I Live With You (6 page)

But it isn’t as if I’m not a crow kind of person myself. And people don’t like the looks of me either.

My house is off alone, halfway up the hill, boulders all over my, so-called, yard. Sage. Rabbit brush.
(And
rabbits.) A skunk lives under the shed but we get along… so far. Same goes for the rattlesnake. So far. I probably get taken for a witch, what with a snake and a skunk for familiars. If I really was one, I’d witch away my knee pains, and I’d witch myself some money. And I’d witch myself some company. (I’ve lived with nothing sweeter than the rattlesnake’s grin. I take as friend whatever looks at me at all.)

Blackthorn and I, we should get to know each other. Would he come up here for iced tea? Or lemonade? I don’t have any beer. Come to think of it, I don’t have any lemons either.

“Hello down there. Halloooo.”

Can he hear me from here? I wonder if he can see me waving?

“Hallooo. Mister Blackthorn.”

He sees me. He shades his eyes and looks but doesn’t wave.

He lives even farther up than I do. His hut is so much the color of everything else, you can hardly see it until you’re practically in the doorway. I climbed up there once when he was out in the fields. I looked in the one and only window but it was so dim and dusty I couldn’t see much. There was a white washbasin with a pitcher in it—both chipped. There were socks on the floor. There actually was a book—on the floor beside the socks—one of those old-fashioned, leatherbound books with gold lettering. I couldn’t read the title. I was surprised and pleased to see he actually had a real book.

But the shed for the mule—now that was spic and span. Smelled sweet of straw and hay and mule. Smelled so good I took a chance and lay down there for a while.

I call again. “Hallooooo.”

Again he looks up, but just as he did before, he goes right back to digging. He’s got to be tired and thirsty. Suppose I hold up a big glass of iced tea? Suppose I had a pail of water for the mule?

I go in, change my blouse to a cream colored one (mule nose color actually) with lace around the neck, and come back out with a pitcher and a pail. I hold them over my head.

“Halloooow!”

Finally!

When the time comes to say my name, what would be unusual and romantic and make him remember it?
And
me?

So he and his mule come all the way up here, two switchbacks and then a long sideways.

He lets the mule drink first. (Of course!) He calls her sweetheart. How he does sweet talk that mule! “Come sweetheart. Come, Penny, drink.” (When has anybody ever called me sweetheart? I think and think, but I’m thinking, Never.)

He says she came with the name Bad Penny, but he calls her Pennyroyal.

It looks like that’s all he’s going to say. Sometimes people who don’t talk much like to have other people chatter away so they don’t have to think about talking, they don’t even have to listen; and yet others like silence around them to match their own.

“Do these ditches need you? Every single day like this?”

“Without me and Penny everything would be as dry as it is right here.” His good eye takes it all in: me, my tin pitcher, my boulders…. The other eye is off at its own secret spot. I can tell he’s never noticed me before, even after all those times I was walking back and forth in front of his ditch whenever he was working near my hill.

“Did you ever think of going someplace else?”

“I’ve been elsewhere.”

He drinks my whole pitcherful right out of the pitcher and without stopping. I should have had as much for him as for the mule.

I like his eyebrows. I even like his eye that roves off seeing… God knows what visions.

By now I can tell what my name should be. I say, “I’m Molly,” so as to be more mule. Though, on second thought, perhaps I should have said Jenny so I could be Jenny to his Jack. I wonder if his first name
is
Jack.

How to keep him here a little while longer? “Could you open this jar?” (He could.) “Could you move this heavy box for me?” (Of course.) “And I can’t reach this shelf.”

He does all the things and with an old crow’s grace. An old crow’s flashing eye.

I feel so good I want to say, Sweetheart, to something myself, except Penny’s the one getting all the caresses. Does she need so many when there’s others (not so far away) who haven’t had any? As to looks, she’s nothing special, just the general mule color, dark with a cream colored nose, but she’s sleek and shiny, which is more than I can say about him. Or myself.

Perhaps, in that wandering eye, Penny is a beautiful woman as pale all over as the star on her forehead, her hair the same black/brown of the turkey vulture feathers he has in his hat.

What
is
he seeing with that off-kilter eye? Suppose he looked at me through that? What would I turn into? But perhaps, for starters, I need to become more mulish. Mules always know what they want to do and when. They’re never wishy-washy. They know what’s best for everybody. I suppose he depends on her for his own safety. I’m afraid I don’t have that knack.

My ravens quack, quack, quack around us. Something else is going, “Tweet, tweet, churrrrr. Tweet, tweet, churrrrr.” He lifts his head and listens—points his going-somewhere nose and listens like a poet. Who’d have thought?

“Could I have a ditch? One connected to the arroyo just in case there’s ever a little bit of water in it?” (There hasn’t been any water in it since I came here.) “It wouldn’t have to be long or deep. I’ll pay.”

I seem to have decided (without deciding) on too much talking though I’m not yet committed to it
completely
. I keep silent as I hand him more tea. I think of all the things I’m not saying, as: Take me to your shack, old crow man. Or take me even farther up, to the mountain lion’s den. I saw a place up there where the grass was matted in a cozy circle. I saw the scat.

What I do say is: “When I die I had always wanted to come back—if there’s going to be any coming back to it—as a raven. I had wanted to be smart and cocky, but now that I see Penny, I think, perhaps, mule is better.”

