All of Us (14 page)

They withheld judgment, looking down at us

silently, in the rain, in our little boat —

as three lines went into the dark water

for salmon. I’m talking of the Hood Canal

in March, when the rain won’t let up.

Which was fine by me. I was happy

to be on the water, trying out

new gear. I heard of the death,

by drowning, of a man I didn’t know.

And the death in the woods of another,

hit by a snag.
They don’t call them

widow-makers for nothing.

Hunting stories of bear,

elk, deer, cougar—taken in and out

of season. More hunting stories.

Women, this time. And this time

I could join in. It used to be girls.

Girls of 15, 16, 17, 18—and we

the same age. Now it was women. And married

women at that. No longer girls. Women.

Somebody or other’s wife. The mayor

of this town, for instance. His wife.

Taken. The deputy sheriff’s wife, the same.

But he’s an asshole, anyway.

Even a brother’s wife.
It’s not anything

to be proud of, but somebody had to go

and do his homework for him.
We caught

two small ones, and talked a lot, and laughed.

But as we turned in to the landing

a light went on in one of those houses

where nobody was supposed to be.

Smoke drifted up from the chimney

of this place we’d looked at as empty.

And suddenly, like that—I remembered Maryann.

When we were both young.

The rare coin of those mint days!

It was there and gone

by the time we hooked the boat to the trailer.

But it was something to recall.

It turned dark as I watched the figure

move to stand at the window and look

down. And I knew then those things that happened

so long ago must have happened, but not

to us. No, I don’t think people could go on living

if they had lived those things. It couldn’t

have been us.

The people I’m talking about—I’m sure

I must have read about somewhere.

They were not the main characters, no,

as I’d thought at first and for a long

while after. But some others you

sympathized with, even loved, and cried for —

just before they were taken away

to be hanged, or put somewhere.

We drove off without looking back

at the houses. Last night

I cleaned fish in the kitchen.

This morning it was still dark

when I made coffee. And found blood

on the porcelain sides of the sink.

More blood on the counter. A trail

of it. Drops of blood on the bottom

of the refrigerator where the fish

lay wrapped and gutted.

Everywhere this blood. Mingling with thoughts

in my mind of the time we’d had —

that dear young wife, and I.

Cutting the stems from a quart

basket of strawberries—the first

this spring—looking forward to how

I would eat them tonight, when I was

alone, for a treat (Tess being
away),

I remembered I forgot to pass along

a message to her when we talked:

somebody whose name I forget

called to say Susan Powell’s

grandmother had died, suddenly.

Went on working with the strawberries.

But remembered, too, driving back

from the store. A little girl

on roller skates being pulled along

the road by this big friendly-

looking dog. I waved to her.

She waved back. And called out

sharply to her dog, who kept

trying to nose around

in the sweet ditch grass.

    It’s nearly dark outside now.

Strawberries are chilling.

A little later on, when I eat them,

I’ll be reminded again—in no particular

order—of Tess, the little girl, a dog,

roller skates, memory, death, etc.

I had forgotten about the quail that live

on the hillside over behind Art and Marilyn’s

place. I opened up the house, made a fire,

and afterwards slept like a dead man.

The next morning there were quail in the drive

and in the bushes outside the front window.

I talked to you on the phone.

Tried to joke. Don’t worry

about me, I said, I have the quail

for company. Well, they took flight

when I opened the door. A week later

and they still haven’t come back. When I look

at the silent telephone I think of quail.

When I think of the quail and how they

went away, I remember talking to you that morning

and how the receiver lay in my hand. My heart —

the blurred things it was doing at the time.

Franz Liszt eloped with Countess Marie d’Agoult,

who wrote novels. Polite society washed its hands

of him, and his novelist-countess-whore.

Liszt gave her three children, and music.

Then went off with Princess Wittgenstein.

Cosima, Liszt’s daughter, married

the conductor, Hans von Bülow.

But Richard Wagner stole her. Took her away

to Bayreuth. Where Liszt showed up one morning.

Long white hair flouncing.

Shaking his fist. Music. Music!

Everybody grew more famous.

“Lately I’ve been eating a lot of pork.

Plus, I eat too many eggs and things,”

this guy said to me in the doc’s office.

“I pour on the salt. I drink twenty cups

of coffee every day. I smoke.

I’m having trouble with my breathing.”

Then lowered his eyes.

“Plus, I don’t always clear off the table

when I’m through eating. I forget.

I just get up and walk away.

Goodbye until the next time, brother.

Mister, what do you think’s happening to me?”

He was describing my own symptoms to a T.

I said, “What do you think’s happening?

You’re losing your marbles. And then

you’re going to die. Or vice versa.

What about sweets? Are you partial

to cinnamon rolls and ice cream?”

“Plus, I crave all that,” he said.

By this time we were at a place called Friendly’s.

We looked at menus and went on talking.

Dinner music played from a radio

in the kitchen. It was our song, see.

It was our table.

I lay down for a nap. But every time I closed my eyes,

mares’ tails passed slowly over the Strait

toward Canada. And the waves. They rolled up on the beach

and then back again. You know I don’t dream.

But last night I dreamt we were watching

a burial at sea. At first I was astonished.

And then filled with regret. But you

touched my arm and said, “No, it’s all right.

She was very old, and he’d loved her all her life.”

Walking around on our first day

in Mexico City, we come to a sidewalk café

on Reforma Avenue where a man in a hat

sits drinking a beer.

