Spinning Stories
In The Beginning Was the World | Children of the Stream | The Red Zinnia | Bird
Grecian Urn | Animal Destinies | Boat

In the Beginning Was the Word

            In the beginning was the word and so far today Joey hadn't heard or thought a single one.  He had awakened with the light that seeped in all around the creamy blinds and illuminated in turns the objects in his room.  None of them were things; they were simply shapes adorning his room.  They were familiar and in their places and their tones became hues every morning in the very same way.  The sheets smooth beneath him sucked softly on his legs and arms and his straw-topped head snuggled the down pillow that bulged out on either side caressing his small warm ears.  His fingers tingled and moved slightly in response.  When the first shafts of real light snuck into the room he began stretching his bright child body.  First the toes, then the ankles and legs, and finally the entire body.  By the time the patches of light had grown to the size of sticks and lay draped and distorted over the contents of the room, Joey was rolling over and reaching one leg out from under the covers.  It was a long way down to the floor.  Joey slept on a regular sized bed even though he was small for a three year old.  When the toes of his right foot touched the floor they clutched happily into the nubby cotton string throw rug.  His left foot followed and he slid down off the mattress leaving a waterfall of sheets and blankets.  His sliding was much like a small boy might slide off a pet elephant.  Stepping off the rug, the cold smooth linoleum flattened the bottoms of his feet bringing satisfaction.  He walked down the hall into the bathroom.  There was a window high above the bathtub.  Large golden light flooded in, mingling with the small peach light glowing all around the night light under the mirror.  He went over to the toilet and pulled the wooded cricket into place.  He stepped onto the cricket, raised the toilet seat, pulled out his weenie and peed.  He enjoyed peeing, he watched bubbles rise in circles and the infusion of yellow into the clear water.  When he finished he shook his weenie and put it back into his pajama pants, he flushed the toilet admiring that waterworks too.  He stepped off the cricket and slid it back to the side of the toilet.  He fondled all the towels as he left the bathroom.  In his room he went to the bureau and took out a shirt, underpants and a pair of shorts.  They were all in the bottom drawer.  He closed the drawer.  He took off his pajama top first, replacing it with the shirt, a pullover.  All his shirts were pullovers.  Then his pajama bottoms came off and he put on the underpants and then the shorts; both had elastic waist bands.  His socks from yesterday were tucked neatly inside his shoes.  He put them on and then his shoes.  The shoes were sneakers and they were the only real difficulty in dressing.  Sometimes he tied them right and sometimes he didn't.  They needed two loops. He always remembered that.  It took some time making it work out usually.  When his shoes were fastened securely to his feet, he went to the table and picked up the box that contained the construction paper weaving that he had been working on yesterday.  He left his room and went the opposite direction this time down the hall; past his mother's room (Father was away), and to the staircase. He backed down the stairs, sliding the box along behind him.  At the bottom of the stairs was a small hall that led to the kitchen.  He picked up his box and entered the kitchen.  Sheba, a golden retriever-cocker spaniel mix thumped her tail once or twice without raising her head.  Joey sat down beside Sheba and opened the box. Originally the box had held Zwieback and the smell still lingered.  It was a pleasant smell.  Joey took out the strips of pink and blue construction paper.  He took out the already begun weaving. One blue strip of paper had pink strips pasted to it in an over-under manner. Mother had done that.  Then there were two more blue strips already "woven" into the pink.  Joey had done that.  Joey had picked the colors too, PINK and BLUE.  He had looked through the colors and painstakingly considered each color.  He chose PINK and BLUE.  He had found the blue first and had almost decided on a fine leathery-ochre color to go with it..almost the color of Sheba, but when he saw the blue with the pink, it did something to him.  It made him whole or happy or proud or something, and, as he looked at the strips of colored construction paper now, it was happening again.  His eyes tingled with a strange kind of joy; they tickled even.  He nearly wanted to eat the colors.  He longed for them.  He gazed serenely at them, not quite abstractly, more openly.  An aloofness both distant and sweet filled his soul and he saw the colors with a strange comprehension, a recognition.  It was almost like a decision, but more "fleeting", this PINK and BLUE. Sheba stirred lifting her head upward and flung it back down flatly in the other direction stretching out on her side.  This placed her neck directly beside Joey's thigh and her nose a half-inch from the loose strips of construction paper.  Joey reached down without looking and patted Sheba's head.  The moisture from Sheba's breath made a splotch of deeper color on the pink strip nearest Sheba's nose.  Joey picked it up and looked closely, then he set it aside and began weaving.  A bird song came in the open window, as a slight breeze ruffled the crisp damask curtains.  Joey stopped weaving and listened to the sound.  The sound seemed to echo inside itself somehow or move in a circle or come from a long way off or something, something different.  It was beautiful and frail and clear.  It was LOUD.  Joey got up and went to the window. He looked at the bird.  It was sitting on a branch of an orange tree.  Joey looked at the bird.  The bird looked at Joey.  It blinked its eyes. It sang once more and then it flew away.  Joey went back to his weaving.  Now he worked to finish.  One of the pink strips of paper had come unglued so it slid around with each new strip.  Joey worked carefully.  He had to hold with one hand and weave with the other.  Then he put the hold part under his left calf and he could use both hands again.  It was still difficult.  Joey worked so intently that he didn't hear his mother come down the stairs or notice her enter the kitchen.  Joey didn't even notice Sheba rise to meet her.  (Joey's weaving had taken him several feet from Sheba by now). Joey's mother stood in her bathrobe, slightly bent to pat Sheba and watching Joey.  Joey was all folded over with one knee up diligently working on a small lop-sided weaving of pink and blue construction paper.  Light from the front entry now flooded down the hall and made a glow around Joey's mother, especially around her hair and around Sheba too.  Sheba's commotion finally roused Joey's attention.  (He was almost done anyway).  He looked up.  Joey's mother was still standing slightly bent to pat Sheba and she was still watching Joey, the light flooding in behind her.  Their eyes met, "Hello," Joey's mother said.

