I was walking down to the tree house to have a quiet smoke by a tinkling stream when the thought came that maybe the Angel of Death was going to rendezvous with me there. They would find my body by the tree house. The saying would become a mantra. “They found Old Bill’s body by the tree house.”

The saying would be one of those that soften death, like a reference to guns or boots. “He died with his favorite six-shooters on.” The security of guns could soften the thought of violence in the old west, but ardent students of that history, reading past many midnights, know there were long periods of boredom and tedious work in the old west and that violence was a rare and brief punctuation. The punctuations are what are remembered.

Or, the tree house would be like an old pair of boots that I had worn until they formed the exact shape of my feet and felt like nothing.

    “Say Old Bill, is that a tree house on your feet?”

    “I feel nothing,” I’d say clomping perplexedly down the street.

    I built the tree house last summer for my son. It was supposed to be a pirate ship theme, but it ended up looking more like what people call a “shanty boat”.

    The Angel of Death, busy with too many appointments in places like Darfur, did not arrive and the smoke from my pipe mingled with the tinkling stream.