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‘HESIS

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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

WOUNDED

presented by

Raymond Joseph Thibeault

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Master's English

degree in

 

 

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0-7639 MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

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TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE II

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”3-9.1

 

WOUNDED

BY

Raymond Joseph Thibeault

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1993

ABSTRACT

WOUNDED

BY

Raymond Joseph Thibeault

Wounded is a collection of ten short stories about
individuals who suffer loss--loss of dignity ("Killings"),
loss of place ("Snow Farm"), loss of self-respect ("In
the Harmattan"), of autonomy ("Winter Rain"), of youth
and adventure ("Aborigine"), of hope ("Connie and Daryl"
and ""War Zone"), of relationship ("Building Roads in Africa
and Elsewhere," "Rock Salt Shotgun" and "Wounded"). But
these stories are about other things as well—~guilt, anger
at, God, sexual repression, escape-~because each person's

struggle with loss has its own unfolding.

Copyright by
RAYMOND JOSEPH THIBEAULT

1993

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank. Jeffrey' Michaels, Brothers of
Holy Cross, for nurturing the "writing seed" within me
back in high school, and my fiction writing instructors
in college: William Goldwasser, at Whyne State University,
and, especially, Albert "Bud" Drake and Dr. William Penn,
my thesis advisor, at Michigan State University. Your
guidance and encouragement have been generous gifts.

Thanks also to my daughter, Shelly, who doesn't seem
concerned that her father, pushing fifty, is still bouncing
from job to job and place to place, and who reads my stories
and tells me they're good.

Finally, thanks to Lynn Swanson for her concern, constant
support, intelligent criticism, and polished editorial

skills.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Killings 1
Snow Farm 9
In the Harmattan 16
Winter Rain 28
Connie and Daryl 37
Building Roads in Africa and Elsewhere 49
Rock-salt Shotgun 60
Aborigine 85
War Zone 95
Wounded 106

Killings

I heard my mother say something to my father, and when
I looked up from my book, I could see him shifting about
on the front seat.

"We'll be going right past his house, for god sake,"
my mother continued. "You might as well get it over with."

My father's hands tightened on the steering wheel;
his eyes peered into the rear view mirror.

"Sit back, son," he said when he saw me looking up at
him. "Just read your book, okay?"

I nodded and lowered my head, but kept my eyes angled
upward. My father turned from the mirror and stared out
the front window. The road twisted and doubled back on
itself like a tangle of rope, and under the cold November
drizzle, the tar was dark black and glistening.

"Well," my mother asked again, "are you going to or
not?" For a long time my father didn't say anything, but
I could see him working his jaw back and forth as if trying
to get it unlocked.

"No," he finally said. "There's no need to take care

of that now. You know that." He turned his head to look

2

at my mother when he spoke, but she didn't turn to listen.
After a moment, she began to fuss with her hair, moving
bobbie pins from one place to another, fluffing it
delicately as if it were something fine and rare. Then
she touched her blonde hair the way Jean Harlow did in
the old movies, the way models did in the magazines that
were always lying open on the kitchen table next to tall
glasses red with lipstick rims and sweet with the smell
of whiskey.

"Why waste gas on another trip," she finally said.
"We go right by his house. Why not do it now? Unless,
of course--"

"Oh, Jesus, why don't you let me alone?" my father

' Then he paused and

stopped her. "Why do you have to--'
his eyes moved to the mirror again; I looked down quickly.
"Hey, is that a good book?" he asked. I nodded but didn't
look up. "Well, you just keep reading, because I want
to know what it's all about. You can tell me while your
mother's doing the shopping, okay?" I nodded again and
flipped the page.

As soon as he turned back, my mother started in again.
She glanced back at me and tried to keep her voice low
at first, but that didn't last.

"Well it's true, isn't it? You're just afraid he's going
to hurt--"

"Oh, Jesus, shut up, will you!" My father shouted,

his fists opening and closing around the steering wheel,

3
pumping hard like twin hearts starved for oxygen.
"Jesus...you don't give a man any room, do you?"

My mother just stared ahead at the road, drawing deeply
on her cigarette as I'd seen her do so many times.
Afternoons when I came home from school, she would pat
the sofa and make me come and sit down beside her. "Is
this how she does it?" she'd ask, motioning toward whomever
the star of the four o'clock movie happened to be, and
she'd inhale and angle her face upward at the ceiling light
as if it were a camera, then blow a thin stream of blue
smoke through the air. "Am I doing it right? Do I have
it?" she'd ask again and again until finally I would jump
from the sofa and run out into the woods behind our house
to wait for my father to come home for supper.

The rasp of my mother's lighter from the front seat
made me angle my eyes sideways toward her. We were close
to the Three Mile bridge now, and Frank Bouchert's house
was an easy sprint beyond that. My mother Opened her mouth
to speak, but my father cut her off by yanking down the
turn signal.

"I hope you're happy," he said through lips that barely
moved.

He pulled only halfway into the driveway before stopping
the car, the shack that Frank and Marie Bouchert and their
nine children lived in standing a good thirty yards away.
Besides the shack, a longish box whose roof had been

tar-papered but never shingled, there was little else

visible in the muddy yard: a dying, barkless tree with
a scattering of dog bones and broken toys underneath,
an old crank-start truck that Frank Bouchert, the neighbors
said, had given up trying to make a living with five years
earlier.

My father blew the horn and rolled down his window
halfway. A moment later, the door cracked open and a
small, dirty face, a face I knew, peered out. In the
lunch line at school, all the kids behind this face would
peel away one by one and go to the end until I was the
one behind him. They knew I would smile and endure his
filthy clothes and odor, and they snickered and laughed
because they thought I was a sucker. But I did it because
my father asked me to; it wasn't the kid's fault, he said,
but Frank Bouchert's.

The boy stared uneasily at our car for a moment and
then began to shut the door.

"Say, your dad home?" my father finally shouted, and
the dirty face nodded weakly and pulled back into the
darkness. My father rested his arm on the door ledge below
the window, and I saw him press his elbow slowly but
steadily against the lock button; then he began coughing
to muffle the sound of the click. I looked at my mother.
She had noticed nothing; her eyes were straining toward
the door of the shack.

A few moments later, Frank Bouchert, whose wife Marie

worked in my father's bar, stepped out onto the small,

5

slanting porch. For a while he just stood there, glaring
at our car but making no move to come near it. I could
see the metal knob of the hunting knife strapped to his
belt. He made what living he did now by trapping muskrat,
mink, snapping turtle and whatever else he could make the
southern shore of Lake Superior yield. The story was he
had fled to Michigan from Quebec after he'd killed a man
while arguing over a single beaver pelt. People said even
the Mounties were afraid of him; that he'd driven his knife,
front to back, right through the man's spine.

Bouchert finally stepped down from the porch and ambled
toward the car, hands stuck deep in his pockets, a cigarette
perched at the corner of his mouth. He was a handsome
man, lean, tan and leathery from his trampings through
the marshes, and he carried his good looks with an ease
that veiled his meanness. He stopped twenty feet from

our car and stared at my father. My mother leaned over,

careful not to touch my father, smiled and waved. "Hello,
Frank." He nodded toward her, then focused again on my
father.

"Say, listen, Frank, about this mix-up,"

my father began,
his voice an echo summoned from some chamber deep within.
"Mix-up?" Bouchert interrupted. "No mix-up. You owe
Marie a hundred dollars. You been holding back, goddamn
it."
"Look, it's all down on the books, Frank. You can see

for yourself."

6

"Books? Shit on your books. I can make books. Goddamn,
make 'em say anything I want." Bouchert yanked his hands
from his pockets and advanced toward the car. My father,
who had kept the car running and in reverse, jerked his
foot off the brake. The car shot backward.

"Come back here, goddamn," Bouchert yelled, his fists
tight and hanging at the end of his arms like rocks, but
my father was already backing onto the road.

"Oh, Jesus, you were just great,"

my mother said, shaking
her head and then smiling and blowing a thin stream of
blue smoke toward Frank Bouchert. My father yanked the
gearshift into first and headed down the road.

"You still reading that book, son? I want to hear all
about it. You just keep reading now, you hear."

As soon as he stopped, my mother began.

"You want me to take care of it? Give me the keys tonight,
and I'll bet I can handle Frank. I'll bet I can take care
of everything." She leaned toward my father and pulled
a lock of blond hair across her eyes.

"Shut up," my father said, shoving her away, his voice
a whisper tight as wire, and he pushed down hard on the
gas.

"Slow down, for god sake!" my mother yelled. "You'll
kill us all. Stop it!"

My father ignored her, and when he rounded the next curve
and saw a mink slinking across the road, he sped up again

and aimed the car directly at it. The mink stopped,

7
crouched, then turned and dashed back. My father veered
and ran the car onto the gravel shoulder, the mink darting
into the weeds just in time, the car shaking and starting
to swerve. My mother screamed; I buried my head between
my knees.

It seemed a long time passed, and then the car began
to slow, the shaking stopped, and I could feel my father
regaining control and guiding the car back onto the road.
Above the noise of the engine, I heard him breathing
heavily.

' he said. "Forget about this; it's

"Jesus, I'm sorry,‘
all wrong." I lifted my head from my knees and listened.

"It's just that sometimes you have to wonder why God
makes such fierce creatures. Creatures that destroy
whatever they want--just tear things apart, bone from soul.
Jesus." He was breathing deep, shuddering breaths and
looking at me so intently in the mirror I was afraid we
would run off the road again. "But you can't just kill
them, no matter how fierce they are." Then he turned and
looked directly at me. "Sometimes you need to run, though.
Sometimes it's okay, I'm sure of it. It's the only thing
you can do." Then he turned back, and I again saw his
hands opening and closing around the steering wheel, but
this time more easily, more quietly.

My mother remained silent, pushing herself up against

the door. Once I saw her glance at my father, her lips

trembling as if she were trying to say something, but

8
nothing came out. Instead she turned and drew deeply on
her cigarette, let the smoke curl over her lip, and stared

at her reflection in the window.

Snow Farm

Even then I hated the city and the wide highway leading
from it, the first leg of our winter journey back to my
grandmother's farm. The highway that was always thick
with cars and buses and trucks; that was either wet and
noisy with dark, watery slush that thumped against the
underside of the car, or dry and gray with the dust of
salt-melted snow that swirled in pale eddies behind us.
Even then I hated the wires and lights, the antennas and
signs that clung to the store fronts and roof tops like
wind-driven litter.

So I would remain quiet during this leg of our winter
journey. I would sit in the back seat of our car and read,
refusing to look outside except to be polite when my mother
or father would point out something unusual. I would remain
quiet until I heard the soft clicking of the turn signal
and felt our car move west off the highway onto the country
road leading back to the farm miles beyond. Quiet until
I felt the cushion of undisturbed snow beneath the tires.
Only then would I close my book, sit up and let my

excitement lift and hold me the way wind sweeping through

10
a willow tree will lift and hold the thin, fragile branches.
Only then would I look outside the car to see the open
fields covered with smooth, crusted snow. Snow that was
still white and clean and glistening with the light of
the winter sun. Snow I would stare at for as long as my
eyes could endure its bright whiteness.

But not that day. That day was different. My parents
were talking in hushed voices I wasn't meant to hear, so
I edged forward on the cushion to listen.

"It's inevitable," my father said, and then he talked
about property taxes and three hundred acres and the cost
of the water line that had gone through that summer--words
I didn't understand, but words I could see were making
my mother turn and stare out the side window. Words that
made her answer in short, clipped sentences like pieces
broken off of something inside her.

When they stopped talking, I slid back on the seat and
tried to read but couldn't. I kept losing my place,
skipping lines, turning the page before I was finished--the
threat, the danger, whatever it was, hanging in the air
like some heavy, obscuring smoke.

For a long time I sat brooding until, after the car
rounded a bend where the old road swooped away from the
creek, I spotted the farm standing atop the rise, a castle
in its own kingdom. Drawing nearer, I could see my aunts'
and uncles' cars already crowding the driveway, so my father

found a spot just off the road under the sycamore trees

11

in front of the house. Arms loaded with gifts and
food--rye bread my mother had baked the night before, a
ham scored into rectangles garnished with cloves-~we walked
through the snow along the side of the house, past the
well shaft, now unused, past the cellar doors, bolted shut,
weathered and leaning at an angle against the stone
foundation as if sleeping, around to the back where the
kitchen jutted out like a chapel.

From under my grandmother's back door, the sweet
fragrances of baking fruit pies wafted like fingers curling
to beckon us, enticing us to continue as we climbed the
porch steps-—as if we might change our minds! When we
opened the door, a bank of warm, steamy air surrounded
us, grandma still baking in her black, wood-burning stove,
her chrome and porcelain electric range, a gift from her
children, standing isolated in a corner like a misbehaved
child. Her back to us, the ends of her red and green
Christmas apron, tied at the small of her back, swaying
and fluttering with her movements in front of the oven,
grandma spoke to us while poking vents in the pie crusts
with a fork.

" she exclaimed.

"Juiciest apples I ever pared and sliced,
"Puffing steam like the old 10:15 used to pass by and scare
the milk out of the cows like it did." Then she whirled,
bent and embraced me, the fork carefully tucked backwards

under her palm, and I felt as if I had been wrapped in

a goose-down quilt. No words--she knew the pain of my

12

shyness--just the embrace. "You and I," she'd once
whispered to me, firmly pressing my hands between hers,
"we don't need words." Grandma rose to hug my parents,
and I spun away and skated leisurely across the kitchen,
across an expanse of arms that pulled me in, patted me
on the head, squeezed my shoulders, tickled my chin--aunts
and uncles who had inherited or learned grandma's ways--and
finally landed in the living room at the foot of the
Christmas tree, a land already populated with tiny cousins
dressed in bow ties and new shirts still smelling of flannel
or crinolines snapping and rustling with each turn, twist
or bow.

I stared up at the tree, decorated as it was every year,
with strings of cranberries and popcorn dating back to
my mother's childhood on the farm, and the wooden angel
grandpa had carved just before he died. My eyes fell to
the presents, gifts in shining bows and bright paper
circling the tree like a ridge of frosting on the edge
of a cake. Dozens and dozens of presents that our parents
had bought for the dozens and dozens of us. But no more
than three for each child: that was grandma's rule about
store gifts. And behind me, I knew, squeezed onto the
old, cherry-wood table and sloping up into a cone, would
be grandma's presents for us: something baked or sewed
or stitched. On these, there was no limit.

I turned to look at them, my eyes moving slowly up and

down the small mountain: honeyed popcorn balls she'd made

13
just the day before, wrapped and twisted shut in red, blue
and gold cellophane; ribboned jars brimming with walnuts
she'd gathered from the trees behind the barn, then
cracked, cleaned and smoked; knitted scarves, mittens and
hats boasting rainbows and sunflowers, purring' cats and
kites floating tails of silk. And these were the presents
that pleased me the most, for these were the presents that
smelled of her kitchen, her hands, that were heavy with
her work, that spoke of her and this, her snow farm, for
days and weeks and years after that single day was done.

"Hey, look!" one of my older cousins shouted suddenly,
and I turned to see him staring out the window, my other
cousins running 13) gather around him, their eyes following
his pointing finger to something far in the distance. "See,"
he kept repeating. "See them way over there past the fence
line." I joined them, weaving my way to the front of the
crowd, resting my elbows on the sill and pmessing my nose
against the cold glass. And there, far across the east
field that had been so tall with dark green corn the summer
before, beyond it in a field belonging to the next farm,
so far away' I could barely see them, were two
swiftly-moving, black specks.

"What are they?" someone asked, and by then aunts and
uncles had joined us at the window. "Jeez, look at them
go--what are they?"

An uncle finally answered. "Must be those new machines

just out on the market--what do they call them? Some catchy

14
name. 'Ski—Do,‘ that's it. (k) like the devil, I guess.
Go anywhere you want in snow. Up and down hills, across
fields, through forests. They run on tracks like tanks.
Nothing can stop them."

I watched the machines as he spoke. Watched them zooming
over the snow as smoothly as marbles rolling across glass,
now hugging the fence line and searching for a break in
the line, now finding a break and swerving through it into
grandmother's field, making a wide, sweeping turn toward
the farm house, bearing down on it--on us--like wasps
skimming the ground, coming closer, closer, so close the
heavy drone of their engines rattled loose window
panes--then abruptly and sharply turning, heading back,
retreating across grandma's field, back through the break
in the fence, finally disappearing into the field beyond.

For a long time after they had gone and the murmuring
crowd around the window dispersed, I stood there looking
out at the snow in the wide, empty field, seeing where
the machines had sliced through the white crust and left
great, curving tracks like long coils of rope, seeing trails
of black exhaust on the snow where they'd abruptly turned
back. Then I whirled and bolted, pushing my way through
my cousins standing around the cherrywood table chattering
about grandma's presents, the machines forgotten, and ran
into the kitchen.

She was standing alone by the ‘window, detached from

the small eddies of family swirling about in the kitchen,

15

waving glasses of her home-made wine as they talked.
A froth of laughter bubbled up from the mix of sentences.
A foolish uncle talked about how he might get one of those
machines come next. winter. Grandma. was staring (nu: the
window at the field. I ran to her, clutched her leg with
my arms, turned my face down into the soft folds of her
dress.

At first, she didn't respond. Then. she turned from
the window, leaned over and cupped my‘ face, her' hands
smelling like sweet cider from the apple pies she ‘was
baking. For a long time she stood there and looked at

me. Looked and said nothing.

In the Harmattan

Just after a sharp bend in the road, the driver of the
Red Cross truck saw the African leap out of the darkness,
frantically waving his arms. The truck dipped into a
hollow, and the man disappeared from the yellow cones thrown
by the headlights.

