Bacon Scrapins – “I Count as One”

by Barry S. Wolfe

Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They’re tasty, but the ‘nutrition’ needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin.

The meal was done, the dishes rinsed and stacked in the dishwasher, pots scrubbed and placed on the drying mat.

I got dressed for a fall evening and went out onto the patio. I tipped the winter-ready chair back onto all four feet, slid down to the bottom of the seat, shoved my fists into the jacket pocket, stretched my Crocs out under the table, and rested my toque on the chairback.

Looking up, the night sky was a washed-out grey. Indoor lights were still affecting my sight. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, relaxed, and let my thoughts drift. No sights. The darkness behind my lids. Just sounds and skin sensations.

The fan blade on my neighbour’s compressor rattled irregularly. The huge pines on our two lots created a whoosh as the wind passed through them way up. The air was still here on earth.

Whoosh, whoosh through two trees, then a gentle titter of the dying deciduous leaves clattering together closer to the ground. There was a repetitive rhythm of the pulsing wind. That discordant fan blade was a nuisance to the rhythms of nature.

To rid myself of that discord, I opened my eyes. Wowsers. What a splatter of white dots. Planets and stars and constellations were now spread out on the skyscape above me.  A cluster of a dozen dots over to my left. An irregular bunch above, dozens scattered everywhere. Is that a y-shape in the middle left? The horizon was washed into the ambient light of the city lights. Now looking up!

That angled line of eight has one blinking red one in the line. Must be a jet flying high?  Nope. It’s not moving, just blinking. Look away. Count to ten. Look back. Nope. Hasn’t moved – still blinking. My oldish eyes see whitish halos around the piercing white dots. I look back. The pulsing red dot is still fixed in its position, still apparently blinking. Weird.

I imagine there’s a group of beings up there on that blob, and they aren’t happy. There’s such strife and red-hot chaos that the entire object is pulsating and may be ready to explode.

What an almost infinite number of white dots extending away, and away, and away, and off into space. All those objects, and maybe all those beings, out there, on some of them? Here I am, sitting in my chair, alone, looking up. I count as one.

I count as one. You count as two. She counts as . . . with almost 39 million of us on this country’s land, and thousands more arriving each year to join us. And yet, we’ve all got enough space to sit quietly, look up, and ponder. I count as one. You count as two. Could all 39 million of us count as one?

Maybe there’s a guy sitting in a chair out there, wearing a toque to warm his baldish head, looking far out into his night, and he believes he sees a pulsating red object in space. An object full of visioners, planners, pushers, and non-listeners. Maybe that guy’s also pondering, looking at us all sitting on the blob known by very, very few – as Earth?

Characters in these tales are fictional.

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