David Rivard

After his ham & cheese in the drape factory cafeteria, having slipped by the bald shipping foreman to ride a rattling elevator to the attic where doves flicker into the massive eaves and where piled boxes of out-of-style cotton and lace won’t ever be decorating anyone’s sun parlor windows. Having dozed off in that hideout he fixed between five four-by-six cardboard storage cartons while the rest of us pack Mediterranean Dreams and Colonial Ruffles and drapes colored like moons, and he wakes lost— shot through into a world of unlocked unlocking light— suddenly he knows where he is and feels half nuts and feels like killing some pigeons with a slingshot. That’s all, and that’s why he pokes his calloused fingers into the broken machinery, hunting for loose nuts a half inch wide— five greasy cold ones that warm in his pocket— and yanks back the snag-cut strip of inner tube with a nut snug at the curve to snap it at the soft chest of a dopey bird. Then the noise of pigeons flopping down to creosoted hardwood, and then a grin the guy gives me & all his other pals later. And afternoon tightens down on all our shoulders, until the shift whistle blasts, blowing through the plant like air through lace. As it always has, as it does. That bright. That stunned.

I fed my father what as it turned out the future would call his last meal (tho at the time neither he nor I was required to think it that exactly)— ground chourico & chopped green pepper open-faced on a burger bun, french fries, a cupcake with icing almost chocolate in flavor—alarming, a departure from his diet of low-sodium, zeroed-out trans fats & sugar-free vegetables with high fiber- scores, suffering as he had been for years from barbarian cholesterol & geriatric diabetes (the nurse shrugged simply & said "why not?"— meaning of course that we should get it, all of us, he was going to die, and soon). A few loose chitters of ground sausage fell onto his johnnie from the fork I lifted to his mouth—they left tiny, paprika-red dots of oil on the sheer cotton, prussic red, corpuscle red like the small scabs my sister and I had left on his face while helping him shave the day before. A week earlier I had visited him at home; the day an unusually warm day in a March unusually cold. He was telling me how he'd gone out into the yard to get some sun only to return minutes later to the house, the wind far too strong— he said he worried that if the wind took his hat from his head, he might die while chasing it. I made a joke—forced to, I thought—chasing a hat, I said, that might be a better death than most, I said maybe the death certificate would read "killed by the wind." He laughed all right. You know, he said, you've really got a lousy sense of humor. Better than nothing, I guess—(did he say that, or did I think it?). Later he said . . . he'd said earlier . . . then I said . . . he said . . . I said . . . I said . . . I said . . . Say now that this might be all that's left for consolation, this might be love at the end, the confidences exchanged— all these pratfalls, & this skin chapped by a blade, and your willing servant's shaky hands, then a short trip to be washed a last, finally blameless time (so the scriptures say) in the blood of the lamb: a smell like the smell of sweetgrass burning crosswise the length of a dry plain and sent by a wind whose swiftness has in it the bright voices of kindergarteners, children born of a hardship town.

Now that everything seems so persuasive you will go on changing      as always it has always been the case with you whether you knew it or not      ever since that morning in the swamp      that Sunday a sunless windy morning      when right in front of you      a fat hive dropped unbidden      out of a blackened tree a tupelo      and where it fell      the water was shallow      eighteen inches at most but in it      one hundred & fifty-six wasps drowned      so      no      you are not finished      your apprenticeship is not yet over you have fallen in love      inadvertently      you are the bride-to-be      and now      having dressed yourself in the gown      for practice you must stand before a mirror in the upper right-hand corner of which      all of a sudden      a courtroom will appear      the litigants judge & jury suspended there      in midair      a news bulletin      the reporter's face reflected from a portable television far across the room      the sound turned down the litigants looking tense      or bored the whole crew of them a little self-conscious      like characters who have just recently been conjured      though somewhat incompletely      by a staff of studio writers in Century City      California In a field off a Vermont road      later this week      you'll listen to a car ticking as it cools      the sound of the engine blending with the cicadas in tall bluegrass floating past      as in a dream then you will finger the veil & lift your mother & father long ago set aside in a folder for silences & song you'll waken      almost immediately reborn      you will have lifted the veil though of course      sooner or later      farther down the line      that stranger      the one with whom you spend so much time in your mind      talking      he will reveal he is your brother      and what will you have to say to him then      when as he must      he asks if you had allowed yourself to lead a happy life in spite of the fact your parents had not      what is it you will tell him what answer can you give?