"God Almighty, let him be gone when we come up," the
driver, an Englishman, said to himself. But the man was
still there, standing squarely in the middle of the truck's
path, still frantically waving his arms. The Englishman
looked over at the woman in the passenger seat. She was
leaning against the door, apparently sleeping. An instant
later, she sat up.

' she said.

"We'll stop, of course,‘

"Of course," he answered, then flicked his cigarette
out the window, the wind spreading the ash in a thin, red
line along the side of the truck.

The Englishman slowly braked to a stop and the woman,
an Italian, leaned through the window to talk to the man.

At the side of the road an African woman sat on the ground

awkwardly holding a child, the child's head arched back

16

 

Ad
03

17
to the breaking point. "Meningitis," the Englishman
muttered to himself. "Drought, famine, now, Christ
Almighty, all this meningitis," and he leaned forward to
rest his head against the steering wheel.

"Yes?" the woman, Maria, said to him. The man, Albert,
shook his head.

"Nothing," he said, looking out the window at the dirt
road, staring at the ruts, the deep holes, the sharp rocks
that were constantly working their way to the surface.

Maria stepped down from the truck and walked over to
examine the child, a girl, who moaned when Maria gently
probed her. Albert could hear Maria talking fluent Hausa
to the girl's mother. For a moment, he strained to
understand the words, then shrugged, lit a new cigarette
from the old, and tossed the butt into the night. Maria
returned to the truck and poked her head through the window.

"Don't worry. We won't have to go all the way back
to the capital. There's serum now at our infirmary--I
packed it off myself two days ago."

The Englishman stopped himself from sighing and nodded
instead. A moment later, the African family was sitting
jammed into the cab, the child moaning softly, her body
rigid and her head still arched back as far as it could
go, the mother holding her with difficulty.

"I broke a bow once when I was a lad," Albert said,
glancing over at the girl, then turning and glimpsing the

darkened image of his own face in the mirror. "Strung

18
it too tightly, it snapped."

"She'll be all right," Maria said. "If she gets the
serum tonight, she'll recover."

"Ah, but the question is why, isn't it? What for?
Perhaps you should have bloody well packed off vials full
of meningitis instead of medicine," he said, his voice
rising, lips pulled back against his teeth. "Some sort
of national euthanasia--not an irrational policy here,
am I right?"

Maria stared ahead. A long silence passed between them,
the only sounds the grumbling of the tires against the
washboard road, the complaint of the wheels bouncing in
and out of potholes.

"Sorry,' the Englishman finally said. "You know I hate
my bloody self when I say things like that. You know that,
don't you?"

She looked at him before answering. "Yes, I know,"
she said. Then she turned and stared out at the side of
the road.

An hour later, as the truck came over the top of a hill,
the scattered, feeble lights of Gidan Abir came into View.
Ten minutes later, the Englishman turned onto the town
and drove quickly toward the infirmary. Along the street,
fires glowed; next to them, the bodies of African beggars,
wound in thin, ragged blankets against the cold of the

winter night, lay at odd angles, strewn about like pieces

of wood. The Englishman tried not to look at them; when

19

the truck passed the auto gare where the incident had

 

occurred, he turned and stared at the adobe buildings on
the other side of the street.

"Did you hear about it?" he finally asked Maria,
clearing this throat at the end of’ the question, then
coughing into his fist.

"Sorry? Hear about what?"

He waited for a moment. "You will. I'm bloody well
sure of that."

Maria opened her mouth to inquire, but didn't.

The truck turned down the track leading to the infirmary,
slowing as it did, bogging down in the fine, deep sand
and nearly stopping, the Englishman cursing and engaging
the four-wheel drive just in. time. Moments later, the
truck pulled up in front of the dark brown building and
halted by the entrance to the night clinic. Maria reached
over to open the door for the African family; then followed
them out of the truck. Albert stayed in the driver's seat
smoking, his slouch hat pulled low on his forehead to shut
out the glare from the single, bare light bulb jerry-rigged
above the doorway.

For a moment, Maria stood on the veranda peering into
the empty office of the duty nurse; then she called out.
Down the open hall, bodies had cautiously appeared in
doorways, skinny, decimated bodies, some with dirty bandages
taped over an eye or an ear, some propping themselves with

branches broken off the trees in the courtyard, most showing

20
the grey, dusty patches of disease and malnutrition, as
if their skin had been sanded down in spots and the grit
left behind.

Several minutes passed before an African in a white
lab coat emerged from the darkness behind the truck and
walked toward the infirmary, a wide smile on his face,
a curious little side step occasionally faulting his gait.
When he passed by the truck, he belched suddenly, and the
sweet smell of millet beer was overwhelming. He smiled
again.

"Madame,' he said, looking at Maria, "a votre service,"

 

and then he stumbled forward several steps, arms fluttering,
before finally righting himself. Maria turned to Albert.

"Won't you say something to him?" she asked in English.
"You know how they feel about women criticizing them."
Albert said nothing for a moment; then responded from
beneath his slouch hat.

"Me? You want me to say something to him—-the pot to
scold the kettle?"

"But at least you don't—-" Maria blurted the words
then stopped abruptly.

"...drink on the job? That's what you were going to
say, isn't it? Ah, but you've been in the capital for
a week, my love. Things change here, you know."

Maria turned and walked into the duty nurse's office,
found the vials of serum in the refrigerator, filled a

syringe and returned to inject the girl. The nurse sat

21
on the edge of the veranda spitting thick, grey phlegm
into the sand, saying nothing, finally beginning to vomit.
In the truck, Albert turned away and looked at the broken,
dying trees at the edge of the courtyard.

"I'll be back in the morning," Maria told the girl's
mother, her one hand resting lightly on the mother's arm,
the other stroking the girl's forehead.

The path back to Red Cross headquarters ran south, then
west, but Albert drove the truck diagonally across a wide,
sloping hill, a short-cut that skirted the town cemetery.
It was an open area of unmarked graves indistinguishable
-—except for the sunken ovals that were the freshest graves,
those run: yet filled in with blown sand--from the
surrounding terrain. Ahead, at the bottom of the hill,
was their compound, and they could hear the drone of the
generator, the town's meager electrical system too faulty
to trust.

"Oh, no," Maria groaned weakly.

Three large trucks were parked in front of the compound,
all with Togolese license plates—-a grain shipment from
Lome. It would have to be counted, verified, the manifests
signed and stamped yet that night.

"Ah, what did I hear?" Albert said. "What's that?
A "Chink in the armor? St. Joan. complaining (n? battle
fatigue? What's this?"

"Please don't," Maria said. "Please don't be sarcastic.

Not now."

22

Albert drove the truck, silent for a moment, then-—

"It's the weapon of the weak, you know. Sarcasm,
I mean. I read that once . . . and I owe you another
apology. For Christ's sake, that's all I ever have to
offer you, isn't it. Apologies."

"You owe me nothing, Albert. You're tired, that's all.
We're both tired."

The watchman, Issafou, glum-faced as a sinner, pushed
open the doors. Albert blinked the headlights in greeting
and eased the truck over the sand hump at the foot of the
driveway.

"I'd offer to do the count," he said, flicking his head
back toward the grain trucks, "but we know how that bloody
well goes, don't we? Still, I was only off by a ton, three
the last time I counted, wasn't I? An astounding
improvement over the eight tons, five--that is my record,
isn't it?" and he tried to laugh, but the laughter
sputtered out in a fit of coughing.

"In April, you'll have your month holiday, Albert.
Things will be so much better after that," Maria said,
her face lovely in the pale glow of the instrument lights.
"I'm sure of it."

Albert's gaze lingered for a moment before he turned
away. "Too little, too late, I'm afraid, love," he
mumbled, opening the door and stepping down.

Issafou had already climbed into the back of the truck

and was unlashing Maria's baggage from her week's stay

23

in the capital. Albert walked around to give him the bright
red and blue we be had bought for Issafou to give to
his wife. His sad face brightened when he saw the cloth,
and they exchanged smiles. For a few moments, Albert stood
there, taking Maria's baggage from Issafou and setting
it gently on the ground. Finally he stopped and leaned
over the tail-gate.

"Please tell her what happened, Issafou,' he said in

a quiet voice . Issafou turned away . "I 'd rather it come
from you than someone else," Albert continued. "It would
be a favor." Issafou slowly turned back and nodded, his

eyes down-turned, his hands busy with the lashings.

At the far end of the compound, Maria was already at
work counting the sacks of sorghum and millet, her
flashlight tracing precise lines on the burlap. Albert
watched her for a moment, then turned and walked into the
bungalow they shared, half of it painted white, the other
half still the dark brown of the raw adobe brick.

Inside, Albert walked straight to his bedroom. A moment
later he exited holding a fresh bottle of gin. He blew
dust from a tumbler he found atop the refrigerator, filled
it a quarter full, tossed back half, then, dangling the
bottle by the neck, walked to the north window where he
could look out over the refugee camp.

The small, tattered huts the people had built out of
poles and covered with scraps of cloth and paper, burlap

sacks cut along the seam and flattened tins were quiet

24

and colored silver by moonlight now, at peace until morning.
"Ah, night, thou merciful blanket," Albert said quietly,
raising his glass to the moon. Then he stood there for
a long time, staring out at the sleeping huts, not turning
or moving until he heard the scrape of Maria's sandals
against the cement floor. He waited until she had slumped
in a chair to begin.

"Please don't think Issafou's a gossip-monger. I asked
him to tell you." He sat down on the floor facing the
wall, his legs crossed, the bottle of gin clinking against
the cement as he carefully set it next to him.

' he said. "One

"This won't be an apology, mind you,’
can't really apologize for something like that, can one.
One can only explain, I suppose--though that's worth shit
as well, isn't it?" Albert set his tumbler of gin on the
floor next to the bottle and folded his hands on his lap.

"I had no intention, of course, of striking him. I'd

just gone to buy a pack of cigarettes at the auto gare.

 

It was stupid of me to go. I should have sent Issafou.
But . . . I had to get out of the house, away from the
camp for just a few moments. The harmattan winds were
blowing their sand and grit so hard that day, the refugees
making so much bloody noise--someone had died, so all the
women were moaning and wailing and beating on pots and
pans--and their noon meal had been completely spoiled by
a batch of rancid oil I'd neglected to have the cooks

check--I simply had to get away. As soon as I stepped

25

down from the truck the beggars surrounded me, of
course--twenty of them, more perhaps, all stinking to high
heaven, all thrusting their dirty tin bowls in my face,
screaming 'alms for the poor, boss, alms for the poor,’
and the cripples had scuttled between the legs of the others
and were yanking on my trousers and knocking on my
boots-—'alms for the poor, boss. In the name of Allah,
alms for the poor.‘ I was backed against the truck;
couldn't move--—that's when I struck him--just struck out
blindly, actually, and happened to hit the one chap."
Albert fell silent for a moment. "There's nothing more
to it, really. Except to say I'm paying to have his jaw
fixed, of course, and handing over a thick pile of bills
beyond that as well."

After he'd finished, Albert heard Maria get up and walk
to the refrigerator, heard the door open, heard cold water
splashing into a glass.

"You despise me, don't you? . . . I don't blame you.
Not after this." He poured himself another quarter tumbler
of gin, then swore sharply-~a. wind had suddenly sprung
up, gusted and blown a ridge of sand from the window sill,
spoiling his drink.

"Bloody harmattan winds starting to flog us again.
Two days of calm, never more, then thirty days of that
god-forsaken wind out of North Africa. Christ Almighty."

Albert got up, shuttered the windows, then walked to

a chair opposite Maria.

26

"You'll have to tell them, of course. You'll have to
tell the inspection team coming next week. They'll ask,
'How's it with Albert?‘ won't they?

Maria nodded her head. "Yes, I'll have to tell them."

"And it's true isn't it?" he asked.

"What? What's true?"

"You do hate me--no, despise me now, don't you? What
I did is bloody inexcusable, isn't it. Unforgivable."

"Stop," Maria said. "Please, don't do that to yourself.
What good does it do?" She got up from her chair. "I'm
going for a walk."

"In the harmattan?"

"In the harmattan," she said, wrapping a scarf around
her head and face and pulling a sweater over her shoulders.

After she left, Albert got up, grabbbed the bottle of

gin from the floor and walked into his bedroom.

He was lying on the bed, an arm resting across his
forehead, a cigarette burning in a tin lid on the floor
a half—hour later when Maria returned. She knocked, waited,
then quietly opened the door when she heard no response.
She walked to the bed, sat. gently' on. the ledge of ‘the
mattress, and put her hand on Albert's shoulder.

"I'll suggest £1 desk assignment in Geneva, that's what
I'll do," she said. "A year in Geneva before you come
back to the field--and they'll agree, I'm sure. They don't

just toss people off, you know. And things will be so

27
much better after you've rested a year in Geneva."
For a moment, Albert didn't move. Then he slowly turned
toward the wall, Maria's hand falling from his shoulder
as he did.

"To have struck a beggar,‘ he whispered. "A. beggar!

Oh, Lord, Jesus."

Winter Rain

I push over to the side and press my purse against my
lap and myself against the window, and I wish my heart
wouldn't pound like it is. Here I am, oh God, going to
be trapped on the inside. And how long has my mother been
telling me always to take the outside seat. Thirty years
now? From the time I first started to ride the bus--when
I was eleven, maybe twelve? Her point is that if their
hands start to--you know--wander, you can always just get
up and leave if you're on the outside. And Esther would
always nod and say, yes, otherwise you got to crawl across
them, which is maybe what they want, or maybe slap them
or scream and who wants to make such a fuss right there
in front of all those strange eyes? But here I am about
to be trapped, and if I get up to leave now, it would be
so--you know--so obvious, and I don't want to make no fuss.

So I turn and stare at the winter rain outside. This
rain has been falling now for, oh, God, how long? Days?
But it seems like weeks, even months. There's no wind
with it--just heavy drops that fall and drum into

everything. Windows, streets--the roof of the bus. I'm

28

29
just so tired of it. I guess that's why I didn't notice
the empty seat next to me. Didn't notice the woman leave,
and so didn't jump up and grab the strap until it was too
late. Until the man with the newspaper rolled under his
arm and the umbrella in his hand was already heading for
it like a dog after a bone.

He sits down, and I hear the swish of his raincoat and
feel the bottom flap brush lightly against my leg, the
cushion yield and sigh under his weight. I'm not looking
at him directly. I'm staring into the window. It's so
black outside with the winter rain and overcast that the
window's become a mirror, and I can see his reflection
in the glass just as plain as day. Oh, God, he's swarthy.
Swarthy with dark black, wavy hair. A Mediterranean, for
sure. Spanish? Italian? No, Greek. His nose has that
hook to it like they all have, and I catch the smell of
olive oil. Oh, God, a Mediterranean and the worst kind.
There is this long time argument at our house--and I suppose
I might as well say it's Esther's house too because she's
always there; she doesn't like her present husband any
better than the others. My mother will say, "Marry a
Polock, and you'll end up barefoot and pregnant all your
life." But then Esther will say--she'd be cracking her
gum real loud and flicking ashes into the big, orange
ashtray waiting for my mother to finish--"No, no, the Greeks
are worse. God, don't I know," and she'd be waving her

cigarette all around leaving trails of smoke in the air

30

and drumming the table with the fingers of her other hand.
"I had two of them for husbands, for god sake." And she
did--the first auui third, I think--and so she should know,
shouldn't she? My mother never married a Greek. Only
Irish for her, and most of them drunks, so why would she
know anything about Polocks or Greeks? No, I sided with
Esther on that one.

"Lucky I saw this empty seat, huh?"

His voice startles me, and I jump like a Mexican bean.
God, I'm so jumpy lately. Even mother’ and Esther’ are
worried about me. Don't drink so much coffee, they say,
but they are as bad as me. We all drink too much coffee
and smoke way too» much. Pots of .Folger's thick enough
to tar your roof and packs and packs of Camel and Lucky
Strike and Pall Mall. The ashtrays no sooner emptied then
they're over—flowing again with cigarette butts and burned
matches.

I don't turn to look at him, but I nod enough that he
can tell. Tell that I'm acknowledging him, I mean. "You
can always be civil," my mother would say, fluffing her
hair the way she does when she pronounces something. "To
a point," Ester would add, cracking her gum. "Oh, yes,
to a point. That's what I meant, Esther, you know that's
what I mean," and my mother's voice would have this
tightness to it because she hated to have Esther correct
her. And vice-versa for Esther. They have this

competition, you see. I guess it's because they both know

31
so much. Experience teaches, they both say, so really
it should just be a question of whose experience is the
best regarding the matter at hand. Like with the Greek
and Polock argument-—Esther should know. They really don't
need to always compete like that.

In the glass, I see the man looking around the bus,
craning his neck like a bird, and I can tell he's going
to talk again. I get myself ready so I won't jump this
time.

"They should have more buses, you know. All these people
having to stand," and when he sweeps his arm toward the
crowd, a gold cuff link flashes from beneath his sleeve.
Real gold. And I can see his raincoat is London Fog and
his shirt and suit have never seen a blue—light special
at K-Mart.

"Myself, you know, I don't depend on buses, but my
Lincoln's in the garage, and you ever try to get a taxi
when it's raining like this?"

Oh, so he wants to put on airs, does he? Impress me?
Well, he won't get his foot in the door that way. Does
he think I'm a fool? Not know what he's after? I know
Greeks too. Esther's not the only one. This one's no
different than that Greek friend my Joe had—-—back when
we was still going together. Not rich, but swarthy like
this one, and always wearing tight black pants and those
undershirts with straps. We'd go over there for dinner,

my Joe and me, and there was always bowls of those oily,

32

black olives around. He'd serve them with the cocktails,
the meal, the after-dinner drinks. And the Greek always
calling them "love food" and "aphrodisiacs" and saying
to me "have a bite of love food, babe." And he'd hold
one of those little, oily olives up to my mouth and try
to push it through my lips. "Come on, babe, open up,"
he'd say, and he wouldn't stop till I turned and walked
away.

