John the Posthumous (3 page)

EIGHT

T
he ants: in parts.

The choke seeps blood and then withers in the cold.
The heart recalls a needle, crooked at one end.

At night, as here, they can appear rather despairing.

I compare them with cornfields and with fathers in the dark, though wasps would surely posit a better resemblance.

Potters, for instance, are the correct color, among other things. White spears are without eyes.

Hook ants pass the fall in dooryards.

My advice: ox-gall, turpentine, and boiling water.

It is best to set the bait in a modest trap, slit dirt at either side. Some household objects, such as a hatbox or a milk tin, their tops properly gouged, will do just fine. Suffocation is often the easiest course later in the season.

Fire, for its part, prefers girls in a hayloft.

Never mind a lavish appraisal of the landscape, though, save for the remains of the stables.

Cattlehouses attract botflies, which resemble bees, generally speaking. Their maggots give sheep the staggers. Warble flies, lost, sometimes freeze on the green.

The winter passes handsomely.

And then: hornworms and betsys.

But cut leaves, as such, can also mean lash rot, a fever of sorts, with wounds somewhat graceless in formation, while the mottling seems more appropriate to a pox.

Thief ants occur inside decaying trees.

Shadows never help matters, dividing the bed lengthwise. The yard is dark by eight o’clock.

I do not expect guests anymore, no, but just look at
all the cracks in the glass.

My apologies: for the black ink, for the meager portion of cloth.

It is sensible to use arsenic too, though mold will grow anyway. The parts are apparent at the bottom of the jar. The specimen should be placed on bright white paper, after the usual fashion, the block on end.

Light dictates the arrangement of pins.

A ridge replaces each appendage, in the male, the skin dull on the dorsal side.

The face displays a jaw and three sutures. The thorax follows from a notch, red in the terminal segment.

S
ee the bees atop the cinders.

But spiders prefer flesh flies, which prefer pox hens, bleeding through the evening.

Tomorrow you will mistake them for postholes in a row.

The border plants, an afterthought, are caught by blight. The bruises ruin the view of the column and the vines.

To catch vermin of this sort, first turn back your cuffs, please, and remove your necktie, and then soak the roots in kerosene, cinching the rag with twine.

But now I have managed to trample the annuals again.

Certain courtesies also obtain in the case of stakes, beginning at said point in the northeast corner, and running thence west to the decline.

Solitary wasps occur in the rockery, one chain away.

Potters, for instance, hunt at the far end, stalks and all. The male seems to gasp.

When they surrender, examples of this family, the bodies shudder, barkweed strangling flowers in the background.

I neglect the pots and lose another month.

The trees follow rather solemnly from the fence, wounds painted red. The hedgerow narrows as it approaches the rats.

The deportment of the lawn accounts for my fall, northerly in performance, beginning at a distant point on the eastern side of the house, and concluding in the rain.

These beetles starve beneath the leaves.

Betsys trap weeps in better weather. Skins lie abed in the winter, the way one’s mother sometimes does.

Bury carrion by the bracken, please, using a new spade and a tin bucket, your handkerchief set out like so, bees at the very edge of the image.

T
he hornets: in order.

Ours, for instance, are known to swarm about a sickroom. They die inside the lowboy.

In embroidered form, as here, the face displays a red stitch.

The veins take a different color, panel out. The thorns are ornamental.

Never mind that the blanket recalls an animal, from one angle, or that the flies collect in piles.

Other insects are even less congenial, given the habits of the household.

Such as: waiting at the window.

The scars on the doors are a better measure, however, like hatpins, and like the disposition of copper pots at five o’clock.

A calf’s head, divided, accounts for the gnats. The heart decays on a polite white plate.

It is correct, I hope, to remove knives from left to right, and the glasses last. This one has cracked in my absence.

The hallway offers its own disappointments, beginning here, in poor light, and following discreetly to the gash in the far wall.

Deathwatch beetles will attack woodwork of this variety.

And then: the joists and cripples.

The ticking sound, once thought a final sign, is actually a fact of courtship.

I imagine the jaw as a broken line or as a simple
triangle, the points in gray. A circle replaces the cranium
proper.

Termites prefer timbers such as these. Fire sometimes traps rats in their galleries or behind an attic door.

Cellar stairs attract the smaller daughters, not to mention spiders and rot.

Or: toppled objects.

The gap in the banister is dreadfully evident, at any rate, despite the embarrassment of the pattern, hornets and all.

These examples are brown, with red banding and ordinary black claws. The veins are sickle-shaped.

