Of the Soil, a Romance

By Jared T. Fischer

If I recall, it was the seventh month at Gresher Farm when I noticed something particular that changed me. This blazing sun, it rose with a green sheen mixed with yellows. Then it shone white all up and down the broad expanse of the heavens.

And there was this fenced-in grassy dip with a slight pond on a section of that farm, and I headed over to it. Thought I’d look at the ducks that were there the day before. Found instead a dead little crow all mangy, its fur and feathers were blood-clumped and dried out. That’s what struck me. It was right there before the gate of the fence. And I felt it was ominous, saw even more that green-yellow sun flailing its absent white every which way along the sky’s reach.  

Shit wasn’t right that morning. I took a minute to think before I neared that pond another foot. From what the eye could see, there weren’t any ducks down the slope to the pond. But I made the trip to see. Saw the muddy water of that little dip. No ducks. Some strange cat at the other side of the pond stared back at me. His eyes wild, he wondered at me. I laughed a while at that cat, how he broke up the gloom of the crow that almost scared me.

But it was there again as I was leaving. Nasty image of the crow. Its beak parted like it weakly respired. The crow was a little death man in that green grass. He spoke blood warnings to me, and I didn’t want to hear them. I wanted nothing other than to make it through the year there at Gresher Farm. Rigcliff offered me the position. A little lawn care. He said just keep the appearance prim, you know, and he paid me good money.

You see, it was like this, me and Rigcliff grew up together, same community, Esher Avenue. Where Bridley Park is at on the far end. Were the same age. Always did everything together--played basketball, football, . . . painted the same church, Montgomery Methodist, down Warner (made real good money then), shit! We were seeing girls out just about every night. And, above all, he even dropped out of Dover High School when I failed math and decided I wasn’t going back.

Yeah, we were like blood in those days. Were going to escape together--turn our backs on school and live like the biggest kings Esher ever had. Get everybody at Bridley Park hanging with us at the benches and the swings. It would have been the Chitney sisters, big Damon, little wheelchair Offal, Simone, Geatelieu, Carl, probably Norse Code, me and Rigcliff--you know, just good people who get along. I was sure we’d be having crab feasts just about every week under the quiet sycamores of Bridley (there were a dozen of them, tall, shady ones, close to the pond); we’d be eating crabs and would look up at the ducks going wild with their girls on the water like it was a good life to be wet.

But things didn’t turn out nearly the way we expected. Funny how much life will surprise you. With not much of a reason at all, me and Rigcliff didn’t hang a day out of Dover. There weren’t any crab feasts, nothing--no calling the Chitney sisters, trying to double up for a walk through the trails at the back of Bridley. Not a damned thing we did together--almost it was like we had never hung out.       

Guess that’s when he met Lacey. Has to be. Because there went a time I didn’t hear from or see him. Wasn’t exactly that I tried to either. And he sure didn’t go out of his way to see me. Our leaving Dover together was embarrassing more than anything else. Esher Avenue turned quiet, a grave. It was when I kept inside my house for a time. Wanted to hide out, not think too much about what happened at school.

My sister Anne, she just really started to get noticed at Dover around this time. She was three years younger than me. Since we were real little kids, nine and six, I recall, she could read just about anything anybody gave her. So, when she got to Dover High School and showed those teachers, they were impressed. Ms. Lambert proclaimed, “Cornell! Anne needs to go to Cornell to study Modern Languages and Literature.”

Yeah, I remember she told mom and dad that Ms. Lambert suggested Cornell, said there were scholarships to be won. And Anne always had a book in her hand. Big books, not all paperbacks, shit I can’t fathom. But it wasn’t like I had no interest. You see, around this time I used to sit in the corner of her pink walled bedroom, second floor. She’d study and read daylong into night. She at her desk, back to me. I’d sit in the corner opposite, one leg bent, the other stretched out on the floor, sleeves rolled up and I held my head with one hand, the other arm slung across my stomach. It was when she called me surly, she didn’t look up from her book. I was silent, watched her. The sun had gone down slowly, a big shadow of me against the wall, she lit one of her candles at her desk, preferred them to turning on the lights. She asked me if I wanted to hear her read to me. “Alright,” I said. I was interested . . . wanted to hear some voice other than mine, my thoughts. And I was drawn in when she read by what she read! Other worlds, other times . . . science, history and poetry . . . French, and she was like a chicken, my sister Anne clucking French. Sisyphe! Sisyphe!  

Had to wonder what it all meant. And she told me some things, just a little at a time. And the science, she said it was chemistry. Started describing what she called lethal admixtures, and we looked at the periodic table of her textbook. Her chemistry wasn’t for me, because I soon got to thinking of Ms. Rook and the awful math that drove me away from Dover. I’d feel best when it was poetry she read. She had Homer ready, big books . . . about this man named Paris of Troy! Man sailed home loving and kissing a fine woman Helen who was supposed to be the wife of a king back in Argos called Agamemnon. High prized woman like that brings two armies to fighting, a long war waged, with even the gods up on the mountain arguing, getting involved. War just like a dance or drawn out game. Rhythms, Anne was talking about rhythms, and I remember hearing a bunch of big words mix together with the small ones I already knew. That was a power there, I was thinking. She asked me, “Would you ever consider poetry, Grove?” Sure, I’d consider it . . . that was about it. But deep down I wanted to use some of her words. I can say that. We got to hanging tight every day, sister and brother, with Anne always having some book she wanted to read to me from. That’s when we started going to Bridley together and saw the ducks in the pond there.