Then he always told some dirty little joke, and my Joe
and the Greek and his wife would laugh and poke each other.
At first, they used to turn to me, waiting for me to laugh,
but I never would. So after awhile they just acted like
I wasn't even there. Finally I told my Joe I'd had it.
No more, I said. I had my standards. And Joe said, "Ah,
he's not so bad. Just relax and laugh a little. Don't
make no fuss." "No," I'd answered, and mother and Esther
said I was right. "One thing leads to another," they'd
said, and they should know. And Joe said, "Okay, if that's
how you feel", but I saw his lips were thin and tight when
he answered, and he was jingling the change in his pocket
real loud and fast. After that, Joe stopped calling and
coming around so much, and then one day I just never heard
from him again. And, God, that has been how many years
ago now?

My heart is till pounding, but it seems a little quieter
now, and for awhile I just stare at his reflection in

the glass. I can see streaks of silver shining and

33

glimmering in his black, wavy hair, and I wonder if the
veins of silver the prospectors find in the ground out
West look like that. And I bet they do. I guess he must
be my own age. Or close to it. And he's full-looking,
healthy. Not fat at all, but--well, fleshy. And. eyes
that move around all 13“; time. Not anxious, but
just--alive. Brown eyes. full of life. Okay, handsome.
Yes, he's very good-looking, and he reminds me of my Joe
a little. Not that I'd tell him, of course. I mean, not
that I'd even think of just turning to some stranger on
the bus and telling him Ihe's good-looking. I mean, if
we happened to be--you know--dating or something then it
wouhd be okay to say something like that. But I probably
wouldn't anyway. He looks too 'pumped, up ‘with. himself.
Like those puffing birds I saw at the zoo once. Joe was
that way. He had money, and he wore gold and London Fog
too. And he was even handsomer than this Greek.

OH GOD—-there it is, and I jump. His hand. I can feel
it. His hand lying right against my thigh. I can feel
it clean and sharp-—sharp as the blade of a knife. Feel
the edge of his hand press right through my raincoat and
skirt and cut into my flesh. Oh, God. I burn and ache
where he's touching me, but what can I do? I don't want
to make no fuss. I'm trapped, just like Esther and mother
warned me. And now tears are filling my eyes, and I can
feel them spill down the sides of my cheek. But what can

I do? I don't want to yell or slap him or crawl over him

34

to escape. My eyes are closed, but I force them open and
look at his reflection in the window. He's looking straight
ahead like nothing is happening, like what he's doing to
me doesn't matter at all. And he stays that way for a
long time. Motionless. Staring ahead. Then he reaches
down, and suddenly I feel the burning stop and I see him
bring up the newspaper and shake it open. But no! God,
no. That was his hand touching me. I know it was! No
newspaper could burn and ache like that. Does he think
I don't know? Does she think I'm such a fool I would fall
for a trick like that?

Oh, if only my heart would stop Ibeating like this.
Stop pounding so hard. So hard I fear it's going to shake
the bus off the road and make it crash into one of the
street lights or one of the old homes we're passing. That's
how hard my heart is pounding. And I think everybody in
the bus can hear it. I know it's silly, but that's how
I feel.

The bus slows for a stop, and I see him turn his back
to me and face the aisle. When the bus brakes, and he
starts to get up, I have this sudden, strong urge to say
something to him. I don't know what I'd say--but I want
so bad to say something. And I don't know why--it's crazy
after what he just did to me--but there's this urge. But
just as I turn toward him something hard and cold jabs
me in the lip, and I feel a sharp and then a burning pain,

and I let out a little yelp in spite of myself.

35

"Oh, lady, I'm sorry. Are you all right? You okay?"
The man turns and bends over me to look at the wound.
He's stabbed me with his umbrella. I taste the hot, salty
sting of my own blood, and I can't remember the last time
I've had that taste. Then. the 'blood. begins to ‘trickle
down my chin. He pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket
and holds iiz‘Uo my lip to stop the flow, but I twist away
and face the window. I lift my hand and touch the wound,
my fingers pressing into the warmth of the blood. In the
window, I can see his reflection. He's standing there
holding the stained handkerchief and looking confused.
I see him turn toward the other passengers who shake their
heads, shrug and motion towards the door.

"Look, lady, here's my card,"

and I see something small
and white flash from inside his coat. "If there are any
problems, doctor bills or anything, you call me, okay?"
When he sees that I'm not going to turn and take the card,

he lays it on the empty seat. "It's right here,‘ he says.
"Right next to you, okay?"

I close my eyes so I don't have to see him get off,
and I keep them closed for a long time after I hear the
doors hiss shut and feel the bus lurch forward. When I
open them, there is nothing outside but the rain and the
rain-covered street and the street lights showing how steady
the rain is still falling. After awhile, I reach back

and grope until I find his card on the empty seat. Without

looking at it, I crumple it and throw it on the muddy floor.

36

Three more stops and I pull the cord, and the bus slows
to a halt. The doors wheeze open, I step off, and the
bus passes on. Across the street I see our brightly-lit
house. Through the kitchen window, I can see mother and
Esther sitting at the table drinking coffee. Esther fluffs
her hair, and my mother inhales from her cigarette and
blows a steady stream of smoke into the air. I'm late
because of the rain, and I see my mother glance up at the
clock and then say something to Esther. Esther leans back
in her chair, pushes the curtain away from the window and
peers out. When she sees me waiting next to the bus stop,
she waves and motions for me to come over, and I can see
my mother looking over her shoulder at me, and she starts
motioning too.

I stand there a moment, looking at them and feeling
my hair grow heavy with rain, and the rain running down
my neck in rivulets. Then I see my mother reach for an
umbrella and head for the door, so I step down from the

curb and hurry across the street to my home.

Connie and Daryl

Connie carried the pitcher of ice water with one hand
and wiped her forehead with the other. "Jesus, it's hot,"
she muttered. Between her breasts, beads of sweat gathered
and began to trickle. She ignored them, as she tried to
ignore everything about her meager breasts that had
nourished the baby only three weeks before drying up like
stones. "Jesus, it's hot," she muttered again as she sat
down at the kitchen table, shoving aside her cigarettes
and ashtray and carefully setting the earthenware pitcher
near a stack of old magazines. Her hands, one grasping
the handle of the pitcher, the other cupping the bottom,
lingered for a moment against its cool, dewy surface.
Then she turned to look at the baby, its stroller parked
next to the table. The child was asleep but wheezing
and restless in the August weather, its skin the color
of brick-dust. Connie turned away.

She sat in a chair next to the open window, hoping for
a breeze, but finding only flies buzzing leisurely in and
out as if invited. Connie looked out on the dry, brown

lawn, the grass so lifeless it looked like something cut

37

38

from paper. There, she saw Daryl, her husband, bending
his long, skinny body over the front wheel of his rattling
semi. Her face tightened, and she started to turn away;
then, because his back was to her, she stopped and began
to stare at him. He was shirtless in the heat, and she
could see glistening beads of sweat sliding down the bumps
of his spine, and blades of dead grass stuck to his skin
from when he had shimmied under the truck to get as
something broken. A thick, purplish coat of grease covered
his hands and forearms; underneath his ribs, the skin was
scraped raw from when he'd fallen against the truck's
mangled bumper.

For a long time she watched him working in the hot sun;
after a while, she began to chew on the corner of her lip.
Finally she leaned forward and poked her head through the
window.

"Daryl . . . jeez, you want any water, another
beer--something?"

Daryl slowly straightened himself, standing finally
as rigid and thin as a stick. He wiped the sweat from
his face with the back of his hand; then brushed the hand
against his groin, leaving a dark slash against the white
of his faded jeans. "Sure, why not . . . a beer," he
mumbled, looking at her for a moment before turning away.

Connie stood, taking care not to upset the pitcher,
and hurried into the back entrance where a refrigerator

whirred loudly. She tugged a coil of plastic clothes line

 

39
looped through a hole where the handle should have been
and jerked open the door; then pulled a can of beer from
one of the rusting shelves. Slamming the door to make
sure it would stay shut, she walked back into the kitchen,
scooted by the stroller, bending to give the baby and
awkward pat as she did, and leaned through the window.

"Here ’ n

she said, tossing the can toward her husband.
"Damn it," he shouted, twisting up from the engine to
catch it. "I've told you a hundred times not to do that.
Makes it all foamy inside. Shit!" And he flung the beer
back toward the house, Connie pulling her head inside,
turning away from Daryl, seeing from the corner of her
eye the baby jump when the can slammed against the siding
and reaching down absentmindedly to pat the baby's head,
all the while swallowing hard as if a flash of heat had
suddenly scorched her throat. To distract herself she
began to survey the kitchen: the ceiling fan sprung from
its fixture, the dust-covered blades dangling like a spider
from a single web and threatening to fall at any moment;
the cupboard door hanging askew from one hinge--and she
tried to count the number of times either she or Daryl
had fixed the other hinge only to have it pull away
again-~the calendar that hadn't been turned over to August
yet, and here it was almost September. But through these
distractions she could hear Daryl stomp into the rear
entrance, yank open the refrigerator, drag another can

of beer off the shelf, then stomp outside again, the crunch

 

40
of his boots against the stones in the driveway sounding
like the cracking of bones.

Several minutes passed before Connie stopped looking
around the kitchen, before she noticed she was still patting
the baby. She took her hand from the child's head and
glanced down, noticing again how hot and red it looked,
finally wondering if there was something she should be
doing. The baby looked so uncomfortable in the stroller.
She was curled in on herself like a scorched leaf, a white
crust of dried spittle at each corner of her mouth, her
limbs twitching fitfully. Feeling the dryness come back
to her throat, Connie looked away from the baby, dipped
her hand into the pitcher, and, without looking back at
he child, sprinkled her with ice water, thinking as she
did of how the priest used to sprinkle her, Connie, with
blessed water when she was a child. The baby stirred,
whimpered and then went back to sleep. Connie's eyes fixed
on the pitcher for a moment, then moved to the house across
the road where Mr. Swanson lived, the man who had given
her the earthenware pitcher. The pottery was entirely
his own creation: shaped and reshaped by his own hands
until it was exactly as he wanted it, fired in his own
kiln to make its shape hard and strong, then glazed to
make it shine and glitter.

"You hot for the old bastard, Connie? That it? That
why you're always lookin' over there?" Daryl's voice

startled her; she pivoted toward her husband. His head

 

41
was tilted back, and he was gulping beer, his adam's apple
jerking up and down each time he swallowed, his eyes peering
down at her along the sides of the can.

"Don't you wish," Connie answered softly, her voice
weighted like the hot, wet. air that seemed to surround
and hold the three of them like water thick with silt and
weed. "You'd love to have a reason to get in that rig
and keep driving, wouldn't you? One way to California."
Daryl licked beer foam from his wispy mustache "What?
. . . so you can feel sorry for yourself?--more 'an you
already do. Shit, no." He took another gulp of beer.
"Besides, it's yourself you're talkin' about now, ain't
it, Connie? No, I'll play the hand I got dealt me. I've
said that all along. Ain't that true, Connie darlin'?
Ain't it?" He stared at her for a moment, then crumpled
the beer can in his hand and hurled it toward the trash
barrel inside the garage. Connie turned away.

Across the road, she could see Mr. Swanson sitting in
the backyard in the gazebo he had build, sitting and reading
a book. Everyday she would see him there. Sometimes he
would just gaze at the clouds or the fields of wheat and
corn that surrounded his house. Sometimes he would work
on his pottery: sketching new designs on large white sheets
of art paper, or, with a finetip brush, delicately painting
lilies or clover or bluebirds on some vase or bowl he'd
fired the day before. That was when she especially liked

to look across the highway and watch him--when he was being

42
an artist and making something new. And she was happiest
when Daryl was away on a run, because then sometimes Mr.
Swanson would come over and show her the art paper with
some new sketch for a vase, or a flower he was trying to
paint for the first time--a juniper or marigold.

The baby suddenly began to cry, and Connie jumped up,
overturning the ashtray she'd set too close to the edge.
"Oh, shit," she said, brushing ashes off the faded,
flower-print housecoat she ‘was still wearing, though it
was already late ill the afternoon, then scurrying to the
refrigerator and returning with a bottle filled with apple
juice. She stuck the rubber nipple in the baby's mouth,
and the child stopped crying. Connie slumped in her chair,
then abruptly pulled a cigarette from a plastic case lying
on the table. She lit it, blew a thin column of blue smoke
out the window and brushed back clumps of sweaty, brown
hair from her forehead. "God, it's hot," she :muttered,
her eyes wandering and coming to rest on the earthenware
pitcher. Lifting her hand, she gently touched the cool,
thick dew that coated its perfectly rounded middle, its
thick curving handle, the deep "V" of its spout--then her
eyes jumped up to check on Daryl. He was half-swallowed
under the truck hood, invisible from the waist up. She
looked back to the pitcher.

Daryl had said it was ugly: the handle too thick, the
spout misshapen--but Connie knew he was lying. Once, when

he thought she'd left, she'd seen Daryl pick up the pitcher

43

and hold it to the light by the window; she'd seen him
turn it searchingly and admire it just as she did. But
he would never admit it, and, even if he did, she wondered
if he understood--if he could ever understand-—what really
mattered about the pitcher. Mr. Swanson had made it with
his own hands. He'd taken. clay--dirt, really, clay is
nothing but dirt-—and made something that had shape and
gleam to it. That was what mattered.

The blast of a truck horn snapped Connie's head toward
the road. Fifty yards down, she could see Billy Dean's
truck--jacked up "halfway to heaven," as Daryl would
say--braking sharply, blinkers flashing for the turn into
their driveway. Daryl, already grinning, had pulled himself
from under the hood of his semi and was wiping grease from
his hands with an old, ratty tee-shirt.

"Hey, Billy," Daryl shouted as Billy shut off his engine
and jumped down from the high cab, beer in hand and
scowling.

"Jee-sus, you crazy, man? Working on a day like this."
He turned and nodded toward Connie. "You tryin' to kill
off your old man, Connie? You got a barrel full of
insurance on him? That it?" He took a gulp of beer,
holding it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing,
then looked sideways at Daryl. "Forget this, man. Come
on back to the Paradisio with me. Everybody's there--Sam,
Tom, Randy--even Spiller came over from Haggerstown."

Daryl rubbed his chin. "No shit--even Spiller."

44

Billy nodded. "Come on. Shoot some pool, have a few
beers"--then he turned his back to Connie and lowered his
voice--"Some new broads there, too. Spiller brought 'em.
Stacked, you hear." And he began to wriggle his fingers
as if he were fondling a woman's breasts.

Daryl rubbed his chin for a long time; finally he turned
and walked. over to Billy's dark. blue truck. He stood
next to it for a moment, then began to run his hand gently
over its polished, metallic finish. "She's a beaute, Billy.
Best in the county, no shit there."

"Sure, okay . . . so you never should've sold yours,
Daryl."

Daryl looked back at him sharply. "You sayin' I had
a choice, Billy?" he said, his eyes flashing, and Billy
understood and felt bad he had said anything. "You know
how much one of those ‘workhorses costs?" he continued,
nodding back toward his semi. "Even one that's dyin' like
that son of a bitch?"

Billy squatted and fished a twig from the grass. "So,
no use having a heat stroke over it," he said quietly,

his eyes fixed on the twig he was rolling between his

fingers. "You comin' with me or not?" he asked in a feeble
voice.

"Shit . . . you know I want to," Daryl said. "You know
that." He paused for a moment. "But I can't. It's the

wheel bearings this time, and the fuel injector--and I

got a load of shingles to haul Tuesday morning. All the

 

45
way to Cleveland. Then he stared off into the field of
wheat stubble next to the. garage. Billy reached. over,
grabbed some stones from the driveway and started chucking
them at the rear wheel of Daryl's semi. Finally he stood,
his eyes wandering until they stopped at Mr. Swanson's.

"Hey, that pansy still live across the road," he asked.

"He's not!" Connie shouted through the window, her
voice startling Billy. He looked over at Daryl.

Daryl shrugged "The old coot brings her things when
I'm gone, I guess. Bread and shit. He's harmless." Then
he reached over and grabbed Billy's beer. Billy turned
toward Connie.

"Hey, Connie, I'm real sorry if I insulted your friend."
He began scratching his head. "But, I mean-~the man makes
flower pots, don't he?"

' Connie shot back. "Beautiful

"Vases. He makes vases,‘
vases and bowls and pitchers. And he gives them to people!"

"Oh . . . well, then, that's real nice. Yes, that's

real nice," Billy said, turning and winking at Daryl.
He grabbed back his beer. "Don't die on us out here,
Daryl."

"Shit," Daryl answered quietly. A moment later, Billy's
truck was squealing back toward the Paridisio

"I don't like him," Connie said from the window. "He's
. . . he's stupid."

Daryl jerked his eyes from the road and looked at her

like a preacher staring at Sin. "So? . . . we any

46
different, Connie?" he said, and Connie hated Daryl for
saying that, for dragging out the thorn that pierced them
both. She turned away quickly, took a long drag from her
cigarette, then leaned over and pretended. to fuss with
the baby. When she finally glanced up, Daryl had
disappeared again under the hood.

Connie began picking at a spot of dirt under one of
her fingernails. After a moment, she began to skim through
the heap of magazines she'd pushed to the side of the table:
Reader's Digest, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal. Finally
she came to the thin, green catalogue in its hiding place
near the bottom of the stack. Mr. Swanson had brought
it over one morning, along with some rye bread he'd baked,
when Daryl was on a run to Memphis. He only stopped by
when Daryl was gone—-not that Connie had ever mentioned
anything to him-—he just seemed to know.

