All of Us (19 page)

This is the fourth day I’ve been here.

But, no joke, there’s a spider

on this pane of glass

that’s been around even longer. It doesn’t

move, but I know it’s alive.

Fine with me that lights are coming on

in the valleys. It’s pretty here,

and quiet. Cattle are being driven home.

If I listen, I can hear cowbells

and then the
slap-slap
of the driver’s

stick. There’s haze

over these lumpy Swiss hills. Below the house,

a race of water through the alders.

Jets of water tossed up,

sweet and hopeful.

There was a time

I would’ve died for love.

No more. That center wouldn’t hold.

It collapsed. It gives off

no light. Its orbit

an orbit of weariness. But I worry

that time and wish I knew why.

Who wants to remember

when poverty and disgrace pushed

through the door, followed by a cop

to invest the scene

with horrible authority?

The latch was fastened, but

that never stopped anybody back then.

Hey, no one breathed in those days.

Ask her, if you don’t believe me!

Assuming you could find her and

make her talk. That girl who dreamed

and sang. Who sometimes hummed

when she made love. The sensitive girl.

The one who cracked.

I’m a grown man now, and then some.

So how much longer do I have?

How much longer for that spider?

Where will he go, two days into fall,

the leaves dropping?

The cattle have entered their pen.

The man with the stick raises his arm.

Then closes and fastens the gate.

I find myself, at last, in perfect silence.

Knowing the little that is left.

Knowing I have to love it.

Wanting to love it. For both our sake.

Bright mornings.

Days when I want so much I want nothing.

Just this life, and no more. Still,

I hope no one comes along.

But if someone does, I hope it’s her.

The one with the little diamond stars

at the toes of her shoes.

The girl I saw dance the minuet.

That antique dance.

The minuet. She danced that

the way it should be danced.

And the way she wanted.

I opened the old spiral notebook to see what I’d been

thinking in those days. There was one entry,

in a hand I didn’t recognize as mine, but was mine.

All that paper I’d let go to waste back then!

Removing the door for Dr Kurbitz.

What on earth could that possibly mean to me,

or anyone, today? Then I went back

to that time. To just after being married. How I earned

our daily bread delivering for Al Kurbitz,

the pharmacist. Whose brother Ken—Dr Kurbitz

to me, the ear-nose-and-throat man—fell dead

one night after dinner, after

talking over some business deal. He died in the bathroom,

his body wedged between the door and toilet stool.

Blocking the way. First the
whump

of a body hitting the floor, and then Mr Kurbitz

and his snazzy sister-in-law shouting “Ken! Ken!”

and pushing on the bathroom door.

Mr Kurbitz had to take the door off its hinges

with a screwdriver. It saved the ambulance drivers

a minute, maybe. He said his brother never knew

what hit him. Dead before he hit the floor.

Since then, I’ve seen doors removed from their hinges

many times, with and without the aid of screwdrivers.

But I’d forgotten about Dr Kurbitz, and so much else

from that time. Never, until today, did I connect

this act with dying.

                                        In those days, death,

if it happened, happened to others. Old people

belonging to my parents. Or else people of consequence.

People in a different income bracket, whose death

and removal had nothing to do with me, or mine.

We were living in Dr Coglon’s basement

apartment, and I was in love for the first time

ever. My wife was pregnant. We were thrilled

beyond measure or accounting for, given our mean

surroundings. And that, I’m saying, may be why

I never wrote more about Dr Kurbitz,

his brother Al, or doors that had to be taken off

their hinges for the sake of dead people.

What the hell! Who needed death and notebooks? We

were young and happy. Death was coming, sure.

But for the old and worn-out. Or else people in books.

And, once in a while, the well-heeled professionals

I trembled before and said “Yes, Sir” to.

Between five and seven this evening,

I lay in the channel of sleep. Attached

to this world by nothing more than hope,

I turned in a current of dark dreams.

It was during this time the weather

underwent a metamorphosis.

Became deranged. What before had been

vile and shabby, but comprehensible,

became swollen and

unrecognizable. Something utterly vicious.

In my despairing mood, I didn’t

need it. It was the last thing on earth

I wanted. So with all the power I could muster,

I sent it packing. Sent it down the coast

to a big river I know about. A river

able to deal with foul weather

like this. So what if the river has to flee

to higher ground? Give it a few days.

It’ll find its way.

Then all will be as before. I swear

this won’t be more than a bad memory, if that.

Why, this time next week I won’t remember

what I was feeling when I wrote this.

I’ll have forgotten I slept badly

and dreamed for a time this
evening…

to wake at seven o’clock, look out

at the storm and, after that first shock —

take heart. Think long and hard

about what I want, what I could let go

or send away. And then do it!

Like that. With words, and signs.

The house rocked and shouted all night.

Toward morning, grew quiet. The children,

looking for something to eat, make

their way through the crazy living room

in order to get to the crazy kitchen.

There’s Father, asleep on the couch.

Sure they stop to look. Who wouldn’t?

They listen to his violent snores

and understand that the old way of life

has begun once more. So what else is new?

But the real shocker, what makes them stare,

is that their Christmas tree has been turned over.

It lies on its side in front of the fireplace.

The tree they helped decorate.

