Read Online This All Happened by Michael Winter - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Winter
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tractor rears. Headlights jerkily bear down on the mound. He races into the snow, stretches the tractorâs hydraulic neck up, and the fence buckles. Six steel posts bend. The pickets lean and splinter, buttons on a fat manâs gut. Three pickets burst and shoot off into the trees. The dark fence cracks and a raw new light is exposed from deep in the wood. The driver lifts the shovel and retreats, halts. Then roars towards the pile again. The steel posts groan, nails pulled from a board. The palings snap. A mound of heavy, dirty snow tumbles across the path. He retreats, studies the cul de sac. This time he pivots and heads back to the depot.
6 Â Â Â Â Â Â I look up from writing to watch the dying sun turn the snow on Signal Hill pink. The bottoms of clouds another pink. I can distinguish between pinks. Thereâs a pigeon cooing, and it sounds like a rope pulled taut.
I walk down to Lydiaâs. Tinker Bumbo, asleep, is a balloon losing air. The flame in Lydiaâs fireplace sounds like a finger rubbing grit off a record needle.
We eat supper and walk down to the Ship. Lydia pulls down her tights to imitate Oliver. She is so quick and apt with imitation. Maisie, disgusted, throws away the chalk after scratching on the break. How funny is that. Can you weigh funniness. How long does an image stay with you. I think now that it was so funny. Yet I didnt laugh when Maisie threw the chalk. Itâs a funniness that lingers. Maisie threw the chalk out of not blind disgust but a self-conscious look-at-howshitty-that-shot-was disgust.
The cue ball hops over the cushion. It hits a beer bottle. I dont mind, for this moment, if Lydia sleeps with Wilf. She wants to go to the Spur, where he probably is. How I love Lydia gossiping with Maisie about men.
Somehow the world is more intimate and loving and I am generous with what I love. All love is displayed on an embroidered white cloth on long grass beneath a sycamore and generosity is running towards it from a ball field, both teams at once, running, throwing their gloves in the air.
7 Â Â Â Â Â Â Heartache is something you can have without ever having your heart broken.
Sometimes. In Lydiaâs kitchen. When sheâs mixing ingredients for a cake in front of a sunny window. Sometimes, like in photographs of swimmers in the distance, standing on sailboats, the sun cuts through the bodies so the knees and ankles and elbows have light coming through them. Bodies are cut into segments. Sometimes I see that happening to Lydia, so thin. When sheâs sideways. At the mixer churning a cold block of butter. And slowly the silver egg beaters mangle.
In the closet: the sleeves of my coat tucked into Lydiaâs coat pockets. The toes of her boots nudging into mine.
8 Â Â Â Â Â Â Max picks me up in his truck and we head down to Maisieâs. She has put yellow sticky notes on the bits of furniture sheâs taking. There are garbage bags with bedding. A cardboard box stuffed with cutlery. She has dresses and shirts still on their hangers draped over a full-length mirror. She says, I just want to take one truckload and no more.
Her house on Lemarchant is little but solid. She has spent the weekend scouring it. I realize I havent been helping her.
But when we get the furniture in, and weâve had a beer (the only thing in her fridge is a box of beer), she says, Thanks, boys. Now I want to be on my own.
Max says, Can we do your ass now?
I am leaning against the bathroom sink, my pants down. Iâve washed myself and spread vaseline from my hips to my thighs. Lucky youre not very hairy, Max says. Some people I ask to shave.
He is slapping patches of cold plaster over my ass. Itâs nice to have a set of confident hands moulding my ass.
He fires up a blow dryer.
He begins by prying from my left hip. It reminds me of peeling dead skin off my brotherâs sunburned back. Wet blisters of skin. Except this is an entire dry
6 Â Â Â Â Â Â I look up from writing to watch the dying sun turn the snow on Signal Hill pink. The bottoms of clouds another pink. I can distinguish between pinks. Thereâs a pigeon cooing, and it sounds like a rope pulled taut.
I walk down to Lydiaâs. Tinker Bumbo, asleep, is a balloon losing air. The flame in Lydiaâs fireplace sounds like a finger rubbing grit off a record needle.
We eat supper and walk down to the Ship. Lydia pulls down her tights to imitate Oliver. She is so quick and apt with imitation. Maisie, disgusted, throws away the chalk after scratching on the break. How funny is that. Can you weigh funniness. How long does an image stay with you. I think now that it was so funny. Yet I didnt laugh when Maisie threw the chalk. Itâs a funniness that lingers. Maisie threw the chalk out of not blind disgust but a self-conscious look-at-howshitty-that-shot-was disgust.
The cue ball hops over the cushion. It hits a beer bottle. I dont mind, for this moment, if Lydia sleeps with Wilf. She wants to go to the Spur, where he probably is. How I love Lydia gossiping with Maisie about men.
Somehow the world is more intimate and loving and I am generous with what I love. All love is displayed on an embroidered white cloth on long grass beneath a sycamore and generosity is running towards it from a ball field, both teams at once, running, throwing their gloves in the air.
7 Â Â Â Â Â Â Heartache is something you can have without ever having your heart broken.
Sometimes. In Lydiaâs kitchen. When sheâs mixing ingredients for a cake in front of a sunny window. Sometimes, like in photographs of swimmers in the distance, standing on sailboats, the sun cuts through the bodies so the knees and ankles and elbows have light coming through them. Bodies are cut into segments. Sometimes I see that happening to Lydia, so thin. When sheâs sideways. At the mixer churning a cold block of butter. And slowly the silver egg beaters mangle.
In the closet: the sleeves of my coat tucked into Lydiaâs coat pockets. The toes of her boots nudging into mine.
8 Â Â Â Â Â Â Max picks me up in his truck and we head down to Maisieâs. She has put yellow sticky notes on the bits of furniture sheâs taking. There are garbage bags with bedding. A cardboard box stuffed with cutlery. She has dresses and shirts still on their hangers draped over a full-length mirror. She says, I just want to take one truckload and no more.
Her house on Lemarchant is little but solid. She has spent the weekend scouring it. I realize I havent been helping her.
But when we get the furniture in, and weâve had a beer (the only thing in her fridge is a box of beer), she says, Thanks, boys. Now I want to be on my own.
Max says, Can we do your ass now?
I am leaning against the bathroom sink, my pants down. Iâve washed myself and spread vaseline from my hips to my thighs. Lucky youre not very hairy, Max says. Some people I ask to shave.
He is slapping patches of cold plaster over my ass. Itâs nice to have a set of confident hands moulding my ass.
He fires up a blow dryer.
He begins by prying from my left hip. It reminds me of peeling dead skin off my brotherâs sunburned back. Wet blisters of skin. Except this is an entire dry
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