An Autumn Evening with Craigslist and a Cock

“Cock-a-doodle-doo to you too, man,” I said. He was pompous but handsomely clad as he strutted by me in shining green feathers, tossing his comb in the wind like a chunk of gelled up hair. He was keeping a close eye on me, as the head of the chicken-household should.

“There is a man coming here to pick something up soon,” I told Rhett the Rooster. Rhett cocked his head, half wondering if I was offering him a treat, and half wondering if I had just insulted him. A rooster is always prepared to fight a duel, should the need arise. “His name is Pierce Smith*, or so his email claims. It is an intense sounding name—I think you will like him.”

I paused to take in a whiff of the air. There was a secret in that whiff. The heat of the day was beginning to give over to evening, so that instead of profuse sweating, my skin was only slightly moist. The waxing gibbous overhead looked a bit lonely without a cloud in the sky, but there was still some golden rays of sunset resting on the tops of the pine trees for a bit of companionship. The cicadas in the trees, the swarm of mosquitoes, the moist skin—it would be summer, if it weren’t for the secret.

“Fall,” I muttered to myself, but Rhett cocked his head at me like we were still having a conversation. Fall creeps in so slowly, secreted away as just a subtle feeling in the air, or a sudden silence that hangs there. I let out a long breath of the fall secret as I looked at my phone. He should have been there by then, and there was no further correspondence.

“Pierce Smith is late,” I said with a raise of my eyebrows to Rhett.

Fall ushers in a certain shift within me, something like spring cleaning. Maybe it does in other people too. I see them put out perfectly good things into a heap at the ends of their driveways. What a waste it is to see the garbage man haul usable things off to the landfill. So, instead I put up an ad on the likes of Craigslist or SwipSwap—listed as free. And so it begins.

I wonder if it is a sign of the times, or of my American culture, or if the Pierce Smiths of the world have always been around. Whatever the case, the Pierce Smiths begin to respond to my ad via email. I am very interested. When can I pick it up? I respond, and…nothing. Clearly they were not very interested. I get a few more Pierce Smiths of the no-response-to-email variety, until I get that special Pierce Smith—the one that really leads me on.

Yes! I will be there at 7:00 to pick it up. Thank you so much! Such eagerness, and gratefulness is in this special Pierce Smith's response. Yep, this one is going to take it, I thought to myself, glad to be done with it. I came home a bit early from an engagement just to accommodate this special Pierce Smith, and…

Pierce Smith is a no-show.

“This can only mean one thing,” I said to Rhett. Clearly Pierce Smith was on his way to my house, cruising down a country road, when he rolled down his window to inhale a bit of that fall scent. While he was distracted by the smell and all those lovely childhood memories of autumn were rushing back to mind, a deer rushed out of the woods in real time.

Pierce Smith tried to swerve to avoid hitting the regal thing wearing a crown of antlers, and ended up avoiding the road. A rough turn into the ditch in those tires, which he picked up for free from someone off of craigslist, left one wheel incapacitated.

I should probably send a quick email to that nice lady that is waiting on me, and tell her that a buck broke my truck, is of course what he would then think, since Pierce Smith is such a polite guy. He then would reach for his phone, but the pain shooting from all ten fingers as he rammed them into his pocket reminds him.

In a freak accident that morning he had burned his fingers while trying to remove his cast iron skillet, which he just got for free off craigslist, from the stove. As it turns out, the handles of cast iron get really, really hot. Pierce Smith might be a polite guy, but he isn’t too bright, so after he burned one hand, he tried to use his other to move the skillet. Not good.

Rendered without fingertips to type out the email, and being such a true heart that would never want to act like a thoughtless jackass, he managed to shimmy the phone out of his pocket. It landed softly on the grass beneath. Pierce Smith then got onto his tummy on the ground and proceeded to use his nose to type out the message.

Unfortunately, he had only gotten in one word—after having to backspace so much over all those nose-typed errors—before he realized that he was next to a swamp. Within three feet of him was a very angry and coiled up cottonmouth, showing off its namesake with large angry fangs ready to strike.

“Pierce Smith is currently in the hospital, no doubt,” I told Rhett. “I know this because there is always a good reason someone would act completely inconsiderate toward another person. Our society is overrun with people with excellent manners and common sense, it is only that freak things happen to them to keep them from being polite—constantly.”

Rhett cocked his head the other way, tossing his comb again, like maybe he had his doubts. “Or…” I said as I took in another deep breath of that fresh air and then let it exhale slowly.

“Maybe Pierce Smith is just an asshole.”

Rhett let out one enormous cock-a-doodle-doo in agreement.

_{*Name changed to protect the identify of a thoughtless Craigslist user}