“Chop the tree. Ram the wall.” I tell them. “Go back to the citadel. Don’t wait around for me. Tell the generals never to come here again, neither for boys nor for copulation. Tell them I’m of no use to us anymore.”
The women won’t be able to shoot at the boys chopping it down. It’s hidden from all parts of the wall.
When they hear the chopping, the women begin to ululate. Our boys stop chopping, but only for a moment. I hear them begin again with even more vigor.
Here beside me Una ululates, too. She struggles against me but I hang on.
“How could you? That’s the tree of dead boys.”
I let go.
“All the babies buried there are boys. Some are yours.”
I can’t let this new knowledge color my thinking. I have to think of the safety of my boys. “Let us go, then.”
“Tell them to stop.”
“Would you let us go for the sake of a tree?”
“We would.”
I give the order.
The women move away from a whole section of the wall, they even provide their ladders. I tell the boys to go. There’s no way they could carry me back and no way I could ever climb to the citadel again.
No sooner are the boys gone, even to the last tootle of the fifes, the last triumphant drum beat…. (We always march home as though victorious whether victorious or not.) Hearing them go, I can’t help but groan, though not from pain this time. No sooner have the mothers come down from the wall, but that I hear, ululating again. Una stamps in to me.
“What now?”
“It’s Hob. Your enemy…. Your enemy has dropped him off at the edge of your foothills.”
I can see it on her face.
“He’s dead.”
“Of course he’s dead. You are all as good as dead.”
She blames me for Hob. “I blame myself.”
“I hate you. I hate you all.”
I don’t believe we’ll be seeing many boys anymore. I would warn us if I was able, I would be the spokesman, though I don’t suppose I’ll ever have the chance.
“What will the women do with me?”
“You were always kind. I’ll not be any less to you.”
What am I good for? What use am I but to stay here as the father of females? All those small, ugly, black-haired girls…. I suppose all of them biting their lower lips until they bleed.
THE DOCTOR
HE DATES HIS THIRD WIFE often but she’ll not come back to live with him. Even before it got this bad she said he’d have to clean out this place first. Have to get new couches not so clawed and peed on. Use a lot of spray for the smell. But there’s no way to clean it up now without burning it down.
She left him five years ago. She had good reasons, lots more than just this mess. One was, he was a partying person and she wasn’t. (Of course if she came back now there couldn’t be any parties anyway, at least not for a long while of cleaning up.) And of course you never can know people’s reasons for leaving—nor for coming back.
The doctor has rugged sexy good looks. He’s still attractive even though in his seventies and even though he broke his back which left him with a crunched-down look. He used to be six feet three but now he’s only six feet. As a young man he had dislocated and broken his fingers so often they look terrible now, crooked and with swollen joints. One wonders how he can be a surgeon, thread his needles, and tie the fancy little knots anymore.
The house is a huge Victorian with a front stairway and a back stairway, five bedrooms not counting the maid’s room, two upstairs bathrooms and one downstairs (only one toilet still works, but the doctor is alone, he doesn’t need more than one). The front parlor is all bay windows and the back parlor is all wood paneling.
There’s empty fields behind the house and little patches of forest on each side. Sometimes deer come in to the doctor’s back yard.
The third wife said if he’d clean the place up even a little bit she’d think about coming back, but he’s like those old men who’ve never thrown away a Life magazine or a piece of string. With him it’s mostly medical journals. He’s not thrown one away since he’d been in medical school, nor any books either. Lots of other junk around, too, parts of old motors, rusty tools…. Two dead cars are in the garage. He has to park his diesel sedan in the driveway.
When the doctor and his third wife bought this house, the wife kept things more or less cleaned up. If she was still with him things wouldn’t have gotten quite so out of hand. She never did like having all this stuff, but it was in some control and mostly out of sight. Actually the house was full of junk from the moment they moved in.