Anyhow, like I said, Rigcliff found Lacey around that time or a little later. They must have seen each other fortnights at a time. What they had developed into a love. And they married, just like that. Yeah, Lacey’s folks gave them Gresher Farm in Byers County and a boatload of money.

It was unreal--fifteen years later, Rigcliff happened to be down Esher Avenue one evening to see his parents. And I met him in the street as he was leaving. He was full from his mother’s roast turkey and wearing rich gabardines I had never seen on him. Changed from head to toe. Nice navy sports coat the man had, too. So, I had to break the ice by commenting that his clothes looked exceptional like he was a new moneyed man. He thanked me, asked how things were with me. Fifteen years . . . he didn’t know. Anne dead for almost that long (meningitis killed her fast). When he found out I wasn’t painting Montgomery anymore, discovered I wasn’t doing anything but hanging around Esher in a gloom, the man said he might have something for me at his farm. Besides, he said he wanted to introduce me to Lacey, his wife. Said she’d make all the girls of the past look bad. Like they were pigs in wigs. Talking about Lacey sensationally, he went off describing how she’d play in the fields in the sun, how much she loved to run the entire length of the estate and then rest in one of the hammocks hung from the trees in the back gardens of Gresher. Of course, I took the man up on his offer. There wasn’t shit to keep me at Esher. And to be honest, I kind of wanted to see Lacey. To experience what Rigcliff was talking about. Then I got to landscaping regularly around their farm, and I saw her.      

She every so often would bring me a glass pitcher of her sugary lemonade. Because I when trimming hedges did sweat miraculously heavy like I had hosed myself wet. Lacey was as nice as any wife I could imagine. She began by talking pleasantries, and it was rather calm between me and her. She did tell me she loved the sun. Said she could lie in it always. If I confess to you--she could do something to my heart just talking with that appreciative happiness like she was a sunshine herself. Of course, I never allowed things to get out of hand. I did put a rein tight to the jump-up longing when it came, and it was all fought out and done with there in the heart. And she and Rigcliff never knew the least bit. It couldn’t get out.

I kept real busy. From the start at Gresher I was doing magnificent work. Pulling weeds where I saw them in their front garden. Around back by the barn, I was on my knees in the patches for carrots and radishes, working neat new rows into the black soil, and my hands got dirty. Basically, I was going a little beyond landscaping. Sure, I’d mow their lawn, trim multitudinous hedges till I was blistery, spray the bushes for bugs. But it was the creative, extra shit I did that really won them over.

One hot day, Lacey came outside offering me cookies and iced tea. She saw me going above and beyond; I’d got a packet of seeds. Was planting primroses and grass--nobody had to ask me. She came close, with sweet coconut oil in her hair. It was a fragrance I liked. And I thanked her kindly for the treat, ate a cookie in front of her to show I appreciated it, and sipped my glass of cold tea, the lemon touching my teeth. She saw how the seeds were situated low in the dirt. She smiled, was amazed, said she was going to love having primroses in the grass. They were her favorite she said, explained they were like little yellow suns the grass was going to play green against. I told her I just liked having all that color low to ground. It is wild when the colors you expect to find in heaven, the green, yellow, the bright white--how the sun is at different times--are of the soil, moist, where they don’t burn up so fast. She said she loved my work and how I think.

About that time, Rigcliff let me know his plan for having a rose garden made for his wife. A special one. He blushed and smiled, had something particular in mind. Maybe in this garden he’d be in a high hammock with her, naked, staring at stars. Then I imagined little robins to start twittering high up in the maple tree with the white hammock strung from it. Scattered all around below would be my primroses and grass, wet with the night, and then a little way off from the tree, what Rigcliff really wanted--a circle of big red roses, dewdrops, around a gazing ball set atop this tall white marble pillar at the dead center of some mound of mulch. A soft blue full moon reflected in the ball. Also I saw the reflection of their naked bodies making love, snug in the hammock. Better believe it was some grand sex in this gazing ball I was daydreaming of, when Rigcliff blushing, big horse teeth out, approached to ask me if I didn’t think a rose garden was going to please his wife. Told me he got the space already, left side of their stone homestead. Said he needed my expertise. He was complimenting me left and right, telling me I was a man who could turn hedge clipping into art, and he saw what I did with primroses.

It took but one mild Tuesday I was out there in the space digging, seeding, heaving mulch, hedging, fixing the glass ball down on top of the white marble pedestal, stringing the hammock high in the tree to afford a fine view. Clipping dead branches off the maple that was a giant toward the sun. Went as far as to set them a white marble bench center stage of this their lush rose garden. One Tuesday. Gardening tools all over the place, because I was in overdrive. It wasn’t for nothing either, my effort. I finished six in the evening, sweating bullets, sun on its slow way down. The place looked like a man-made Eden. Rigcliff came by praising my effort faster than I could think, I was dying to drink something. It was when he said he was indebted to me, impressed; he asked me why didn’t I come have dinner with him and Lacey. I took him up on his invitation. Wore probably my best clothes. Nice red flannel dress shirt. Some black slacks that looked new. They started desiring my company at dinnertime. And I’d go. We got to talking, pleasant and familiar. We did laugh, and they invited me again and again.      