The weal resembles a weal, I expect, though it weeps rather than bleeds.

Shadows appear at the furnace, given the hour, and given the matter of the housecoat and the ax.

The floor darkens accordingly.

NINE

T
he bed recurs as a figure in certain burnings—the
torches fixed to boards, for skeletons, and the boiling oil
in pots, in urns, in bowls.

But I am comporting myself poorly.

To begin again.

Camastro
, a Spanish word, meant
wretched bed
in those days.
As distinct from
camastro,
or
wicked bed
, given the facts of dialect. But then—the bodies lay east to west, did they not? And you can see how she clutched at her throat.

The Gothic style, in most tragic accounts, dis
penses with mischief of this variety. Though it retains a
collection of birds, for what that is worth—crows and so forth. Its posts, especially, may remind you of tombs of the period. Or of, more remotely, those relations, the very sad ones, who once came for the day.

The parable of the bed—I imagine the Bible contains no such item. What delicate phrases we must, therefore, do without. Tin knives and burnt blankets, a plague gate. Buried nightdresses, whether diseased or in pieces, find considerable favor in chronicles of a more Teutonic sort. While the parable of the gown ends, once again, without evidence of my wife.

My mother’s will—it was innocent of various provisions. As distinct from common Colonial wills, for instance, whose clauses divide bed from body. So to say. Headboards, for the children, and linens, for the oven, and that canopy—which can only ruin your room, my dear. Some include codicils that explain the placement of mutes around the graves. And portraits of mourning scenes, the names—or a description of the illness, as the case may be—written out in place of the faces. I see, here, two girls who sit as my daughters do. And a fragment of glass that carries us entirely too far from our topic.

Jewish beds, in the New World, were often stuffed with cloth. Though black straw, of the type you might find in an effigy, was the custom in a number of towns. Older practices required ash. The skinner marked the carcass. Slaughter boys, so-called, crossed the boards and burned the offal. The family tore the cord. The marriage bed, in this brown house, was a prettier affair—the latch adorned with short spikes, on the husband’s side, and short hooks, on the wife’s. The hinge was neither gold nor silver, alas. Whereas the pock—this was copper. Sometimes the posts and slats were mistaken for bones. As distinct from skeletons, which sometimes travel to the attic in these marital narratives. Early embalming tables, it turns out, had been modeled upon early cradles. In Northern cities, during the war—the base and legs adorned with dagger-and-dart forms. True, the jars of arsenic were always kept apart from the tunic. Be gracious, please, and leave a place for the grave goods. Rings, for instance—which soldiers often wore pinned to their skin. There were other formalities for a family in a house.

I
f the morning is cold: begin with the scars at the bottom. Rot might follow the stains. For cubits, con
sider measuring endwise, pulling smartly at the hem.
Subtract the width of one digit for every flaw. An
insect might well be our culprit, after all. When facing
south: the house appears to drown. Now the hour is happier but dim. For shaftments, measure the posts only, halving the rust at the bolt. Indicate the span with both hands, as though to signify fright or defeat. In the dark: the nail speaks ill of the glass. For inches, count seams by threes, board to board, quietly. Exclude the shadows at the near side. The wool will shift above you.

C
amastro
, or
wretched bed
, described a wooden
contraption. Though the pikes were overtaken, in their way, by chains. The cell merits fuller treatment in this respect, despite the steel collar. And despite the harrow
sticks, which, like the bodies, lay east to west.
Seize
was preferred, in those days, to
grasp
or
hold
.
But now we think of our brother’s hands, do we not? The cushions contained bees on these occasions, wasps on others. In plague cases, the hair turned first.

Wedding beds, in Pennsylvania, were stuffed with horsehair and pig bristle. Or, under the oddest of
circumstances, girls’ hair and poisoned soil. Bridal beds,
in Maryland, used plain straw. Of the madder family—like Quaker-ladies or this bit of blue in the distance. Or like dying nightdress with a very low throat. Early weeds were evidently better than late ones, whose forms, anyway, sometimes recalled split tongues. Fur, for its part,
was shorn according to rather primitive rules—peculiar
knives, in the course of things—and piled with the skins. These burned especially well. Matrimonial beds, in New York, were cut open and emptied of feathers. Or they were wheeled to a gate and taken away in the rain.