"Look on page twenty-seven," he'd said, his face
gleaming like the glaze on his pottery, and he slipped
the catalogue into her hands, pressing them between his
own for a moment. Then he left, and Connie hurriedly leafed
through the booklet until she came to page twenty-seven.
There she saw a list of Adult Enrichment Classes, and among
them was one he had circled twice with thick lines of green
ink: "Beginning Pottery, Mondays, 7-9 pm." Next 1x3 it,
in the margin, Mr. Swanson had written in the same dark
green ink: "Free use of my materials and kiln!"

Connie saw Daryl's hand only as a blurr as it came down

47

and ripped the catalogue from her grip. Placing an oily
thumblcni the page Connie had been reading, he flipped over
the cover and held it high against the white light of the
sun to read. "Hanson County Community College, Fall
Schedule." He pronounced the words slowly and deliberately,
his lips twisting as if he had a mouthful of sour food.
He flipped back to page twenty-seven and examined it
silently, his lips tightening and blanching. "Shit," he
said. "Pottery." Then In; turned and hurled the catalogue
toward the trash barrel in the garage, its pages fluttering
and tearing like a hundred broken wings.

" Connie

"Wait, you .. . .. you don't understand, Daryl,
said, her fingers twisting her housecoat into small, tight
clumps.

"Understand? I understand everything I need to, Connie,"
he said, wheeling toward her. "I understand that we got
a kid now--and who wanted that kid, Connie? Who was it
begged and whined to have a kid? A kid you got to take
care of now, and I got to feed," and his voice cut her
like wire. "Ain't that enough to understand, Connie?
Ain't it?" He stopped and stared at her, the long, thin
fingers of his hands pumping open and shut as if helping
him to breath. Finally, he reached down, yanked the pitcher
off the table, holding it with both hands spread wide around
its middle, and gulped down great mouthfuls of water.

Connie looked up at him, raising one hand toward the

pitcher, her lips moving as if trying to form words, but

48
no words coming out.

"Whatta you staring at, for Christ's sake," Daryl said,
setting the pitcher down with a thump, wide smudges of
grease dulling its gleam. "Never seen a man drink water
before? Whatta you staring at, damn it?"

Connie said nothing for a moment; then she turned away,
looking out the window at the dry, brown grass in the yard
and the white stones in the driveway, and she began to
shake her head slowly.

"Nothing," she said. "I'm not staring at anything."

 

In

SC

Building Roads in Africa and Elsewhere

The father never knows the son's whereabouts. Nor does
he know when the son will visit. If he does, usually it's
springtime, but twice the year passed without his knock
at the door, and once he came in winter.

Now the father sits across from the son on a late summer
evening, and this is how it is:

The father who is very old, his skin. white, almost
translucent, as if he's preparing himself to become spirit,
sits bent over in a wheelchair near the kitchen window.
He drinks strong coffee from a cup he balances on the sill
while he looks out at the good country road that passes
by his house. The hum of tires rolling over smooth pavement
floats through the screen. He takes it in as if it were
song.

The son sits at the table on the far side of the
kitchen. His brown hair is cut short; he wears boots,
jeans, a blue corduroy jacket. The jeans are flecked
with paint, and he calls himself an artist. He paints
ears that bleed and eyes that are on fire, flames curling
up over disconnected brows. He sits with one foot hitched

49

50
up on the edge of the chair, chain-smoking cigarettes.
These he rolls himself on the table top with hands that
tremble, his finger-nails click, click, clicking' against
the formica. His breath is sour, and his body reeks with
the sickly sweet odor of yesterday's whiskey. He is staring
at his father.

"Jesus Christ, you still do that?" he finally asks,
swinging his foot down from the chair, the heel clapping
hard against the floor. "Gaze out at that god damn road
as if it were a naked woman? Doesn't mother dearest ever
complain?"

The father doesn't answer. Instead he looks down at
his cup for a long time. Then he begins to stir the coffee.
The chink of the spoon against the porcelain is the only
sound in the room.

Already Ina feels immensely weary. Not from the visit;
his son has just arrived. The weariness comes from the
memories that lie in his bones like marrow.

"Do you have to begin already?" the father says finally.
"Can't you wait until I've recited the usual litany: who's
gotten married, had babies, moved, divorced --" abruptly
he stops speaking. For a moment, he seems to be gathering
his strength the way he must before he wheels himself across
the room--but he neither moves nor says anything' more.

"Why should I wait?" the son finally asks. "You know
I don't give a damn about all that."

The old man nods. "It gives us a moment of calm, that's

51
all. Quiets the air just a little. There's promise in
that."

"Ha!" The son pauses to light another cigarette. A
spike of fire flares from the tip. "Memory fails you,
dear father—-or you dream." His words seem to rise on
the swirl of acrid smoke.

The father nods. "Oh, yes. I still do that. I dream,
I wish, I hope."

The son nods. "So do I. I dream of rats. Wish for
wealth. Hope for shit."

The father turns from the road to look at his son:
eyes jaundiced, nose as red as a blood tick, teeth the
grey of old string. Worse this time than last, the father
concludes. The son's life is ditch water running fast
toward the sea.

"You'll die soon, you know,‘ he says. "Dead at forty,
your liver good for a doorstop, nothing more. . . .
forty-five, maybe, if God has poor eyesight and passes
you by."

The son moans. "God jumped ship long ago." He looks
directly at his father. "I am rudder-less, father. The
waves toss me like seaweed." He makes his voice quiver
with false sincerity.

The father picks up his cup and leans toward the counter
to fill it. He holds the pot too high and the coffee

splashes. Hot, black drops speckle his chest. He ignores

them, turns back to the window, fixes his eyes on the road.

52

His son is right. He spends a lot of time looking out
at the road. But it's a good road-~and one reason he'd
bought the house. It runs straight when it can; twists,
rises and dips only when it must. There's no nonsense
to it, no vain extravagance—-and the old man knows roads.
He'd spend much of his life building them all over the
world: Borneo, Peru, China, Kenya--a dozen other places
he can still quickly locate on the map that hangs in his
bedroom. His company was the first to lay asphalt in the
Yukon, he'll tell you. From Whitehorse to Dawson. "True
and solid and useful to this day," and his finger will
quickly trace a six inch line on the vast expanse of green
that is Canada.

But all that was long ago before the years of surveying
miles of swamp and riding bucking jeeps across desert and
tundra had ruined his health and forced him to settle down.
Long before he'd married and his wife given birth to a
son, their only child.

When they'd married, he'd believed they were too old
and ill to start a family. Children, especially boys,
need vigorous parents, he'd said. Young, healthy parents,
and I've already got a cane hanging from my bedpost and
hips that grind like sand on glass, and you, he'd listen
to his wife's asthmatic wheeze, have never been strong.
His wife had nodded yes to all this at the time, but it
worried him that when they talked, she would gaze out the

window at the field of wheat on the one side their house,

53
or the peach orchard on the other.

After a couple of years, once her body began ticking
hot and cold, her monthly cycle misfiring like 21 worn
engine, she'd come to him one night desperate to give birth
before it was too late. Falling to her knees in front
of him, she'd swayed and wept and dropped tears against
his bare feet until he'd lifted her and pressed her to
his chest.

And for that weakness, he'd long ago assigned his wife
and himself their portion of blame.

"So where is old mother dearest?" the son interrupts
the father's thoughts. "Off to an ice cream social? The
thrill of a quilting—bee?" He is holding his hands in
front of his chest, finger-tips touching, separating,
touching, separating. It was his mother's gesture. She
would stand that way, silent except for her asthmatic
wheezing, as he ‘was ‘punching' holes in the kitchen. wall
with his baseball bat to make silhouettes--"There. That's
Voltaire. Do you know who Voltaire is, Mother? Do
you?"-—or seeing how much of the living' room furniture
he could throw into one corner—-"Volume, Mother, equals
height times width times length. It's so simple."

"She's dead."

The son is lifting his cigarette to his lips when he
hears the father's answer; his hand jerks to the left
as if a whip has grabbed it.

"Dead," he finally mumbles. "Mother's dead." He

54

inhales, bows his head and blows blue smoke toward the
tile floor. It's dull and cracked now. When he was little
and it was smooth and polished, his mother would spread
toys there to keep watch over him while baking bread or
washing dishes. Years later, when he was desperate for
drink, he would offer to wash and wax the floor for a couple
dollars which, no, of course, he promised, he wouldn't
spend (n1 liquor. After several moments, he rubs the back
of his neck. "Think I'll take a walk," he says, and he
grabs matches and a handful of the stubby cigarettes he's
rolled; several squirt through his fingers and fall to
the floor. Half of these he sends skittering into the
corner with a sudden, uneven swipe of his boot; then he
turns and walks toward the door like he's moving in water,
holds on to the door longer than necessary to keep it from
slamming.

The father watches him through the window. The son
follows the flagstone walk past the small pole-barn, then
turns into the field next to the road. He still walks
the way he used to when he was younger, before the father
ordered him out of the house. He doesn't lift his feet
all the 'way, and this shuffling' gait crushes the lgrass
and wild flowers and cuts a swathe as if some heavy,

belly-swinging animal has passed.

In high school, after he'd started drinking, he'd

retrieve the liquor he'd hidden in the culvert a half-mile

55

down, or in the hollow of the old hickory tree split by
lightening or under a thicket of wood fern, and by the
time he'd get to town, weeds sticking from his cuffs, burrs
fastened to his pant legs and shirt like blood-suckers,
he'd be ready to begin his ranting. When the women saw
him coming, they would lay hands on their children's
shoulders and gently turn them toward home; the men would
lower their voices and drift behind gas pumps or into store
fronts to carry on their business as best they could.
It wasn't just that his ravings were painful and
embarrassing, but that they also had sons and daughters.

He would stagger to the center of town, one hand stuck
in his wallet pocket, the other clinging to a half—empty
pint, a finger hooked into the neck of the bottle. He'd
stop, stick a pheasant tail in his hair if he'd found
one in the fields, then roll around in a lop-sided,
stumbling circle that was supposed to be an Indian dance.
Finally he'd throw back his head and begin. "My mother's
a Flathead squaw," he'd yell. "Crazy from loco weed.
Makes bread from burlap sacks, soup from gravel and rock.

Do you hear? . . . Woo-woo-woo,‘ he'd tap his fingers-tips
against his mouth, whoop and again stumble-dance in a
lop-sided circle. "My father-—ah, my father. A failed
shaman from the Stink—Fish Tribe of Oregon. Foretells
good times and generosity, faith and forgiveness. . . .

Woo-woo—woo. He's one-eyed. Sees the flower, never the

weed. The robin, never the hawk. Save me, someone. Save

56
me. They pour water in my nose and siphon off my brain.
Steal my memory and lock it in the cellar for the mice.
Help me. Pleeeease help me!"

Eventually he'd try to smash the bottle against the
front of some building--the church and bank. were
favorites--but often his release was ill-timed. He'd
bounce it off his own shin or foot and piss his pants black
from pain. Someone would have called the sheriff, and
when he arrived he would snare him like a bad actor being
pulled from the stage, dump him into the back seat of his
cruiser and cart him back home. He'd half carry the boy
11) his bedroom-~both his father's hips were ruined by this
time, nests of fire and pain--then remove his sheriff's
cap and hold it in one hand, hook a thumb in his belt and
mumble how sorry he was, that maybe all this soon would
pass.

But he could only do that for so long. Eventually he

had to start taking him to jail.

Fifteen minutes later, the son returns from his walk.
He lets the door slam, and takes his seat at the kitchen
table. He has smoked all the cigarettes he'd taken outside,
so he reaches down and grabs one off the floor. He taps
it against the flat of his hand and lights it.

"It was peaceful," the father says. I'd just given
her tea, and she'd watched the sunrise."

For a long time the son is silent. "I sold a painting,"

57
he finally says. "I called it 'Perdition.' All. black
with a tiny white spot bottom, center. Blood-red lightening
strikes down at the spot."

The father drinks from his cup and then lowers it to
his lap. The sun is setting, and the breeze has cooled.
He wraps both hands around the cup to warm them.

He begins to talk about roads, for these are what he
knows best. When he talks about them, he feels like he's
offering a gift.

"Sometimes, when I was working in the Third World, we
would put down a road right over a path the people had
been using for centuries. There ‘was no :need to survey
a new route: the path was well laid out to carry the people
from where they were to where they wanted to be. It skirted
boulders, found the valley that lead through the mountain
range, fjorded the river at it lowest, calmest spot. Other
times we'd find a path whose course was inexplicable--it
would bump over rocky hills just to the side of a pleasant
valley, raft across insect- and snake-infested mangrove
swamps when dry land was within eyesight, swing wide of
comforting shade trees and cross a sun-burned plain. It
was almost biblical. As if the people were punishing
themselves for past sins.

The father stops and there is silence for a moment before
the son speaks, his words tumbling out hurriedly' as if
there is a deadline to be met or a contest won.

"I've expanded my horizons, father. I now sculpt.

III I J'TJ-h an; a id'n‘l I!

 

58
I'm working on 'Atlas Defeated.’ The globe is oversized,
of course, and Atlas is already on one knee, the other
right at the point of collapse. The trick is to capture
the agony in the muscles; to show the pain and trembling,
the immense strain in the tendons just a millisecond before
they snap and Atlas falls."

"Once," the father continues, "after we'd built a road
just below the Sahara Desert, I witnessed something very
sad. There was an animal native to area, a kangaroo rat.
It had huge back feet and could leap six feet to the right
or left in a split second. It had many natural
predators--jackals, wildcats, fennec--yet little trouble
evading them. It would run ahead, leaping right to left,
left to right over and over, and the fox or jackel or
whatever it was couldn't change directions fast enough
to catch it. Oh, they'd try, but all they'd do is stumble
and dig their noses into sand.

"Once the road was finished, though, things were
different. Caught in the middle of the road with a car
or truck bearing down on them, they'd turn away from it,
leaping right to left, left to right, right to left--but
never leave the road. What they needed to do, of course,
was learn to run in a straight line directly off the
road—-but they never did. Hundreds were crushed to death
each day. Needlessly. Foolishly"--abruptly he stops
speaking; The son has bolted from his chair and fled

out the door .

59

The father peers out the WindOW' to follow the son,
but the evening shadows make it difficult for him to see.
He leans fOrward, straining, but can see nothing clearly.
He has no idea where the son has gone, which direction
he has taken. Is he in the field again on the path next
t1) the road? Or on the road itself? He draws as close
to the window screen as he can, his eyes searching the
landscape, his head tilting from side to side. Finally,
he slumps back in his wheelchair, breathing heavily because
of his efforts, shivering because of the evening breeze.
He rests for a moment, then, after slowly releasing a deep,

deep breath, reaches up and pulls the window shut.

Rock-Salt Shotgun

A pan of Jean's lovely mulled wine, floating cinnamon
sticks and orange, simmers on the stove. Jean, in quilted
housecoat and slippers, ladles out two cups and. passes
one to me. Our children and grandchildren, even more
attentive now that we both are widowed, are gone for the
night, and we retreat down a long hall to the family room.
A Christmas tree glows brightly near the windows; maple
logs snap and hiss in the fireplace, filling the room with
sweet, forest smells. The wind gusts and slaps at the
windows as we take our first sip of hot wine, and I can
hear icicles cracking off the eaves and thumping into the
crusted snow beneath. Outside, it is bitterly cold, just
as it was that night sixty years ago when Uncle Israel
returned. We are alone with our memories of those distant

years. The two of us—-the only ones who escaped.

****

It was late afternoon, the temperature just above
freezing.

"Joe, did you milk them all?" I asked. Grinning beneath

60

61
a mat of black, wind-tied hair, Joe glanced back and nodded
yes as he slid the barn door shut.

"Amelia?" I about—faced toward the chicken coop and
watched as she struggled with her tiny, pink fingers to
twist tflua block of wood that held the door tightly closed.
Then I turned toward the far end of the barn where Nars,
the two halves of his torn, soiled coat flapping like the
wings of an injured crow, was tossing another bucket of
silage at the sows rooting and grunting in the pig sty.

"That's enough," I shouted through cupped hands. "Bring
the axe."

He was there like a shot, offering me with both hands
that worn tool, the head pitted and rusty, the handle
bleached bone white by the sun, as if it were something
medieval encrusted with diamonds.

"All right," I said, holding the cutting edge at eye
level, tilting it this way and that and pulling my thumb
across it. "Needs sharpening plain. as ‘day. Can't cut
a Christmas tree with a dull axe." They shouted yes, and
off we marched. to the tool shed, Joe, Amelia and. Nars
running circles around me, then laughing and pushing each
other to see who could win the honor of cranking the ancient
grindstone. The axe didn't need sharpening, but I knew
the shower of sparks thrown by the spinning wheel would
excite the younger ones. I knew it because Jean had thought
of it the year before. "Fireworks," she had whispered

to me, "if you imagine a little."

62

But where was she now? The stone was whirling. I
pressed the blade against it and looked toward the house.
No Jean-~and I was worried. I couldn't remember a Christmas
when our tree hunt hadn't been led by Jean--laughing
prank-playing Jean--straight to the greenest and
sweetest—smelling spruce in the Upper Peninsula. It was
tradition. It was how things had always been—-how they
had to be, really, if we were going to survive: the bunch
of us sticking together, no matter what Pa did, no matter
what Ma didn't do. But when I'd asked her about it in
the house, she only glowered and mumbled, and all I
understood was something about letting her alone, letting
her be.

