Emploting Armadillos: An exercise in configuration
"Most simply, emplotment involves making a configuration in time, creating a whole out of a succession of events."
— Cheryl Mattingly, "The Concept of Therapeutic Emplotment"
It’s warm for October: Sunny, his birthday, the trees splashed in fire, so they decide they'll take a drive—something easy, something beautiful. How about Natchez Trace? They go slow, passing cyclists, the occasional car, crossing the bridge at Bird Song Hollow where now there are tall metal, curved fences instead of a clear view down. Too many people jumped there, so it was a matter of time, she thinks as she looks at the fence and all that sky filtered through diamond metal angles.
They notice the armadillos—Have you ever seen so many? She tells him about their migration. They’re in places now where they never were. They think about leprosy, but how could they not? It’s all over the stories about them. Watch out! Don’t touch! people say and warn. They carry leprosy. It could happen.
But they’re wonderful and so much more, she says. And he agrees. As they drive and stare at the strangely prehistoric-looking creatures scattered about the hills. Pink with fuzz, with ears that remind her of eucalyptus leaves and round bodies with slightly hairy shells. They remind her of furry potato bugs on pig hooves. Just wandering, gathering, sniffing the air, then wandering again to the next thing in the grass—so near-sighted, self-contained, but determined while ambling slow.
On the way back, after the tobacco shed with the tobacco no longer in it (the last time there were endless leaves hanging wrinkled and brown and plants high and green standing strong in the adjacent field), they drive behind the shed along the clay road along what the signs says is part of the old parkway. There’s another one: Look! And it’s there in front of them, standing nose up oblivious in the middle of the road, forcing them to stop. They watch and fall and desperately want to touch. She imagines it curled up in her arms, how the weight of it would feel, how the hair might bristle-prick straight into her skin.
Until it crosses and they drive.
To the paved road, the new parkway, while counting armadillos all the way.