It’s wrecked now, icicles and candy canes

litter the rug. How’d a thing like this happen, anyway?

And they see Father has opened

his present from Mother. It’s a length of rope

half-in, half-out of its pretty box.

Let them both go hang

themselves, is what they’d like to say.

To hell with it, and

them, is what they’re thinking. Meanwhile,

there’s cereal in the cupboard, milk

in the fridge. They take their bowls

in where the TV is, find their show,

try to forget about the mess everywhere.

Up goes the volume. Louder, and then louder.

Father turns over and groans. The children laugh.

They turn it up some more so he’ll for sure know

he’s alive. He raises his head. Morning begins.

This old woman who kept house for them,

she’d seen and heard the most amazing things.

Sights like plates and bottles flying.

An ashtray traveling like a missile

that hit the dog in the head.

Once she let herself in and found a huge

salad in the middle of the dining-room table.

It was sprinkled with moldy croutons.

The table was set for six, but nobody

had eaten. Dust filmed the cups and silver.

Upstairs a man pleaded

not to have his hair pulled by the roots again.

Please, please, please
he cried.

Her job was to set the house in order.

At least make it like she’d left it last time.

That was all. Nobody asked her opinion,

and she didn’t give it. She put on her apron.

Turned the hot water on full, drowning out

that other sound. Her arms went into the suds

to her elbows. She leaned on the counter.

And stared into the backyard where they kept

the rusty swing and jungle-gym set.

If she kept watching, she was sure to see

the elephant step out of the trees and trumpet

as it did every Monday at this house, at this hour.

For the world is the
world…

And it writes no histories

That end in love.

—
STEPHEN SPENDER

I’m not the man she claims. But

this much is true: the past is

distant, a receding coastline,

and we’re all in the same boat,

a scrim of rain over the sea-lanes.

Still, I wish she wouldn’t keep on

saying those things about me!

Over the long course

everything but hope lets you go, then

even that loosens its grip.

There isn’t enough of anything

as long as we live. But at intervals

a sweetness appears and, given a chance,

prevails. It’s true I’m happy now.

And it’d be nice if she

could hold her tongue. Stop

hating me for being happy.

Blaming me for her life. I’m afraid

I’m mixed up in her mind

with someone else. A young man

of no character, living on dreams,

who swore he’d love her forever.

One who gave her a ring, and a bracelet.

Who said,
Come with me. You can trust me.

Things to that effect. I’m not that man.

She has me confused, as I said,

with someone else.

When my friend John Dugan, the carpenter,

left this world for the next, he seemed

in a terrible hurry. He wasn’t, of course.

Almost no one is. But he barely took time

to say goodbye. “I’ll just put these tools away,”

he said. Then, “So long.” And hurried

down the hill to his pickup. He waved, and

I waved. But between here and Dungeness,

where he used to live, he drifted

over the center line, onto Death’s side.

And was destroyed by a logging truck.

                         He is working

under the sun with his shirt off, a blue

bandanna around his forehead to keep sweat from his eyes.

Driving nails. Drilling and planing lumber.

Joining wood together with other wood.

In every way taking the measure of this house.

Stopping to tell a story now and then,

about when he was a young squirt, working

as a powder-monkey. The close calls he’d had

laying fuses. His white teeth flashing when he laughs.

The blond handlebar mustache he loved to

pull on while musing. “So long,” he said.

I want to imagine him riding unharmed

toward Death. Even though the fuse is burning.

Nothing to do there in the cab

of his pickup but listen to Ricky Skaggs,

pull on his mustache, and plan Saturday night.

This man with all Death before him.

Riding unharmed, and untouched,

toward Death.

Your delicious-looking rum cake, covered with

almonds, was hand-carried to my door

this morning. The driver parked at the foot

of the hill, and climbed the steep path.

Nothing else moved in that frozen landscape.

It was cold inside and out. I signed

for it, thanked him, went back in.

Where I stripped off the heavy tape, tore

the staples from the bag, and inside

found the canister you’d filled with cake.

I scratched adhesive from the lid.

Prized it open. Folded back the aluminum foil.

To catch the first whiff of that sweetness!

It was then the earwig appeared

from the moist depths. An earwig

stuffed on your cake. Drunk

from it. He went over the side of the can.

Scurried wildly across the table to take

refuge in the fruit bowl. I didn’t kill it.

Not then. Filled as I was with conflicting

feelings. Disgust, of course. But

amazement. Even admiration. This creature

that’d just made a 3,000-mile, overnight trip

by air, surrounded by cake, shaved almonds,

and the overpowering odor of rum. Carried

then in a truck over a mountain road and

packed uphill in freezing weather to a house

overlooking the Pacific Ocean. An earwig.

I’ll let him live, I thought. What’s one more,

or less, in the world? This one’s special,

maybe. Blessings on its strange head.

I lifted the cake from its foil wrapping

and three more earwigs went over the side

of the can! For a minute I was so taken

aback I didn’t know if I should kill them,

or what. Then rage seized me, and

I plastered them. Crushed the life from them

before any could get away. It was a massacre.

While I was at it, I found and destroyed

the other one utterly.

I was just beginning when it was all over.

I’m saying I could have gone on and on,

rending them. If it’s true

that man is wolf to man, what can mere earwigs

expect when bloodlust is up?