All of Us (9 page)

Driving lickety-split to make the ferry!

Snow Creek and then Dog Creek

fly by in the headlights.

But the hour’s all wrong—no time to think

about the sea-run trout there.

In the lee of the mountains

something on the radio about an old woman

who travels around inside a kettle.

Indigence is at the root of our lives, yes,

but this is not right.

Cut that old woman some slack,

for God’s sake.

She’s somebody’s mother.

You there! It’s late. Imagine yourself

with the lid coming down.

The hymns and requiems. The sense of movement

as you’re borne along to the next place.

In a little patch of ground beside

the wall of the Earth Sciences building,

a man in a canvas hat was on

his knees doing something in the rain

with some plants. Piano music

came from an upstairs window

in the building next door. Then

the music stopped.

And the window was brought down.

You told me those white blossoms

on the cherry trees in the Quad

smelled like a can of just-opened

hominy. Hominy. They reminded you

of that. This may or may not

be true. I can’t say.

I’ve lost my sense of smell,

along with any interest I may ever

have expressed in working

on my knees with plants, or

vegetables. There was a barefoot

madman with a ring in his ear

playing his guitar and singing

reggae. I remember that.

Rain puddling around his feet.

The place he’d picked to stand

had Welcome Fear

painted on the sidewalk in red letters.

At the time it seemed important

to recall the man on his knees

in front of his plants.

The blossoms. Music of one kind,

and another. Now I’m not so sure.

I can’t say, for sure.

It’s a little like some tiny cave-in,

in my brain. There’s a sense

that I’ve lost—not everything,

not everything, but far too much.

A part of my life forever.

Like hominy.

Even though your arm stayed linked

in mine. Even though that. Even

though we stood quietly in the

doorway as the rain picked up.

And watched it without saying

anything. Stood quietly.

At peace, I think. Stood watching

the rain. While the one

with the guitar played on.

What a rough night! It’s either no dreams at all,

or else a dream that may or may not be

a dream portending loss. Last night I was dropped off

without a word on a country road.

A house back in the hills showed a light

no bigger than a star.

But I was afraid to go there, and kept walking.

Then to wake up to rain striking the glass.

Flowers in a vase near the window.

The smell of coffee, and you touching your hair

with a gesture like someone who has been gone for years.

But there’s a piece of bread under the table

near your feet. And a line of ants

moving back and forth from a crack in the floor.

You’ve stopped smiling.

Do me a favor this morning. Draw the curtain and come back to bed.

Forget the coffee. We’ll pretend

we’re in a foreign country, and in love.

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.

Fear of falling asleep at night.

Fear of not falling asleep.

Fear of the past rising up.

Fear of the present taking flight.

Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.

Fear of electrical storms.

Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!

Fear of dogs I’ve been told won’t bite.

Fear of anxiety!

Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.

Fear of running out of money.

Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.

Fear of psychological profiles.

Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.

Fear of my children’s handwriting on envelopes.

Fear they’ll die before I do, and I’ll feel guilty.

Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.

Fear of confusion.

Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.

Fear of waking up to find you gone.

Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.

Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.

Fear of death.

Fear of living too long.

Fear of death.

    I’ve said that.

The nights are very unclear here.

But if the moon is full, we know it.

We feel one thing one minute,

something else the next.

You could write a story about this

ashtray, for example, and a man and a

woman. But the man and woman are

always the two poles of your story.

The North Pole and the South. Every

story has these two poles
—he
and
she.

—
A. P. CHEKHOV

They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s

apartment. They’ll be alone for another hour, and then

her friend will be back. Outside, it’s raining —

the rain coming down like needles, melting last week’s

snow. They’re smoking and using the ashtray … Maybe

just one of them is smoking…
He’s
smoking! Never

mind. Anyway, the ashtray is filling up with

cigarettes and ashes.

She’s ready to break into tears at any minute.

To plead with him, in fact, though she’s proud

and has never asked for anything in her life.

He sees what’s coming, recognizes the signs —

a catch in her voice as she brings her fingers

to her locket, the one her mother left her.

He pushes back his chair, gets up, goes over to

the window … He wishes it were tomorrow and he

were at the races. He wishes he was out walking,

using his umbrella … He strokes his mustache

and wishes he were anywhere except here. But

he doesn’t have any choice in the matter. He’s got

to put a good face on this for everybody’s sake.

God knows, he never meant for things to come

to this. But it’s sink or swim now. A wrong

move and he stands to lose her friend, too.

Her breathing slows. She watches him but

doesn’t say anything. She knows, or thinks she

knows, where this is leading. She passes a hand

over her eyes, leans forward and puts her head

in her hands. She’s done this a few times

before, but has no idea it’s something

that drives him wild. He looks away and grinds

his teeth. He lights a cigarette, shakes out

the match, stands a minute longer at the window.