The Colonial fourposter style—notice how poorly it
conforms to the walls, to the crude themes of my room.
One morning in a childhood home—with Mother and all, for what that is worth. The frame, painted gray, and
the body, face down, and the bedsheet—whose seam is
a shame, prominent as it is. Now fold the blanket like so. Find the scorch mark at the neck, as you always do. Watch the child show sorrow. Does one confess to the inheritance of bedclothes?
Bed,
in any case, once meant
flay
, as in a burr mattock or a beggar’s cup, its handle a long nail. The hornbook—found north of the slaughter, or south of it—displays a drawing of boys. They stagger elaborately—or so it seems to me—outside a burning house. A diagram explains the demolition of a bed.

Beds of the dead, in Biblical custom, were buried, yes—usually at night, by the father. Though my father, perhaps like yours, died first. The garment is rent, in Jewish funeral law, which also requires that the eldest
son fall to his knees. Well, if not this, quite, then
certainly that the
shomer
, or watcher, exhibit the holes.
The family cleaned the bones with lye. They scratched the ground. The reeds were brought to a wall. Morgue drawers, or stalls, were named and then dismantled. Rings were excised from the soldiers’ skin—in the square, before the mourners. Mauled horses were sometimes found on the lawn. Is it true that little girls once had rooms like these? Let us try, next time, to save the nuns and lanterns on the staircase, and to describe the tombs with more aplomb. Oak coffins, in some traditions, were used in the event of contagion. The folded hands may remind you of knives—of the period or otherwise. Or of rats atop the bedsheets. Blankets, in many Colonial towns, were detailed with figures of husband and wife, the limbs spotted red or cut off—as the case may be—and the faces stuck with pins. Crying-houses, so-called, killed blind children in the night.

W
hen fire arrives in those old towns: it is mistaken for flower carts or hospital wagons. And then the flames have their way with the drapery. An object ignites, it was thought, according to the form of its name. A rail—granted—before a rope, and paper—such as this—before a person. The way a body burns: this will embarrass us somewhat less. Brass makes little claim upon the seams. Batting travels about the room. The sound of light, it was thought, recalls the breathing of priests. The manner of the embers: this attracts horseflies and black ants. Burnt sackcloth appears to prefer hornets. All the mornings now are cold enough for wool.

C
amastro,
by some accounts, was pronounced with rocks in the mouth. It took the shape of a cage. In Spain, a bit later—the hinge, like the skin, painted yellow or white. As distinct from
camastro
, or
wicked bed,
which faced west and was composed of bones.

Jewish beds, in the New World, often faced east. The patterns of blood were understood in several ways. Spots
a hand’s-breadth apart, for instance, meant hatchets.
Crosses meant wolves, just as you would guess. Or the throats, I suppose, of bride and groom—as logic might oblige some mention of a son.

The Gothic style, at tragic moments, stands on ceremony. I regret this. Sometimes it omits the box ornament and singe holes, however, as well as more ungainly traits. This example suggests a pile of knives. The legs, from the orphanage, and the slats, from the hospital, and the canopy—which is not the color, quite, of the wallpaper in my daughters’ room.

My mother’s will—it was silent on the subject. Rather like—you might indulge me—my father’s will. If not the column, lying on its side, here outside the house. Decorum asks that I ignore the grass, burning gracefully from back to front. Or from door to gate, as across other American lawns. True, widows’ wills a century ago—these may seem more amply despairing. This one includes a preamble that explains the frame as the form of a man. And portraits of the sickroom, a gas lamp—or just a hat and a rope—evident in the mirror.

The parable of the bed—were we to have it, that is. A carcass, in this case, would be a great success for us. Much in the manner of tongues nailed to a town. To corrupt an old phrase. The parable of the gown—a nightdress, in point of fact—presents various tales of failure. The wife dyed the garment. She wound a cord around the stick. A length of wool, rent, covered the floor. The litters—sometimes called scrolls—used mule hides in those days. Some funerary discourse favors kidskin, which may deprive the narratives of decapitation, among other insults. Bed etiquette, in such documents, forbids the kind of cloth I hold before you now. Whereas blankets and quilts sewn of limbs—these seem commonplace figures in folklore. Were your sister’s things quiet and fine? Well, perhaps not, but the carts were—far from the towns, rolling over the hill. The spires always found the family behind the trees, tiny as they were. But what a pity about the soldiers’ rings. Bits of their skin, charred, or imprinted with round marks, were pinned to the walls. The
burning bed, in this blue house, was a simpler affair—
the cross-stitch lost, on the husband’s side, and the cuff at the rail, on the wife’s. The bodies lay east to west. The latch was black, at last.