Rue

I was a traveler in my day a business traveler, territorial in the grassy gaps. I sold bonds to clients hungry for bonds in the boundless sales call door to door among “folks.” It was a job I was born with. I had a heavy sample bag, rubber- banded stack of calling cards and leather binder (embossed) opening upon a vista of lamination, obligation rumination. I furnished a nation to the chemical engineers and wives of Schenectady, New York over coffee, over roast beef and piano, a kingdom, a nation, a principality, landlocked state, aspirational acreage spiritual fallout hideout. I showed a picture of my boy cross-legged in front of a backdrop of a glaciated hanging valley deep in the transaction among handshakes and signatures if it came to it This is my boy, I said Come to me. I was a traveler. Later I inspected the nickel mines near Sudbury telling my boy about the endless sheer black subterranean drop in the cage. I was telling the truth when I knew how to, as I had to as sales required, as stewardship permitted, long before disembodiment. I kept a picture of my boy in front of a cardboard tree and treehouse platform tacked to the upholstered partition above my desk. Once I brought him to the office. He stared at himself. “I had a treehouse then,” he said.