The doctor loves a big house like this. When his wife was still with him they could invite guests to stay over. He likes to play the paterfamilias. Of course he can’t do that anymore. Now he does it in a smaller way. Whenever he goes to a party he always brings big chunks of cheeses and special black bread. Sometimes a ham. Sometimes a five pound bag of pistachios. Always more food than anybody can use in a week.
His dog died shortly after his wife left him. He buried it in the back yard. That dog…. Twelve years before he had taken home a sick, mangy puppy, slept with it on his chest and got mange himself. It was a type of mange that human beings are not supposed to get. The puppy grew up to be the dog that died.
But on the other hand, the doctor taught heart surgery by having the students operate on dogs.
The house badly needs painting, but the doctor doesn’t notice. If he did, and though it’s a huge job, he’d probably plan to paint it himself. He’d buy the paint and keep it in the garage or the basement and now and then think about doing it.
The cats started more recently when the doctor discovered a family of feral cats in his garage and began feeding them. One was pregnant. It was getting colder so the doctor made a little cat door into his basement. It gave them the run of the house.
He’s not sure how many cats are in there now. And he thinks he saw a possum.
The cats are mostly tabbies, some gingers, a calico or two…. Only one is white. That’s his favorite. White cats always have a hard time hunting. They’re so easily seen. And she’s smaller. She’s the underdog cat. He has always loved underdogs best. Besides, she’s so luminous. She seems to glow in the dark. He named her Nimbus. He wonders about her fur. He looked at it under the microscope to see if he could see what caused the sheen. Too bad he doesn’t have a normal white cat to compare it with, but wild white cats don’t last long. He wonders how this one survived to grow up.
They’re all still pretty wild. They won’t let him pick them up. So far only two sit on his lap. They’re nocturnal and the doctor’s not home in the daytime to keep them awake. There’s a lot of action through the night. They’ve staked out their territory and defend it with caterwauling. The doctor has learned to sleep through it.
He leaves paper grocery bags on the floors all around the house because the cats like to go into them. Also cardboard boxes here and there.
Even though he can’t pick any of them up, if he sits quietly (and he makes a point of sitting quietly) one might jump into his lap.
He doesn’t go on vacation anymore because he can’t leave the animals. He doesn’t attend medical conferences. Even going away for a weekend might be dangerous for them. Nobody could ever be persuaded to come in there to feed them. He wonders what they would do if something happened to him. The minute he comes in, he says Hello to all the cats in the kitchen. (Some of them are good at meowing back to him.) He comes in the back door, the front door is never used and wasn’t even when his wife was here. There’s a nice little porch out front but it’s never been used either.
The doctor brings in forsythia and pussy willows to force into bloom. On hands and knees, he puts in tulip bulbs, thinking all the time that, instead, (if, that is, he had actually noticed the need for paint and bought it) he should be painting the house or at least starting to. He has no illusions about what a big job it is and how long it’ll take but
he thinks himself capable of anything regardless of his age.
The doctor brings in a large cocoon. It was hanging on a limb right over where he parks his car. He’s surprised he didn’t notice it before since that’s exactly the kind of thing he always notices. He brings in the whole branch and nails it on the wall over the breakfast nook. High enough so the cats can’t get to it.
What is born in the warmth of the kitchen is a moth of unusual beauty. The doctor can’t bring himself to put it in alcohol, pin it and put it up on his wall along with the others in his collection, even though it’s the largest and most beautiful of any of them.
The moth won’t survive these cats. He takes it upstairs and puts it in the master bedroom where there’s a big bay window. (He doesn’t sleep there anymore.) He shoos out the cats and shuts the door. Of course it won’t last long. It doesn’t have a mouth. It’s purely a sex creature, alive, not to eat, but to copulate.
Fairy dust covers his hands.