But I say in the seventh month the crow tore out a blood spell from my body. He conspired with the sun, the green-yellow devil that sputtered white magic and made the sky too much a telling of some doom brought on. It was a crow’s mysterious doom. It haunted me up and down. It told me I was that cat figure, sly and treacherous. It told me I was Paris . . . . Fuck, it was a scary thing--like the bird had been right there listening all the nights Anne had read me those big old poems that have Paris in them. Like he had nuzzled right on in between Anne’s arms, looked at the page, got his beak on it, following the words. Almost you’d wonder could he read them by his damned self. If so, he’d probably read the books to the cat. It made me mad, thinking--how is he going to play Anne? Read the shit to the cat like Anne read it to me! Of course, the death crow, it had read Homer. I was a Paris! And Lacey’s image in her pink summer dress, it flashed my eyes with caustic sense. It was a doom come on me that a suggestion in a bird could say my lust was going to have to swell out to damn me. Despite all I could do, I was getting these blood pangs. Started to feel hounded (wondering how there was a spell put on me, there in the blue blood), shit! . . . It was worse than those big old mastiffs Mrs. Goozebrick kept in her yard that were always barking at everybody that ever tried to come down Esher at night; my blood was shaking and stirring! And I feared in that year what I would do.

Well, I kept going to dinner with them. At their table. You know, kept appearances usual like nothing new. Rigcliff, man, it did get hard to look at him though. I blushed crazily and fought it the best I knew how. Bringing the napkin up to wipe my face. Being chivalrous, passing thick butter to his wife. Made it just a gesture, nothing beneath it. But the crow got to lancing mysterious communication into my head. I was the while trying to keep face. The bird masterfully chirped, “Notice her neck all soft and dainty? She’s an elegant number, ain’t she, man?” Then the crow grew crazy and wired, speaking. “You ought to take her behind a tree, my man, and play this number out bestial. O, I bet that cat is going to watch.” And he laughed. Shit, I almost laughed at the table, but I bit it back and ate more steak. Drank down my French 75, good shit Lacey had made. They liked to go all out at these meals: bread and butter, cheese, greens, cranberry sauce, cocktails, rare, sweet steak, candied yams . . . I was surprised the crow wasn’t nagging for food and drink!

Rigcliff broke up the silence and the plate clanking. “I saw you were at the pond earlier, Grove. Were they the geese or ducks there that had you so interested?” This was what I needed, I thought. Just something to change up this bird cackling I was hearing when nobody else did. Ah! and play good, too, keep the man in his fantasies about what I am in this scheme playing out. Keep it like I mean to relate to him, like I still care for him. Not his wife.

“There wasn’t a damned one when I expected to find both. No ducks, not one goose. You see, after I quit Dover I used to mark ducks all the time. Watched them at Bridley Park. My sister Anne, me and her threw bread pieces to these big ducks and their wives. They’d swim in circles, even get peckish, for that French bread we were throwing them. Ma gave us the stale shit she was throwing out. Said go see the ducks of Bridley with these. I thought they were art. The gliding ducks along that greenish water. And so they’re still on my mind, from time to time. I appreciate them as a kind of key to who I was in those days. And you know Anne she died young, fifteen, and it broke my house up. Bad fever undid all she had going (doctors found out it was meningitis). That girl had straight A’s, matter of fact. Over at Dover. My parents mourned for days not numbered after she died. Ducks were particular to me then. They were a dead sister swimming in flocks on the green splash-up water. But no, no, they were me. Big men ducks and their wives getting really antsy crazy when the bread was dropping in clumps--”

Rigcliff butted in, “Grove, you’re going insane on me. Talking all this duck symbology. I’m trying not to up and laugh in your face. But come on, man. You’re the ducks and she’s the ducks? Work that shit out. You’re going to have Lacey laughing at you wildly. She’s going to spit up the gin on her dress.”

I couldn’t care less about all he was saying. Anything to keep him unsuspecting. Especially with a fucking bird going haywire in my ear, demanding, “Reach over! Touch his wife’s leg. Yeah, Paris man, touch his wife’s smooth leg beneath that tablecloth.”

I wanted the meal to be over. Think I even went to the bathroom twice to calm down. Bird followed me there. I marked my true position. It was undeniable, I found I was pushed into this Paris fiasco. It was like a fire was scorching my better self. About when I lost control . . . in their bathroom. My chest heaving, heart a pain. Saw my eyes were red--glaring crazy twins. It looked nuts, that face I saw was mine. Washed up quick and spit in the sink. Eyes still as wild as can be. But I had to go back in. Had to. No other way.

I sauntered right on in, composed like there was nothing more to the deal than an active bladder. Lacey was cutting at her steak; gentle but quick with her silverware--she moved like she was a canary. Rigcliff, his mouth full, hunched over his plate, looked up like he still wanted to laugh about something stupid. I took my seat next to Lacey, at an edge of the table. Tried to look a man of posture and bluff up a kingly air, I was playing it off legit. There was just no other way. The bird was trying to say something or other. I was not listening.  

It just so happened that I saw this china plate in their curio cabinet against the wall, wallpaper all primroses and grass, big chandelier up high. If I recall, on that dish started my second big sign that I was in a sort of breakdown marsh thick of it. Obnoxious how amid all the deep blue farm pasture of the print on the plate there was this small impression of a lazy-eyed scarecrow, tortured. I say, he, to my fright and grand dismay, was heckled by the selfsame crow that was ripping my nerves out, as if snatching the seeds from a gourd. Wild, I say, to have this image behind us in the case: on the china, in sky-blue and navy, there was a big old crow on the scarecrow’s shoulder. A couple of smaller ones flying round his back. And some were only dark little lines in the lapis blue etched sky. But isn’t a scarecrow in truth supposed to scare those fucking crows off his back, out of the farmyard so the crops are safe? But no, in the pictures, the old cartoons that have scarecrows that look like the one on this china plate, there are always a few of the pesky crows getting to laughing atop the poor man’s shoulder blade. And he can’t do shit about it . . . .  