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Children of the Stream

She had never noticed how beautiful Madeline was before, and certainly not on the day she had kissed her.  But now, there she stood absolutely radiant blubbering hopeless tears of remorse and blowing tiny translucent bubbles from her dilating nostrils.  Her fine white-blond hair pulled smoothly back appeared almost blueish in contrast to the glowing Nordic face which was now so red that she  could easily have been an Indian, or worse, a new born baby.  The entire kitchen shook with her throbbing upward thrust of anguish and of woe.  Madeline's mother stood facing her eleven-year old blubbering daughter and with her back to Marianne.  She had her hands of her hips but this gesture only asserted her own placement in the room and did little to comfort Madeline.  She dropped her arms in defeat, picked up the teakettle, poured out the old water and filled it again.  She began a new line of reasoning; tea and cinnamon toast.  Madeline stopped crying just long enough to hear her mother's words then her sobs burst anew louder and from even more explosive depths.

The trouble was Randy.  He had kissed her.  In the middle of the movie.  In front of everyone.  Without even asking.  On her very first date.  Just done it.  It was simply horrible.  It would never come again. Her very first kiss..

Marianne had never seen Madeline this upset.  In fact, she had never seen her upset at all.  There had been the time that she had beaten the whey out of Thomas because he had made fun of her little sister.  She wasn't upset then.  Thomas was bigger that Madeline too, but she had just run as fast as she could right into him knocking him over and then walloped him good.  She left him there stunned on the gray and yellow stained snow in front of the cold school building propped up on one elbow, half wanting to yowl for his mother and the other half perplexed by this new obstacle which was somehow impossibly out of his reach and which receded now down the street sparkling in the noonday sun.

Then there was the time that both she and Madeline had received 'Ds' in Miss Periwinkle's geography class.  They had stood on the school stops looking sadly at one another, report cards in hand, ready to share the sad walk home bearing their ill-got prizes.  It had mattered more to Madeline that it had to Marianne but Marianne preferred Madeline's point of view and she resolved that she too would try much harder.  In all things she regarded Madeline as superior. She gladly deferred to Madeline's judgment and let Madeline revise her own bumptious or sometimes tiresome ideas. Madeline seemed to have a sixth sense about which modes of play were fun and which were sure to lead to trouble.

Life had been miserable for Marianne before Madeline had come to town.  Before Madeline, Marianne had been the 'new kid'; she had tried to make friends.  Kimma wanted to be friends but she wanted to leave Patty out.  Then Patty  wanted to leave Kimma out.  Till finally one day the three had been walking home and Kimma and Patty decided to leave Marianne out.  Marianne surprised even herself by pushing both girls into a deep snow bank and walking home alone.  She was happier than she'd been in all those weeks while trying to make friends.  And then, like a miracle, Madeline had moved to town, bringing with her a trampoline and a tetherball which she set up in the center of the block.  She shared them with everyone too, waiting in line and taking turns no longer than the rest.  Marianne also stood in line waiting her turns but never dreaming that Madeline would choose her as a friend.  Madeline, who wore the sun like a halo and who could do everything, that Madeline would choose her above all the others.  How it had changed her life.  But now, to see her so upset, it was a little like the sun not rising.