Letting her be! This nonsense had been going on for
six months now. This . . . this withdrawing--from me,
Joe, Amelia, and Nars; from the babies, Rose and Joe.
This becoming sullen and secretive and moody. This
meanness. This meanness from a girl the nuns at St.
Pascal's used to coo over, and dream of the day when she
would enter their convent. Why did she hate us so? What
had we done?

The back door suddenly swung open and Jean stormed out,
slamming the door behind her so hard she loosened a bank
of snow at the edge of the roof. It tumbled in a heap
behind her.

"Put that axe back in the shed, Joe," she said, her

eyes fixing him like nails. "No hunt today. No tree.

-_.A’?

z

‘7'

63

No nothing." Immediately Amelia and Nars burst into tears,
but Joe was old enough to have learned to choke them back,
though his face showed white from the strain. Stone-faced,
Jean stomped right past us, ignoring us, stopping' only
when she noticed Amelia and Nars weeping. "Stop it, you
hear! It won't do any good. Nothing can help. Nothing!"
Then she turned back toward me. "He's whiskey-mean, Sam.
You hear. Let it go."

The grinding wheel was coasting to a stop, turning
slowly, wobbling and creaking on its uneven shaft. The
axe hung at my side. For a long time we stood there
watching Jean tromp through the north field, her head
hanging down, not looking back or waving, not caring about
any of us.

"What's wrong with her, Sam?" Joe finally asked, Amelia
and Nars turning to hear my answer as well. "What's
happened to her?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just don't know." Then
I handed the axe to Nars. "Take it back," I said.

We waited until Nars returned and then headed into the
house together. We opened the door quietly, slipped out
of our boots, coats and gloves with barely a rustle; then
walked like cats--Amelia and Nars arm-in-arm and
tip—toeing--into the single, large, plank-floored room
'that was, other than for Ma and Pa's bedroom, the kitchen,
and the straw loft where all of us slept, our house. We

looked over into the open kitchen where our eyes joined

64

on Pa's whiskey jug sitting in the middle of the table.
A bead of dark liquor was sliding down its hip, the corn
cob plug lying next to it on the worn, brown oilcloth.
Behind the table, Pa was stretching his wirey, bantam frame
as high as he could, his cover-alls, dirty and a size too
small, twisted between his buttocks. He was glaring out
the north window.

"Goddam, if she ain't goin' there. Going over to that
trash," he said, and we could see the cords in his neck
were drawn as tight as fiddle strings. Ma, standing at
the sink pumping water, her eyes bright with fear, turned
to us and flicked her head toward the loft. Joe, Amelia
and Nars bolted for the ladder. Rose and Emil, the babies,
were already up there, crouching behind a thick, rough
brace beam and staring down with wide, white eyes. I slid
back into the little entrance hall where Pa couldn't see
me, then peeked around the doorjamb.

"Goddam," he repeated and turned to take another swig
of whiskey, his voice rasping like a knife point drawn
against rust, that "whiskey-mean" voice we'd all learned
to fear like Judgment Day. Then he strode over to the
kitchen wall where two identical hammer-lock shotguns hung
high on wooden pegs, the bottom one filled with rock
salt-—for his "loved ones" he'd sneer: it maims but doesn't
kill--the top one with lethal buckshot——for his enemies.
As he reached for the rock salt gun, I grabbed my coat

and eased open the door.

65

Once outside, I ran to the creek behind the barn. Its
banks were high, the water low and frozen, and it ran
straight as a rake handle toward the Holtz farm a half-
mile to the north. I slid down the bank and began running
along the edge of the creek, leaping on clumps of dead
saw grass and milk weed, patches of bottom rock--anything
sticking through the ice that would keep me from slipping
and falling.

The Holtzs were the trash Pa was talking about. Old
man Holtz was a known thief and cheat, and Logan Holtz,
his eighteen year old son, was worse. I hated Logan Holtz
as much as I hated my father, and I couldn't figure out
why Jean would chase after that misery to add to the misery
we already had at home. Especially when the Guillaume farm
lie just a mile to the south, and Martin Guillaume, who
was as smart and handsome and gentle as Logan Holtz was
not, had been in love with Jean for the past two years.
Logan Holtz had done nothing but sneer at Jean before she
suddenly started chasing after him one day about six months
ago, and Logan Holtz was dirty, crude and vicious. Once,
while I was hidden by a wild raspberry patch, I'd seen
him tie a broken millstone around the neck of a whimpering
dog and toss it into the creek like he was chucking a
rock—-all the while a smile showing every tooth in his
mouth. But Jean didn't change the look on her face when
I told her about it; then, when I'd hollered at her, she'd

just turned and said, "What? You still believe in St.

1,‘ '

66
Francis, Sam—boy? Do You? Well, he's dead. Dead and
buried. Don't you understand that?" But I had no idea
what she was talking about.

I'd gone and sat under a tree to think. I thought back
to the time when Jean first took up with Logan Holtz.
It was right after Pa had shoved her face into a plate
of beans for no good reason-~could that be it? Was she
just trying to spite him? But he'd done that before, and
it hurt a lot less than being hit or shot with rock salt.
And what did that have to do with St. Francis being dead?
I just couldn't figure it out.

Halfway down the creek to the Holtz farm, I stopped
and peered over the rim of the bank. Pa, grasping the
gun by the barrel, muzzle down, stock riding on his
shoulder, was striding swiftly through the field separating
the two farms, not more than a hundred yards behind. I
studied him for a moment, studied the strange way he moved
across the field, studied his loping, feral gait--the sight
chilling me like ice put to my spine. I turned to run
but hesitated. Maybe rock salt is what Jean needed. Maybe
a back full of green and yellow welts draining pus for
a week would knock her out of whatever tree she'd climbed
up in so high, so remote from us, so cold and mean and
silent. But the thought of such betrayal repulsed me.
I crouched again and started to run.

Just beyond the Holtz's barn, I came up low out of the

creek bed, sneaked along a fence line leading right up

67
to its north side and began to climb. Old man Holtz
neglected his farm even more than my father did ours, and
so the barn was full of knotholes, loose spikes, and missing
boards, all of which made easy hand and toe-holds. I pulled
up even to the open hay loft and peered in.

"Jean?" I whispered, though my father was still at least
fifty yards away and approaching from the other end of
the barn. "Jean, Pa's coming." After a moment's silence,
the straw rustled and a head popped up in the pale,
mote-filled, dusk light filtering through. the Iholes and
cracks in the barn wall. Then a second head, large and
squarish, rolled up: Logan Holtz leering.

"He's got a gun, Jean. He's comin' for you." There
was silence, then Logan Holtz started 11) snicker, then
to laugh in a low, sick-sounding way.

"Which gun," he asked, "the rock salt gun for his loved
ones or the bmckshot for his enemies?" He laughed again.
"Don't matter anyway does it?" Still leering at me, I
could see him start to paw Jean, and Jean did nothing to
stop him. Had I Pa's other shotgun I would have killed
him--maybe Jean as well.

"Hurry , Jean , "

I said, hearing Pa begin a coughing fit
on the other side of the barn. "Follow me." I scampered
down, jumping the last five feet to time rough, frozen
ground, and, hugging the fence like before, ran back to

the creek. As I slid into it, I glanced back and could

see Jean sprinting from the barn, so I turned and ran as

68
fast as I could back to our house.

I threw my coat on a peg in the entrance way and walked
to the kitchen where Ma was washing turnips in a bucket.
She looked up at me as I entered, her forehead a knit of
furrows, water from the turnip she was holding dripping
down her sleeve and spotting her dress with dark,
over-lapping circles.

"She's right behind me," I said and went to sit on one
of the hard, straight-backed chairs in front of the fire.
Ma began scrubbing her turnips again--saying nothing as
usual, retreating into her own silent world. A moment
later Jean ran in breathing hard and came over and threw
herself down on the chair next to me. For a long time,
she stared at me as though she wanted to say something;
finally she turned and stared at the fire. Shortly after,
we heard Pa stomping snow off his boots outside the door.
He must have caught sight of Jean, three years older and
taller than I by two heads, running back in the creek bed.

When he stepped through the doorway, he stopped and
glared at us over his long, crooked nose. It had been
broken, word had it, at least four times back when his
drinking and meanness had been more public than they were
now. For several moments his red-veined eyes flickered
between Jean and me. Then, without a word, he walked into
the kitchen, hung the gun on the wall pegs and went over
to the table where he unplugged the whiskey jug, twisted

it up over his shoulder and sucked at the rye liquor he'd

69
brewed in the barn last summer. After swiping at his mouth
with his sleeve and stopping the jug with the corn cob,
he looked at me sideways.

"Where'd ya git that red nose, boy?" he asked in his
raspy, whiskey-mean voice.

"Why I told him to move, Pa. Been sittin' there too
close to the fire for too long now. It's a shine he's
gittin'."

Ma's attempt was pathetic. It was the only way she
ever tried to help us, and it was doomed from the beginning.
Her voice always had a nervous edge to it when she talked
to Pa; when she lied it outright quivered.

Pa came at me with his left hand raised like a scythe,
but it was Jean he back—handed across the side of her head
with the knuckles of his other hand, surprising her and
knocking her off the chair. Then he struck me in the back
of the head, but I was ready for him and didn't fall over.
He stood there glowering at us for a long time before
finally walking back to the table and dragging out a chair.

"I'm hungry," he said to Ma, sitting down without looking
at her. She immediately set a plate in front of him and
began piling apple butter on a slice of bread.

Once Pa was gone, I reached down to touch Jean's
shoulder, but when I did she withdrew, snarling, like a
dog I'd once tried to free from a muskrat trap.

"Damn it, Jean, what's wrong with you!" I kept my voice

low, and neither Pa nor Ma looked over at us. We used

70
to comfort one another, Jean and I, and the younger ones
as well. But that also had changed over the past months.
That too along with everything else about Jean.

She pushed me away and climbed the ladder to the loft,
crawling to a corner and turning her back to everyone.
A few minutes later, I followed her; then Ma, her eyes
avoiding mine, handed up tins of pork gravy and biscuits
for all of us. But Jean wouldn't touch hers.

From the kitchen, we could hear the whiskey jug thumping
against the table and soon Pa's voice singing (nu: Old
Testament verses in loud, wavering stanzas.

"Cursed be he who dishonors his father and mother.

Cursed be he." Then he'd say, "Come on, Ma. Come on."
And we'd hear Ma's feeble, sparrow voice respond, "Amen.
Amen."

At sunrise the next morning, Christmas Eve morning,
the mild weather was still with us: the sky still and clear
and the temperature just low enough to put a lid of ice
on the water bucket. By the time we finished our chores,
though, a: bitter wind was scudding a line of slate-colored
clouds from over Lake Superior, and snow was already
crunching under our boots.

When we come in from the barn, Pa was up and sitting
at the kitchen table, and the big, blue and white-flecked
porcelain coffee pot, puffing steam like a donkey engine,

was perched atop the black, wood stove.

"He's coffee-sad," I ‘whispered 1x) Jean, smiling, but

 

71
her face hardened, and she turned away, unable to welcome
the morose, sometimes maudlin mood my father would fall
into for some length of time after each drunk.
"Coffee-sad," we called his depression because he traded
the whiskey jug for the coffee pot, and we were safe as
long as it was warming on the stove.

I turned away from Jean and watched the babies, Rose
and Emil, circling the kitchen table in little acts of
courage and hope, each time walking closer and closer to
Pa, each time slowing, wanting him to reach out and grab
them, tousle their hair or sit them on his lap and fuss
over them awkwardly and mawkishly as he sometimes would.
For them, it was the only time he touched them with
affection; for us, it was the only time he wouldn't handle
us with cruelty: no black eyes and split lips, no festering,
green and yellow, rock—salt welts on our backs. Even Ma
was relaxed and humming as she kneaded bread for the day's
baking.

As Christmas Eve morning was traditionally the time
we would decorate our Christmas tree, without one, we all
fell quiet and melancholy after our breakfast of warm milk
and bread. The rest of us did, at least. I couldn't tell
about Jean. She was keeping by herself, off near the corner
of the fireplace, reading a battered copy of Treasure
Island-—or pretending to. I stared at her for several
moments, disgusted by how filthy she was. Living on a

hard-scrabble farm as we did, with chores to face twice

72

daily and water to pump, haul and heat if we did want to
bathe, we had good reason to be dirty most of the time--but
not on Christmas morning. Despite our disappointment about
the Christmas tree, despite Pa being Pa and Ma being Ma,
all of us had washed and changed clothes before breakfast.
All of us except Jean. Her face was smudged; her hair
hung in greasy clumps and tangles with bits of pale straw
clinging to it like streaks of gray. The ragged dress
and patched, baggy leggings she wore were the same she'd
worn at sunrise when she'd curried the horses and shoveled
out their stalls.

The scrape of a chair against the rough planking turned
my head. My father had twisted in his chair, his red,
watery eyes wandering around the house, skipping over the
children, the sparse, hand-hewn furniture, then stopping
at the corner where the Christmas tree usually stood.

"Where's the goddam tree?" he asked of no one and
everyone. Then his eyes flickered with some dim
recollection of what had happened the day before. "Go

' he said, and Amelia and Nars

out and get a goddam tree,‘
squealed and ran for the door, and the little ones, Rose
and Emil, were holding hands and jumping in circles. I
looked at Jean, but she was staring into the fire. I walked
past her to get my coat, not bothering to beg, and walked
outside with Joe, Amelia and Nars. As I closed the door,
I could hear Ma coaxing her.

"Go with 'em, Jean. Why don't you go with 'em."

73
We walked to the barn to get the axe; then turned toward
the woods on the far side of the east field. Half-way
across, I glanced back over my shoulder, but Jean wasn't
following us, and the snow now falling thickly was already

covering our tracks.

An hour later we were back, Ma had taken down the box
of home-made decorations, and we were winding long strings
of popcorn and cranberries around a fat, sweet-smelling,
spruce. Ma stood to the side giving directions, and even
Pa twisted in his chair to watch for awhile, but Jean,
still sitting in front of the fireplace, kept her back
to us the whole time. Soon the only thing remaining was
to place at the top of the tree the straw Star of Bethlehem
we had all taken part in making two years earlier. It
was Jean who'd had the idea; Jean who had gathered us in
the wheat field right after threshing to search for the
brightest yellow straw; Jean who had guided our fingers
in the weaving, knotting and lacquering until the large,
golden Star had finally emerged.

I dragged over one of the straight-backed chairs from
the fireplace, stepped up, and stretched as far as I could,
but the tree-top stayed a hand-length beyond my reach.
A brief, awkward silence followed before everyone, Ma,
Joe, Amelia and Nars, Rose, Emil and I, turned toward Jean.
It was little Rose who finally took the Star from my hand,

tip-toed over to her and tapped her on the shoulder. When

74
Jean finally turned, Rose held out to her our woven Star
of Bethlehem.

"Please, Jean," she said. "You're the tallest."

Except for Pa, who had turned back to his coffee and
sadness, we all were watching them. For a long time, Jean
just looked at the Star as if it were something she didn't
recognize; finally, she took it from Rose's hand and walked
to the tree. All the younger ones cheered and clapped,
but Ma and I could see how painful it was for her, so we
said nothing. She wasn't smiling, and she seemed not even
to be aware of the rest of us as she stepped onto the chair.
I steadied it as she reached up, holding the Star of
Bethlehem in both hands. But when she tried to tie it
to the top of the spruce, her hands shook terribly, and
she almost dropped it. We all saw this and fell silent,
even little Rose and Emil, and Ma raised her hand in a
halting, incomplete gesture to help her before letting
her arm fall limp to her side. With much effort, Jean
finally managed to steady her hands enough to make the
knot; then she quickly stepped down and fled back to her
chair, slumping into it, drawing herself into a ball,
exhausted.

For a long time I watched her sitting there, small and
curled in with such sadness, dry and shriveled like an
apple left too long in the sun; then my eyes turned toward
Pa sitting at the table. He too was curled in on

himself-~hunched over his coffee, morose, silent, distant;

75

dry and shriveled like Jean——there was little difference
between the two of them. It was as if two bodies now shared
the same soul-—and finally I understood. I knew why Jean
now allowed Logan Holtz to paw her, why she let her hair
hang in greasy lumps on Christmas, why she was so mean
to us and wouldn't be comforted. And I knew why, that
one day months before, she'd told me St. Francis was dead.
Dead and buried.

I also knew I could do nothing to help her--or myself
or my brothers and sisters when our time came. And come
it must, it seemed, from the looks of Jean, the oldest.

The rest of the morning dragged by slowly, uneventfully,
and, for me, with my new understanding of Jean, of us,
sadly and painfully. Joe, Amelia, Nars and the babies
mostly played in front of the tree, and I joined in
half—heartedly from time to time. Ma was busy in the
kitchen; Pa sat hunched at the table drinking coffee, and
Jean, I saw each time I turned to look at her, still stared
into the fireplace. And nothing changed until noon when
we heard the noises outside.

The snorting of the horse is what we heard first; then
the quick, punching sounds, muffled by the morning's fresh
snowfall, of its hooves breaking through the hard, icy
crust beneath. We all swept toward the door at once, Pa
at the head, and all dropped our mouths in chorus when
he swung open the door on a tall Ojibway sitting atop a

black, steaming gelding pawing the snow with its hoof.

76
The Indian looked down on us for several moments, neither
smiling nor frowning nor uttering a word; then he pulled
a letter from beneath the blankets he had wrapped around
himself. After Pa had stepped forward cautiously to take
it from his hand, the Indian wheeled the horse about and
was gone.

Inside, Pa turned the envelope over suspiciously several
times, eyeing it as if it were a rock under which something
had just moved, before slitting the flap with a knife and
removing the letter. He handed it to Jean.

