Hunger's Brides (214 page)

Jacinto, why have they come?

There are five red suns … in a wedge, sun glinting off their visors, their high-tech bucklers and targes that taper like kites. They march under a waving human banner—red sun glaring from heads of gold, arms of silver, bellies of brass. Beachcomber welders in splints, butchers and bakers widow makers—

We know these men.

Four hundred malevolent stars glint in their buckles and bosses and rivets and gussets, in their belts and guns, in the gleam of boots greaved in blood. Knees of copper, feet of porcelain dust. Sad death heralds they come to quell the insurgent Arab, make war on the doubting Ninevite. Scarab warriors of the beetling brows, umbrals of iron—roaches in russet armour I know you.

Bright Child, they have come for us …
they have come for me.

They walk in ragged formation, they walk to me in fire and shadow. Fierce light off the water, in their long black shadows gouging trenches where they step.
Treble-dated crows of tyrant wing
, cast your sable pinions of murder west.
²⁷
Foul forerunners of the fiend, augurs of the fever's end—

Captain Hoofleak where are your ponies gone? Commandant of the redshirts and black—my Blond Holocaust,
I name you
. Sun a crush of copper foil in his beard—a shower of sparks, rooster tails from a grinder of iron. I see the whites of his men's eyes—murrengers harbingers spites.

They have seen me now.

Jacinto just look at them! On they come in their breeches of bombast, vests of brass and buff, shields of Hephaistus and Ajax, hides of wild dog and ox. Scarabs! See the thighs slow in armour, the pea groins codded, queerbullies copped at elbow and chin. On each blunt head a little chapel of iron, burning down.

Beneath their beetle brows whole continents of red extinction, under brims ducktailed like turtle shells.

See their paultry shoulders—maxi-padded businessmen with cushy jobs / in their cladding of plate and property! Wearers of slaughter, turtle-crowned.
Property was thus appalled.
²⁸

Good Friday to you, and a Happy Eastering, bargain hunters. They have come to make this a long weekend. They have come to place their order. They have come to read us their requirements. Welcome to a new world, wipe your feet on us, take whatever you want for free. We've been put here for you, all the fowls and the fishes that fly and swim, that
smell like fish that taste like chicken. We are all here for you. You were expected.

But this time we're not alone. We wait for them together. They've come for me but we stand our ground. We go forward to meet them, barefoot on sand on scorched soles that crunch like new snow.

Little turtle we have had our time. Even here it catches up. Bit by bit, so softly, so Sothically. But once with you I saw such
wonders
—was made for a day your Science Queen. With you I heard America sing as it sang once, heard its thousand
wondering voices
echo through our long scorched fall
²⁹

down through a sky of such
sublimity …

  to this sacred ground.

    Hurry.

Fall and then begin again, without assumptions, without end. With you I stood at the threshold and looked beyond, made love in the rivers that run underground, where the lizard swims. Hands of a deer, face of a temple mask—with this man, there was rest, there was breath—how I still hunger for it. How I do, I do. To this chastity was I wed on temple steps. With this man, simple and complicated, gentle and strong, there was life for a while. Hard and plain as flint. Opulent.

Hurry
.

I go forward with him in a mutual flame, stars of our own love. In this wedding dress of fire, knit to fit like skin. Walk on. I am not afraid, I am not alone. Some part of him is here, some part of me is there with him. Together we once touched the inexhaustible all. Together we skimmed the painted books of black and red. Hurry now.

Side by side I walk with the turtle who carries the world. He has lent me his shield of tortoise shell. So now we pit scallop shells against scalloped steel, we clash clay flutes with fluted steel. We will fight them for our lives and
choose
this death. We have seen how it ends, so it begins again. We will make them poets, we will make them sing our elegies. We will make
them
make believe. Armoured in their hieratic technologies—let them stop the silver bullet of
poetry
. We go forth with our feather axes! We have put our bards on, we do battle with the sun. Walk on.

Fire up the engines of siege again. Repeat after me. We are not afraid.

We are not afraid.

Feel the wind. See the pennants fluttering.

Little turtle this is the fight you
dreamed
of, duelling musics—cellos and log drums and barrels and chimes. Keep walking. Don't be afraid,
they're not so tough—defunctive music, shields of glass! heads in salad bowls and bassinets! Men in gloves—hiding in skirts! We are not afraid of these.
Breathe
. Cuirasses in coy corselets and glancing visors—they're only brigands and goths, and they
drool
through their bevors.

Hear the breath of the sea—?

Please
hurry up. Oh, little turtle just look at us.

Toy soldiers on a cereal box. Me in my cinderella dress and gooseflesh—chilly quills and raggy plumes. And you, your hawk's bill is only dipped in burgundy—my startled falcon, of soft sweet fruit.

No … wait here. You have done enough. Here, hold my cinderella dress. Naked is best. Don't come. For you it's dangerous.

They only want you when you're small.

So this is how it ends. You won't leave me then, you won't stay behind? Then say after me. Yes I am afraid. But I am willing. I have loved impossibly, I have loved heroically. I have faith in the fate that is this impossible love. We will fight and then choose, we will drink this death and swallow the worm. We will eat this death and vomit gods. We will make them write our epitaphs.

Feel the wind now, hear it howl. Bright Child, time to go now.

I will be your air force. And you can be my infantry.