The third wife never comes around to the house. It pains her to look at it. He won’t let anybody in anyway. They always meet someplace else—at a nice restaurant or at a movie. Last date they had, the third wife thought the doctor looked a little odd, kind of fuzzy… greenish, mossy…. And he smells odd. Not so much the damp man-smell of sweat, though that, too, but musky and marshy—a smell of growing things. It’s sexy but it worries her.
The house itself is sending out waves of pheromones that bring yet more creatures to the little cat door into the basement. Nobody can guess what’s in there now.
Finally the smells bring the third wife.
It’s so dim in there and there’s this odd strong smell. She’s not sure if a good smell or bad one. At first it makes her choke. She goes back out but then she sees eyes… two huge scary black eyes peering out at her from an upper window. What might be up there looking out with such big eyes? Maybe the smell is the smell of death. (Unlike the doctor, the third wife doesn’t know what death smells like.)
The third wife puts her hand over her nose and mouth and goes back into the kitchen, moving slowly. It’s hot outside, but not bad in the house. It’s three stories high, and it’s shaded by big trees, and the doctor has pulled all the shades to keep it cool.
At first she sees shiny eyes all around her and there’s scuffling noises. She steps around boxes and stacks of magazines. She steps on a paper bag. Something yowls and tears out of it in a fury.
Then she sees Nimbus on a high kitchen shelf. The doctor has already told the third wife about her—how he looked at her fur under the microscope—how it had a glassy quality.
The third wife is wearing white. She’s almost as luminous as Nimbus. One wonders how long she can be in here and keep her skirt and blouse clean.
She calls out, Are you there? It’s me. It’s me. Calls out, Honey? Dear?
One wonders who, or how many, out of all these creatures, might answer.
Does she dare go on, farther in? Is the doctor even home? But what about those strange big eyes in the upstairs window? The Doctor might be up there helpless, at the mercy of…. Or sick… maybe sick from his own house-smells.
She heads up the narrow back stairs that go straight from the kitchen. She wonders: Is he still sleeping where he used to sleep? There are two big bedrooms, a big bed in each. He might be in either. Though what if those rooms have gotten filled up with junk? He might have had to move to a smaller one.
Then she thinks maybe she should have called the hospital first, to see if he was there. You never know when he might be operating. He’s called out at all hours. (She always thought it odd that he never seemed to mind. She remembers one Christmas dinner, all the family there, the turkey just brought out….) But she’s come too far now, she might as well take a look.
The upstairs hallway is narrow and dark by the back stairs but broadens out for the fancier bedrooms. It’s daytime, but it’s awfully dim back in the narrow part of the hall. Cats have followed her. The white cat, in its catty way, circling her feet, first one side and then the other. She has to be careful not to step on her.
At the far end, where the hall broadens out, there’s a window with a dirty lace curtain. The window sends out dusty beams of light. The third wife can see… or she thinks she sees, tiny creatures in the dust, flying in the light. But how would you know the difference, dust or bugs?
But where is the doctor? She calls, “Honey? Are you there?”
She’ll go on. She has to see if the doctor is all right.
The white cat still circles her legs, purring now.
“Honey?”
She was right about the first big bedroom. Nobody could sleep in there. There isn’t room. The shades are drawn against the heat and the third wife sees the gleam of a few sets of eyes. She backs out and shuts the door.
It’s from the window of the second big room that she had seen the huge eyes staring at her while she was still outside. She doesn’t want to look in there, she’s scared to, but it might be important.
As she opens the door, something flutters out from behind the curtain. That’s what the eyes were. Big wings with huge eyes on them. And it seems as if it’s looking at her but of course that can’t be. Those eyes are phony—meant only to scare, but they work, She can’t help but step back and huddle into herself.
The big, big-eyed moth follows her out of the room and back down the hall, always just a few yards behind. It seems to be growing. The third wife wonders if that’s really happening or if she’s just scared. And she wonders if it’s true about moths not having mouths. Maybe some do.