' she began reading. "After twenty years

"Dear Brother,‘
of absence, on this eve of our Savior's birth, I am
returning to visit you, Jacob, my brother, and all my other
brothers and their families. Would you kindly gather them
at your house this evening? God forgive me, I have not
yet found room in my heart for Ma, so I BEG you NOT to
tell her of my return. -— Israel."

Each of these words, as Jean read them, was a stone
piled on my father's shoulders; by the end, he was slumped
in his chair staring at the floor. "Israel," he whispered
just once, then all the sadness vanished from his face.
With one thrust of his arm, he sent his coffee cup crashing
against the wall and us running back to the fireplace.

"Israel," I also repeated the word softly to myself—~a
mystery for twenty years. To us, "Uncle Israel? my father's

youngest brother who'd fled from my grandmother, his mother,

in the middle of the night when he was thirteen-years old.

77

All of us had heard the rumors that something unspeakable
had happened between them, rumors I didn't want to repeat
to myself or anyone else. And we'd heard the other rumors
as well: that he'd fled to Canada with the Ojibway and
settled on a reservation near Thunder Bay on the north
shore of Lake Superior, that he'd finished school at the
Catholic mission there and then stayed to work with the
priest. And both the Indian messenger and the Christian
tone of his letter seemed to point to the truth of these
rumors.

"Jean! Samuel!" Pa's voice jolted us from our thoughts--
I could tell from Jean's face she'd also resurrected the
mystery of Uncle Israel. "Harness the horse to the sleigh.

I'm leaving in five minutes."

It was late in the afternoon when Pa returned, and
darkness had already lowered its hand over the eastern
horizon. The storm that had blown down from Lake Superior
in the morning was hovering above us and rattling the north
window with fiercely-driven pellets of snow. When Pa came
in, not bothering to stamp his boots or knock the snow
from his hat, he wasn't alone. His unmarried brother,
Isaac, was with him, and within half an hour his other
brothers, Shem, Seth, and Esau, all seed of the same seed,
had arrived with their wives and children--the wives either
as partial to jug whiskey and meanness as their husbands

or as cowered and pliant as our own mother was.

78

The children all gathered in small groups around the
Christmas tree or in front of the fireplace, but there
was little play, and our talk was quiet and secretive and
centered on the return of Uncle Israel. His mystery was
as intriguing to us as it was to our parents, and wild
tales became wilder as they will among children on dark,
winter nights. Even Jean was up, hands stuffed in her
pockets, whispering to our older cousins.

The adults stayed in the kitchen, either sitting around
the table or stretching their hands over the wood stove,
with Pa watching out the north window, while Shem and Isaac
took turns pacing back and forth between the kitchen and
the south window to peer out into the increasing darkness
and snow. There was little talk among them, and what talk
there was came in short, chewed-off sentences that were
more grumbled then spoken, and it wasn't long before Pa
had taken the whiskey jug down from the shelf.

The knock came as the jug was being handed around for
the fourth time. The murmur of conversation ceased
immediately; all eyes turned toward Pa.

' he commanded, with a leering smile,

"Put that jug away,’
a Logan Holtz smile, twisting' his face. "We got. us a
Christian visitin'. A New Testament man." Then he turned,
walked into the entrance way and pulled open the door.

"Brother Israel!" we could hear him shout, "God be

praised!" and we heard the swish and rub of clothing as

they embraced. A moment later, both emerged into View,

 

79

and all eyes were fixed on the man who had disappeared
from family life twenty’ years before, a small man like
my father and his brothers, with a tangle of glistening,
snow-speckled hair as wild as John the Baptist's. Releasing
my father's arm, he stepped over to his other brothers,
embraced each of them and their wives, all the while
murmuring words in a voice too quiet for me to understand,
but words resonating with a softness and gentleness that
filled and calmed the room like dawn. Finally, he turned
toward us, the children of his brothers, and took us in,
each of us, possessing us with eyes as solidly blue and
deep as the August waters of Lake Superior.

"Jean," Pa finally said. As the. oldest, it 'was for
Jean to start, but for a long time she could do nothing
but stare at Uncle Israel.

"My name is Jean, daughter of Jacob," she finally said,
and tfluni we all introduced ourselves, oldest to youngest,
family to family, Uncle Israel saying nothing, just looking
at each of us, and we at him. When we had finished, he
turned toward his brothers and their wives and said, "You
are blessed." But the silence 'which followed, when. no
one responded, quickly slipped into awkwardness, and my
father broke it by turning to me.

"Tend to your Uncle's horse now, boy," he said.

And it was at that moment, just as I had started toward
the door to walk Uncle Israel's horse to the shelter of

the barn, that a rush of wind from the entrance way suddenly

8O

filled tflua house, and swirls of snow, like tiny white dust
devils, twisted crazily across the floor. Everyone turned
and looked. There had been no shouted greeting, no knock,
no warning. I turned back toward my father, but both he
and. his brothers were staring' at Uncle Israel, who ihad
reached down and gripped the top of the wooden chair he
was standing next to, locked his eyes on the entrance way,
and shifted his body downward the way a cat does before
it leaps. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of
Ma slipping’ back. behind. everyone: else, crouching ill the
corner by the wall with the guns.

"ISRAEL," a voice boomed from the entrance way.
"ISRAEL," it cried out a second time just before my
grandmother floated into view. Her body was a cloud of
dark, heavy tflankets, her head and face invisible, except
for the glaring points of her eyes, beneath a ragged, black
shawl whose loose ends were whipped about. by the ‘wind
rushing through the open door. She took not more than
three steps into the house 'before stopping" and staring
at Israel. My father, Shem, Seth, Isaac and Esau filed
in behind her to form a wall in front of the entrance.

"After twenty years, Israel, you finally return to your
mother," she hissed, and there 'was nothing' but ice .and
fire glistening in the grey points of her eyes when she
spoke.

At first, Israel said nothing. His hands gripped the

chair tighly; then a low moan began deep inside his belly,

r.

.2

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A:
:—

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a...

u..

cw

s-u

:

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.

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81
rolled upward to his lips and broke forth in a few whispered

' he said, "Adders' eggs and spiders'

words: "Adders' eggs,‘
webs. Whoever eats your eggs will die." Then he slowly
raised the chair, held it above his head and stared at
his mother who never removed her eyes from his, who
retreated no an inch from her ground--then suddenly whirled
and. heaved. the chair through the south ‘window ten feet
behind him.

The crashing glass and splintering’ wood. had, not 'yet
settled in the snow outside when Uncle Israel hurtled
himself through the opening, his left shoulder grazing
the frame as he did, twisting his body around so that I
had one last glimpse of his eyes before he disappeared
into the darkness and snow. Not a moment later, Jean leaped
through after him, leaving behind a cry that floated in
the air long after she'd disappeared through the window.

The moment's shock passed, Rose and Emil burst into
tears, and Ma ran to comfort them. Behind her in the
kitchen, all I could see was a confusion of thumping boots
as my uncles rushed for the door--my father behind them,
a shotgun in his hand. I glanced up at the wall. The
top pegs were empty.

"Run, Jean,‘ I cried out as I turned, dashed to the

broken window and leaped. "Run, oh, God, run!"
When I landed outside I fell, cutting my face on a shard

of glass; at the same moment, I heard the pounding of Uncle

Israel's horse, the roar of Pa's shotgun, and then, holding

rh

82
my breath . . . silence, nothing but glorious silence except
for the slowly fading pounding of hooves against snow.
"Traitors!" I heard Pa scream after them. "Traitors,

the both of you!"

Winter spun itself out as it does in the Upper Peninsula,
fiercely, with a false thaw in late February' and then
vengeful blasts of snow and wind and ice in March. The
lasting thaw finally came in April, and with it the birthing
of calves and, once the sun and wind had dried the pools
of snow-melt, the plowing and planting of wheat and oats
and corn in the hard, rock-strewn soil.

And, all this time, I mourned. I mourned our loss of
Jean. I mourned (nu: own. frightful, unhappy' future-~but
I felt as well the joy of knowing that Jean, at least,

had escaped.

It was June, I remember clearly--the house was filled
with the sweet, light fragrance of the wild lilac blossoming
in front of our house--when Jean returned. She woke me
just before sunrise, clasping her hand over my mouth and
whispering, "Get your clothes and follow me."

"Jean!" I said too loudly, and she quickly shushed me,
then backed away so I could get up.

I crept down the ladder first, Jean lingering at the
top to stare at Nars, Amelia, Joe, and the babies in their

sleep. Finally she followed me. We tip-toed across the

83

floor, slipped out the door, ran for the barn, the creek
beyond the barn, then turned north to follow it past the
Holtz farm all the way to the road that would take us to
Sault Sainte Marie and the train to Detroit where Mr. Ford
was paying workers five dollars a day to build his cars.

"We'll come back," Jean said as we handed the conductor
the tickets Uncle Israel had bought for us. "We'll come
back when we've got the money. We'll come and take them
all away--Nars, Amelia and Joe, Rose and Emil. And Ma

too. We'll save them all, Sam. Every one of them."

And we did go back, two years later, only to find the
farm a tangle in weeds. They'd left, we were told, just
a few weeks after Jean and I had escaped-—and not just
Ma and Pa and the little ones, but grandma and grandpa,
Shem, Isaac and all the other brothers and their families.

We followed rumors that took us as far as Iron Mountain,
then on to Copper Harbor. There, the trail ended, and

we returned to Detroit never to see or hear of them again.

Headlights flash across the room, lifting us from our
memories. Jean's neighbors,.her best friends, are leaving
for midnight Mass. I look across at her. She smiles but
says nothing. After all these years of coming together

on Christmas Eve, there is no need. We've done all our

84
talking; to remember is enough. She holds up her empty
cup.

"Another?"

I shake my head no. It's late, and I know our children
and grandchildren will be back early in the morning,
Christmas morning. Back with arms piled high with presents
wrapped in soft, white paper and tied with ribbons that
curl, bows that sparkle and shine. Back with tins of mince
and apple pie, bowls of fresh grape and melon, and loaves

of bread still warm, soft and fragrant.

Aborigine

It was a bitter winter Sunday, and Charles sat in the
den reading a book about aborigines. He wasn't too far
from his wife, Ruth, who was in the kitchen, but he had
fled as far as he could without having to march outside
into the snow.

"Charles?" Ruth said.

No response.

Her long dark hair coiled neatly on top of her head,
Ruth was kneeling culaa chair and leaning over a newspaper
spread across the kitchen table. Magnifying glass in hand,
she was examining one of the ads as if it were a rare
coin.

"Charles, we ought to go to Blakely's today. They're
having a wonderful pre-spring cleaning sale. Sponges,
soap, buckets--everything. She scanned the fine print
at the bottom of the ad for disclaimers, her face darkened
with mascara and eye-liner, her narrow lips given broader
but false contours by a coat of thick lipstick. Satisfied,
she put down the magnifying glass and picked up her cup.

"Did you hear, Charles?" she said again, sipping sugared

85

86
coffee and studying the color of the wall in front of her.
For some time now she had been considering lavender.

Charles had heard. His only reaction was to shift
slightly toward the patio door.

"Charles?" Ruth said again, turning and funneling her
words down the narrow hallway that separated them.

This time Charles answered, but without taking his eyes
off the book spread open on his lap like a butterfly with
black-on—white wings.

"Don't want to. Sunday's a day of rest."

Ruth looked away from the wall and began to dig at
something caught under a fingernail.

"Since when did you start keeping holy the Sabbath,
Charles?"

Charles sighed and looked up, a finger pressed against
the page marking the spot where he'd stopped reading.

"It has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with
being tired. All week I sell real estate. All day Saturday
I cart you around shopping because you refuse to get a
license. Sunday is my day. Sunday I read."

Ruth took a knife to the spot under her nail.

"Don't ridicule the handicapped, Charles. You know
I don't drive because of my eye problem."

Charles' finger slide to the bottom of the page. Ruth
was in her script now; this would endure.

"Ruth, darling, all you need are glasses, but you refuse

to wear them. Isn't that so, sweetest?" He heard Ruth

87
grumble something, then there was silence. He waited.
More silence. He turned to his book again.

"So what about Blakely's? Spring is upon us, you know."

Charles placed a marker in the book, closed it, set
it carefully on the light stand next to him, then began
to massage little white circles into ‘his forehead 'with
his thumb and index finger. After a while, he stopped
and turned toward the hallway.

"There are six inches of snow on the ground with a crust
like sheet metal," he shouted. "The thermometer' hasn't
climbed to twenty in three weeks, and you say spring is
upon us, for crying out loud!"

Ruth took her lighter from the pocket of her housecoat
and lit a cigarette. In the silence of the kitchen, the
wheel rasped loudly against the flint. She inhaled and
blew a stream of blue smoke down the hallway.

"All I know, Charles, is that it has a way of coming
and going before you know it."

In the den, Charles stood, walked over to the picture
window and stared out at their snow-covered backyard.
He wished Ruth were right. It had been a long, tiresome
winter.

"And what about the 'Home Beautiful' contest in June,"
Ruth added. "They judge inside and outside both, remember,
and we might want to paint the living room or do something
else that takes a lot of time."

"Home Beau-ti—ful." Charles repeated the words slowly,

88

pulling the second word into syllables as if picking apart
a machine to see how it vmmked. He thought for a moment.
"How long have we been entering that silly contest anyway?"
he asked Ruth..

"Silly?...and you're in real estate."

"How long?"

"Why . . . twenty years, I suppose."

Charles rubbed his whiskers--he'd begun to give his

razor Sundays off—-and considered the matter. "Twenty
years of washing, painting, digging and planting," he
muttered . "New curtains , new petunias and then a photo

of our house and our faces with cheese smiles in the
neighborhood paper-—for twenty years now. Incredible!"
He turned toward the hallway.

"I say we skip it this year, Ruth."

"Skip it?--and you're in real estate! Do you hear what
you're saying, Charles?"

"Yes, clearly. I am saying we should skip the damn
thing. Enough is emough." He waited for Ruth's response.
Nothing. He cocked his ear toward the kitchen. All he
could hear was the rapid clinking of the spoon against
the cup as she stirred her coffee. 1

Ruth laid the spoon on. the 'table. Another tangent,
she thought. He's off on another kick of some sort. She
hated it when he did that. If only they could stick with
Blakely's and spring cleaning.

"Well, all I know is you used to say it was important

89
for someone in real estate to keep his own house beautiful,"
she said, hoping to draw him back to subject.

There was a long pause ‘before Charles answered, and
it was to himself that he softly spoke.

"Yes . . . I know . . . for twenty years.

In the kitchen, Ruth's knees had begun to ache. She
got down from the chair and walked to the coffee pot to
pour herself another cup. As she watched the flow of dark
liquid, she thought about the many Sundays--going on two
years now-—Charles had spent sitting in the den reading.
For awhile she had listened to him when he began to rattle
on about something new he'd learned, something that
fascinated him. She had even tried to ask the right
questions, to make the right comments, to laugh when he
laughed (n: let her face grow serious when she saw him do
the same. But. she knew' she never' really listened; she
knew she was only acting--not that she hadn't made her
share of resolutions. Just last summer she'd enrolled
in a community college course—-Cultures of the Pacific
Rim, or something like that--hoping this would help her
to talk with Charles--or to listen, to really listen, at
least. But she'd soon dropped out. What did she care
about Maori fertility rites, she'd asked herself, or food
gathering among the Tagalog? The answer was nothing--not
a penny's worth.

But sometimes she would remember last summer-~though

this remembering happened less and less frequently-—remember

90
that Charles had left the den and spread his book on the
kitchen table across from her as she studied, that he would
get Lu) and bring her fresh coffee and often lay his hand
on her shoulder as he passed-—and she would be moved to
make a fresh resolution.

Ruth carried her cup back to the kitchen table and set
it on the newspaper. A few drops splashed over the rim,
and she quickly soaked them up with a napkin before they
could spoil the ads. She smoothed her dress, fussed
with her hair and turned toward the hallway.

"What are you reading about, Charles?"

' he answered, the tiredness in his voice

"Aborigines,'
escaping her. He glanced at his watch. It was a cruel
little game he played, timing these flare-ups of Ruth's
self-conscious interest.

"Oh," she said, beginning to fidget with a corner of
the newspaper.

"Don't they wear bones through their noses?" she asked,
struggling to keep the echo of disapproval from her voice
and failing.

"Some do," he answered.

"And go naked?"

Charles began to dig at the leather armrests.

"Yes, darling, except on cold days. Then they wear

little battery-heated g-strings. Part of our foreign aid,

you know." Ruth ignored his ridicule.

"See, that's what I don't understand," she said,

91
abandoning all pretense of being' one ‘with. her husband.
"Why are you always reading about these bizarre, uncivilized
people: the Zunis and Bantoes...."

"Bantus," he corrected her.

"Okay, Bantus, what difference does it make. They all
run around naked, for god's sake. How stupid and disgust--"

"The Zunis don't, the Bantus do," Charles interrupted
again. "It's hot as a griddle where they live. We put
in central air to stay cool--for three thousand
dollars--they just take their clothes off. So who's
stupid?"

"Oh, stop it, Charles. You're making fun of me again."

"You were making fun of them again."

Ruth stubbed out one cigarette and lit another,
preparing herself for second try. Her hands fluttered
about her hair for a moment, tucking in stray wisps,
slipping out bobby pins and re-anchoring the coil of dark
hair on top of her head.

"All right, Charles, please tell me. Why are you reading
an entire book about aborigines? What is it you find so
fascinating about them?"

Charles, not bothering to look his watch anymore, had
abandoned his chair and was standing in front of the world
map he'd hug in the den. It was dotted with green, stick
pins; one for each culture he'd studied.