She stood looking on bedazzled by the spectacle before her eyes, and growing in turns annoyed and upset herself.  What did it matter anyway?  She knew that Madeline had only gone out with him because he had asked her and because she had never been out with a boy before.  How could he hurt her? So what if he'd kissed her, he had done it, after all, not her.  What did it matter?  In a way it was a compliment.  Marianne knew she would never be sought after like Madeline always would be and it seemed to her to have some good aspects to it; being sought after.  Marianne wouldn't have liked Randy kissing her either, she guessed, but this she concluded more from seeing Madeline now than from any thoughts about him.  She thought it was too bad that Madeline had gone out with him in the first place. She was even a little jealous.  But she knew Madeline didn't care much for him and if this all was only a preview of what has to come, she felt it only dully and in her love for Madeline she accepted the inevitable and wanted Madeline always to be happy.  As for herself, she still felt lucky to have known Madeline at all.  That was the unusual thing,  Madeline wasn't to blame for what had been before or what lay yet ahead.  That was fate or the way things were and she'd get by.  She didn't care much for Cotillion, it's true, or the teen club that was causing such a fuss lately.  It wasn't right that their friendship should suddenly be subjected to the opinions and judgments of those grimy boys as they'd invite first one and then the other to dance.  And cutting your legs all over trying to get the hairs off and those silly itchy stockings and beauty parlors and looking in mirrors.  It really didn't compare to swimming and trampoline and walking in the woods, being together and happy.  Most of the boys were awful, it was true.  There was no way to understand why they would do the things they'd do or what the affect they would have on you.  Like for instance that Gary Speegle.  Marianne had sat by him in Miss Craney's class.  Miss Craney had liked Gary but not Marianne.  So every time Gary would ask Marianne a question, Marianne would get into trouble, but not Gary.  And Gary chased Marianne and wrote on her legs with his three colored pen he'd gotten for Christmas.  Marianne thought that Gary did this because he liked her, like her brother when he pinned her and tickled her.but actually she had mixed feelings then too.  And after Miss Craney kept blaming her, throwing erasers at her, she decided she didn't like that silly Gary anymore and she wished he wouldn't ask her any more questions.  She had some notion of politeness that impelled her to answer his questions despite possible peril. But it was really against her will. But then one day they had had an eye test in class and Gary had not been able to see any lower than the E-Z-T-L line and had almost cried in class. She had decided then, that day, that Gary Speegle was the most attractive boy in the whole class and she almost wished he would chase her with his pen again.  She resolved to always be nice to him.  But the next year they had been in different classes anyhow, and better yet, she was out of Miss Craney's class for good, and best of all, Madeline had moved to town.  But there were other boys, boys who weren't like Gary or her brother or like any of her brother's friends either.  There was Hank, who was somehow solid, brownish, even and always nice, and there was Janet's brother Keith, who could play the piano. He was too old of course but straight and tall.a little hard to figure but he was a possible way a boy could be which might be something nice.  In time things would be different, she'd see.  Her mother was married, Marianne's too, they'd done 'you know what' or she and Marianne wouldn't even have been born.  It made her dizzy to think about that. 

She preferred not to think about that, so she looked back up at Madeline, who was now exhausted from crying.  Madeline was beautiful, like she would never be and moreover, she loved her but not like 'that' and not on that day.   She thought about the day she had kissed her.  There had been three of them; she, Madeline and Isabel.  Isabel had moved in shortly after Madeline and sometimes joined Marianne and Madeline but usually she spent her time with quieter things like books and cooking, making new clothes.  Still she sometimes liked to romp in rougher ways or even intrigued one or both to quieter pastimes.  On that particular day, it was early spring, the three o f them had gone to see if the ice was gone yet from the beaver ponds.  They had hiked over the rise with its growth of trees all sticklike and barren, and down toward the big woods that protected and grew all around the river and the ponds.  In the fall the ponds were good for ice skating and in the summer, it was fun to watch the beavers cavort, and it was always wonderful examining the sticks and brambles which the beavers used to build their homes and dam the streams.  But this day the three had been talking about the school dance, what they were going to wear, would they shave their legs, if they'd have their hair 'up' or 'down', where they'd have it done, all that sort of thing; boys, corsages.  Marianne could see from the conversation that she had not given the subject proper consideration, and, to make amends for her annoyance, she hit upon a plan that they should practice kissing, taking turns being boy or girl.  So just below the rise between the patch of stick trees and a much larger denser forest, eleven year Marianne, pretending to be a boy, had kissed twelve year old Madeline.on the lips, Isabel looking on, awaiting her turn.  Madeline said she didn't want to do it again and so they stopped the game, Isabel never getting a turn at being girl or boy.  It had changed their mood toward dismal and resembling sad.  This memory now entered Marianne's thoughts and obliquely she tried to forget that afternoon.  She grasped it momentarily but it was too large to comprehend in parts.  She stood humbled and dizzy.  Suddenly, Madeline's house which was built from the very same set of plans as Marianne's (all the houses on the block were exactly alike) became immense and important, completely out of proportion to her own.  Madeline was unhappy.  She was there.  It was her fault.  That was all.  It was time to go away.  And that is precisely what she did, she went away.  She went home and she became very quiet and she never thought about it again.

And then Marianne moved away and later Madeline moved away too. And Madeline still wrote Marianne letters which were filled with good cheer and love, confiding, telling her about the clean bright boys she'd met.  Marianne read the letters eagerly but rarely answered them. As for boys she was unusually bold and then painfully shy.until many years later when she met Henry.

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The Red Zinnia 

            It all started with a dispute about whether Mary was a virgin or not a virgin.  Charlotte held the view that Mary was Joseph's wife and was thus linked to God.  The preacher who had singled Charlotte out to teach a Sunday school class simply couldn't let an error like this pass.  Charlotte was seventeen, straight-backed, graceful, smart in all her subjects and faithful to her family. For these reasons he had chosen her specially and spent many an afternoon and evening counseling her on various subjects:  the Trinity, the Ten Commandments, the Sacrament.  She seemed to have such a natural understanding until it came to this issue about Mary and the Host.  What a disappointment!  She had become distant and unmoving on this item.  The preacher of course had to take back his offer to let her teach the Sunday school class and he soothed his own wound by contemplating original sin and the Passion.  For Charlotte too it was a blow and her intuition was befuddled by confusion and hurt.

            Looking down through a brief blear of almost tear, she opened her hand to seek solace in the hardy bean pod of the carob tree which she'd been fingering throughout the interview.  In midsummer the long beans dried and twisted open flinging their black seeds upon the earth.  The pods themselves   remained on the trees, curling empty vessels which rattled raucously with the slightest stirring of the air.  This pod she had picked up on her way here and it was still greenish and leathery.  With some difficulty, she'd pulled it off of a downed branch which was piled beside the road along with other clippings, from pepper trees, eucalyptus and other pungent semi-tropical growth.   It was garbage day and each driveway had a garbage can with other articles stacked beside it.  Charlotte noted the various groupings as she walked under the tall trees along the sidewalk which was cracked and lifted from their action.  She had pulled this pod off to examine it.

