All My Days Are Saturdays

13. Variations on a Theme during Fall

153 13 Variations on a Theme during Fall Brahms scored the orchestral version of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn for a dozen or so different instruments, among them, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, timpani, triangle, and flute. In my variations during fall the only theme is the endless clicking of metronomic time. Throughout my years, however, measures have repeated themselves, not following a B-flat major theme as did Brahms but certainly establishing a pattern, one more often flat than elevated, no matter the instrument . Early one Sunday in October Vicki and I ate breakfast at the Beebe House in Coventry, Connecticut. As I sipped coffee and waited for eggs and bacon, I looked out the window. Across Route 31, a black and white cat scampered across a lawn and, bundling up the front steps of a small clapboard house onto a porch, hopped into a metal chair. From the chair the cat jumped onto a glass-topped table. The table sat under a picture window. The cat walked to the edge of the table and, standing on its hind legs, pressed itself against the window. Shortly thereafter the front door of the house opened and the cat rushed inside. Fall with its woodland flutings had arrived, and I had begun to notice small outdoor 154 All My Days Are Saturdays things: a streaked tussock moth caterpillar chewing an alder leaf, the hairs on the insect’s body making it appear purple and frosted; a mist thick with Japanese barberry leaves low and orange in the woods above the Fenton River; and on a rotten branch fallen from an oak in the backyard , split gill fungus, the underside of the shell-like caps divided into folds resembling gills, the tips rolled and curved inward. After breakfast at the Beebe House Vicki and I walked the dogs along the Willimantic River and across Spring Manor Farm. Grasshoppers sunned themselves on the crumpled asphalt of a neglected road. A merlin dashed through the air above us, then turned like a boomerang to the right before vanishing into trees.Along the bushy edge of a cornfield leaves of red maple fell layered atop each other, gleaming in the light like fish scales.When we returned home,Vicki and I discovered a small flock of cedar waxwings gleaning the roof of the garage. “Fall is here,” Vicki said.“Yes,”I answered and from a wooden chest in the rear of the garage pulled out the tarpaulin in which I pile leaves to drag into the woods behind the house. From the rafters I took down two rakes. I didn’t start raking immediately, however. The next morning I ran eight miles with my friend David. Shortly after his thirty-eighth birthday, David began tracking the miles he ran. David is now seventy-six, and after we ran six miles, his mileage totaled 83,000. I ran with him last year when he reached 82,000 miles, and unless one of us flat-lines during this coming year, I’ll be beside him when he reaches 84,000. The presidential election was a month away, and campaign signs wavered like signal flags across yards in Storrs. During an election a decade ago my friend George filched a sign from the shoulder of a highway in Mississippi. Red, white, and blue with the state of Mississippi sketched on the left side, the right side urged drivers to “Re-Elect Pickering to Congress.”In October four years ago I covered the outline of Mississippi with masking tape and hammered the sign into the ground in my front yard. Several passersby paused and on reading the sign looked puzzled, but after the election two lively women informed me that they voted for me, writing my name on the ballot and explaining, “You were the only respectable candidate.” I neglected to put the sign up during the following congressional election, and after positioning the sign in the front yard this fall, I explained to questioners that since I’d been elected to Congress by acclamation four years ago, I only had to stand for office once every other voting cycle, unlike less popular congressmen who Variations on a Theme during Fall 155 were required to run every two years.“I didn’t know about the acclamation rule,”a student said to me.‘I’ve taken classes in government, and no one ever mentioned acclamation.”“That’s...