"What do I find fascinating? I find. it fascinating

that none of them ever has--or ever will--enter his little

92
grass hut in a "Home Beautiful" contest, that's what I
find fascinating."

"Stop being ridiculous," Ruth pouted.

"Who says I am?" Charles replied calmly. "Let me try
to explain. What I find fascinating is that their lives
are . . . so basic, so elemental: building their simple
shelters to survive the heat and cold, putting their noses
to the ground to sniff for spoor, cocking an ear to the
wind to listen for bird calls"-—he had turned and was
staring through the patio door at the great white expanse
of snow outside—-"digging in the earth with your hands
to find water so you won't thirst to death, migrating with
herds of wild animals because that's what fills your belly
. . . . That's why, Ruth. That's why I read about
them."

Ruth had taken up a kitchen knife and was busy scrapping
off a spot of food that had crusted on the table's edge.

"Oh, come on, Charles, you sound like you're still in
the boy scouts.

Charles wasn't listening. "They have this fascinating
custom, for example--actually it's a rite of passage--called
the 'Walk-About'. When an aborigine boy is fourteen or
fifteen, he's given a walking stick and nothing
else--absolutely nothing!—-and told to go off into the
wilderness by himself for a year, to walk through his land,
to study and understand his world, to make your own weapons

and shelter and clothes; to hunt and fish-~to learn how

93
to live, in other words, to live in the most elemental
sense. Then, if you survive the year, you're welcomed
back into the tribe as an adult, a man. You've proven
yourself, you see."

There was a long moment of silence when Charles stopped
talking, for Ruth had gone back to the ads and didn't
immediately realize he had finished.

"And you . . . find that interesting, do you?" she
finally managed to say, picking up the magnifying glass
again.

"Interesting? The word's too weak. Fascinating.
Invigorating. Vital. All those wonderful adjectives and
more."

"Yes . . . well, if you ask me, it's an awfully cruel
thing to do to a young boy--to send him all like that all
alone. At fourteen! Why that's only a few years younger
than you were when we married, Charles. Just a few years.
Now think about that a minute." Abruptly, Ruth stopped
talking, leaned forward over the newspaper, and peered
through the magnifying glass. "I can't believe it——why
didn't I notice this before!" she scolded herself.

"Charles," she said loudly. "Charles, it's a ONE DAY
ONLY SALE AT Blakely's. We've got to go today, don't you
understand? It's now or never. We have no choice!"

Ruth picked up her coffee cup and walked to the sink.
She rinsed it, set in on the drain-board, then looked at

herself in the mirror hanging from the wall next to the

94
cupboards. "Oh, God, I'm a fright," she .mumbled, then
glanced at her watch. "But I'll have to go as I am. I've
no choice." She walked back to the table to gather her
cigarettes.

"Charles, please don't be difficult. I know you heard
me--this is important." She waited a moment, but there
was no answer. She sat down at the table. "Charles?"
she said again loudly, but the only response was a sudden
rush of cold air that swept. down. the hallway into the
kitchen. Ruth sat there for a moment, blinking, frowning,
pulling her collar tight around her throat, then--"Oh,
no . . .oh, Lord, no," and she jumped up from the table
and ran down the hallway toward the den, the coil of hair
at the top of her head sliding loose, tipping over her
ear in a bunch, then beginning to unravel.

"Charles!" she cried, flying though the doorway into

the den. "Chaaaarles!"

War Zone

A strange haze as fine as bone dust hung in the air,
and the African sun that shone dimly through it was as
small and dark as a ferret's eye. Only the heat. was
familiar, pressing like an iron against the backs of the
three men who jumped from the shelter of the bush taxi
as it jerked to a stop.

"Snap, snap." The sound of the driver's fingers turned
their heads, and one of them took a thick stack of pesitos
from an inside pocket and laid it on the man's trembling
hand. As the taxi sped off the way it had come, some
of the bills were blown away and settled like dead leaves
on the dusty pavement. The driver never glanced back.

The three men looked across the street at. what used
to be an elegant hotel during Portuguese rule. But that
was a distant time, and now large chunks of its rose-colored
stucco had been shattered by bullets, its shutters nailed
to the window frames with rusting spikes, and a heavy wooden
table--the door had been blown apart during a previous
battle and never replaced-—turned on its side to block

off half the entrance.

95

96

The hotel, located near the northern edge of the
provincial town--it was commonly' known. the .attack. would
be launched from the cover of the hills and forests found
there--was ideal. With its well—braced cellar and balcony
ringing the perimeter of the third floor, it offered both
safe haven from bombardment and vantage point from which
to view the assault itself.

The three men had made all the arrangements to travel
here from the government side. Words were whispered in
the ear of a "friend of a friend," bottles of decent
Portuguese wine passed around generously, necklaces slipped
into shirt pockets for wives and mistresses--soon all was
settled: transportation, laissez-passer documents to ‘get
them into rebel territory, and reserved seats in the third
tier of a fortress-hotel.

As the men walked across the vacant street, they could
feel frightened eyes watching them through cracks and
peepholes in the surrounding buildings, and at the top
of the street a rebel platoon fidgeted behind a barricade
of over—turned donkey carts. Once across the street,
one of men handed another thick stack of pesitos into the
shadows behind the doorway. Immediately, the dark hands
of the hotel keeper rolled the table aside and pulled them
through the opening.

Inside the three men unshouldered their cameras and
leather pouches bulging with film, beat dust from their

veld hats, sighed and sat down heavily at a splintery wooden

97
table veined with knife carvings and mottled with cigarette
burns and the dark stains of beer and wine. Once seated
they looked across at one another and nodded.

They had been covering the war together for a year now
and, as men often do in time of war, had come to love one
another as brothers. Together they had marched with troops
advancing and fled with those retreating, hidden from
bombardments in ravines and under abandoned trucks,
witnessed atrocities and assassinations and the rare shining
deed in an unfathomable civil war that would untangle itself
one week only to tie itself into a more complicated knot
the next. Rebel troops would cross over to the government
side, and government forces turn rebel during the course
of a single night. One political faction would ally itself
with another, only to have a third arrive, whisper truth
and lies and destroy the alliance. And all the while the
ex-colonial power sniffed about like an old dog prowling
for dropped bones, and the super powers manipulated everyone
as if scooting about pots and pans on a hot stove.

And throughout, of course, it was the innocents who
suffered: the peasants who wanted only to plant and harvest,
the shepherds to herd and milk, the mothers to bear and
raise their children, and they only to play, laugh and
grow older. And it was because of the innocents that the
three men were in the war zone. The three men the other
correspondents had come to call the Holy Trinity, though

never to their faces, for they respected them too much,

98
and always with gentle affection the way parents, in the
privacy' of the night, will speak tenderly' of their' one
child who is somehow endearingly different from the rest.

The eldest of the three, Stephano, was a devout Italian
Catholic with a father and five brothers who bowed their
heads to recite the Angelus each noon as they cultivated
a small vineyard on the western slope of the Apennines,
and a mother who would send him colorful tins filled with
home-baked pastries and holy cards carefully folded in
waxed paper. Stephano carried a rosary in his pocket and
wore a St. Christopher medal, but he also read Liberation
Theology and Kierkegaard and believed indeed that our soul
is not handed.tx> us whole at birth, like a loaf of bread
on a plate, but is created and shaped by our choices and
manner of living. To those who asked, Stephano would speak
gently and movingly of the need to act in the Image of
Christ and to see that Image in everyone. Among the other
correspondents, hard-drinkers and women Chasers many of
them, he sparked a most unusual debate: some would insist
he was certain to become a saint; others would argue he
already had.

Raoul was a French Jew and an atheist, but in the way
of some atheists, had embraced. humanist principles with
a fervor that touched wings with the mystical. He had
as well the wisdom to recognize the purity and depth of
Stephano's belief in God, and sometimes, when they would

return to the capital after long, spirit-deadening journeys

99
through the war zone, Raoul would accompany Stephano through
the salty, ocean fog of early morning to Mass at the
war-damaged cathedral. Though he never told anyone else
about this, to himself, Raoul had begun to admit that in
Stephano he saw glimpses of the God he had long believed
to be a mere ghost in a child's story.

The third man in the trio, Billy, was an American from
a small Ohio town where his grandfather had helped build
the first Pentecostal Church, and he, Billy, the second.
Blue-suited, combed and with skin washed to a shine like
a polished apple, he had been a regular Sunday attender
and would sometimes happily think of God during the week
as well. But here in Africa, things were different. Here,
after the field artillery had stopped booming and the
ack-ack of the automatic rifles fallen silent and were
replaced by the low, steady moans of the dying--the way
thunder and lighting wane and are replaced by heavy, droning
rain--Billy found his Pentecostal beliefs to be soup with
little meat. Of the three, he was the one who most often
would bolt upright in the middle of the night and flail
at the darkness around him to drive away images of children
with half torsos and women with no eyes.

The hotel keeper, as a matter of courtesy, came to serve
them cold water from a tray of green glasses that chimed
against each other as he circled the table. The men
thanked him and quickly emptied the glasses, the

hotel-keeper standing by and fidgeting as they did. He

100

knew of the dust that coated their throats and how the
bitter, local beer would cut through the chalky film in
a way that water never could. This is what he would tell
them, at least, for he was anxious to fatten the wad of
pesitos already swelling his pocket.

"Cuveja?" he asked once they had finished their water.
"Cuveja freia?" and then he began his little speech.

' he said, for

Raoul quickly waved him off. "No beer,‘
the three never drank beer in a war zone. With the heat,
fatigue and tension, just one bottle of the strong, thick
beer could addle the brain more than one wanted when bullets
were flying around. The hotel keeper frowned and shuffled
off to plan a new strategy. One could never get enough
pesitos, especially with the vagaries of war.

"So," Stephano began to speak, and Raoul and Billy turned
to him. "Maybe it's here we'll find what we've been looking
for. We can hope, no?"

"Do you think . . . do you still believe it's possible?"
Billy asked, for he was losing heart quickly in the face
of it all. And Raoul as well looked over at Stephano for
his answer.

"Of course," Stephano said, and then, as he always
did at times like this, he pulled the old news photo from
his wallet, unfolded it and held it up to remind them.
They saw again the naked, terrified girl fleeing the dark
smoke of bomb blasts behind her, running weeping past a

long line of dispirited American soldiers plodding toward

101
the war zone in Viet-Nam. "Do you know how many hearts
this image changed?" he asked. "Do you know this was the
beginning of the end of that war?" And they did, and it
was that which they were after—-that one image that would
bring about a soulful crisis of conscience that would shock
dead hearts back. to life again, for' they' believed. both
in the power of images and of the heart to respond to them.
And it was this that had drawn them together in the first
place, that had woven their three lives together like
strands in a single rope. It. was this quest that. had
brought each of them to the war zone a year earlier and
silently drawn them to the same breakfast table that one
morning in the capitol. It was as if they had whispered
their dreams to one other above the heads of the other
correspondents noisily scraping plates clean of egg yolk,
rattling cups against saucers, and talking’ of the ‘war,

the war and nothing but the war.
The hotel owner approached them again, this time carrying

a tray with three bottles of beer so cold that condensation

coursed down the green glass in streams. "Cuveja freia?"
he entreated them in a whispery, child's voice. "Mucha
freia!"

Raoul and. Billy' both. said. no, but. Stephano, after' a
moment's hesitation, reached up and took one of the bottles
from the tray.

"Stephano!" Raoul said, and. Billy raised his lunui in

silent protest.

102

"I know,‘ Stephano answered. "But the shelling hasn't
even begun yet. We have hours to wait."

It was true, Raoul and Billy knew. There was always
the shelling for three or four hours first, and only then
the attack. It had been the method of the government
ever since the war had began three years earlier . . .
still. The two of them shifted in their seats and looked
uneasily at one another. The hotel keeper' circled the
table and lowered the tray between Raoul and Billy. They
shook their heads no, and he left. muttering ‘with. only
Stephano's money in hand.

For several minutes, the: only sound. was the click. of
Stephano's bottle against the wooden table each time he
lowered it.

"What; if’ we never' do?" Billy, who Ihad ibeen tracing
circles on the table with his finger, suddenly asked.
It was the first time he Ihad raised. the: question, but
Stephano had been expecting it. "What if we never do find
the young girl or the old man or the child soldier whose
image of suffering will the change hearts of people? What
if we shoot. another ten thousand. photos and ‘people all
over the world see them and just fold their papers and
go back to their coffee and toast? Our chances are so
remote--what if we never succeed?"

"It doesn't matter," Stephano answered immediately,
looking up from his beer and staring for a moment, first

at Billy, then at Raoul. "Not one bit."

103

"It doesn't matter?" Raoul asked.

"Of course it does," Stephano said, again without
hesitating. "It matters more than anything in the world."

Raoul and Billy looked at one another for a moment;
it was Raoul who finally turned and spoke.

"It doesn't matter--it matters. What kind of nonsense
is this you're handing us? What are you trying to say? "

Stephano shrugged. "It can't be explained, only
understood," he said, and. he seemed to in: apologizing.

After he had spoken, there was silence for a long time
that was, to Stephano, like the silence that fills the
hour before dawn when everything seems to make complete
sense--or no sense at all. He looked at Billy, at Raoul,
hoping they too might hear the silence, might finally
understand.

It was then that shouts of the government soldiers and
the noise of small arms fire came rolling up the street.
For a moment, the three of them sat motionless, Raoul
finally turning and cupping his ear to make certain of
what he was hearing.

"Jesus, no artillery. For the first time no artillery,"
he said. Behind them, the hotel keeper was scurrying toward
the cellar.

The three of them reached for their cameras and ran for
the stairs leading to the balcony. Through. the patch
of light above the over-turned table in the doorway, they

could see government troops running up the street, spraying

104

bullets into the surrounding buildings. A sudden, sharp
cry rose above the din of the attack, and Stephano abruptly
veered toward the doorway, raising his camera as he ran.

"Stop him," Raoul shouted, and Billy grabbed at Stephano,
caught his shirt, tried to pull him back toward the stairs,
but the shirt slipped thorough. his fingers. Two steps
later, an arc of bullets struck Stephano mid-chest and
threw him back ten feet across the splintery, beer-stained

table.

Hours after the fighting had finally ended, several other
correspondents who had been trailing government troops
as they advanced into the town, came to the hotel looking
for the three of them. They found Billy and Raoul sitting
in chairs next to the table, each holding one of Stephano's
hands, each staring off into the distance refusing to look
at him.

"It was the beer," was all Raoul would say when they
asked what had happened. "The beer made him crazy".

The other correspondents looked at one another for a
moment, said, yes, they understood, then pryed Raoul and
Billy's hands from Stephano's so they could lead them
outside before removing the body.

"But look. at ihim. just once, lads, before you leave,"
an Irish reporter said to them. "He's done his work.

He's at rest. Just glance at him, lads. It's in his face

105
like blood's in the heart."

But neither would look.

Raoul continued his work as a war photographer, this
time in Asia, but those who knew him said he never was
the same. He became reckless, arrogant and cynical, and
would laugh whenever someone laid a 'hand on his shoulder
and urged him to be cautious. His own life ended in
Cambodia two years after Stephano's, when an officer in
one of the guerrilla factions was offended by a photo Raoul
had sold to L_e M_or_1ge and ordered a bamboo spear driven
through his heart.

Billy went back to his small Ohio town where he quickly
married a woman he'd known since grade school, and went
to work for the local newspaper taking photographs of family
reunions and county fairs. Sundays, when he went to the
Pentecostal Church with his family, he would sit listlessly
except during the hymns, when he would sing in such a loud,
beseeching voice that the preacher would begin to fidget
with his tie, and Billy's wife would have to touch his
elbow gently, lean close and whisper calming words before

he would quiet himself.

Wounded

Harry sat on knot of worn blankets in the attic and
watched the city inspector drive back and forth looking
for a parking space. He wanted one close to the house,
Harry figured--for the. quick. getaway-—but. had. to settle
for one around the corner. He didn't look happy. "Well,

' Harry grumbled, then slid down a firemen's

I'm not either,‘
pole through a hole he'd sawed in the living room ceiling.

When the inspector opened Harry's front gate, it fell
off. He tripped over small gorges in the sidewalk, tangled
a rusty chain, hidden by the weeds, around his ankles,
refused to advance farther than the bottom step of Harry's
long front porch, which sloped to ruin at the far end.
In his hands the inspector held a big red tag, a hammer,
a bag of nails all bunched up the way an old woman holds
a bundle of weeds. Here was a man, Harry snickered, who
made his living rotating a swivel chair.

"Harry?" the inspector said peering up at the front
door. "Can we be nice, Harry? Can everyone be happy?"

Harry stuck his shotgun through a splintery hole in
the door he'd made with a Sledgehammer.

"HARRY! PLEASE! Please put the gun down. It's the

106

107

law, Harry. PLEASE."

"Not mine," Harry said, turning the barrel back. and
forth against the frayed wood to make it groan.

"Harry, you put holes in the roof."

"I got buckets."

"The pipes leak."

"I got pans."

"Harry, for Christ sake, you have raw sewage running
into the back yard."

"You ever seen my tomatoes? Five times the size of
your balls, official city man."

"Oh, Harry, PLEASE. The neighbors. What about the
neighbors."

KA-BOOM!

Before pulling the trigger, Harry had angled the barrel
upward toward the dark, hovering clouds. As the city
inspector fainted backwards, he glimpsed the leaves of
the overhanging elm being shredded by Harry's double load
of buckshot.

"Dumb-ass,‘ Harry chuckled. "Shooting at God, not you.
Would have nailed Him if the tree hadn't gotten in the
way—~hell, you're 51 peon. Not worth a double load. Ha!"

It took the inspector a long time to revive. Harry
watched him crawl off toward the gate. He left the red
tag, nails, hammer in the weeds where they'd fallen.

