When I went to talk to Sarah this morning, I said, “Do you think you could mail me to America? It might be safer that way.”
She laughed, then coughed. Picking at the toast I had brought, she said, “Nae, ’tis a bad idea, Angus.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, to begin with, what would you do for food and drink…not to mention what comes of eatin’ and drinkin’?”
“I can hold my water a surprising amount of time,” I replied primly.
Sarah laughed again, but it was dry and wispy. “And who’s to package you up? I canna now do it myself, as you well know.”
So we watched an old movie on her little TV. We mostly watch old Westerns, which is how I know America to be wild and barbarous.
Partway through the movie, Sarah fell asleep. Once she was making that little-old-lady snore of hers, a kind of blippitty-whistle, blippitty-whistle (’tis a sweet sound), I went belowstairs, where I spent a very distressing two hours trying to package myself up.
I will not write of the humiliating failure of this attempt, save to say that packing tape and curly brown hair are not a good combination.
About the time I was recovering from another fit, I heard the front door open. It was Barbara-from-next-door, who comes in to check on Sarah every afternoon.
I heard her clomp up the stairs.
Barbara is a good woman, but she does clomp.
After about twenty minutes, I felt a pain in my heart and heard Barbara begin to wail. I did not need that sorrowful cry to know my Sarah was gone. I felt the bond between us snap in the very moment that she passed from this world. And so tomorrow and no later I must leave this house.
This all comes from Da carrying love messages for Ewan McGonagall all those years ago. Oh, Da! Why could you not have let well enough alone?
Ah, weel, that is all long past. The matter at hand is that I have but a fortnight to make it to America and my new human.
How I am to accomplish this journey, I do not know.