The days are dog-eared, the edges torn, ragged—like those pages I ripped once out of library books, for their photos of Vallejo and bootless Robert Johnson. A fine needs paying now it’s true, but not by me. I am no more guilty than that thrush is who sits there stripping moss off the wet bark of a tree. A red fleck, like his, glows at the back of my head—a beauty mark, left by the brain’s after-jets. I would not wish for the three brains Robert required to double-clutch his guitar and chase those sounds he had to know led down and into a troubled dusky river, always. Three brains did Johnson no earthly good, neither his nor Vallejo’s 4 & 1/2 worked right exactly—O bunglers, O banged-up pans of disaster! Crying for days, said Cesar, & singing for months. How can I be so strong some times, at others weak? I wish to be free, but free to do what? To leave myself behind? To switch channels remotely? Better to sing. Not like the bird, but as they sang, Cesar & Robert— with the shocked & seeded sweetness of an apple split open by a meat cleaver.

Lucky day still spent wrestling the private problems and obsessions encountered first in your youth but played out now within the spectacle of public aging (tho, strangely, as you age you feel less & less seen by the young, a citizen active in frequencies of light waves increasingly invisible—not even boring to 15-year-olds). Of course, some problems you once had really have vanished—you can sense that as your daughter lays out the tactics crucial to "pre-gaming," her teen friends setting out to get toasted or stoned before house parties, parties at which they've been warned not to drug or drink— no longer a worry for you (except as relates, of course, to your daughter)—you can drink & drug somewhat "it would seem" to your heart's content. Not your style, you say? Not any longer? Still, the urge to lift or get lifted from self-conscious woes hasn't gone away totally, has it? Wanting to be free of your self has always been a mission big in your church—evangelically so! You got in a way (the wrong way) your wish— your skin certainly got looser on you—baggy, rounder, wrinkled—prescriptions for departure—the rigging's untuned, & no milk bath full of rose hips can compensate (so your friend likes to say), no fish oil omega-3 in gel capsules manufactured by entrepreneurial ex-hippies no wifely fruit smoothies or mod boots will cure jowls now or allow for glamour without the costume.

Where am I going today if I'm going anywhere at all without my soul, that bird with its unreadable, unheard name having wandered off again, convinced that it is more than just a word— do we travel far from each other today?— me in my pre-owned Mazda with my radio full of wasps' nest news, my Peshawar & my Rupert Murdoch, all my guilty Murdochs— my destination like a homestead made of fallen maple leaves, the three leaves that form a tipi tipped together by a 5-year-old's hands, a dwelling place, where if I wanted to I could rest my human rights while my soul travels far from its base, lost for a while on its own highly privatized trip, the idea of living forever an idea that is not an eternity at all for my wanderer but a wish the bird has to fly brocaded by herself within the borders of a tapestry, far from some witch queen's cackle, far from that witch who has disguised herself as a sparhawk woven out of dark thread by a Flemish peasant's hands— how far is too far, you ask?— a little foolishness goes a long, long way, I'd say; a lot drops dead in its tracks.