. . . Then I realized it was a grand auditorium in the back of my mind. Laughing, crying, big rhapsodic voice or chorus caws, and I couldn’t tell if everybody was watching comedy or tragedy. Crows in every seat and on the stage in those gabardines that Rigcliff wore too much: a black brotherhood, conspiracy, with me and against me. Acting everything out. It was a grand auditorium--porno, comedy: somebody laughing, and the feline leering up beneath me and Lacey (or crows supposed to be us) making love astride the white marble bench at the center of the rose garden I trimmed Tuesday. Or a tango behind the tree the bird was talking about. And a mangy dead crow supine squawked, “Yeah, that’s it. Get it. Lacey’s probably moist. And up high, look, Paris man! The Sunshine!” I looked: green, yellow, white, green, yellow, white--way up, it was a madman’s chandelier. Ground level all primroses and grass. Brain eager, fast, connecting everything, associating sights, smells, myth and miseries like Rigcliff’s fat pig always sniffing for something special in the compost heap. Glacier, water, big boat going down or Caesar stabbed, and towers falling in the back of my mind. Somebody’s always going to take Paris out. Achilles dead is no end. Some Philoctetes’s wound is going to heal up, and he’ll come by with the Hercules arrows, unhorse the man who was kissing Helen smooth. Right behind a tree like the one my bird was talking about. Or they had marble benches, the Trojans . . . .

The hard thing was sitting there all night. Lacey buttering bread, her head all pretty peahen down. Couldn’t read a word of her face, and her lips were silent. I didn’t hear it. But a heart had to be beating around the upper chest of her near bridal gown. Décolletage, low and fanciful. I read some secret there of her sleek skin. Sunshine!

Numbering madly, a plastic clock at the back of this wicker bureau had its hands twitching, it was green but its face was yellow. On time, but you got to wonder, is it the sun’s time? And how much time does the sun have? Lacey said she’d lie in it always. But some real big fires go out. And you got to wonder what all is going to be burned down along the way.   

Helped clear the table. Threw everything in the sink. The water running, big suds climbing the plates over the brim. I was worried, was the bird going to flap his beak at me? Would have liked to up and leave. Was a little at a time dancing to the door to dodge bringing the house down on top of those people’s heads. The crow was going to put the horsewhip on me!--drive me to a scene that was going to destroy all that was stable!--a boulder was going to roll up to crash down!--Hell no! not to me, not this . . . in their dining room . . .

. . . The likes of Anne, head down, reading out, flashed me, and something gave. Calm of the pond. Heart wasn’t so tight. Did I hear a duck? How long was this going to last? I wasn’t about to eye that clock ticking on my left. A madman’s chandelier probably glaring the glass face like mad time’s the devil’s domain. But thankfully, then and there, a little pond water was splashing in the back of my mind (“Quack!” I was hearing), and the crow was real quiet or he drowned.

But couldn’t leave. No chance a little quick goodbye would do the trick, get you out the door. Meal over, we took to the living room. Rigcliff wanted to play cards. “Grove, we’re going to play war. Lacey too. Little money, if it will make you happy.” Couldn’t unarch the frown lowering my face at his proposal. So I said, “Alright, I’m game.” (Keep the appearance prim.) And he smiled his horse teeth, got the cards out of the red carton, and started shuffling them like he was a pro. Craziest old thing, Rigcliff, like fast magic, divided the cards among us all, and a deep voice, like some father not my own, some preacher, teacher, poet or devil, at the front side of my head started story-time telling something I was half hearing. The voice omni-something or other, so big it was like you were hearing a brotherhood of bullhorns at the front side of the head. The words weren’t but a heap of noise. But I listened to them as best I could. The voice was sure not a crow’s.

Days toward the sun--eyes lifted, wild,

see it rising, raising harsh white

on the backside of Gresher barn

and the pearly stone homestead.

Sun’s glare, can’t see a stone.

Sizable black crow shadows

collect beneath the side the sun can’t see.  

These standing buildings, sun on one side,

crow shade on the other, are like men

caught between different forces pushing,

drumming up a fight. Are sun and crow

a tag team? O but nights away from the sun

are no joke. It’s all crow from there

on out. Black and the eyes aren’t seeing

but what the crow is talking about--

“LACEY, LACEY, LACEY!”

Must be tripping, I was thinking. How’s some mixed up, gathered, godly voice going to boom about my troubles, going to rhapsodize about the pressure and pain of birdseed busting out of my gourd? . . . the scarecrow’s head the crow has posted his leg on, pecking hard to have my shit torn up! Know-all motherfucker going to mount a podium at my forehead!--talking about the conspiracy I’m experiencing every day! Hell no. How is that supposed to console me, the little poetry of observations I’ve made already? Then that strong voice is going to imitate the little death man screaming that Lacey bullshit! Voice wasn’t nothing but a damned crow itself. Can’t trust a fucker in the field!

