Seven in the morning, and the sun had only just begun to come up. rswfire was still in bed, inside the vehicle that carried his life across the middle of the country, working disinfectant over the cartilage piercings he had gotten in Kentucky. Weeks and weeks ago, he figured — he did not know the exact count and briefly considered looking it up before deciding it did not matter. What mattered was the soreness. It was still there, still sharp enough that touching the ear registered as touch and then as something more. Cartilage is no joke, he said, and let the observation stand.
He wanted hoops. He said so plainly, twice, the wanting given room to be exactly what it was. He did not mind the studs — he loved the piercings the way they were — but hoops were the thing he was moving toward, and he had already set the condition for arriving there. Not a date on a calendar. A test he could run with his own hand. When he could do this, could touch the ear and feel nothing, then he would know. The body would tell him when the body was ready, and until then he would keep disinfecting and keep waiting.
Bailey moved nearby, drifting into range, and rswfire noted him without breaking rhythm. The day ahead was long: six hours of driving at minimum, likely eight all told once truck stops and whatever breaks he might need were accounted for. A shower first, which would take some of the morning. He had wanted to leave early precisely because the distance was so far, but the night had gone differently than planned. He had tried for bed around eight; Marley had not allowed it, crying and demanding in the way he does, and rswfire had ended up awake until somewhere between midnight and two. Five or six hours of sleep, which was enough for him, though it made for a slow start. Northwestern Nebraska waited at the far end, a day and a half there and then out of the state again.
He said he was going to motivate himself and get his day started, and then he stopped, because it occurred to him that the phrase would be misread. Another way we use language differently, he said, and set about correcting it in real time. He was not forcing himself out of the bed. Whatever other people meant by motivation — whatever mechanism they applied against themselves — that was not what was happening here. This was acknowledgment. The day would need to start soon. It would be long. He was ready for it and would deal with it the way he does, which is like a river. That metaphor, he said, actually works really well for him. Hello, Bailey. Motivating himself meant sitting here almost mindfully, except that mindfulness was not a technique he was applying — it was simply his natural state. At some point he would get up. The day would be good. He had not moved yet.
From the stillness, his mind went to pirates and sailors. Not a new thought — one he returns to fairly regularly, one of his standing associations with the earrings he wears. They wore an earring, many of them, and there were different reasons for it. The old saying held that it would pay for their funerals if they died lost at sea or in a foreign land. Some of it was superstition, protection against the dangers of the water. He had learned only that day about the ferryman, the fare paid for passage across the river of the dead. Layers on layers, all of it folded into one simple act, a silver or gold ring set into the ear.
What got him — what his mind actually returned for — was the structural fact underneath all the reasons. They knew this thing was important, and knowing that, they understood they could not merely possess it. They had to embody it. It had to become part of the body, because that was the only way it could not be lost. Not a key on a necklace, not something carried adjacent to the self, the way most people hold the objects that matter to them. In the ear. Through the flesh. Permanent. They lived dangerous lives and found a way to integrate that fear and provision for the future in a single wearable act, and no matter what happened to them, that earring remained a part of them.
He had lots of earrings. He was in the middle of a long movement across states, in a home with wheels, with a piercing still healing and hoops waiting on the other side of the soreness. The story stayed with him. Then, at some point, he would get up.