Hot Glue Guns in a Cop Killer World

You must not try to be too pure, you must fly closer to the sea.
- Sinead O'Connor

This past Saturday morning, me and Arle get up early to go to the flea market. We are going to peddle her creative wares, but there is a real possibility (read that: guarantee) that I will wander/ and seek/ and peruse. The ride down there is lovely; the Juniata Valley is lush now; the early summer drought of June having been bashed in the head by somebody somewhere doing some kind of intense rain dance. It pours a little almost every day now. The corn is 100 feet high. The soybean fields are green Volkswagen traffic jams as far as the eye can see.

Cows are fish.

Farmers raise their eyes to the skies and thank God. And Donald Trump.

The land here, along the formidable Juniata River- as she eases towards the vast Susquehanna, then rolls southbound into the Chesapeake Bay- it is ancient and rocky and wild and creepy. We get off the exit of the highway and pass the State Police barracks where a guy started shooting at parked cop cars last month. Later in the afternoon, he led the authorities on a wild goose chase down country roads. In the end, he wounded one senior trooper and killed another younger one before they cornered him against a row of trees by someone’s house.

They shot him dead as hell right there.

It was pretty much the only ending on the menu at that point.

I keep wondering if anyone was watching from their kitchen window.

______

The trooper that was murdered was 29 years old.

When I was 29 I felt invincible. I think it’s the only way you can be at that age.

It’s such a bright morning here: the idea of deer rifles and death seems so far away as we hang the right at the bottom of the hill. But it never really is, I guess. A simple sign on someone’s front lawn says ‘We Love Our PSP’. Pennsylvania State Police. It’s the only indication that something really bad happened here not long ago. One sign. But maybe one is all you need, isn’t it?