            She looked back up blindly, the girl, the almost woman and now, at once, the artist.  Like a picture in a painting she acquired, for him, her full form.  Her clothes, tastefully chosen, well designed, just a bit too big, a bit too feminine, caught the light in their ample sleeves, about the shoulders and around the neck.  And they formed an awkward beauty worn contrarily, without guile.  Their rhythms marked her sterner still natural sex.  He held her forthright gaze and forced it back upon itself.  Within her lay Greece and Rome and Stonehenge, the geometry to the steep steps of time, an entire garden and a single flower too.  The Renaissance, indeed, Alberti, her never love affair, still-lifes, rain storms, other hours, pure sweeps of watery brushstrokes, ivory inlaid paper, oh, and oh, the colors.  He imagined a landscape stretching out for miles and miles behind her, children all around.  She looked nice in blue, he thought, and could wear white as well. He pursed his lips.  He looked down.  He held a blade of grass.  He wound it around his middle finger and then around his fourth and then back.  Yes, original sin, and there was a time that came before.

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Bird 

She had had a natural resistance to men until this one. This one was different.  Nothing she had thought or done before had any meaning or relevance, in fact, it no longer existed, not even as spume from a wave. No more hopping over hedges and other evasions, football under the moon, stories, clowning, antics to stretch out the almost delicious game of hide and chase.  Yes, this man was different.  This one drew her out, all of her.  She became angelic, ephemeral, lost tracing the lines of his face, floating through his eyes, his hair, the color of his flesh. And when they touched, why, Bacchus himself would have been envious of her state, or rather lack of it.  For here, she disappeared altogether and "coming to" was her only remnant of some strange ecstatic and secret holy place.  And together it spun around them, and went out from them until the whole world reverberated and responded back to them with rejoicing and bowed and celebrated with all whom they met.   The sky sent forth a promise; the tall trees of the forest stood, and all, all was wonderful, transformed and transforming deep into the roots of night, the earth.

And she was still herself with it too, still brownish, awkward, waifish, still the child-athlete grown feminine, not yet strong in womanhood.  This frail new beauty inside negated mirror and magazine and softened the disparate parts of her adolescence into a single creation of her own humanity and sense of awe, acceptance of herself, and shyness.  And still the intensity grew.

On the football field alone under the stars, she floated before him in diaphanous robes of primeval terror and willingness to love.  A stone cold hush and her unknowingness.  And the chill passed, and they climbed the empty stadium and spoke of mighty things.  He's once seen a dead man and his life had all been changed.  But her consciousness could not grasp it.  How could he not be happy, she was perfectly upset! 

And then he went away, returning with another. She could not hold this fact intact.  Nothing would conspire. In the interim she grew listless and tried to be quite hard.  She reproved the birds for their constant twittering, the blueness of the sky,   She hated life and loved it but never would she cry, and used it for an anchor, this perversity inside. And the world still lay beautiful, and still she did believe.  She cold not let it in or out, and so she practiced at indifference, indifference to herself.  She shaped herself from outside now.

At length she took another, indifferent to herself, and he took from her, indifferently, what the first had never tried, then quickly fell asleep.  She lay alone beside him, wondering at the night, the smell of musty linens, the breathing at her side.  She did not hate the man for it, but loved the other more.

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Grecian Urn 

            There was an instant of resistance, much like time itself had faltered before his face contracted.  Like being overtaken from without, the movement crept from behind his ears to the soft area just outside the eyes. There tiny wrinkles of glee burst broadly, while the jawbone dropped slightly and a slit replaced the mouth revealing a string of small white teeth evenly strung from ear to ear.  The body closed inward at the belly opening in a higher zone where an overlarge dark red plaid woolen jacket folded carelessly around the lanky man exposing the awkward gesture of grace as he gave himself over to the laugh.  His eyes twinkled before becoming glowing cracks of bright blue light.  The laugh itself moved on further inward, culmination in a region before and between the eyes where it seemed to evaporate like blue mist or explode like fairy dust only to be renewed by another wave moving in from behind.  The body bent and recovered in minor jerks and the half inch of wine still remaining in the glass sloshed around nearer and nearer to the rim unlike the most rigorous wine test ever concocted.  Not a drop of wine left the glass despite the fact that he held it all the while unattended in his left hand, its base resting precariously on his right knee.  She looked at him now with wonder and surprise.  He sat, only one foot away beside her on the picnic bench still inquisitive and open, calmly self-possessed.  Such was his carriage and laughter; tender, she thought, and free with a natural intensity so rare these days much like, like ripe fruit hanging in space or perhaps tundra in early August.  Even his hesitation was repeated anew with each shift in the dialogue.

            " And how about the caraway?" he asked.  They were talking about Sanders the cook.

