My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (41 page)

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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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Jack, he sees that it is no longer dark-dark like the night but he also sees it isn’t the regular gloom. The thing that growed up through the night with sound of metal and sound of water is so big as to cast a shadow on all the shade.
Out of the ground-up ground all around the wind-stripped wood of the wore-out house of Jack and Jack’s momma, Jack, he sees these big ol’ struts made of metal.
Jack, he sees a grove of these big ol’ struts all studded with rivets, all trussed up and down with guy wires and ratlines growing out of the ground-up ground.
The big ol’ struts, they’re all riveted up and rigged all around with guy wires and ratlines, the big ol’ struts also got rungs.
The rungs, they’re tack-welded to the big ol’ struts.
Jack, he looks up into the depths of the gloom of the dirt-cloud. Jack, he looks deep into the cloud.
Jack, he can’t see no end to the big ol’ struts growing up together into the depths of the dirt cloud.
Jack, he grabs hold of one of them tack-welded rungs.
Jack, he commences to climb one of them trussed-up struts.
Jack, he has no idea where he’s going.
Jack, he has no idea where he’s going but he gets going, climbs up them tack-welded rungs, hand over hand, up into the depths of the dirt-cloud.
The climb, it takes a spell.
After a spell, Jack, he looks back down from the rung he is hanging on to, back down through the rigging of the guy wires and ratlines going every which way between the big ol’ struts. Jack, he sees nothing down below but the dirt-cloud and nothing up above but more dirt-cloud.
Jack, he commences to climb again.
Jack, he climbs up those rungs so long and so far he sleeps in the rigging of the guy wire and the ratlines.
After a spell of more climbing up the rungs and more sleeping in the guy wires and ratlines, Jack comes to the top of the dirt-cloud.
Jack, he pokes his head up above the top of the top of the dark ground-hugging dirt-cloud. And Jack, he sees out over the vast plain of the top of the dirt-cloud, a desert of dirt-cloud, and floating above that desert are cloud-clouds, all white and lovely-like.
Jack, he pokes his head through the top of the dirt-cloud, sees the cloud-clouds stretching above the dirt of the dirt-clouds, and then and there he ends up on a catwalk.
Jack, he ends up on this here catwalk after all that climbing up the rungs of the big ol’ strut.
This here catwalk, it rings around a big ol’ cloud, but this big ol’ cloud is different from the white and lovely-like clouds floating all around it in the clear-clear air above the dirt-cloud.
This big ol’ cloud, Jack, he sees, it’s all made out of metal, metal studded all around with rivets and such. The big ol’ metal cloud is being held up by the big ol’ struts with the guy wires and the ratlines right at the top of the dirt-cloud. The big ol’ metal cloud, it looks like it is floating there, a big ol’ bar of soap floating on top of a bathtub of dirty cloud water.
Jack, he walks for a spell on the catwalk.
Jack, he walks on the catwalk and on one side, Jack, he sees all the while the white lovely-like clouds hanging in the deep blue sky, and on the other side, Jack, he sees the sheet metal of the big ol’ metal cloud with its rivets and seams and such.
Walking on the catwalk, Jack, he comes to a hatch cut into the metal of the big ol’ metal cloud.
Jack, he climbs through the hatch, he climbs inside the big ol’ metal cloud, and inside there, here is this here other catwalk that Jack climbs down onto.
It is dark inside that big ol’ metal cloud. It is dark and Jack, he waits a spell until his eyes can see the light that’s in the dark.
And in the light inside the dark, Jack, he sees nothing but water. Inside the metal cloud, Jack sees nothing but water in an ocean of water stretching away to forever and ever.
Inside the metal cloud, Jack, he sees this ocean as far as he can see. This here ocean, it looks like an ocean with ocean waves breaking over each and such right up to the catwalk where Jack, he’s standing.
Inside the metal cloud, the breeze in there is freshening. The freshening breeze, it sails over the endless ocean, over the breaking waves and such, and lights on Jack’s grimy sweaty face.
Jack, he just lets that breeze light on his face. Jack, his face, it is all grimy and sweaty. And the breeze sailing over the ocean lighting on his face washes all that away.
The breeze, it lights on Jack’s face with all its grime and sweat from climbing up inside the dirt-cloud, from living on the ground-up ground for so long.
The freshening breeze, it lights there, it licks the grime and the sweat right off of Jack’s face.
This goes on a spell.
And Jack, he commences to cry right then and there. Jack, he’s crying on that there catwalk, looking out over that endless ocean he sees in the light of the dark.
Jack, he cries these big ol’ tears. These big ol’ tears, they roll down Jack’s once’t grimy and sweaty skin of his face. And the breeze lighting there freeze-dries them big ol’ tears right then and there.
That’s when a woman, she’s been there all the time, says to Jack, say, what you got there?
Jack, he says back to the woman that he don’t know what she means.
The woman, she says I can take them off your hands, off your cheeks. The woman, she says she’s got something here way better than them there freeze-dried tears.
Jack, he considers this for a spell.
Jack, he considers all the walking he’s been doing, all the climbing. Jack, he considers all the dirt and all the water. Jack, he considers not even knowing about them there freeze-dried tears on his once’t grimy and sweaty face.
