By Sydney Lea

The icy morning finds me in bed, engrossed in a book of John Singer Sargent’s water­col­ors. The thought of staying under the covers all but over­whelms me. Once a ret­i­cent sun crept over the hills, though, our dogs began their woofing and baying. There’d be no sleep­ing in.

Now, having taken them out to empty them­selves and romp, I’m daunted. The first of Decem­ber: I stand in the blow, behold­ing a too-early snow­fall. I steer the dogs away from our pond, whose ice won’t quite hold them yet.

It sup­ports other weights: I see the prints of a pigeon-toed por­cu­pine, and reflect on Sargent’s cru­ci­fied Christ, how His feet alone convey the pain of the scene. Then I come back to reality, think­ing of how that animal would gladly spare as many quills from its cassock of spikes for our dogs. The very idea brings this gelid wind deep into my soul. I con­sid­er the hours I’ve spent in the past year either extract­ing the quills from our pets’ snouts or waiting hours on end after our vet has sedated one or the other and begun the pro­fes­sion­al removal service. The fee is always high, but that’s hardly the worst of it.

This crea­ture has shunned our Hava­hart trap since Sep­tem­ber. We’ve often fooled por­cu­pines with melon, apple, or bark steeped in salt­wa­ter. This one, however, keeps mauling the boards on our back­yard porch, stu­dious­ly ignor­ing what­ev­er bait we’ve decided on. 

As I shiver, I visu­al­ize another Sargent: Moun­tain Stream shows a placid day of summer. Just now I long for such calm, the cold and the tracks having moved me to rage. It may be the same oblique­ly related rage that moved a neigh­bor to fly a Fuck Joe Biden flag. When­ev­er we pass his place, we always pray for no wind to be blowing, so the ven­omous slogan will be hidden in the fabric’s folds.

 If our seven-year-old grand­son were with us, he’d have no trouble parsing the words of the brutish sen­tence. Pre­co­cious, he might even sense the meaning of some other words, ones from an old-time critic about Sargent, the painter I’ve been pon­der­ing this forenoon: “His every touch was indi­vid­ual and con­veyed a quick unerr­ing message from the brain … a kind of short­hand, but magical.”

But why do I recall those words just now? I guess it’s that my mind, antic as ever, keeps vault­ing from one sign to another, and seeing in each, yes, a kind of short­hand: the hideous flag, the porcupine’s tracks on snow, the deft­ness of a painter I deeply admire—all are terse and con­tained, yet, whether it does or not, I allow each to speak volumes.

There’s an NRA sticker on the neighbor’s pickup. I loathe that crowd, but our profane neighbor’s family has lived here since before our town was founded. And believe me, I’ve thought about shoot­ing our spiky invader. 

However you look at it, fellow feeling can be a chal­lenge. To see those gnawed boards makes me so angry I could rip one up for bait. Maybe that would get him! I’d take him to that rotting old lumber pile by the river. Let him chew there all he wants!

I recall how I was taught as a child to revile the sin but to love the sinner, so I tread thin ice here. Perhaps we all do. I know I shouldn’t detest anyone or any­thing for being what it is. And I know I force analogy. 

But I’d gladly learn our nemesis was a corpse.