            "Oh yes, the caraway's great, who cares what it tastes like when one considers its medicinal properties!  No amount is excessive." She returned.  He began to laugh gently.  She continues, "One serving will straighten you right out, scrub the entire alimentary canal, from top to bottom, scrape off all the barnacles."  He continued to laugh, now halfway at her choice of subject matter, her boldness, they had only just met.  She too felt the impropriety and she delighted in its delicacy, the effect on him.  "And if that's not enough," she pursued, "you can always have a draught of pure olive oil," adding "It's good for your 'coat' too."  She reached up to imitate combing her hair using her hand like a claw.  He laughed on.  She persisted, "And if that's not enough." She paused widening her eyes and looked questioningly at him which sufficed to complete the sequence and together they laughed again, this time letting it wind down.  She listened for a moment to her own laughter extend beyond its proper length.  It became, she thought, ungainly and rude, a gafaw almost, but this indictment quickly softened and disengaged in the present company and for the reason of their shared laughter and on account of their new acquaintance.

            He now worked at the residential school where she had worked.  He was only there for a summer program, but she had been there during the school year and had in fact cooked opposite Sanders.  Sanders was what one might term 'an experimental cook'.  He shunned cookbooks or even the taste-as-you-go method and yet he was filled with inspiration on some days, which accounted for such delicacies as blue-cheese-tuna or hot pineapple with velveeta cheese sandwiches. "The kids won't eat anything unless it's exactly what they're used to," he complained, "Fruit Loops and Spaghetti-O's is about it." Sanders was noted for his proclivity for certain spices; caraway, mace and nutmeg were among them.  No one ever knew whether it had been an error in ordering or if Sanders actually preferred this unusual palate.  His wrath at having to deal with leftovers, however, made even stranger combinations yet, like corn beef-cabbage-cashew-chicken-noodle soup!  It was amazing how two delicate flavors could, along with one institution-size can of soup become one near inedible goulash or soup or casserole.  Since she had cooked opposite Sanders, she had had occasion to try to ameliorate the situation.  It was after one weekend (she had filled in on a Monday for a sick teacher's aide) that she had first confronted the problem. There for lunch was a strange smelling concoction which on closer inspection turned out to be the chicken curry that she'd cut up 16 onions for along with the leftover beef stew, in addition to which had been added some broccoli from the previous day.  It was now a deep olive green color.  She might have cried on the spot but laughed instead as one kid proclaimed, "This is the best meal I've ever had!"  This had the effect of adding salt to the wound, but she knew that he was simply restating his compliment from the night before not quite noticing the difference (alas! The school was for handicapped boys) and how petty of her to care.  Still she was determined to spare herself further discomfort.  At first she took to leaving written instructions with each item and when that brought no change, she gave up and simply froze any leftovers, planning them into her own future menus.  Yes, caraway smothered potatoes, mushy string beans, burnt fish sticks, all out of cans or otherwise institution prepared and a wilted brown salad from yesterday with a choice of six store-bought dressings, and there you were until 8:30 the next morning.  Of course, 'staff' as they called themselves were allowed to raid the kitchen, but she could never bring herself to do that since the kids weren't given the same option.  More than once she laid in bed pondering why it was that food which didn't appeal always made her so hungry..Of course it was especially funny now since she no longer had to deal with this problem having left Pine Tree School for another job.  Not that she had bad memories, no, she had liked the kids mostly and had even gotten along with Sanders.  If fact if anything had marred their friendship (besides her cooking) it was her leaving seemed a mutiny to Sanders.  One must work in a kitchen to understand this.  Now it was fun to share a laugh on the subject.

            Their talk progressed now to broader ground; science, crops, rice, athletes' foot, insects, locusts, men, light, hydrogen, hydras, school, wine, women, weather, earthquakes, sundials, and, the 'future'..About working at Pine Tree, he said that the kids' problems were almost a rest in a way.since they took his mind off his own troubles.  He enjoyed it usually.  She looked at  him now almost to the  point of scrutiny.  He was easily ten years younger than she was, (at least chronologically), and he appeared to her in all ways 'perfect';  what possible troubles could he have?!

            Just then a voice boomed over the loudspeaker announcing the next horseshoe contestants, and naming a location.  He excused himself and stood up.  This was the first time that she had seen him stand as he had been sitting alone and she had joined him.  This had happened nearly fifteen minutes earlier, before which time she had never seen him at all.  He rose now with the same reluctance that had proceeded his laugh.  He was tall and his jacket swayed loosely around a back that was rounded not with age but with work and interest.  He was a man already beyond the usual zenith, who belonged to another more specialized realm. Transparent he seemed to her now, transparent and very good.  She watched him move away dutiful, lithe, bent gently beyond, head erect yet with downward gaze.  And that was the last she saw of him.  She waited for a long time, hoping that when the horseshoe throwing game was over that he would return, and knowing all the while that he would not.  She looked at the other people at the barbecue, she even talked to some of them. She liked them better now somehow and yet they had a clumsy made-up quality. 

She was elsewhere.  She thought about words like 'never' and 'someday' and basked in his recent nearness.  She thought about herself.  She looked at her shoes, at the pine needles strewn over the earth.  She quit smoking.  She sighed.  She reviewed their conversation, memorized his face, his posture, the color of his hair and most of all the distance between them.  None of this quite happened with intent, it just happened, like thinking about tundra in early August.or of ripe fruit hanging in space.