"He'll be back," Harry said. "And not alone." He was

talking 1x3 Ezra Pound, his cat, who'd crawled from

 

108

underneath a battered car hood once the smoke and noise
had drifted away. Until a couple of weeks ago, "Ezra Pound"
had been "Blackie." Then the city inspector had paid his
first visit. After he'd written down all the code
violations Harry was guilty of—-he'd run out of room on
the official form and had to take loose-leaf from his
notebook--Harry had decided these were serious times in
need of serious names. He thought of his friends: Art
Plano, Bill Peters, Joey McGrady. Not much there. He
sifted memories--Ezra Pound popped up. From where? Some
high school class forty years ago? History maybe? Of
the man himself, Harry remembered only one thing: he'd
had the good sense to go insane at some point in his life.
This was the selling point: Blackie became Ezra Pound.

Harry needed to search his pockets for shells, so he
leaned his shotgun against the jagged stub of a wrecked
airplane wing he'd propped against the wall. "Found art,"
is what Harry told the city inspector when he'd eyed the
wing. "Rockefeller's offered me a million. For you,
I'll knock off a hundred grand." The city inspector kept
writing on his clipboard.

Harry cracked Open the shotgun and pushed two shells
into the barrels.

"Where we going to go, Ezra Pound?" he said. "What
are we going to do?"

The cat climbed up Harry and sat on his shoulder, his

tail wrapped around Harry's neck. "Let's go,’ Harry said,

 

109
and he turned to walk toward the back of the house. His
path twisted around rusty bird cages, broken windows,
smashed hubcaps, a car door riddled with bullet holes,
a three-legged picnic table, cross-cut saws with broken
handles and bent teeth, chipped green and brown bottles,
lamps with shades and without, a collection of torn hip
boots and a bookshelf he'd nailed to the wall and loaded
with spider plants and geraniums, all of which were now
brown and dry as string. "Found art" is what Harry said
to the city inspector when he saw him write "junk" on his

clipboard. "Don't you understand?"

When Harry was a young man working in the factory,
he lost the first inch of his left, little finger. A press
cut it off like a bud. When he was a middle-aged man,
a dropped wheel smashed three toes. Neither time had Harry
allowed even a single tear to gather in his eye. When
his wife Sophie died a couple of years after he retired,
Harry wept for days. "Okay," he said, two months after
the funeral, "I'll try to be reasonable about this. But
what does a new widower, a retired factory man, do to
fill the hours?" "Look around," a friend said. "See
what other widowers do. Do the same thing." So Harry
looked around. He saw widowers bowling, widowers fast
walking in shopping malls, widowers chasing widows at dances
in church basements, buying and selling stock in investment

clubs, learning to paint water-colors of fruit bowls.

110
None (n? this interested Harry except the investment club.
He thought it would be good to pick up a few extra bucks
in. his retirement. When. he *went. to Zhis first. meeting,
the other men asked him how much he'd like to invest.
"About $30," Harry said. He wasn't invited back.

Then he saw a poster: "Senior Citizens' Travel Club:
See Points of Interest." Points of interest, Harry thought.
I'll bet I'd like to see those, so he signed up.

The first month, taking day trips on an old yellow
school bus that smelled like a: balogna sandwich, Harry
saw: a winery, a tomato canning plant, an historic bridge,
auml a. craft show. The first three "points of interest"
interested Harry not at all, the last only slightly because
I“? couLd buy hand-painted ties with trout leaping against
backgrounds of blue and green water. As a young man, Harry
used to fish. Three days before a pre-paid trip to the
birthplace of the man who invented the zipper, Harry quit.
He didn't even ask for a refund.

"Okay," Harry said to himself, buckling on as much
courage as he could, "I'll try to remember what Sophie
and I used to do together, and then I'll do that. I'll
do my best." The problem was, he soon realized, deciding
where to begin. Working in the garden thinning
strawberries and billing pumpkins? Strolling to the park
with a bag full of bread heels for the ducks? Clipping
the hedges, each starting at one end and racing toward

the middle, the loser buying the quart of chocolate almond

111

ice cream they would eat from the box while sitting 'on
the porch swing? Or with the books--she reading, he
listening--about the frontier days or Abraham Lincoln or
climbing Mr. Everest, Harry not always understanding but
listening just to hear her voice? (You could be on
television, he told her. You read like some people sing.)
No, he decided. He would begin with cards, that would
be easier. He and Sophie loved to play cards. Canasta,
Michigan Rummy, Hearts and, their favorite, Euchre. So
Harry asked Mrs. Tillenberry, his widow neighbor next door,
across the lot, to be his partner.

From the start, this had gone badly, often ending in
shouting matches and overturned drinks. Mrs. Tillenberry
was not a good card player. She didn't know the right
way to trump, for one thing. She didn't know, as Sophie
did, how to bring the trump card from high overhead and
slam it against the table with a snap of the fingers the
way a big-spender snaps a hundred dollar bill off his roll.
Besides, Mrs. Tillenberry had the hots for Harry and that
bothered him. She was a good friend of Sophie's, and to
Harry it seemed disrespectful--at least, to start chasing
him so quickly.

A month after Sophie died, she started hanging her
underwear on the line to dry, something she hadn't done
since her children all chipped in to buy her a gas dryer
ten years earlier. And the underwear she hung--Ha! Harry

had to laugh. Tiny, black, lace panties she couldn't have

 

112
gotten her thumb through, let alone a leg. And little,
wire, push-up bras that her nose would have fit into snugly,
but not those saggy milk jugs she hefted around.

Harry gave up on playing cards with Mrs. Tillenberry
one Sunday afternoon when she tore up his trump card and
dumped the pieces into his beer. For two weeks Harry
sat in his living room with all the shades pulled. He
drank grape juice from water tumblers and munched potato
chips. He ate green beans and pears in syrup straight
from the can. When he was tired, he fell asleep in his
clothes on the sofa. When he was awake, he read magazines
and detective novels, some of them two or three times.
One day he decided to watch television all afternoon.
This was new to Harry. While Sophie was alive, he seldom
watched t.v., other than for Walter Cronkite and Gunsmoke.

Some kind of dating game was on, Harry figured out after
a few minutes. Three men and three girls were perched
on plastic chairs with long legs; a tall divider separated
the two groups so they couldn't see one another. All
the girls had hair like small explosions. The men had
faces like something bought from glass cabinets in expensive
department stores. The host (Harry wondered if he had a
piano stuck in his mouth, the man had so many wide, shiny
teeth) asked one of the girls ("Pretzel?"--something like
that) "Which side of Rob's (Bob's?) personality do you
find the most SEXY?" The audience laughed. "Jesus," Harry

muttered. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his

 

113
knees. "Don't answer it, Pretzel. Tell him to jump in
the lake." Pretzel ignored Harry. "His . . . BACKSIDE,"
she said. Everyone roared. The two men next to Rob began
slapping him on the shoulders. The host told Pretzel what

' Pretzel shreiked. "Much lower."

they were doing. "Lower,'
The audience howled; the host made "woo—woo-woo" sounds
into the microphone. Harry sat at the edge of his chair
staring at the t.v. He reached down and pulled up his
socks. He scratched his nose, took his belt in a notch,

ran his hands through his hair. "Sophie,' he finally said
quietly. "Sophie, it's come to this."
Harry stood up, poured his grape juice into a potted
plant, hurled the tumbler through the television screen.
"CRASH, POOF." Acrid, blue smoke curled up from he debris,
but Harry didn't stick around to watch. He was already
on his way to the hardware store to buy a Sledgehammer.
Harry began with the front porch, completely knocking
out the pillars at one end, because that was what he saw
first when he came back. Then he went into the house and
started swinging randomly. A sledge goes through a wall
real easy, Harry found out, unless you hit a stud, which
he did a few dozen times. Kitchen cupboards, tables, the
linoleum--the hammer dented that up real nice, made deep
craters so that Harry had a moonscape when he was done.
Later, when rain pouring through the holes he'd made in
the ceiling and roof filled these with water, Harry stocked

them with goldfish.

114

Harry had outbursts like that several times over the
next few weeks . Mrs . Ti 1 lenberry called hi 5
daughter--"daughter," Hal, a fiction, Harry concluded
long ago-—and she called Harry long distance, but he hung
up. The police came out but only gave him the number to
a mental health clinic. A man can destroy his own property
if he wants, they told Mrs. Tillenberry, but, yes, the
housing authorities would get involved if he didn't fix
it up. There were codes, they said.

After about a month, Harry put the sledge hammer in
the broom closet and sat at what was left of the kitchen
table. For two days he drank coffee as thick as shoe
polish and ate butter and onion sandwiches. It was
accidental that Harry saw an article about found art in
one of the old newspapers that had flown out of some cabinet
or cupboard he had demolished. After he'd finished reading
it, Harry looked around him. He saw shards of china, broken
door casings, lumps of plaster, wads of furniture stuffing.

"I've been creating found art, Harry mumbled. "I didn't
even know it." He looked at two ‘pieces of splintered
cherrywood crossed in a vee and saw the beauty of the
accidental symetry. This is it, Harry thought. Ike got
his snow shovel out of the basement and pushed everything
out the back door into the yard. Then he opened a beer,
sat on the grass and admired the heap. When that got old,

Harry began to search the city's junk yards, alleys,

Salvation Army stores for new, found art. It got him out

 

115

of the house.

Harry and Ezra Pound were in the dining room now where
the phone was hooked up. It still worked, but was buried
under a collection of leaky gas cans Harry had bought for
a quarter each at a junk yard. He'd closed his eyes and
thrown them in a corner on top the phone (accidentally)
to see what pattern would result, and then forgotten about
them.

It took him a while to hear the ringing, a while longer
to locate the receiver.

"Pa, is that you?"

"'Pa, ii; that you?’ . . .. I live alone, your mother's
dead four months now. Do you think I let the meter reader
answer my phone?"

"Pa, don't be grumpy. I'm worried--you're shooting
at people now."

"Ah. Mrs. Grand Canyon mouth, she called you, huh?"

"Pa, you need help. You need to see a doctor."

"A doctor. What kind? A gynecologist?"

"Don't be cute."

"The answer's no. I won't help some shrink pay off
his yacht. I'll go when I'm certifiably nuts so all he'll
have to do is sign the paper for the looney bin. It'll
save money."

"For crying out loud-~you're shooting at people!"

"No. Not people. God. I'm after God. All I need

 

is a clear shot."

"Pa!"

"Don't worry. I'll tell them to keep your name out
of the papers."

"Get a hold of yourself, Pa. Be rational."

"No. I tried that. All it got me was fish ties,
Pretzel and Mrs. Tillenberry's underwear--besides, talk
about 'being' something, hOW' about. you ibeing £1 daughter
fin: a change. Four' months since the funeral, and the
only time you call me is when Grand Canyon mouth calls
you first."

"I get busy Pa. I got kids."

"And what about the ten years before you got kids?
You'd call us--what?-—three times a year, visit two days
every other. Besides, if you hadn't moved to Tibet, we
could've help you with the kids. I could now."

"California's not Tibet, Pa."

"Oh, yeah? You burn incense, don't you?"

"Pa, this is getting ridiculous.

"I agree. Good-bye. For thirty-five years I stamp
out wheels at Chevrolet so you can run off to Tibet with
Al Capone and ignore your parents."

"I ran off because you were a grump, Pa. Always a
grump. You complained about everything, except Mother,
all the time."

"I GOT grumpy SOMETIMES, I keep telling you," Harry

yelled into the phone. I was not A GRUMP. I complained

 

117
SOMETIMES, not ALWAYS--besides, your mother was a saint.
What excuse do you have for ignoring her?"

"She was living with you--and you have NO RIGHT to
say my husband's a crook."

"OH. He spent THREE years in San Quentin because of
the beach? The mountain view? Oh, I get it. He was
VACATIONING."

"He's paid his debt, Pa. He's reformed."

"Good. Wonderful. I'm happy for society. Now you
reform. Be a daughter. I am NOT a grump. Goodbye."

Ezra Pound was sleeping on Harry's lap, and Harry
petted the cat for a long time, black fur sticking to his
sweaty palms. Finally Harry calmed down, closed his eyes
and napped. Ten minutes later he opened them with a start.

"Forty thousand dollars to bring it up to code, Ezra
Pound. That's what Official city man claims. Oh, why
did I take the hammer to the pipes, Ezra Pound? What are
we going to do?" Harry sighed, picked up his shotgun,
pushed his way past a paper mache coat tree with one branch,
a coop for racing pigeons with no door, a set of mallard
decoys with no heads -—found art. Ezra Pound pranced behind
him into the kitchen.

"Let's get crazy, "

Harry said. He walked over to the
sink and picked up the hose he'd shoved into the cut end
of the spigot. (He'd taken a hack saw to things one night

for a change of pace.) Harry opened the faucet, leaned

over the sink, turned his head to the side. He aimed the

 

118
stream of water at his ear.

"What do you think Ezra Pound?" The cat was lapping
water spilled on the drainboard inches from Harry's eyes.
"Water-logged brain. Drowned cells. That should get me
a bed with straps, don't you think?"

Harry let the water flow for several minutes, then turned
it off and lifted his head. Water drained from his ear
and darkened his collar. He looked out the window. Mrs.
Grand Canyon Mouth was in her back yard, leaning on her
rake, staring at his house. Harry threw open the window.

"Don't you ever call my daughter and squeal on me again,
do you understand?" Harry yelled.

Mrs. Tillenberry dropped her rake and stood with a hand
on her hip.

' she shouted

"A person's got responsibilities to others,‘
across the open lot between them.
"Then go be responsible with somebody else. Go make

bandages for the lepers or something."

"It's for Sophie that I do it. She was my friend."

"WHAT!" Harry climbed up on the drainboard and leaned
into the window. SOPHIE? Don't you ever profane her
name again by speaking it, you . . . harlot. Trying to

seduce me with your skimpy underwear things on the clothes
line not a month after Sophie's in the ground. Rabbits
have more control."

"Ha! You nincompoop egotist. You idiot. Those were

my granddaughter's things. She was staying with me."

119

"LIAR," Harry bellowed, picking up his shotgun. He
broke out the screen with the barrel and shoved it through."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA," Mrs. Tillenberry screamed, dropping
to the ground, burying her head with grass she'd just
raked.

"KA-BOOM."

A huge cloud of brick dust erupted where the buckshot
stuck Mrs. Tillenberry's chimney. "Shit," said Harry.
He leaned through the broken window. "Get up, you old
hag. I was shooting at God, not you. Missed. Shit."

Mrs. Tillenberry raised her head. Blades of grass turned
her hair green. "God?" she said. "You're shooting' at
God now?"

"Who else?" Harry said. "All I need is one clear shot."
Mrs. Tillenberry blinked like a fish several times, then
lifted herself onto her elbows and knees and scuttled toward
her house. A high, thin wail trailed behind her like a
ribbon.

"While you're in there, learn how to trump, will you?"
Harry climbed down from the drainboard. "Granddaughter's
underwear. Ha."

Harry lifted Ezra Pound to his shoulder and walked
onto the back porch. He'd closed if Off and filled it
with shelves thirty years ago at Sophie's request. She
needed the space for her canned goods: tomatoes, pears,
peaches, strawberry preserves; her pickled beets, cucumbers,

green onions, a mustard relish the neighbors begged for--and

120

got. Now Harry had filled the shelves with his smaller
found art. Mashed ball bearings, broken combs, a torn
dog collar, a green baseball glove with three fingers cut
off. Behind a box of petrified dishwasher powder--Harry
wondered if it looked like some kind of famous sculpture
or monument--he found the box of shells. He cracked open
the gun and put one in each barrel. "Missed. Shit." he
muttered.

On the back porch steps, which leaned to the left because
Harry had hammered out a bottom board, he stopped and shook
his head. His brain didn't feel soaked, but his ear did.
More water trickled down his neck.

"This is it, Ezra Pound," he said looking up at the
big hole between the overhang of the oak and elder that
stood on opposite sides of the yard. "A clear shot. No
excuses." He stared at the low, dark covering of clouds.
Everything was absolutely still. Nothing was moving in
the heavens. Harry wondered if God had heard him coming
and was trying to be quiet and hide. Harry knew it wouldn't
work. A load of buckshot anywhere in those clouds would
bring Him down. He wondered how it would be——he imagined
God flopping at his feet like a shot goose.

Harry raised his shotgun and aimed at the sky.

KA-BOOM.

At the sound of the explosion, Ezra Pound darted off
into the bushes. Harry waited for a moment, then rested

the stock Of the gun against his sneaker. He peered into

121

the sky and tried to calculate how long it would take God
to fall. If He was just above those clouds, and He had
to be, it shouldn't be long, Harry figured. The clouds
were hovering not more than. two Ihundred feet. overhead.

Harry felt something against his skin. Something wet,
cool. He felt it again. He looked down at his hands.
Raindrops. He looked up. He could feel them against his
face now. Cool. Like lemonade, maybe. Or the way cold
beer felt against the back of his throat on a hot day.
Fur brushed against his leg. Harry looked down. Ezra
Pound had come out of the bushes and was sitting on his
sneaker, his face turned to the rain. He licked the drops
and washed his paws. He stretched out on the grass and
purred. Harry watched him for a long time. "Don't be
fooled by that gentle rains of mercy business, Ezra Pound,"
he said. "Don't buy into it."

Harry looked up. The rain was falling steadily now.
Still cool and soft--suddenly, Harry slapped his leg.

"Ha! Wounded," he shouted. "That's. it, Ezra. Pound.
Wounded. Any moment now He'll fall," he said, stretching
out his arms against the rain.

And then, quite satisfied, Harry sat down to wait.

"illmm