The Force of Anemoi's Lungs

Tru Value told me the next time they’d have the mixed fuel for their leaf blower would be today, Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.  When I got there the old timer who looks after the machine rentals, Frank, jumped right up to search the warehouse and came back empty handed.  It seems it wasn’t part of the delivery.  He went to check the front desk with his hands in his pockets. "Sorry."  “You know anywhere else that has em'?”  “Lowes.”  So I rented the blower, loaded it in the car and considered that it might have been helpful if I’d asked that question last week. 

I went up to a young man and a young lady in their Lowes vests, the moment I walked in.  The young man stared at me blankly when I asked for the mixed fuel cans but the gal piped right up and told me to head to aisle twenty-four.  They canisters were notably cheaper than what they charged over in Tru Value.  Gazing across the acres-deep warehouse of Lowes it wasn’t clear to me how Tru Value can compete against this Goliath.  This is probably what the local hardware store thought when the chain store Tru Value first settled in town. 

Back at the homestead, I have a lot of leaves to blow.  Our home is on a steep gradient down to the rail trail, down to where the water channels into a stream that flows to the Wallkill River.  I managed to blow clean about half the yard to the right of the house.  The left side down by the garage is still covered in leaves as well.  I rip the motor into a roar up right beside the car and lightly blow on all the leaves in the front yard that have settled since last week. 

All leaves are not equal.  Surely this is clear when they turn color on the trees in the fall.  Settling into a long, hard blow into the stone base that’s been built around the striped maple that is closest to our house you can see that leaves rot differently too.  Oak leaves retain their pale brown color, while these striped maple leaves that were so remarkably electric in the autumn are bitter black now.  It's the second time now I've cleaned this tree bed.  There’s a trigger to this blower and I gun it over and over again but still there are more and more terrible black leaves, perhaps year’s old leaves that have rotted together into earth.

One can’s worth, lasts you a bit less than an hour.  The motor sputters once goes on but you know your blowing moments temporal now.  From past experience I gun the throttle full force and blow whatever I can for all its worth, cutting a path through a wet patch that has yet to feel the force of Anemoi’s lungs for as long as these waning moments will last.  Coughing, gasping, and I’m done.  Twice I plod back up to the driveway to secure another can.  It takes nearly all of the third tank but finally “all” the leaves back here have been forced off the lawn and out into the forest.  Up then, in the stretch of land that rides towards our neighbors on the hill, uncovering slate and clearing rose beds, I run out of fuel for the third and last time.

Wednesday, 11/27/19