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Animal Destinies 

She rotated her arm in the morning light watching the tiny red blond hairs glow in turns describing the delicate curves of her arm. The wrist and hand were held as gracefully and lightly as a prima ballerina might, but the elbow was ever so slightly hyper-extended which gave the rotation a secondary motion, the rhythm of which Donald was tracing as he spoke. "She was the first woman I ever made love to," he continued blandly and precisely.  The motion struck some cord in him and encouraged his outflow.  "We'd known each other for most of our lives."  He was propped up on one elbow now so he could easily have looked at her face but instead he continued watching the slow hypnotic motion of her bare arm rotating in space.  "I thought I'd never make love again.after that."  She brought her arm down abruptly.  "It was the first time too," he offered lastly creating then a significant silence.

She turned and looked at him curiously, "Your mom's face?" her eyes round as saucers.

"Yes, just as we were finishing." He answered solemnly.

She was silent for a minute, then proclaimed, "Jeese!" in a loud voice and rose up out of bed, tossing her shiny red mane over her perfect and completely bare emerging body.  "You must have really been going at it!" she exclaimed, climbing over him and heading for the bathroom.   He had a moment of embarrassment and also one of dismay, this being their first night together and her sudden nudity and  his being upstaged with his confession.  But he also felt a strange relief and his ear trickled warmly as he allowed his gaze to follow after her, her round pink rump bobbing away from him.  She turned, asking, "You like escargots?" her face aglow.

"No," he replied, again taken aback.

"Oh well," she said and disappeared into the bathroom.  He flopped down, pulling the covers up around his neck.  He heard the commode flush and then the shower come on before he fell asleep.

He awoke with a start to find she was back in bed beside him.  Only her head was above the covers.  Her hair was blond now and shorted than he remembered.  He felt dizzy, then he decided that perhaps he had not seen it clearly.  She turned and he could see her face. Again he had the sense  of familiarity, but there was another new familiarity now, so he laid back down.  "This place sure is dusty," she said, "I feel like I have a cold."  The sun was streaming in and the light stood in the air on the dust particles forming three dimensional shapes of white and grey and blue.  They were contoured partially by the angle of the sun's rays through the windows and partly by the prevailing dust motes.  She sneezed, "Would you like me to clean it for you?" she asked.  No, he didn't want her to clean it, not really.  He had carefully monitored his interaction with the cabin's previous inhabitant, she would surely foul everything up.

"Did you know that the lady who built this cabin was one of the first settlers in this area?" he asked hoping to change the subject and also to acquire the necessary time to come up with an acceptable reason why she shouldn't clean the cabin, or better yet, maybe she would lose interest.  He concentrated on this last possibility.

"Oh," she replied, looking now at the room as if to see the woman who had once lived here.  She wondered what had become of the curtains.

"She lived here over 50 years, all by herself.  Her name was Miesel Tooker,  'Gran-ma Tooker' she was called.  She died about this time last year."  He spoke now with authority, then added, "I'm the first one to live here since"  Now he could have been telling a mystery story to a class of fourth graders.

The wall had several built-in cabinets which contained china and glassware which had sat untouched, she surmised, since 'Gran-ma  Tooker's departure.  She looked at the other contents of the room and from the dust covering, she thought it possible that much of these too had belonged to the woman.  She shuddered and sneezed.  He had been living here for half a year and she guessed accurately that he had never once cleaned other than a cursory floor vacuuming more to fulfill a schedule than to actually clean.

"I could do it this afternoon, I don't think it will take too long," she offered again.  Two thoughts crossed his mind at once, firstly he still had not thought of a reason he could give for not wanting her to clean the cabin and secondly, he reviewed his conviction that he was involved in as active relationship with the cabin's previous inhabitant and that even the dust that had accumulated was a matter of consideration.  (It never occurred to him that there was no reason why she should clean his cabin.)  Then two more thoughts came to him.  One, he secretly wanted the cabin cleaned, and two, if she did it, he would not be responsible.  Still he wanted to think it over a bit, "Maybe," he proffered, trying now to tempt her, hold her interest, "How about tomorrow? I have to go to L.A. today, I need to see my father." 

After an overlong pause he continued, "My father won't listen to me over the phone.He's rented a Rolls Royce and he's out of work."  This explanation was meant to vindicate himself of any confusion and to demonstrate his importance and his filial responsibility and trusted counsel.

She sneezed again and sat up, "Oh, that's peculiar." And climbing over him she asked, "May I take a shower?"  She was smaller and more gracefully shaped that he had expected and also shyer.  Again he had a strange feeling as if perhaps he had missed something.

"OK." He answered and covering some reluctance added punctiliously, "but there isn't much water."