—for George Shelton Sometimes everything feels like a trick. Some days things seem to have been stolen from you. Cash to pay the bills, your sense of humor, friendship. You could almost believe those are what you look for as you walk around your neighborhood. But, no, instead, you get splashes of zinnias against stucco, cactus wrens, a pack of kids who ignore the sodium amber streetlights which just stuttered on, because it means their mothers want them home right this minute. And, on the corner variety store’s wall, a crude, sun-washed mural of the angel Gabriel defaced by thick black sideburns so he looks like a street punk, a strutting cholo, so he seems the only creature on earth who hasn’t heard the news that everything can be lost. His strong upper arms curving naked and graceful as the tan thighs of a slender, athletic girl. A girl he’s after, though she’s gotten bored waiting on the stoop and watching the sun set behind the foothills. Sky reddening until it slams into a blue that blesses anyone oblivious to all the negations, including the one, pal, where you think it’s possible to step out of your heart and leave it empty as an egg shell or a cardboard box. When you finally return home the tint of sky more or less matches the flash of a thrush as it swoops from limb to branch, acacia to willow. Standing at the kitchen counter, you pick through a carton of strawberries. Good juicy ones from the moldy and over-ripe. Choices that are easy. What do you trust anymore? The aproned man in the mercado said California strawberries, they’re the best this time of year. In bed, later, you remember the grocer, round belly under his apron, but as you start, nearly asleep, to tell your wife about him, how he talked about his deals, she starts reading aloud from a tattered bird guide, that the wood thrush is “essentially useful and worthwhile.” What is worthwhile?                      Now, remember.

Sunlight fades the storefront full of magazines. Month to month they boss us—the covers, they tell us that if we want to get happy & alluring (real happy, alluring sexually) we must for goddamn sure take up the breeding of Jack Russell terriers, or else dig ourselves a little backyard fishpond. Days of fish, days of dog, days of sex— in that order, necessarily. In the sun all the titles are trying to vanish—phrases like trout pond diluted, the 20-point sans serif, inked-red passion bleached now, apathetic, ghostly— words that want my attention like movers on the street lugging mirrors, a moment when I seem to come toward myself & then I’m gone too. I am not a greedy man. All I want is to be a visitor to this life.

"I see you," she says— one of the flickering homeless with gray alehouse hair, pale blue eyes, crunchy lips—a methadone- troubled moth by the YMCA—but who does she see?—is it the chubby, right-handed schoolboy sent out by the nuns at St. Joseph's to clap the chalkboard erasers clean? Or the giddy teenage shipping clerk at lunch break smoking pot for the first time behind a curtain factory shed? Perhaps the middle-aged mortgagee? Maybe an ex- proofreader in lawyerland or betraying husband? Maybe the good loser? How about the new father smiling in tears? Why not the complainer's ally, or the devoted wanker, or the inert doubter, or the annoyancer or toddler?— if not the circumspect bald man, crank, or unselfish lecturer— or does she see each of them?— maybe each would like a lantern to carry; tho there are nowhere near enough lamps for all.

When I wake now it’s below ocherous, saw-ridged pine beams. Haze streaks all three windows. I look up at the dog-eared, glossy magazine photo I’ve taken with me for years. It gets tacked like a claim to some new wall in the next place— Bill Russell & Wilt Chamberlain, one on one the final game of the 1969 NBA championship, two hard men snapped elbowing & snatching at a basketball as if it were a moment one of them might stay inside forever. I was with my father the night that game played on a fuzzy color television, in a jammed Fall River bar. Seagram & beer chasers for hoarse ex-jocks, smoke rifting the air. A drunk called him “Tiger” and asked about the year he’d made all-state guard— point man, ball-hawk, pacer. Something he rarely spoke of, & almost always with a gruff mix of impatience and shyness. Each year, days painting suburban tract houses & fighting with contractors followed by night shifts at the fire station followed by his kids swarming at breakfast and my mother trying to stay out of his way, each of the many stone-hard moments between 1941 & 1969— they made up a city of granite mills by a slate & blue river. That town was my father’s life, & still is. If he felt cheated by it, by its fate for him, to bear that disappointment, he kept it secret. That night, when he stared deep into a drunk’s memory, he frowned. He said nothing. He twisted on the stool, and ordered this guy a beer. Whatever my father & I have in common is mostly silence. And anger that keeps twisting back on itself, though not before it ruins, often, even something simple as a walk in the dunes at a warm beach. But what we share too is a love so awkward that it explains, with unreasoning perfection, why we still can’t speak easily to each other, about the past or anything else, and why I wake this far from the place where I grew up, while the wall above me claims now nothing has changed & all is different.