Look at them in their turtle hats—scared of us already. They have pulled their visors down.

Sharpen up your feather axe. Stand tall.

Come on, little turtle, let's go get your shell back.

C
ONQUEST
        

… ¡Q
UÉ MILAGRO
! We know this dress, do we not,
caballeros?
And how is our Canadian friend?
Vos queremos dar la bienvenida, señorita doncella honradísima
. And where is your Maya healer now?

He's right here. Can't you see? He walks beside me
.

T
HE
F
AR
S
HORE
        

S
EE THE MAN
. He drives with the window down as if to drive by ear. As if to clear his eyes. He is wearing a light tweed jacket, jeans, bedroom slippers. A T-shirt, faded blue. It is forty below zero. The point where centigrade and Fahrenheit collide.

Air shrouded in ice-fog … Muscular cuts of ice rut roads burnished now to a high gloss, like sculpted meat. At these speeds the ruts sometimes fling the car into slight fishtails. It is after midnight. He passes almost no vehicles. It feels as though he has been driving around for hours. It has been much less. Once, passing a phone booth, he thought to call her back, to tell her he isn't coming, he's never coming.

He finds himself following a tree-lined boulevard that winds along the river. It is not far from her house. He understands that this is where he has been heading for some time now. Sodium lamps flare orange up over the windshield and slip back into darkness. The river flows alongside, thickening with ice. It freezes where it pauses. Open water boils up its cold into the arctic night. The air is choked with ice, trees fog-rimed—a faeryland petrified in hoar. The car slews wildly sideways. The gut-clench of dread he feels is familiar to him now. He has time to swing the wheel into the slide before the car explodes sidelong into the soft-banked snow. A dream—weightlessness—then impact, very real.

He opens his eyes to a lap heaped with snow. Into it, slow, beads a string of rubies from a cut on the bridge of his nose. His left temple throbs. It is an ache more frail than bone. The door is wedged shut against the snow. He struggles out through the open window.

The black car's feathered track has missed the concrete pylon of a footbridge by less than a foot. He does not trust this hilarious urge to laugh that bubbles up in his chest. He clambers up to the footbridge for a better view. The steps before him are heaped with snow like high-risen loaves.

He looks back, down, grateful for the tracks. The facts so clear. He is fascinated by the scene. He sits down in the soft snow blanketing the bridge. He slips his feet over the side and swings them lazily back and forth above the water, through the steam. One foot has lost its slipper. He rests his elbows on the retaining bar and looks out over
the river of smoke, across to the far shore. Clouds of sodium orange, sky of India ink, a glittering mist….

He rests his chin between his hands on the frosted bar. He shapes smoke signals with his breath.

Hahh…. Huhhh…. Ahhhh….

He feels a tender kinship for this small animal within, ally against the frigid night.

The arctic air claws at his nostrils, floods his eyes with tears. He lets the cold weld his lashes shut as children will. He feels the warmth of childhood memories he cannot quite recall, smells burnt toast …

To him, through a drowsy warmth comes the fabling croon magpies make to bait a cat. A slow pulse blooms in his head. He understands he is about to freeze to death.

His eyelids balk, flutter—crack the weld of lashes. From beside his face on the bar a shape flaps off, the feather rasp of its black-and-white motley still audible through the steam. A thought comes to him: that it has pecked out his eyes—he jerks his chin up, leaving the inside of his lower lip fused to the bar. White sear, trickling warmth, mouth filling with iron. He can't open his
eyes
. Panic rears in his eyelids, the delicate horror of moths. Both palms come away from the bar torn, flayed. Skinned fingertips scald as he wets them on his tongue to melt free the lashes of one eye. He scrambles to his feet, stumbles back along the bridge, one eye shut, one blind to perceptions of depth. At the car, in the rearview mirror, he glimpses nose and lips cased in ice the shiny red of candied apples. Oozing fingertips freeze now to the key as he turns it in the ignition.

But the car starts easily, pulls out of the snowbank easily. Everything will go easily now. If he can just get warm. Frost smokes the windshield glass as the heater fan blows powdery snow off the dash.

He pulls the car down a familiar side street, thrusts his head out the window to squint through the fog—on the glass, in the air—through the white flutter behind his eyes. To the freed lashes cling enamelled burrs, like tiny molars of ice. If he could just see, just get warm
…. Go to her
. The most natural thing in the world.

Snowy swingsets, slides, teeter-totters … stilled and silent, like agricultural implements wintering, idled. A harrow, a plough.

Bare branches, cracked trunks. Tiny tracks, wedges in the snow. His own tracks up the walk. Each step forward leads him further from
what he's known. Thumb jammed to the intercom buzzer, unanswered. His speech rising, slurred, a thread of chill tangled in the jaws. No answer.

He goes back around to the front of the building, hauls himself up onto the low balcony though he has seen no lights inside. His raw palms again burn as they tear free of the railing. He is ready to break in if he has to, to smash the sliding door. He puts his face to the glass next to the handle. Through brush strokes he sees a faint light. He understands that the windows are not dark. They are painted black.

It seems so obvious that the door will be unlatched. He slides it open, stubs a numbed, stockinged foot as he staggers in. His back to the warm, black wall, he slumps to sit on the carpet, cradles the fire in his right hand. The whiteness that flutters behind his eyes does not feel like rage, does not feel like anything he knows.