"Oh," she said and disappeared into the bathroom.He fell back on his pillow and went immediately to sleep.  Soon he was awakened by a muffled whining coming from the closet.  He crossed the room to the closet and opened the door.  Instead of his broom and dustpan, vacuum and mop, there was a tiny wooden staircase leading downward.  Daylight and animal whimpering came from below. He entered cautiously, tying his bathrobe closed.  The door fell shut behind him.  He tried it but the latch had dropped into the lock position on the other side.  He would have to proceed forward and down.  The staircase led to a large room filled with animals.  The animals were so plentiful that they were bumping up against one another.  There were cows and goats, dogs, lambs, pigs, chickens, cats, all manner of beasts, farmyard beasts.  In some spots the animals were stacked several deep, such was their numbers.  He made his way through the animals trying to reach a small door on the opposite side of the cellar.  The animals neither deliberately impeded his progress nor did they quickly move out of his way giving respect to his taller and more imposing shape.  There was simply nowhere to move.  At the door he looked out and up a small stairwell and as far as his vision penetrated, every bit of free space was occupied by animals.  He went up the stairwell squeezing between a pig, a chicken, two dogs and a goat and started down the crowded street.  The animals whin-ed and mooed, wailed and crowed, oinked, grunted, squeaked, whimpered, bellowed, groaned, squawked, an coughed in an ever increasing cacophony as he passed.  The sound swelled in waves all around him.  He could see a wrestling ring up ahead.  It too was filled with animals, but there was also another human being.  It was a woman standing in one corner of the ring and she was nursing a child and rocking it.  It took some time but he made it to the ring and climbed up and into it.  He recognized the woman now; it was his first wife.  He went closer to her and she handed him the baby.  It was all wrapped in lace and bunting.  As he reached for it, he saw the tiny furry face of a spider monkey.  Before he had a chance to respond the monkey was clinging to him with sharp skinny hairy arms.  In the next moment it bit his neck.  He shrieked, and blinking his eyes, found he was back in bed and again she was in bed beside him.  This time her hair was a sandy brown and shorter yet, close cropped all around her rosy ears. She turned to face him pushing the covers off her upper body.  She was absolutely flat chest-ed, and her face had a regularity and a familiarity that stopped his dream's advantage.

"What's wrong?" she asked peering quizzically into his face.

"I had a dream, that's all."

"Tell me," she demanded and he proceeded to relate the dream.  She listened batting her eyelids languidly. As he told the story he examined  her carefully; she looked slightly like a boy.  He finished recounting his dream and she plucked a red hen feather out of his hair and asked, "What is this?" He took the feather in his own hand and scrutinized it puzzling.  She answered for him, "A mystery."  As she said the words he suddenly recognized her.  She was a boy. his old boyhood friend Damiem, now a young man.

"I wanted to see you once more too," Damien said, as if to explain the strange circumstances of their meeting, "It's too late for us, Donald, I'm getting married." Then he added apologetically, "Shall we rake leaves?  I'm still the best leaf-raker around."  Donald consented and dumbfounded looked down at the feather in his hand.  He blinked to see he was holding a small dried out leaf.  Damien crawled out of bed, over Donald, put on Donald's bathrobe and headed for the bathroom.  "Why don't you put on some coffee?" he called after himself.

" All I have is Postum," Donald answered, still confused.

"Oh well," said Damien and disappeared into the bathroom.  The shower went on.  Donald got up and put on some water for Postum.  He felt foolish being naked and the floor was cold on his feet.  He returned to bed and shortly fell asleep. Again he dreamed; he dreamed of the smell of apple pie and of women.  He dreamed he was making love.  Now she had blond hair and then it was black, and so on.  He drifted from one act of heroism to another until he was awakened by the dog howling.  The room was filled with smoke and the awful stench of burning pan.  The water had all boiled away and the Teflon pan had scorched, fouling the air. Beside him in bed was another dog and a third stood by the door whimpering.  He went to the kitchen, turned off the gas, put the pan in the sink and turning on the water, a terrible sound came forth and malevolent steam hissed upward.  He quickly opened the windows and the door.  The dogs rushed out at once, darting after squirrels who quickly scattered up into the trees and then scolded raucously fro their branch perch safety.  It was a sunny day in early autumn.  He went into the bathroom.  On the floor were several damp towels and wet footprints had indented the throw rug.

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Boat

He stood in the field or rather what was left of the field, as it had rained for thirty-one days.  It was raining now.  The great river had lost its edges and the earth was washed away, and other earth came and replaced it.  And the earth which was washed away was good earth and the earth which replaced it was also rich and good but the seeds had already been in the ground and they had been washed away too and there was little seed left now to replace those which were gone.  It was too late anyway for the crop could not become full.  The sky was grayish-brown and the earth was brownish-gray and where they met was indecipherable.  The man stood now in the wet and tried to think of something to do but there was really nothing to do but to watch and to wait, and to wonder.  The water came to the man's knees and it moved perceptibly to the south taking with it what it could.  The man had tied all his farming implements together, his plows and harnesses, and these he had tied to the fence posts and to the gate.  The gate had fallen on the eighteenth day of the rains and all of the remaining posts were leaning if not completely down.  Each day the man would look to see how many posts still held and lamely he would sometimes try to put the others back where they belonged.  Today seven stuck in the ground.  The lambs and goats were all inside the man's house standing in water to their belles, the two cows and the ox were tethered outside.  The woman and the three boys were upstairs and the woman cooked now on the roof under a tarp.  The man and the woman and the three children would not starve, at least not soon.  They could eat fish.  They could eat the uz-fish and the ad-fish, the beg-fish, and there were the things that the woman had put away into jars the year before, there were still sacks of barley and of corn, even figs and dates remained.  Still the man was discontent and uneasy.  The man could not work.  There was no field to tend, no crop to watch over and it all portended ill.  How would he feed the flock in winter;                                                what if the ox became weak from standing in the rains, and there was much else to mull over in his mind but little that the man could do.  He wondered when it would end.  Sometimes he became angry.  Once he even cursed the woman in his anger but he was ashamed and sorry afterward and so he went back outside into the field.  It made him nervous anyway to stay inside with the children and the woman working almost as if things were usual.  So he spent his days in the reed boat sitting under his oil cloth contemplating the gray-brown and the brown-gray west all around him, above him and below him.  He wondered who he was; if the bright field would truly reappear.  At length he accepted it.  Then he would tie the boat to a fence post and he would gaze into the wet until sleepiness overcame him and thus he would pass the time sleeping in the drizzle.