But like I say, Rigcliff was preparing war on his rosewood tea table at deep dead center of the chocolate rug of their living room next to the dining room we were in earlier. Through the partition, I rolled eyes at that chandelier high up haunting me and wanted to hammer its daylights out, have its glass smashed down on the floor. But it was probably what the chandelier and crow were expecting. And I wasn’t trying to fall to their dreams and schemes. Not when day and night this month long I had run rough against them with all the striving of my limbs and loins and the mind I did cultivate around Anne and the ducks of Bridley. There comes a time when a blood pang passes as lightly as a joke--harassing crow just is wasting his time. My mind turned to a memory--placid pond, discovery in the park, to a sister and her value that can strip the crow black from a brother, unclench the claws, rest the man naked, low in the wet soil like he’s ducking the scorcher sun, like he’s a duck, low down, simple, wild, of the soil, the pond, of the honest earth. It’s when low down colors start to burst out in grass, stems, and rosebuds. The stranger sun far, far--it can’t scar my planted ground. No char, no ash, no black of the crow harrying rabbits out from under the flowers. And the mind’s at ease. Yeah, he of the soil can stay ground level, primroses and grass, but it doesn’t mean he’s got to climb the heights of bird shit mounting atop his head to a green-yellow sun he needs to keep his distance from--its white and heat too wild for eyes and skin . . . .      

When I thought this, . . . I remember, I was feeling good. A second . . . maybe two. But I could look at Lacey. Cold. Not so much of the heat down in me driving me to her. Cold and moist! The crow distant, sounded like he was gargling underwater, I remember, I was sitting in their living room perfectly still . . . on a chocolate rug on the floor that almost looked like soil. Ground level! Above me, Rigcliff was just about to have the game in order. He was sitting next to Lacey. And Lacey on a red Victorian sofa, legs crossed, was looking at the cards. But nobody grabbed their hand yet. We were waiting on Rigcliff to give out the last of them. And he did. Three seconds more. I was feeling good.

War . . . I was feeling good . . . where I was on the floor. But I knew I had to get up for war. Guess there’s going to be war. Yeah, guess there’s going to always--guess there’s absolutely going to have to be war. And we’d play it. Lacey, Rigcliff . . . myself--we’d play it. Little money, if it’ll make you happy. If anything will make you happy, right. I remembered . . . shit! Just a couple of years back . . . on TV the desert down low, but everything big was going on in the air. Big ass stealth jets high up so you didn’t see them. The blazing sun as shown on TV on those days, over the desert! Even on TV. Better believe it must’ve been a witching wild green-yellow. Riling the haze from the oilfields that had been set afire. The smoke, crow black. The blaze. You could see this kind of shit on TV. We were shooting down below, tearing apart homes. Their bases, office buildings, their complexes and compounds started to burn up. Come to find out, they were setting their own oilfields on fire. Watch TV real late, you’d see the night of the desert. That green infrared . . . military camera was recording it all. It’d be rather quiet, then a scud missile would fly up. Do its crazy little arc. Then we’d see white fires that made it look like the sun dawned at night. People were on TV explaining what the military was doing, detailing everything they would do to keep everybody safe. The number of our dead real low. It was because we were in the air fighting, I thought. Big success over in Kuwait, they were still talking about. And the Saudis were happy. Despite all the talk, all you had to do was watch TV real late at night. All that war, hid high up in the black nighttime air, was ripping massive fire out of the earth. And the oil started smoking out the picture. Wondered what it would be like to be there filming . . . .

Yeah, that was war. But this was war . . . this game we were about to play, I was thinking, in their immaculate house. I sat up straight, not feeling so good. Could’ve sworn the crow tried to blab something about the fallout of the cards. Rather tune his ass out if I could. So we grabbed our piles and moved them to each our own corner of the tea table. The two still on the sofa, I sat up from the floor. We started to play.

Who wants to hear about all the minor shit that went on! Sure Lacey won some. Her seven of diamonds took the stash over my three of clubs and her husband’s two of hearts. And Rigcliff won some of the rounds, too. Even seemed he had a little streak going. I had my wins occasionally, nice win here or there with an ace. Nobody really went to war. But what I mean to describe is something. It was unbelievable. Seemed like the crow somehow got in and reshuffled the cards to make me look like a damned fool. To make us all look like fools.

Well, it happened. It fell right on out like this. Lacey probably just won a round. Then we all went again. Slapped down our cards. There were two kings. Me and Rigcliff were going to war! He screamed it. Lacey’s eyes opened really big, she had a four of hearts. Me and her husband were going to war. That means you each get out a prize card that you all can see and a fighting card that is put out face down waiting to be flipped to wage war. How was the crow going to make me and Rigcliff’s prize pieces both be queens! But that was the way it was. And we flipped our fighting cards. Two more kings! Rigcliff started to smile his horse teeth, big and flashy. Just run your eye along the tabletop, already you’d see what all was at stake; seven cards were scattered there like good hay waiting to be bundled up to feed Rigcliff’s horses; better still, six of them were royalty, with Lacey having a meager heart on the line. Now I was sensing shit, betting on the bad. Believed the crow had got black wing, gold beak six feet deep down in the layout!

Again we were laying out new prizes. And I don’t know what got into Rigcliff, but he started singing a song that me and him had sung bass for when they used to make us in Ms. Chanson’s Sunday music lessons--a faint squawk of the crow now and again interrupted; the little death man improvised like it was damned call and response! They as a combination weren’t particularly musical, there was no soul, no harmony, nothing! Rather wished Rigcliff wouldn’t sing while we were trying to play cards. But you listened, even if you didn’t want to. And Rigcliff’s bass was lower and louder than the subwoofers in one of those bad ass jeeps that race down Esher on a Friday night, midsummer. The two together sounded like this:       

There’s no hiding place down there,

There’s no hiding place down there, sq-u-a-w-k, caw, hip, caw, c . . . 

