There's a new pole on Third Street, just past the Exxon, holding up a small black box that has been photographing my truck every time I drive to get biscuits. This is not a metaphor. I know it's happening because the contractor who bolted it up there, a young man from out of county, told me so himself while eating a biscuit of his own, apparently without irony.

The town approved it back in June for "traffic safety," a phrase that in my experience means one of two things: either somebody on the council is worried about something specific they won't name, or a salesman bought somebody lunch. Either way, my truck's comings and goings are now a matter of municipal record, filed somewhere between the water bill and the minutes of the zoning board. I have given the government less reason to watch me in sixty-some years than at any point in my life, and I have never in sixty-some years been watched more closely. Somewhere a server is learning that I get biscuits four mornings a week. It could have just asked Doris at the counter. She already knew, and she doesn't need electricity.