And the pharaohs came and beckoned to her, as this was a dream and he was now a woman, and they entreated her from a distance to come and to join them.  She could feel and see their gestures through the waves of heat which rose all around her and which indicated by their quavering the great space belonging to the desert.  There was the straight line of the horizon and the single pyramid only reaching up into the flat blazing blue of the sky that hummed and whirred with the heat.  All else was the color of the sand, either the color of sand or the color of shadow.  For the color of shadow on sand was so intense that it belonged no longer to the sand but instead belonged only to the shadow.  To the eye however it was the light which was the bright one, causing the shadow to be empty and unseen.  Her eyes could not focus but neither could they leave off trying, trying to make out the smaller scene of the three draped forms waving their arms to her and these shapes too wobbled ever upward toward the Great Round One.  Her nostrils burned with the acrid air and her legs felt the warmth creeping up from the fine firm sand beneath her feet.  She met the pharaohs and they gave her admittance to their group, matter of factly, as if by some previous arrangement, for they said nothing but only bowed their heads and started off in single file toward the pyramid.  Their path was a wide arc passing around to the left toward the shadowed face.  It rose like a blackened triangle and was mirrored below denying the solidity of the ground upon which they tread.  This final shape made of the two triangles together was a square with two squatty sides which lengthened with their approach to form a proper square.  Then this form too dissolved and melted into an all enveloping darkness as they entered into the shadow.  The land was restored and gradually the empty space became full.  A lizard scurried across the sand, dung beetles were at work.  Of a sudden the dark face of the pyramid met with the plane of the land and there an even darker shape, a rectangle revealed itself as an entrance to the pyramid with steps leading down.  And they went down, the pharaohs first, silently, without hesitating, down, downward, taking small lanterns from the walls lighting them and carrying them along with them.  The dry sand smell of almost nothingness gave way to the smell of fine gray dust that rose from their feet of burst from the walls in small clouds.  This odor too was replaced as they continued down by a richer pungent smell of earth, moist, of mineral, and of mold.  The passageway leveled out and they were in a great hall rich with glimmering gold.  A golden sarcophagus stood in the center of the hall, inlaid with bright blue stones; red and lavender, shiny black and a warmer black kind too.  Two winged wooden greyhounds with painted eyes stood on either side of the large gold sculpted box.  Its gold face gazed up at the 'firmament' which was depicted upon the ceiling.  The walls were all covered with writing pictures and the columns were as well.  She fell behind looking at a panel of these pictures.  They showed the harvest and listed the products of the field. There were baskets of oats, rye and barley, pomegranates and dates, sheaves of wheat and flax for linen.  There was papyrus and reeds for the basket makers.  A separate panel showed the basket makers at work bending and twisting the reeds together into shapes; round ones for meat, fish and cheese, oblong ones for fruits and vegetables.  And the fields were here too, with the men gathering in harvest, cutting the roots and tying bundles together, bending and carrying the bundles away upon their backs.  And boats were shown with figures pulling in nets. The panel led around to the right off of the main corridor and on to another shabbier hall and terminated it a passageway  which led yet on further to yet another room.  The room was small and barren except for a strange light that glowed from the stone walls, ceiling and floor.  Within it was a mummy without a box, only wrapped in linen.  She began at once to unwrap it.  The wrappings fell away easily revealing a man whose face was so utterly beautiful that she was filled instantly with perfect love.  She kissed his face and he opened his eyes and looked at her.  What occurred next was in the region beyond recollection, even for the dreamer still within the dream.

And then she was wrapping him back up and she had to unwrap him a second time because she had left out his staff the first time; not having noticed it until then.  And she did so with the utmost haste because she knew the pharaohs would soon return and they would be displeased.  They might kill her, but there was time. She heard them outside in the large hall as she completed the wrappings.  With longing and with joy she began her escape.  The pharaohs were now between her and the corridor which led to the great staircase by which they had entered.  She had to go the other way down passageways she had never seen, running ever running, turning this way and the that.  And she could hear them behind her not calling out or yelling, but only running after; their sandals beating hard upon the dust covered stone.  Sometimes the corridor would narrow leading upwards or suddenly curve down or turn around so abruptly that she'd almost crash against the wall.  It once opened out inexplicably and she had to choose one wall or the other so as not to become completely lost.  The light was not absent entirely but it was dim and it sifted in only from above through a series of holes left in the stones.  Even now she was filled with joy, running as she was, untouchable in her exhilaration.  And the light increased and became an opening.  She could hear the pharaohs still behind as she emerged into the bright wide dry desert.  There was a smell of baskets.

As the scene changed back and he awakened, as she was now a man, he perceived in his joy a difference in the air. His boat had come untied and he had floated down stream to a shallow place where the boat had caught among a stand of overgrown papyrus.  Last years tufts sailed above him, white and elegant like giant stiff dandelions and above, the sky was nearly clear. It was a pale, pale turquoise color now being far too clean from the long rains to support a deeper hue.  Pinkish blushes of cloud stood low in the sky and also above in a row.  A large golden sun was setting and a very slim silver moon curving up was rising just above it.

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END

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