Oh I went to the rock to hide my face,

The rock cried out, “No hiding place,” c-a-a-aw, fuck! Lacey’s legs, squawk!

There’s no hiding place down th--

Motherfucker stopped dead in his tracks singing when our hands were touching the tea table and down fast we were laying queens! They were the last two of those royal women. Prizes just like their sisters. The crow shut up his flopping beak. Me and Rigcliff looked up at each other--this war amazed us, and we were eye to eye (neither one of us was ready to get out a fighting card; complex war like this was really shocking the shit out of us). A little bassy echo buzzed out, from the back of my mind: There’s no hiding . . . But I had to look away. Didn’t mean to rest my eyes on Lacey. But that was exactly what I did.

Lacey leaned over, her fine round behind snug, situated low in the sofa’s soft red cushion. She ran a finger back and forth on her heart card on the table, aimlessly like she had nothing to do. But she smiled bright, still her calm and pretty self. I say, she leaned over with style, the way I sometimes saw beautiful women lean over, sitting their big fine bottoms on benches at the light rail station, waiting--waiting for one of the trains to take them down Warner where lots of people worked jobs. Temperature rising, I found myself caught under her, looking up, up, from down on the floor, eyes just visiting--not staying long--all the sweet lodges on the lay of her land; but even if we found her a battlefield, that would be a damned shame. How could you involve her in gross conflict? She carried herself how she wanted, and where my mind travelled--nothing about that was a no-man’s-land.

But the more my eyes looked the more they stayed where they looked--liking her long neck, the pearly necklace, her breasts, stomach, knees and the black crow shadow between her knees where the skirt of her gown didn’t cover the near meeting of fine fat thighs. I was aware of an outrageous heat, when I was gawking at the black between her legs.     

Though it was a good room away, I was feeling like I was being seared by the hottest parts of that electric, lit-up chandelier. The little light bulbs, fake little flames and the burning crystals, even the scalding golden frame, were a weight of heat pressed down on my neck, my back, like a cruel brand driven down hot on my hide; it scarred the skin. O! It’d make a cow go mad!

In my mind, the gathered godly voice picked up the song where Rigcliff left off:                                     

Oh the crow cried, “I’m burning too,”

Oh the crow cried, “I’m burning too,”

Oh the crow cried out I’m burning too,

I want to go to heaven as well as you,

There’s no hiding place down there.

Oh the sinner man he gambled and fell

Oh the sinner man he gambled and fell

Oh the sinner man he gambled, he gambled and fell;

He wanted to go to heaven, but he had to go to hell

There’s no hiding place down there.

When I heard this I started cursing something fierce. Don’t know if it was in my mind or under my breath. Don’t even know how long all that cursing lasted. Seemed as long as a sermon at Montgomery (especially one with the Reverend Ore preaching about people falling in ditches and getting back up on their way uphill to see God). All I know, I was cursing everybody and their mother out:

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck your damned crow ass, fucking the song’s words up, singing, “Oh the crow cried, ‘I’m burning too,’” making me feel like a mad damned fool with a chandelier branding his back with a mark of madness, with a welt, a scar, a mark of damned foolishness! Fuck this crow bullshit! Fuck all of you, chorus of nasty crows! You all are always screaming, screeching, “Look at the sweet ass on Lacey! Yeah! Paris, you got to hit her from the back, my man! Or have her sit on you, right; she’ll be wobbling, bouncing, shaking that ass, riding it the livelong day into night! You’d just be sitting there hard and mighty, or moving in sync with her down dancing back, thrusting up, a little harder, faster, and her titties jiggling, flapping in the breeze--it’d look like you all were playing leapfrog, with nobody leaping anybody and Lacey bouncing, bouncing in one place, on one spot!” Everybody’s always laughing! All I can say is fuck you all! You all are a bunch of fucking perverts! And fuck Rigcliff too, how he said, “Come see Lacey! She’ll make all the other girls look bad!” And now we’re playing goddamn war! Even worse, me and Rigcliff have gone to war, are getting tangled up; we are in complex fucking war, repeating shit, we keep whipping out the same goddamn cards! Prize is queen! Fighter king! The same fucking shit keeps repeating like fucked up clockwork, like crows are fucking around with all the clocks, are fucking with the sun and moon! . . . No! Fuck that! Fuck all that! It goes deeper--it goes higher up than crows, this anger that’s got me swearing and shouting! Yeah! I got something to say! . . . Fuck that green-yellow sun! That sun that was high up the day the crow fucking changed me! Like it was the head of a big conspiracy against me! Wanted a dead crow to fuck up all the good shit that’s ever come my way!  Fuck that, spreading white light around like disease, spreading heat, drying up ponds so there are no ducks! Making a desert a desert! Or trees, calling them out, hot and heavy--having them be giants toward it, just so their leaves burn up, blacken, die! And the sun must like it! Drying the fucking blood, clumping it in a dead crow’s feathers! Yeah! Fuck you, sun! Fuck you! Fuck-- . . .  . . .  . . .  mmm . . . phew . . . mm . . . m . . . shit . . . think that’s the highest . . . ah . . . my hate can go . . . think that’s the highest point of my anger . . . don’t know where else it can go . . . don’t want to know where else . . . who else . . . what else . . . don’t want . . . don’t want to know . . . I’m sweating . . . feel like I had a fever and it broke . . . sweating . . . it feels cooler now . . . wondering how the chandelier’s let up like that . . . I’m cooling down . . . cooling down, Anne . . . almost . . . ah . . . almost want to take this shirt . . . want to take my clothes off . . . close my eyes . . . lie down low, Anne . . . I want to lie down . . . I don’t want . . . legs . . . Lacey’s legs . . . the black between them . . . the gown . . . I’m seeing the tea table, Anne . . . the cards . . . I’m seeing the cards all spread . . . I don’t . . . Rigcliff . . . want to . . . “Grove, you ready? Let’s go and flip those fighting cards. I’m antsy to take that stash!” . . . Anne, are you going to read me more of that poem today . . . here . . . let’s stop by the ducks, see if they want some bread . . . okay, you go ahead, start. I’m listening . . . “Grove, you ready, man? Lacey’s out. It’s just me and you, man! Flipping to take it all!”

