My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (40 page)

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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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And Jack, he’d sink into the hole he dug as the dirt-dirt washed away from right under where he sat on it, wash away in the dirt-wind.
’Fore you know it, Jack, he would be all the way in the hole, sinking into it, with his daddy in his winding cloth. ’Cept there was no hole no more.
Jack, he’d stand back up and start to digging another hole to bury his daddy, his daddy in his rotting winding, lying in a heap on the shifting ground at his feet.
This went on a spell.
About then, the brindle cow, she run dry.
The brindle cow, she up and dried up.
Jack, he was in no ways surprised by this.
Jack, he’d been feeding the brindle cow wood from the barn, the red clapboards stripped of paint and sanded smooth by the dirt-wind.
Jack, he’d be back there massaging the bag to get the brindle cow to let down. The brindle cow, she’d be chewing and chewing the old barn wood all the time Jack was there in the back trying to get her to let down.
Jack, he’d work up a spit to spit on his hands to rub the boss’s bag to get her to let down.
Before she give out, she’d give just one-half tin cup of rheumy cream.
To get that, Jack’d use all four teats for that one-half tin cup of rheumy cream the brindle cow would give after Jack’d massage her shrinking bag to get her to let down.
The brindle cow, she’d graze the sticking-out tops of the buried bob-wire fences.
The fence pickets and the bob-wire, they would knock the dirt-dust out of the wind and all get buried in the drift.
The brindle cow she would graze the fence tops, work the staples loose.
The brindle cow, she’d lick rust right off the bob-wire. Her big ol’ tongue licking the rust right off the wire.
Jack, he found himself one of them ol’ magnets. He found one of them big ol’ bar magnets and fed it to the brindle cow.
The ol’ magnet, it done lodged up in the crop.
That ol’ magnet up in the crop, it draws all the hardware the brindle cow grazed on.
That ol’ magnet, it didn’t do no good.
That ol’ magnet, it didn’t do no good at all ’cause the brindle cow went dry as a bone.
The brindle cow, she stopped altogether letting down.
The brindle cow, she stopped altogether letting down, stopped giving milk, not even giving up a stringy spit of milky milk.
Jack’s momma, she says to Jack to fetch the brindle cow into town.
Jack, Jack’s momma says, fetch that ol’ stopped-up cow into town.
She’ll fetch a price, Jack’s momma says, for her stringy meat if nothing else.
Jack’s momma says the brindle cow’s hide’s done been already tanned by the wind. Her coat, she says, done been wore away. Her horns and hoofs done been hollowed out by the same dirt-wind wore the coat clean away.
And she’s full-up with all that scrap, Jack’s mamma says.
Jack’s momma, she tells him to sell the scrap after the slaughter of the ol’ brindle cow.
Jack, he says he will.
And the bones, Jack’s momma says to Jack, fetch home them inside bones for bread.
Jack, he says he will.
And the tongue, Jack, Jack’s momma says, fetch that home too. We can ring it out, ring it dry of water, the water that got leeched from the rust she’s been licking from the bob-wire.
Jack and the brindle cow, they up and go, gone behind the big ol’ cloud wall hanging from the sky and sweeping up dirt-cloud of dust at its feet.
Right away, Jack, he sees nothing but the cloud of dirt all around him.
Jack, he can’t even see the brindle cow on the other end of that there rope.
Jack, he nickers. Jack, he says, come, boss, he says.
Jack, he hears the brindle cow say moo. Jack, he can’t see her inside the dirt-cloud all around.
This goes on for a spell.
Then Jack and the brindle cow come to the forest. Jack, the brindle cow, and the forest are all in the dirt-cloud all around.
The forest isn’t made up of no trees. It is a forest of old windmills. Hundreds of windmills. Hundreds. The windmills’ blades make an aching sound in the gloom when the snaggle-tooth blades turn in the gritty dirt-wind.
The snaggle-tooth blades turn over out of sight inside the gritty ground-up dirt-cloud there overhead Jack and the brindle cow mooing in the gloom.
The windmills, they are only milling wind.
The windmills’ screw gears, they done been wore away, been stripped clean by the gritty wind.
The windmills can’t lift no water. No water to lift.
The windmill in the windmill forest done sucked up all the water out of the ground hereabouts long ago. The windmill forest, it is sinking into the ground, into the hollow place where all the water used to be.
All them windmills, they can’t lift no more water. No water to lift. The windmills, they pump sand.
Jack and the brindle cow, they walk through the forest of the criss-crossed windmill towers, the windmill blades making their aching sound overhead.
The brindle cow, she hold up, stops to take a bite from the wood on one of them criss-crossed windmill towers. The brindle cow, she can’t be budged.
That’s when a man, he’s been there all the time, says to Jack, say, what you got there at the end of that rope.
Jack, he says back to the man that he has a brindle cow all dried up he’s taking to slaughter somewhere over there on the other side of the dirt-cloud.
The man, he says I can take her off your hands, says he’s got something here way better than a dried-up brindle cow to trade.
Jack, he considers this for a spell.
Jack, he considers all the digging he’s been doing, trying to keep his daddy in the ground. Jack, he considers what his momma said about the scrap metal and the hide and the sopping tongue and such.
Jack, he considers the big bones inside the brindle cow and the bone bread his momma wants to make with them.
The man, he says, after a spell, says what’s it going to be?
Jack, he says to the man to tell him what’s he got.
The man, he takes out a glass vial, a vial stopped up with a rubber stopper. The man, he holds it up right up to Jack’s eye so as Jack can see into it.
Jack, he looks and looks.
Jack, he sees inside there an ocean of silver in the vial. An ocean, it has itty-bitty waves breaking and everything. Silver spume and such.