What I don’t say is, who ever caresses a raven?

What I do say is: “I have stones as if instead of trees. All my shade is from boulders. I’m surprised anything grows here at all but some things find a way. They get a toehold. Like I do.”

I don’t say: My stones are warm and motherly after a day in the sun and I lean against their big round bellies every evening. They’re warm well into the night.

He has looked at me again. One of his fleeting glances that slip sideways and down before you know you’ve been looked at.

What I do say is, “I thought I heard a stream or maybe it’s leaves blowing. I heard another, tweet, tweet, churr from some other place entirely. And it’s cool somewhere not far from here.” I spread my arms, the better to feel the breeze. “Admit it. There’s another world somewhere, all shiny and sweet smelling. Not a bit like here.”

He spreads his arms, too, but to show my hill and my view. “Why do you want to see more than this right here, the gray fox colors of the underbrush, and, not far, the fox herself and her kits.”

Spoken like a poet. And what more
do
I want than the warm bellies of the granite? And there
is
a tree, one, and more up where he is.

But I think there
is
a world of the other eye, and in it he would be the wiry black prince of mules. And he would have shaved in that world. His hat would smooth itself out and clean itself up and the turkey vulture feathers would become the feathers of a hawk. No, eagle.

I say, “I saw sparkles. Diamond shapes, all different colors and all in a row. I heard swishing sounds as if a stream or of poplar leaves in the wind. I heard wind chimes. I felt how cool. I shivered. Look how I shiver. I saw…. I thought I saw Penny. She was wearing a nightgown sort of thing. Even now your other eye is glistening. I see tears on that cheek.”

I step forward to wipe the tear but he jerks back.

“My other eye sees nothing.”

“And does the nothing have a light-blue cast?”

“There’s no other place than here.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what you will, people always do, and they like the odd and scandalous and fantastic better than the real.”

“What about Pennyroyal?”

“She is as you see.”

But I know better.

Except now he’s on his way down—
already
on his way, back to his ditch.

“It’s too hot!” I’m screeching it. Then I screech again. “Dangerous to work in such heat!” (What kind of bird is that, that screeches so? None I ever knew.) “A man of your age….” Screech, screech.

He’s going. He’s down. And he didn’t say if he’d dig me a ditch or not.

But I know happiness
is
possible because I don’t want a lot of it. How sweet it would be to sleep in the hay with Penny. That’s not much to ask.

Like his nose says, I’ll go forward, do something, go elsewhere. I will know what I want. I will become more mule.

I go back in and pack up my nightgown and a snack. (The nightgown might be important.) I sit on one of my rocks and wait until I see Blackthorn and Penny leave the ditch. (She doesn’t even have a lead rope. She follows him home on her own. I would, too. I
will.)

I wait until it’s almost dark and then I take my bundle and climb up into the piñons. There’s a light in his shack, but dim. No doubt an oil lamp or candles. I peek in. Blackthorn is at the little table, leaning over it, side view. (I
do
like that going-someplace look of his nose.)

With that lamplight I can see more than I could before. Things are nicer than I thought, though I see sandy dust all over everything. (I could clean that up in no time.) There’s a patchwork quilt on the cot, Secret Star pattern. There’s a humpbacked trunk. Hard to put anything down on top of that but there’s not only a couple of dirty shirts lying across it, but a tin cup balanced at the top of the curve. I hope the cup’s empty. The washbowl and pitcher look even more chipped and cracked in this light, and dirty socks are on the floor again—or still. Maybe a couple more pairs. They need darning. I’ll do that.

Then I notice I’m on the side of his rambling eye and it’s rambling right over to the window—to me. I don’t know what he sees, but there’s no reaction. It’s as if that eye
is
blind, but maybe it’s that he’s seeing wonderful things and wouldn’t be paying attention to me anyway.

And now he has that poet’s look of listening. Have I made a noise?

The odd eye is still right on me. It glistens in the lamp light. His good eye was crow-blue-black. This one is
light
blue.

I think of clouds tinged pink, rainbows of course… balconies, gazebos, long white gauzy gowns that blow in the wind, raven hair… “tresses,” as they say, also blowing. And Blackthorn…. In the world of that blue eye, he would wear clothes that fit him better, though they’d still be black. Penny would have a long courtly nose (as she already has) and her tresses would make her face look all the more narrow, but what makes somebody beautiful? Not their nose. Not perfect teeth. Not big caramel-colored eyes. (She does have that.)

“Harriet?” Now it’s his good eye which is turned towards me. “Harriet?”

How did he know my real name? Another sure sign of… well, several things. If he knows my name then for sure there
is
another world out there somewhere.

I hear wind. Branches squeak as they brush against the roof of the shack. I feel the evening breeze. Or is that in that other place?

He says, “Enter.”

Enter what? Does he mean into that other land? And how? Since I don’t know how to go there, for now, and though I’m right by the door, I just step through the little window. It’s small and high, but I step through just as though it was easy—except I fall when I land on the other side. I’m down by his knees. I dare to touch his ankle. He’s not wearing any shoes or socks so I touch bare skin. I look up into his eyes … eye, that is. You have to pick which one you want to look into.

“Please get up.”

But his ankle is warm and damp. I haven’t touched skin-to-skin with anybody for longer than I can remember. I lay my cheek across his instep. It smells of ditch.