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So I've turned off winding Williston Point Road onto the two-lane part of the next highway where I can't pass but at least I can go fifty on new asphalt until I reach the four-lane, mile-long, thirty mph drag that finally spills onto the sixty-five mph highway, a sign that I'm about halfway home.

The car knows every lean and bump on this four-lane, and even with my eyes closed I can time my arrival at that fractured expansion seam that makes the tires skip like a stylus across a scratched LP.

But the tires aren't humming their usual Louis Armstrong what-a-wonderful-world tune anyway because John Denver and the Muppets are going on about Merry Christmas, Little Zachary or something and I'm wondering if I have a rear tire going bad, but it costs less and interests me more to wonder about those turkeys I've been seeing on Williston and I know I have a clear road ahead of me for a few miles because I just passed the airport, so I won't have any traffic to worry about until I get to the golf course entrance, so what would it hurt to lower both my eyelids for just the smallest fraction of a second against the noon glare?

And I'm wondering about the turkeys, wondering if that bigger adult in the pair with the four chicks would have challenged me if I had stopped today to take a picture. Perceiving a threat to the young, would that big bird have felt his heart race to pump courage through his veins, and after he had run me off, would his heart have continued to pump excitedly from the confrontation, would he have had a tale to tell, or is it all autonomic for him, would he have returned to business as usual, scratched something more out of the dust to eat and herded the young back into the long grass?

So at sixty-five mph I'm wondering about turkey consciousness when I remember that Ron Carlson short story about Bigfoot stealing wives, and that great sentence about bored housewives cruising malls while they wait for life to become lovely again, and I marvel at what a stroke of genius that detail about the Orange Julius was, but out of nowhere I remember a remark someone made about keeping the fights clean and the sex dirty in a good marriage, and I'm wondering if this is more or less than facile bumper sticker wisdom when I realize that none of this has anything to do with turkey consciousness, and I wonder how I got here on the shoulder of the road, headed at sixty-five toward a highway sign, and I veer left onto the road without looking behind me, but I get lucky because the highway remains empty for a mile around me.

On a clear highway, I check my pulse for ten seconds. Normal.

Watched: The Age of Innocence. I need some Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis, something where stuff explodes. Quick.

Reading: Because it didn't move as quickly as the first one did for me, I've set the second Harry Potter aside while I try Plainsong, by Kent Haruf instead.