Abraham Lincoln at the Coffee Shop

Abraham Lincoln stopped at a small coffee shop to grab an espresso. After a few oblique glances, the barista, a young woman with a ring in her nose, recognized her customer.

"I know you," she said. "You're the guy on the penny."

"Heads it is," replied Mr. Lincoln, nodding. "I'd fancied to land my profile on the nickel, but George Washington swooped in on that. I suppose he is a mite more handsome. And deserving."

"You look better in person, if that matters," the barista noted. "You have an aura of kindness about you. Are you into crystals?"

Lincoln considered for a moment. "I'm afraid crystals have largely evaded me. I do enjoy Aesop's Fables, though, and recently I've been taken by Bob Dylan's music. I enjoy his weave of narrative and song. And I appreciate that his voice has not fully come in from the wilderness. It's honest."

As Abraham Lincoln was talking, the young woman made change and handed it over.

"How weird is it to get paid with pennies?" she asked.

"At first, it made me uncomfortable. Now, the oddity of it walks directly through me untouched," Lincoln admitted.

"When things got weird for me, I got a nose ring. That's what I did."

"Interesting. I will keep that in mind."

Ten minutes later, Abraham Lincoln found himself rolling down the sidewalk with a newly minted penny in his pocket and a coffee in hand.

—Mitchell Hegman

Conglomerate

Conglomerate is the natural geological presentation of concrete. Long before we figured out how to mix cement with gravel, nature was doing much the same thing. Rivers rounded stones into smooth pebbles, layers of sediment buried them, and mineral-rich groundwater slowly cemented everything together into solid rock. The process took thousands to millions of years rather than an afternoon with a concrete truck and an ample supply of beer, but the result is surprisingly familiar.

One of the first "keeper" rocks in my collection is a time-worn conglomerate specimen I collected no more than 100 yards from the spot where my house presently stands.

I was 6 or 7 years old the day I found this treasure. Honestly, it still ranks as one of the most thrilling finds of my life. I gasped when I first spotted the rock amid a few nondescript stones. It was a perfect representation of nature's concrete and an ancient story told in stone.

"Look at this!" I said after trotting back to find my father and show him my discovery.

Though I proved a disappointment to my father when I revealed a propensity to pick up random stones rather than a baseball, he did his best to share my enthusiasm.

The conglomerate specimen has been on display on a shelf somewhere near me ever since. Every time I pick up the stone, I feel a certain earthy energy in the weight of it. It is of immeasurable value to me.

The photograph below is that very rock.

Conglomerate Specimen

—Mitchell Hegman

The Slide

I woke from a dream in which death was, literally, a long slide. Two women with indistinct facial features and I were stationed at the top of the slide so we could shove people off when their time arrived. As was bound to happen, someone I knew, an apprentice I once taught and liked immensely, appeared beside us.

When the time came, I helped push her down the slide without question.

I woke immediately after this and now sit on my sofa in the pre-dawn, wondering why my brain does this to me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Four

I watched a program on television last night featuring a woman who pronounced the number four as "fo-were." For me, something like that is the equivalent of having a tire blow out while driving down the highway.

It's the end of all forward progress. I need to pull over before severe damage is done.

For the rest of the program, I kept repeating fo-were every time the woman appeared. Today, in the fresh light of morning, I don't even recall where I was headed with the show.

But henceforth, fo-were shall be the new four.

—Mitchell Hegman

105 Degrees

Late Saturday afternoon, while driving from Helena to East Helena, my car registered a temperature of 105°F. That’s about 40 degrees higher than my preferred maximum temperature. It also ties the official all-time record high temperature for Helena.

When my car recorded that temperature, I had serious concerns that I might melt into a white-haired puddle. I insisted that Desiree capture an image of the numeric display on the console of the car so she could share my manner of demise with future generations.

You know that thing about all of us returning to dust?

Welp, apparently, I am getting an early run at that, too. When you look at the photograph of the temperature on my car’s display, you’ll see a lot of dust.

—Mitchell Hegman

Willing

I’m willing to eat daisies, cut boards with a dull handsaw, and rebrand myself as retired. But I’m not willing to live with a humanoid robot, paint the walls in my house hot pink, or eat a hot pepper.

—Mitchell Hegman

From What I Gather

Under certain conditions, sound carries itself remarkably intact across the lake. In the latest installment of this, I heard a pair of young “ladies” talking. From what I gather, there are a lot of “fuckers” on that side of the water.

—Mitchell Hegman