. . . go . . .

“Go!” I remember feeling that word. Felt like it came from inside and out. Was like I was underwater, hearing part of something, quiet, a little hard to hear, a little music; then something pulled me, sent me shooting up above, like pond water ripped and splashed, with the rest of the word spoken loudly by a bunch of splashing and louder hissing of waves, all at once. “Go!” The quiet “G” sound was mine. The loud “o!” had to be Rigcliff. They overlapped--“Go!”--chimed together, against each other. Like somebody hammering both eardrums, with one hammer small and wooden, the other massive, made of bronze. I could see who was talking and who he was talking to: Rigcliff leaned over, got a hand on my shoulder, slapping, “Go!” He was talking to me. Must not have heard all the shit I said. I was wondering, did I say anything?  

I thought anything would beat staring at Lacey’s crotch and all the trouble that could come of it. Sweaty like cheese that’s been sitting out in the heat too long, I decided to go ahead: “Alright, Rigcliff, let’s just flip them on the count of three!” Rigcliff asked Lacey to do the honors. One-two-three. Flip . . . You would not believe!  

. . . Jokers! Two of them, staring us right in the face. The crow was going to do that corny shit! Try to say me and Rigcliff were two jokers who have the sorry hats and toothy grins. With the cards indicating we were a damned pair of fools! Lacey laughed. Rigcliff didn’t look up yet, his eyes fixed on the surprise; the man’s heavy, hunched shoulders dismissed that pro air he had earlier when he had that winning streak. Now he looked embarrassed, a little disappointed. He touched his joker slowly with one of his long fingers. And looked like he really couldn’t believe, like something like this blocked him, hunched his spine when he wanted to be an upright king. Lacey laughed out. Too much for me, I laughed something through my lips that sounded like a sneeze. Then everybody was laughing and joking. Rigcliff looked over at Lacey.  She sat up to say, “For all that shuffling like a pro, Rig, you would think you would have taken the jokers out before dealing and ruining a serious game.” And she got to laughing again so bad that Rigcliff wasn’t able to keep any kind of seriousness. He said the game couldn’t go on like this, all the giggling, carrying on. Already, he was grabbing up the cards with both hands, the smile cracking through, was putting them in the little red carton. Then he was uncorking another bottle champagne for another French 75, asking Lacey to slice up some lemons. When she came back in, with cut lemon, the gin and sugar, a strap of her gown was slipping and I was seeing the side of a breast,  I was scared. Wasn’t any telling what the crow would do next, or what anybody else would. Hanging around Lacey was asking for shit to burn up again. I feared I’d be staring between her legs again. No, not going to happen to me! All the white fires and the dozen crows in the clock towers and the sun, with something invisible brushing the hot crystals of the chandelier, I knew I had to leave. Didn’t want to chance having shit repeat itself! No! Next thing you know, the drinks torn up, somebody would be out of their mind wasted, proposing another game of war. Or I’d get caught admiring Lacey’s legs. I had to go:

--Rigcliff man, thanks, you hear . . . look . . . you know I love gin and champagne, and I appreciate . . . but . . . I think . . . I think I better be heading back to Esher. There’s a load of laundry I got to turn over if I’m going to be here bright and early tomorrow.

--Laundry! Come on, Grove! That’s some lame sounding shit. Look, Lacey already has the lemons cut. And I don’t have to tell you this champagne is good. Shit! You just come over tomorrow in whatever, and I’ll give you some clean pants and a shirt.

--Rig, you’re a man above! . . . Drinking a French 75, offering me another. Tempting . . . but I just got to get going . . . slip home, give my mother that goodnight kiss she’s waiting on. The woman’s probably sound asleep by now. Slip in, kiss her on the head. You see there’s plenty of shit I got to do back at Esher. Think there was a whole stack of mail I didn’t even touch. And you know I need to put in a good night’s sleep if I plan on being fresh for the hedging that lies ahead of me.

--Okay, you’re right! You’re right, Grove! But man, I wish we could’ve had you stay for this last bottle. We might have put on records and danced. But you go ahead. Go on. You’re a man who knows what’s ahead of him, knows the work he’s got to do. You’re a right good man, Grove! Alright, give it here! I’ll see you out the door. Look, Lacey wants . . . Yeah, go ahead give Grove a hug. We’ll see you out, Grove. You got to come on back here nights. It’s fun. Alright, Grove. You go on. Esher’s waiting! Ha ha! Alright then, we’ll see you here in the morning. Take care now.