She finally gets to the little maid’s room. As she opens the door somebody says, “Come in. I’ve been waiting for you. Waiting and waiting.” The voice is deep, resonant. Growly. Is it really her husband’s? Perhaps he’s sick. He sounds sick. But it’s a voice full of love. The third wife wonders how she ever could have brought herself to leave him.
The white cat goes in first. She lights the room with her glow. But the third wife’s white blouse glows, too. The moth comes in last. The third wife thinks it’s grown to the size of a blanket.
There’s something long, lumpy, and greenish lying on the maid’s little bed.
The wife lies down beside… it… him… whatever it is that’s so warm and soft… that smells both very good and very bad. Lies down and sinks in. First she thinks, I’m sorry I came and right after that, I’m glad I came.
She says it, “I’m glad I came,” and, “I’m glad you’re all right.”
The thing beside her growls. She always thought he was sort of like a bear.
The neighbors across the street don’t call the fire engines. They don’t mind such a ramshackle eyesore burning down—good riddance, though too bad about the oak paneling and the oak staircase. And there are too many cats. Besides, they know the doctor is almost always at the hospital so there’s nobody there to be rescued. They had been glad the deer preferred the doctor’s yard to their own—glad possums and raccoons stayed over there. Even the crows like the doctor’s land best.
Up from the flames comes a big black cloud and out from it, sparkling ashes rain down.
Everybody in the little town nearby wakes up and looks out the window. They think somebody has set off firecrackers. They haven’t seen such a good show in a long time.
BOUNTIFUL CITY
WALKING AROUND SAYING, I love you, I love you, I love you, and not being in love with anybody…. Perhaps it’s too much coffee. Or the air today, transparent—pinkish. It usually isn’t. After all, it’s the city, everything black and gray. Chewing gum stuck all over the sidewalk. And spit. A quarter falls and you hate to pick it up. You get soot in your eye. But that won’t happen today.
I love. I love. I could fall in love with the very next man who appears. I check them all out. Compare mustaches. Lots these days. How nice to smooth one. Or stroke a beard. Stroke rough man cheeks. Chest hair. Small of the back hair.
The city glimmers. I’m looking at the tops of buildings
, not down at the spit. All kinds of architecture all mixed up, up there. Some shine golden. Some painted Aztec colors: aqua and dull peach. Some art nouveau.
But how nice, right this minute, to be bouncing along the street looking up, but also into faces. Smiling. Evaluating. Thinking about beards and eyebrows. Thinking, I love you, I love you, but who? Love. How nice to be in it.
Except for the yearning. That’s the hard part.
Where is somebody?
My goal in life is this one thing. (As if it hasn’t always been.)
Walk proudly. But not too proud. You never know what the man in question might like best in his women. I won’t be anything particular until I find out his taste.
There goes a possible man right now. I always did like skinny dark ones. And here’s another right behind him. What a generous world!
The look in the eye is important. I peer. I stare. Here’s another one. He’s wearing a cowboy hat (I was always a sucker for a big hat). He’s not from around here. What wonderfully bushy eyebrows! He’s from out West. Patience is needed with animals especially horses. A patient man would be nice. Of course patience is needed in the city, too. Just crossing the street can be aggravating. And all that honking.
I wonder if he’s rich. Of course he could be a farmer, not an oil man.
Even so I turn and follow that one. I don’t remember if he had a kind eye. His mustache was so big I didn’t notice anything else.
But I don’t want any short-term relationships, I want somebody from right here. I turn back. I wander on with all the other walkers. I watch the Chrysler building roof glimmer in the setting sun.
Here’s another man. Hat, dark suit, black turtleneck makes him look all the thinner. I turn and follow him. His legs are nice and straight, not like some.
How begin? Drop my package? Trip him?
When’s the proper time to say, I love you? How long do I have to wait? I’ve been saying it to myself at every step. I may not be able to hold myself back. I put a cough drop in my mouth to keep me quiet, and follow.
I Live With You Page 7