Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

Egg DayI was up early a hectic dayalready putting on coffee tea water gathering foodputt’en my shit away stirring the bacon answeringpeople’s questionsBy God I couldn’t even think of taking a crap’cause there wasn’t enough time toI just held itgot me a little frustratedSo bacon’s donetoast in the dutch on the table andI’m flipping eggs to orderover easy over medium over hardone’s with just whites and scrambledsomeone says poached so I give three mean jabs to twoover easysyellow yoke dribbling all overlike grasshopper guts spreading out on a windshieldand throw it on his platehe says that’s not poached andI says Poached – to trample or cut up with or as if withhoofslook it up in Websters that’s the only kind of poachedwe have herehe stares for a second then moves onNext one says over easy then I remember no salsaI didn’t put it on the tableshit fer brains multi-taskingdamn everything ruinedcan’t have eggs without fucking salsathat’s like a cheese sandwich without the fuckingcheese andsure they had those kind of cheese sandwiches inWWII andthe Great Depression but they don’t have ‘emnowadaysI rolled my eyes over to the table hurtingbut there it wassalsa in a jar with no spoonso you could pick up that whole jar andget that low soulful sounding chugof salsa on eggscan’t get no chug ’a salsa with afucking spoon in the waytinkling against the fucking glass just won’t happenIt was beautifulI choked up a littlea tear almost slid out my eyehow’d it get there?and there she wasLaughing River Willow had done itI know ’cause she’s been doing stuff like that thewhole goddamn tripshe put that salsa on the table with no spoonsaved a goddamn breakfast like it was nothingeffortlessly like the morning breeze which carriedcoffee and bacon smells to everybody in campI couldn’t hold backthat tear slid out my eye andplopped onto a sunnyside upI wished I could have gone over to her thenand hugged her and saidGod Laughing River Willowyou are good you got that salsa out with no spoon andit’s things like that that help me out when I’m multitaskingandsometimes I get multi-task overload andyou’ve been doing it this the whole damn trip anddon’t think I haven’t noticed andI appreciate it andI’d say more but if I did say all that and moreshe’d of thought I’d been on the river too longand maybe by brain was scrambledjust like the eggs I was doing nowI smiled and said grab a plateand when she came overI slid her that sunnyside upalready salted with a tearYou can’t get any closer than a tearthen she moved over with that morningbreezesmiled andchugged some salsa on that sunnyside upOde to female swampers by male motorguide, “anonymous”boatman’s quarterly review page 13