Then walks back to the table and sits

down with a sigh. He drops the match in the ashtray.

She reaches for his hand, and he lets her

take it. Why not? Where’s the harm?

Let her. His mind’s made up. She covers his

fingers with kisses, tears fall onto his wrist.

He draws on his cigarette and looks at her

as a man would look indifferently on

a cloud, a tree, or a field of oats at sunset.

He narrows his eyes against the smoke. From time

to time he uses the ashtray as he waits

for her to finish weeping.

Now that you’ve gone away for five days,

I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,

where I want. Make biscuits and eat them

with jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulge

myself. Walk on the beach if I feel

like it. And I feel like it, alone and

thinking about when I was young. The people

then who loved me beyond reason.

And how I loved them above all others.

Except one. I’m saying I’ll do everything

I want here while you’re away!

But there’s one thing I won’t do.

I won’t sleep in our bed without you.

No. It doesn’t please me to do so.

I’ll sleep where I damn well feel like it —

where I sleep best when you’re away

and I can’t hold you the way I do.

On the broken sofa in my study.

I love creeks and the music they make.

And rills, in glades and meadows, before

they have a chance to become creeks.

I may even love them best of all

for their secrecy. I almost forgot

to say something about the source!

Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?

But the big streams have my heart too.

And the places streams flow into rivers.

The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.

The places where water comes together

with other water. Those places stand out

in my mind like holy places.

But these coastal rivers!

I love them the way some men love horses

or glamorous women. I have a thing

for this cold swift water.

Just looking at it makes my blood run

and my skin tingle. I could sit

and watch these rivers for hours.

Not one of them like any other.

I’m 45 years old today.

Would anyone believe it if I said

I was once 35?

My heart empty and sere at 35!

Five more years had to pass

before it began to flow again.

I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon

before leaving my place alongside this river.

It pleases me, loving rivers.

Loving them all the way back

to their source.

Loving everything that increases me.

So early it’s still almost dark out.

I’m near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other’s arm.

It’s early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

You’d dozed in front of the TV

but you hadn’t been to bed yet

when you called. I was asleep,

or nearly, when the phone rang.

You wanted to tell me you’d thrown

a party. And I was missed.

It was like the old days, you

said, and laughed.

Dinner was a disaster.

Everybody dead drunk by the time

food hit the table. People

were having a good time, a great

time, a hell of a time, until

somebody took somebody

else’s fiancée upstairs. Then

somebody pulled a knife.

But you got in front of the guy

as he was going upstairs

and talked him down.

Disaster narrowly averted,

you said, and laughed again.

You didn’t remember much else

of what happened after that.

People got into their coats

and began to leave. You

must have dropped off for a few

minutes in front of the TV

because it was screaming at you

to get it a drink when you woke up.

Anyway, you’re in Pittsburgh,

and I’m in here in this

little town on the other side

of the country. Most everyone

has cleared out of our lives now.

You wanted to call me up and say hello.

To say you were thinking

about me, and of the old days.

To say you were missing me.

It was then I remembered

back to those days and how

telephones used to jump when they rang.

And the people who would come

in those early-morning hours

to pound on the door in alarm.

Never mind the alarm felt inside.

I remembered that, and gravy dinners.

Knives lying around, waiting

for trouble. Going to bed

and hoping I wouldn’t wake up.

I love you, Bro, you said.

And then a sob passed

between us. I took hold

of the receiver as if

it were my buddy’s arm.

And I wished for us both

I could put my arms

around you, old friend.

I love you too, Bro.

I said that, and then we hung up.

This much is clear to me now—even then

our days were numbered. After our first week

in the house that came furnished

with somebody else’s things, a man appeared

one night with a baseball bat. And raised it.

I was not the man he thought I was.

Finally, I got him to believe it.

He wept from frustration after his anger

left him. None of this had anything to do

with Beatlemania. The next week these friends

of ours from the bar where we all drank

brought friends of theirs to our house —

and we played poker. I lost the grocery money

to a stranger. Who went on to quarrel

with his wife. In his frustration

he drove his fist through the kitchen wall.

Then he, too, disappeared from my life forever.

When we left that house where nothing worked

any longer, we left at midnight

with a U-Haul trailer and a lantern.

Who knows what passed through the neighbors’ minds

when they saw a family leaving their house

in the middle of the night?

The lantern moving behind the curtainless

windows. The shadows going from room to room,

gathering their things into boxes.

I saw firsthand

what frustration can do to a man.

Make him weep, make him throw his fist

through a wall. Set him to dreaming

of the house that’s his

at the end of the long road. A house

filled with music, ease, and generosity.

A house that hasn’t been lived in yet.