flashlight were the only tools required to clear that blockage. I secured my trailer and returned to Vancouver and my busy work life.
The Métis said something on the phone to his declared fiancée during one of their frequent long-distance fights within a week of my return. She repeated it to my wife in the usual post-quarrel phone call. It was inaccurate, untrue in the context used and tantamount to cruelly using me as a weapon with which to psychologically bludgeon his fiancée.
That night, I wrote duplicate registered letters to that strange couple, which informed them that they were both no longer welcome in our home nor would they be tolerated on our phone. I would return all the gifts that had been given to me and would not in future associate with either of them. The Métis psychologically wiped his moccasins on the backs of the people that carried him. The widow had inflicted him upon us, using her knowledge of my desire to learn hunting to leverage our involvement. I informed my wife and made it clear that it was a well considered decision that I would not alter. She was free to go to their place if she wished. She didn’t wish to.
I researched the founders of the SDA church and learned that a young woman who had been struck in the face by a rock as a child, had begun having visions. She married an older man who was a follower of one of the new Christian sects spewing out of rural New York State in the mid-Nineteenth Century. The new couple then formed their own sect. It was distinguished from similar creeds by its precise prediction of the date of the end of the world, the keeping of the Sabbath, fixing the creation date of the earth at six thousand years ago and finally, a belief in something they called, soul sleep.
The first prophesied date of the end 0f the world came and went. Most of the new adherents subsequently left in droves. The couple chose another date and that date came and went. Such complications inevitably arise when people try to decode Scripture. Only the author knows the true code, if any in fact exists. Amazingly, with time, energy and much technique, the pool of believers was increased and today the SDA church has waxed to millions of members worldwide. The original prophetess wrote many books and lived for a while in Australia. I deduced from my research, that SDA people may not easily be dissuaded from their beliefs.
A few weeks after sending my letters to the Métis and the widow, I was unloading some furniture in Lillooet prior to moving. The Métis’ truck appeared in my driveway and he suddenly came up the steps to my porch. He had my letter in his extended hand. I came out onto the porch and did not invite him in. He handed back my letter and told me that he did not accept it. I opened it, read it aloud to him and asked him which part he did not understand. I pointed out that there was nothing within the letter that was optional for him to accept or reject.
He said that I was scared of Jesus. I told him that I and my wife would no longer associate with him nor his fiancée. He began to ramble about the latest things God had revealed to him concerning his engagement and I reminded him that I no longer wished to be informed about those things.
Shaking my hand for far too long to be comfortable, he gave me a small religious tract. I asked him if he would take back his deceased father's fishing pole. He said no because he was absolutely certain that I'd become his closest friend. I said goodbye. He said his door was always open. I said goodbye. He said that it wasn't just going to be him that was praying for me, but that there was a whole group of people praying for me. I said goodbye.
He retreated to his truck and sat quite awhile praying hard before driving off. I watched his lips moving fervently behind the dirty windshield. I gathered the religious tract, the fishing pole, the vest and the old coat rack. I swore like a stevedore and smudged my whole house with fresh sage. Things always seemed to break or malfunction, whenever he or his woman had come around. The next morning, I dropped off all his gear on his front porch with a clearly written note not to return them.
fin
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