I was out. Out the door, going. Could see before me the light from them keeping the door open, watching me on the gravel path. I was walking fast and far. Then the light went out; they closed the door. Night black so all the trees and hills and hedges were real faint. Touches of color now and again . . . green, gray, brown and orange; mostly though, things were black, blue and purple. But the path takes you by that fenced-in pond. No way around it, unless you’re going to walk blindly in the thick woods. A mile north on the path, past that grassy dip, was Rose Street where there was a bus stop you can wait at to catch the one o’clock Argent bus that takes you out of Byers County and into the city, and right on down to the corner of Dome where there’s a stop; get off, walk two blocks east, turn left and you’re on Esher. It was sounding good to me, going home on the Argent, walking, walking, climbing into bed at last. It was sounding good. Wanted to walk right on by that pond and not look at a damned thing.

But then as I was right at the part where the path is closest to the fence and you can gaze down the dip to the shallow pond, I heard a GRRROWLLL! sound like someone had stepped on a cat. Everything was too dark but for the cat. His little eyes were as green as pears. His teeth fangs of white. And I saw the red tongue, his mouth opened wide, fixed that way, open, full of teeth like the stuffed leopard Rigcliff showed me in his antique room. I remembered wondering what it would be like to hunt something with teeth as sharp and big as those of the leopard. But this cat was smaller. Same one from the day I found the dead crow (I sure wasn’t going to look around in the grass at night for a crow). Again, the cat was on the other side of the pond staring at me (nobody stepped on his tail). It was odd, but his fur was puffed out like he suffered an electrical shock or somebody picked his fur out with a rake. And his tail stood straight up, his legs long, pressed down, claws in the earth, his spine arched like a boomerang or small hill. And the motherfucker GRRROWLLLED, had me looking him dead in those small pear eyes. Sly and treacherous! That’s how a cat is. He was like that. And his eyes on me threatened, “You’re just like me!” GRRROWLLL! “You’re just like me!” Paris! . . . Fuck! It sounded like the wind stirring up, trying to say something in a girl’s voice that sounded like Anne’s. Woosh! Stir, stir, went the wind. Then, Paris . . . Paris . . . and despite all the breezes that were  rustling by, rustling the trees of the woods, I was starting to sweat, and I felt feverish when I was hearing Paris and the cat looked right at me. It came on me strong, my fever; imagined it was like when the straw stuffed down in a scarecrow starts burning, burning from the inside out . . . and there are fires already in the hayfield. A fever like never before! I started to unbutton my collar, nervous, I cried, “No! No! That shit isn’t me! He isn’t me!” Next I was running against the burning wind, unbuttoning my shirt, running away from the pond, the cat--afraid crows were going to pop out of the grass. I kept running. In the fiery wind came the voice of Anne. It was like the crow, the cat, the sun, even something I didn’t know, couldn’t see--it was like they wanted to hurt me worse than ever, speaking that crazy shit about me in Anne’s beautiful reading voice. My shirt had come open; I was taking it off, flinging it behind me on the path. I was running quick, quicker. It got too hot. The wind like fire, like the sun invisible in the night. I stopped, sat down in the grass, leaned back against a big rock in the high grass off the path. I took off my dress shoes, socks, took off my nicest black slacks and my red briefs. I left that shit behind low in the wet grass. Still hot as a cast iron skillet on a campfire, even resting a little underneath the big jutting part of the rock. I heard, far off, a squawk, then two, three, four. It was like a chorus warming up. I got to my feet and started running like I meant to rush through fire. From the direction of the Gresher homestead (now it was half a mile away south), I was hearing a hootenanny: guitars, banjos, tambourines and crows screaming: 

Lacey’s down dancing back

is good to smack!

Have her sit on your dick

like a horse-riding trick!         

When I heard this I couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t do a damned thing. I was naked, sweating, and hard; I couldn’t run feeling like this, hearing all this bullshit! The wind burning the hairs on my arms and heating me so the hair at my loins was dripping sweat. I hunched over. Breathed like one of Mrs. Goozebrick’s dogs after running round her yard a dozen times, barking right out of breath. When I hunched over, something felt like it died somewhere around my chest and stomach. I was feeling to see what died, to see if anything was wrong. Wasn’t so much pain or anything. Just a feeling like something gave up, died--it was like a release of tight-packed straw, bursting, like birdseed rushing out. Still more odd than this, it seemed like everything in the night stopped changing. Wind stopped burning, blowing. The crows packed up, stopped making noise. I put a hand on me, moving from limbs to loins, from chest to neck, checking--it felt wrong without all the pressure down on me. But more than this, you would’ve been cold, touching me. My skin felt just like the frozen frogs me and Rigcliff used to steal from the science lab at Dover, throwing them at the Chitney sisters for a laugh. I was cold and moist and hunched over. I wasn’t hard. After all the running, sitting, stripping, stopping, spinning round, I couldn’t hear or see shit--but I knew where I was heading, where I was facing on the path--south . . .  something felt dead . . . something gave . . . the gardens of Gresher.

Have to say the biggest change in me was when things stopped changing. Low, low, low down, I was watching the green-yellow sun rising up white in the morning. The white glistened; it was like the skirt of a gown. It climbed, crawled over, burned the heads of the moist primroses all around me in the grass. And it burned brown the grass close down to the soil. But at the soil and in the soil, it was still green and wet. I was lying in it.