At first the man seems just like any

other man, wearing a hat, drinking a beer

in the middle of the day. But next to this man,

asleep on the broad sidewalk, is a bear

with its head on its paws. The bear’s

eyes are closed, but not all the way. As if

it were there, and not there. Everyone

is giving the bear a wide berth.

But a crowd is gathering, too, bulging

out onto the Avenue. The man has

a chain around his waist. The chain

goes from his lap to the bear’s collar,

a band of steel. On the table

in front of the man rests an iron bar

with a leather handle. And as if this

were not enough, the man drains the last

of his beer and picks up his bar.

Gets up from the table and hauls

on the chain. The bear stirs, opens its

mouth—old brown and yellow fangs.

But fangs. The man jerks on the chain,

hard. The bear rises to all fours now

and growls. The man slaps the bear on

its shoulder with the bar, bringing

a tiny cloud of dust. Growls something

himself. The bear waits while the man takes

another swing. Slowly, the bear rises

onto its hind legs, swings at air and at

that goddamned bar. Begins to shuffle

then, begins to snap its jaws as the man

slugs it again, and, yes, again

with that bar. There’s a tamborine.

I nearly forgot that. The man shakes

it as he chants, as he strikes the bear

who weaves on its hind legs. Growls

and snaps and weaves in a poor dance.

This scene lasts forever. Whole seasons

come and go before it’s over and the bear

drops to all fours. Sits down on its

haunches, gives a low, sad growl.

The man puts the tamborine on the table.

Puts the iron bar on the table, too.

Then he takes off his hat. No one

applauds. A few people see

what’s coming and walk away. But not

before the hat appears at the edge

of the crowd and begins to make its

way from hand to hand

through the throng. The hat

comes to me and stops. I’m holding

the hat, and I can’t believe it.

Everybody staring at it.

I stare right along with them.

You say my name, and in the same breath

hiss, “For God’s sake, pass it along.”

I toss in the money I have. Then

we leave and go on to the next thing.

Hours later, in bed, I touch you

and wait, and then touch you again.

Whereupon, you uncurl your fingers.

I put my hands all over you then —

your limbs, your long hair even, hair

that I touch and cover my face with,

and draw salt from. But later,

when I close my eyes, the hat

appears. Then the tamborine. The chain.

They were in the living room. Saying their

goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ears.

They’d been through a lot together, but now

they couldn’t go another step. Besides, for him

there was someone else. Tears were falling

when a horse stepped out of the fog

into the front yard. Then another, and

another. She went outside and said,

“Where did you come from, you sweet horses?”

and moved in amongst them, weeping,

touching their flanks. The horses began

to graze in the front yard.

He made two calls: one call went straight

to the sheriff— “someone’s horses are out.”

But there was that other call, too.

Then he joined his wife in the front

yard, where they talked and murmured

to the horses together. (Whatever was

happening now was happening in another time.)

Horses cropped the grass in the yard

that night. A red emergency light

flashed as a sedan crept in out of fog.

Voices carried out of the fog.

At the end of that long night,

when they finally put their arms around

each other, their embrace was full of

passion and memory. Each recalled

the other’s youth. Now something had ended,

something else rushing in to take its place.

Came the moment of leave-taking itself.

“Goodbye, go on,” she said.

And the pulling away.

Much later,

he remembered making a disastrous phone call.

One that had hung on and hung on,

a malediction. It’s boiled down

to that. The rest of his life.

Malediction.

The gondolier handed you a rose.

Took us up one canal

and then another. We glided

past Casanova’s palace, the palace of

the Rossi family, palaces belonging

to the Baglioni, the Pisani, and Sangallo.

Flooded. Stinking. What’s left

left to rats. Blackness.

The silence total, or nearly.

The man’s breath coming and going

behind my ear. The drip of the oar.

We gliding silently on, and on.

Who would blame me if I fall

to thinking about death?

A shutter opened above our heads.

A little light showed through

before the shutter was closed once

more. There is that, and the rose

in your hand. And history.

There are five of us in the tent, not counting

the batman cleaning my rifle. There’s

a lively argument going on amongst my brother

officers. In the cookpot, salt pork turns

alongside some macaroni. But these fine fellows

aren’t hungry—and it’s a good thing!

All they want is to harrumph about the likes

of Huss and Hegel, anything to pass the time.

Who cares? Tomorrow we fight. Tonight they want

to sit around and chatter about nothing, about

philosophy
. Maybe the cookpot isn’t there

for them? Nor the stove, or those folding

stools they’re sitting on. Maybe there isn’t

a battle waiting for them tomorrow morning?

We’d all like that best. Maybe

I’m not there for them, either. Ready

to dish up something to eat.
Un est autre
,

as someone said. I, or another, may as well be

in China. Time to eat, brothers,

I say, handing round the plates. But someone

has just ridden up and dismounted. My batman

moves to the door of the tent, then drops his plate

and steps back. Death walks in without saying

anything, dressed in coat-and-tails.

At first I think he must be looking for the Emperor,

who’s old and ailing anyway. That would explain

it. Death’s lost his way. What else could it be?

He has a slip of paper in his hand, looks us over

quickly, consults some names.

He raises his eyes. I turn to the stove.

When I turn back, everyone has gone. Everyone

except Death. He’s still there, unmoving.

I give him his plate. He’s come a long

way. He is hungry, I think, and will eat anything.