Jack, he is fair amazed.
The man, he says that that there is beads of quicksilver eating each other up. That there is melted metal that don’t need no fire to melt. That there is magic beads.
Jack, he can’t take his eyes off of them beads of quicksilver swallowing each other up inside the glass vial.
The man, he says this here is the rarest of the rare. Metal made outa water, water made outa metal. You go and spread that there metal-water on any ol’ ground and see what grows up.
Jack, he’s done thinking.
Jack, he up and takes the glass vial with the beads of quicksilver from the man right there and then.
Jack, he hands over the rope to the man. Somewhere out there on the other end of the rope is the brindle cow.
The brindle cow, she moos in the gloom.
Jack, he hears the man and the brindle cow go off that-a-way.
Jack, he turns the other way for home. The quicksilver in the glass vial, it gives off its own kind of silver light in the gloom.
The windmill blades over Jack’s head, they make that aching sound, turning in the dirt-wind up inside the dirt-cloud.
This goes on for a spell.
Jack’s momma, she asks Jack what he’s got to show for the brindle cow. Jack’s momma, she’s been waiting for Jack for a spell. Dirt-drifts, they have drifted around her skirts where she waited for Jack on the house stoop.
Jack, he shows her there then what he had to show for the brindle cow.
Jack, he shows his momma the glass vial glowing in the gloom, filled up with the itty-bitty ocean of water-metal and metal-water.
Jack’s momma, she’s angry.
Jack, says Jack’s momma, what about all that scrap metal and the leather tanned by the dirt-wind and the waterlogged tongue of that ol’ stopped-up brindle cow?
Jack’s momma, she says what about the big bones I was going to grind down to bonemeal to make our bread?
Jack, he says to his momma that there is quicksilver inside the glass vial, the rarest of the rare. Metal that ain’t hard like metal. Water that ain’t wet like water.
Jack, he says there ain’t no telling what it can do.
Jack’s momma, she don’t say nothing, takes the glass vial right out of Jack’s hands. The quicksilver inside the glass vial, it’s glowing a little in the gloom.
Jack’s momma, she considers for a spell.
Then, sudden-like, Jack’s momma, she up and unstops the stopper there and just like that pours the water-metal metal-water on the ground.
The quicksilver is quick, quicker than quick, glows in the gloom as it slides through the dirt-air to the ground.
Jack’s momma, she says this here is not worth a bucket of warm spit.
The quicksilver, it splashes on the ground. Where it splashes it kicks up little clouds of dusty dust. The way the quicksilver splashes, it makes a wet pattern like a map of the world ’cept the wet parts is the land and the dry parts is the vast ocean tracts I have only heard about in stories.
Jack and Jack’s momma, they look down on the ground where the quicksilver, it makes a map of the world in the dirt.
Both of them stare as the silver-wet of the quicksilver sinks into the dirt-dirt, making a patch of gray mud that, right there and then, begins to dry up on the spot. But it isn’t so much drying up as it is drying down. The wet soaking into, seeping into, that ground-up ground.
Jack and Jack’s momma, they both stand still for a spell. They watch what little wet there was in those quicksilver beads turn into a big ol’ dry.
In no time, even the big ol’ dry, it’s all dried up or, more exact, all dried down.
Jack and Jack’s momma, they stand stock-still for a spell. Still long enough that the drifts of dirt begin to cover Jack’s feet. Still long enough for the drifts of dirt to begin to cover the hem of Jack’s momma’s dress.
Enough, Jack’s momma says after a spell.
Not enough, Jack thinks after another spell of saying nothing.
And both of them fall asleep then and there.
This goes on for a spell.
Then in the dark-dark of the night, Jack, he wakes up to take a leak. Jack, he wakes up and gets up from where he fell asleep on the dirt. Jack, he makes water.
In the yard, Jack, he makes water. The yard, it is so dark, Jack, he can’t see the leak he is taking.
Jack, he hears the water he is making hit the ground. The water, it sounds like it sizzles when it hits the ground-up ground, sizzles like it turns to steam the second it strikes the ground.
After Jack takes a leak, after he has made water, Jack he goes back inside to his pallet of hard-packed dirt.
That night is when the thing growed up out of the ground-up ground.
The thing didn’t need no sun to grow since it growed up in the nighttime.
That nighttime while Jack and Jack’s momma sleep on their pallets of hard-packed dirt, the thing commences to grow.
First, there is this wrenching sound followed by a thumping bunch of big ol’ hollow booms followed by a slide-whistling, followed by a scale pings and plucks followed by a string breaking on an out-of-tune fiddle followed by the kinks being peened out of an ol’ washboard followed by a mucus-y pneumatic sneezing followed by the crinkling up of a tinfoil ball the size of the moon followed by the lumbering howl of a two-handed whipsaw being doubled up and honed with a horsetail bow to within an inch of its life to play a kind of toothy crosscut lullaby of ripped-up half-notes cut in half. And all of this followed by the ears of Jack in the dark-dark, a dark darker than dark on account of the dirt-cloud doubling the dark of the night.
Then, in the dark, there commences the no-mistaking-it sound of water running, water banging in plumbing that hasn’t been bled yet, water glugging through too narrow a gauge pipe, water over a rapid, water filled with air bubbles, water fizzing with seltzer. Water plumb out of its mind with wet.
In the dark-dark, Jack hears it all. Jack, he heard the metal sounds and the water sounds growing together in the dark-dark.
In the morning, when the dark of the dark turns less dark and the dark becomes more of the regular gloom, Jack, he gets up off his dirt pallet and sees what he can see.

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