of newspapers and magazines; they flooded the windowsills and spilled from the sofa. My father brought them home by the bale; they had some connection with the Boy Scout scrap-paper drive, but never seemed to get delivered. Instead they slithered around waiting to be read, and on an evening when he was caught in the house with nowhere to go, my father would disconsolately plow through a whole pile. He could read at terrific speed, and claimed never to learn or remember a thing.
“I hate to get you up, Peter,” he called to me. “If there’s anything a kid your age needs, it’s sleep.”
I couldn’t see him; he was in the living-room. Through the first doorway I glimpsed three chunks of cherry wood burning in the fireplace, though the new furnace in the basement was running as well. In the narrow space of kitchen wall between the two doorways hung a painting I had done of our back yard in Olinger. My mother’s shoulder eclipsed it. In the country she had taken to wearing a heavy-knit man’s sweater, though in her youth, and in Olinger, when she was slimmer,and when I first recognized her as my mother, she had been what they called in the county a “fancy dresser.” With a click like an unspoken scolding she set a tumbler of orange juice at my place at the table. Between the table and the wall was a kind of corridor she filled. Balked by her body, I stamped my foot. She moved away. I walked past her and past the second doorway, through which I glimpsed my grandfather slumped on the sofa beside a stack of magazines, his head bowed as if in prayer or sleep and his fastidious old hands daintily folded across the belly of his soft gray sweater. I walked past the high mantel where two clocks said 7:30 and 7:23 respectively. The faster clock was red and electric and plastic and had been purchased by my father at a discount. The slower was dark and wooden and ornamented and key-wound and had been inherited from my grandfather’s father, a man long dead when I was born. The older clock sat on the mantel; the electric was hung on a nail below. I went past the white slab of the new refrigerator’s side and out the doors. There were two; the door and the storm door, a wide sandstone sill compelling a space between them. From between the two, I heard my father saying, “Jesus Pop, when I was a kid, I never had any sleep at all. That’s why I’m in agony now.”
There was a little cement porch where our pump stood. Though we had electricity, we had no indoor plumbing yet. The ground beyond the porch, damp in summer, had contracted in freezing, so the brittle grass contained crisp caves that snapped shut under my feet. Eddies of frost like paralyzed mist whitened the long grass of the orchard slope. I went behind a forsythia bush too close to the house. My mother often complained about the stink; the country represented purity to her but I couldn’t take her seriously. As far as I could see, the land was built on rot and excrement.
I suffered a grotesque vision of my urine freezing in midair and becoming attached to me. In fact, it steamed on the mulch intimately flooring the interlaced petticoats of the leafless forsythia bush. Lady in her pen scrabbled out of her house, spilling straw, and pushed her black nostrils through the wire fencing to look at me. “Good morning,” I said, gentlemanly. When I went to the pen, she leaped high in the air, and when I thrust my hands through the frosty lattice of metal to stroke her, she kept wiggling and threatening to uncoil into another leap. Her coat was fluffed against the cold and bits and wands of straw clung in it. The texture of her throat was feathery, the top of her head waxen. Under her hair, her bones and muscles felt tepid and slender. From the way she kept hungrily twisting her long skull, as if to seize more of my touch, I was afraid my fingers would slip into her eyes, which protruded so vulnerably; lenses of dark jelly. “How are
you?
” I asked. “Sleep well?
“I hate to get you up, Peter,” he called to me. “If there’s anything a kid your age needs, it’s sleep.”
I couldn’t see him; he was in the living-room. Through the first doorway I glimpsed three chunks of cherry wood burning in the fireplace, though the new furnace in the basement was running as well. In the narrow space of kitchen wall between the two doorways hung a painting I had done of our back yard in Olinger. My mother’s shoulder eclipsed it. In the country she had taken to wearing a heavy-knit man’s sweater, though in her youth, and in Olinger, when she was slimmer,and when I first recognized her as my mother, she had been what they called in the county a “fancy dresser.” With a click like an unspoken scolding she set a tumbler of orange juice at my place at the table. Between the table and the wall was a kind of corridor she filled. Balked by her body, I stamped my foot. She moved away. I walked past her and past the second doorway, through which I glimpsed my grandfather slumped on the sofa beside a stack of magazines, his head bowed as if in prayer or sleep and his fastidious old hands daintily folded across the belly of his soft gray sweater. I walked past the high mantel where two clocks said 7:30 and 7:23 respectively. The faster clock was red and electric and plastic and had been purchased by my father at a discount. The slower was dark and wooden and ornamented and key-wound and had been inherited from my grandfather’s father, a man long dead when I was born. The older clock sat on the mantel; the electric was hung on a nail below. I went past the white slab of the new refrigerator’s side and out the doors. There were two; the door and the storm door, a wide sandstone sill compelling a space between them. From between the two, I heard my father saying, “Jesus Pop, when I was a kid, I never had any sleep at all. That’s why I’m in agony now.”
There was a little cement porch where our pump stood. Though we had electricity, we had no indoor plumbing yet. The ground beyond the porch, damp in summer, had contracted in freezing, so the brittle grass contained crisp caves that snapped shut under my feet. Eddies of frost like paralyzed mist whitened the long grass of the orchard slope. I went behind a forsythia bush too close to the house. My mother often complained about the stink; the country represented purity to her but I couldn’t take her seriously. As far as I could see, the land was built on rot and excrement.
I suffered a grotesque vision of my urine freezing in midair and becoming attached to me. In fact, it steamed on the mulch intimately flooring the interlaced petticoats of the leafless forsythia bush. Lady in her pen scrabbled out of her house, spilling straw, and pushed her black nostrils through the wire fencing to look at me. “Good morning,” I said, gentlemanly. When I went to the pen, she leaped high in the air, and when I thrust my hands through the frosty lattice of metal to stroke her, she kept wiggling and threatening to uncoil into another leap. Her coat was fluffed against the cold and bits and wands of straw clung in it. The texture of her throat was feathery, the top of her head waxen. Under her hair, her bones and muscles felt tepid and slender. From the way she kept hungrily twisting her long skull, as if to seize more of my touch, I was afraid my fingers would slip into her eyes, which protruded so vulnerably; lenses of dark jelly. “How are
you?
” I asked. “Sleep well?
Similar Books