Jack, he considers the big ol’ tears on his face, how the freshening breeze squeezed them right out of him and freeze-dried them on his face.
The woman, she says, after a spell, says what’s it going to be?
Jack, he says to the woman to tell him what she’s got.
The woman, she takes out a glass dish, covered all over with a glass lid. The woman, she 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 a frozen ocean of silver stuck on the glass dish. A frozen ocean, it has itty-bitty frozen waves breaking and everything. Frozen silver spume and such.
Jack, he is fair amazed.
The woman, she says that that there is flakes of iodide frozen on the dish. That there is frozen metal that don’t melt. That there is magic flakes.
Jack, he can’t take his eyes off of them flakes of iodide frozen on the glass dish.
The woman, she says this here is the rarest of the rare. Metal made outa no water, air made outa metal that don’t melt. You go and spread that there air-metal on any ol’ cloud and see what grows down.
Jack, he’s done thinking.
Jack, he up and takes the glass dish with the flakes of iodide from the woman right there and then.
Jack, he chips off the big ol’ freeze-dried tears from his face, hands them over to the woman.
Jack, he sees the woman turn to a purple smoke in front of his eyes right then and there.
Jack, he smells the blood in the freshening breeze.
Jack, he watches the purple smoke turn and twist. The iodide frozen on the glass dish, it gives off its own kind of silver light in the dark light inside the big ol’ metal cloud.
The ocean waves below Jack’s feet on the catwalk, they make that breaking sound, grinding down the waves into water.
The smoke, it turns and twists going up and up.
The turning and twisting smoke, it done turns into a stairway of smoke. The smoke, it done turns to a stairway right in front of Jack’s eyes.
Jack, he knows there is more climbing to be done, knows he will have to climb these smoke stairs, turning and twisting.
Jack, he commences to start climbing the smoke stairs with the dish of iodide flakes giving off that silver light inside the big ol’ metal cloud filled up with an ocean that goes on forever and ever.
This goes on for a spell.
The smoke at the top of the smoke stairs, it done drilled a Jack-sized hole in the metal of the top of the metal cloud.
Jack, he sees up ahead the hole the smoke done drilled there.
Jack, he sees the sunlight pour in through the hole the smoke done drilled.
The sunlight, it pours through the hole.
The sunlight, it pours through the hole and goes right for them iodide flakes under the glass lid on the glass dish.
Up inside there, up inside there the iodide flakes begin to melt. But them flakes don’t melt as much as they don’t turn into no water. Them iodide flakes, they turn right into more smoke turning and twisting under the glass lid.
Jack, he climbs himself right through that Jack-sized hole the smoke stairs done drilled in the top of the metal cloud. Jack, he climbs right out of that there hole in the cloud.
Jack, he is standing on top of that there cloud.
Jack, he is standing on top of that there cloud holding in his hand the glass-covered glass dish holding the cloud of purple smoke that once’t was the silver flakes of iodide.
Jack, he lifts up the glass lid right then and there. And the smoke, it commences to expand. The smoke it begins to break into a million grains of smoke carried by the wind up there in the blue-blue sky.
Jack, he blows with the breath from his dirt-filled lungs the last of the smoke from the dish.
Jack, he sees the million grains of smoke go looking for the million cloud-clouds all white and lovely-like.
Jack, he’s done climbing.
Jack, he is on top of the big ol’ metal cloud and he is done climbing.
Jack, from way up there, he watches in the blue-blue sky the grains of smoke go looking for the cloud-clouds all white and lovely-like.
Jack, he’s done climbing, he’s done climbed all he was going to climb.
Jack, up there in the air, works up a bit of spit in his dry-dry mouth. It ain’t much but enough.
Jack, he works up some spit.
Jack, he leans over the edge of that big ol’ metal cloud he done climbed. He looks down into the dirt-cloud hanging there down below.
Jack, he spits.
Growing up on a vast flat plane, I lived my life two-dimensionally on the x and z axes. Width and depth. Anything that drew my eyes to the height of y, then, was magical. Television towers, radio beacons, windbreaks and copses of trees, grain elevators, silos capped with lightning rods, lightning itself, windmills, and water towers. The I drawn upward. There is a reason, I think, that Chicago—the city of the flat prairie, the flat lake—is the birthplace of the skyscraper. Growing up, I visited, first, one tallest building after another as the first was replaced by the next. I went to the observation deck of the Prudential Building and watched them build the Standard Oil Building even higher. The Standard Oil Building didn’t have an observation deck but the Hancock Building did, and from there I watched them build the Sears Tower, and from the Sears Tower I could see, well almost, forever or, at least, Gary and Indiana off in the vast distance. Growing up, I grew up. And growing up, I grew up on a vast flat plain that once was made up of devil’s food cake topsoil that seemed endlessly endless. Growing up, plain on the plain so vast all of us and everything, even skyscrapers, seemed reduced to minute points in an infinitely plain plane geometry. Growing up, I sang without really knowing that the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye. Growing up was the drama of stark dimensions—x to y to z—rearranging themselves in this medium, this medium of time. Time running short. Time running long. Time running out.
—MM
KELLY LINK

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