by Karen Hesse
plenty of room to carry a load.
and it’s got damn good springs.
have you seen the way the girls dance?
sinful, neighbor, sinful.
these girls
doing the unspeakable gyrations of satan.
with each step they unravel the
moral fiber of our country.
they must be stopped.
not by law, neighbor,
not by legislation. this is no business of the government.
it is up to us, neighbor.
it is up to us to lock our daughters in
until they learn to behave,
until we destroy in them
the wanton will of satan.
the flapper
is not the least bit alarming,
nor a sign of the declining social standard.
though she drinks cocktails and shows an inordinate fondness
for lipstick and the rouge pot,
we have nothing to fear.
i doctor these women
and i have seen over the last years a transformation in them.
and what i see,
the opening of roses kept bud-tight so many years,
it warms this aging soul.
they say maple sugar
is becoming as old-fashioned
as the paisley shawl,
but to see esther hirsh suck on a lump,
her face star-blissed with
sweet delight,
i think that old-time maple,
it’s still all right.
harvey says:
the ku klux are here, vi.
there’s not a thing to stop them. we might as well join them.
why not?
they’re not low-down, like some folks say.
they’re good men,
100 percent american men.
and they might bring us some business.
viola says:
in texas, harvey,
those “good” men thought a certain fella was
keeping company with a married lady.
they had no proof of hanky-panky, harv.
they beat him, anyway,
held a pistol to his head,
said they’d kill him if he didn’t clear out.
harv, you don’t want to join a group like that.
but harvey says:
that’s just rumor.
they have parades, vi,
and picnics,
and speakers from all over.
wouldn’t you like that?
picnics and speakers?
viola washes up the dinner dishes,
her hands gloved in soapy water.
they do good, vi. they take care of their women.
and liquor can’t ever tear up a family with them around.
harvey examines a spot on one of the glasses.
shouldn’t we join, vi?
viola shakes her head slowly back and forth.
no, harv, viola says. i don’t think we should.
this paper is neutral.
this editor is neutral.
i have attempted to remain neutral
in the face of the klan question
and i intend to continue neutral
until i have reason
to do otherwise.
teacher says lewis won’t be coming back to school.
he got himself killed yesterday
playing in the sandbank. it
buried him.
he was alone.
lewis was always alone,
down in that sandbank,
making big sand cities
that he limped away from when his ma
called him home for dinner,
big sand cities willie pettibone and those boys
came in and wrecked
so lewis’d have to start again.
this time the sand slid right down on top of lewis
and buried him
in the very city he was building.
i am being buried, too,
in all this whiteness.
well how do you like that.
down in texas,
mrs. miriam ferguson,
the wife of the impeached governor,
defeated the klan candidate
by 80,000 votes
to win the democratic nomination for her state.
if she wins,
she’ll be the first woman
governor in
this whole damn country.
imagine.
if we join the klan, harvey says,
we can wipe out bronson’s grocery by next year, vi.
all the klan members will shop here,
even if they live closer to bronson.
bronson’s made his feelings against the klan clear.
if we join up with them, how long could bronson last? six months, nine?
viola says:
and what about all our regulars, harv?
we make this store “klan only”
we lose a lot of business.
where do you think they’ll all go?
harvey says:
it doesn’t matter. that little bit of business,
it won’t be enough to keep bronson flush, vi. you’ll see.
i don’t think so, viola says.
folks ask why i never married.
i watched my
father swallow his breakfast whole and rush away,
leaving mother with us children to be readied for school,
lunch to be prepared for noon,
washing to be done,
and the fitting out of a big evening meal.
father would come home late,
tired out,
falling asleep in the best chair after supper,
while mother put the house to rights,
got me, my brothers, my sister
and, finally, father off to bed.
from morning until night,
every day of the week,
that was mother’s life.
father got a holiday from time to time.
mother never did.
that’s why i moved out and came to work on the farm.
soon as i could i bought it for my own.
all these years i’ve managed fine without a man.
i may work as hard as my mother,
but i’m drudge to no one.
we shall reign in the kingdom,
neighbor.
we shall form a great fist,
and we shall still those who oppose us.
we shall strike them out,
wipe them out,
blot them out.
together we cast a long shadow, neighbor,
and with our shadow
we cast our foes in darkness.
we cast those who are not like us into the arms of satan.
every one of the lord’s lambs wants the light shining on him,
neighbor,
every lamb can see the right way when he is
standing in the light of the lord.
every lamb, once he has known the light,
cannot endure the darkness.
come stand with me in the light, neighbor.
there was a boy in chicago,
a rich boy.
he was kidnapped.
the kidnappers wanted $10,000
from the boy’s daddy
to bring the boy back alive.
only he was already dead.
even before the ransom note came,
the boy was already dead,
naked in a ditch, miles away from his house.
that boy was fourteen.
and now he’s dead.
and he was rich.
and he was white.
my brain did get hurt yesterday.
doc flitt says
it did get hurt a little like senator greene.
i was having chasing games with margaret
and i did fall and hit my head on a rock.
&n
bsp; the rock made big heart beatings in my eye.
i did find my way home to sara chickering
with the good dog jerry helping me
but i didn’t feel any good feelings anywhere.
and then my eyes did see only darks
and i did get confused and
thinkings i did drown in sand
the way lewis did with his lame leg.
and then lewis did take my hand
and he gave me showings of the way back home
to my nice little bed in sara chickering’s house.
this morning i did wake up
and my brain is all good feelings again.
and i can have seeing again and the darks is all gone
and the big heart beatings is just a little thump thumps.
doc flitt says
i am like senator greene
only i did get better so much faster.
the chicago police did it.
they solved the case of that murder
of fourteen-year-old bobby franks.
it was the spectacles that
led detectives to the slayers.
nathan leopold, jr.,
son of a millionaire manufacturer,
and richard loeb,
his companion,
were taken into custody
for kidnapping and killing their neighbor.
the reports say both leopold and loeb are smart,
students at the university in chicago.
they made full confessions to the charges,
said they’d been planning the job
since november.
if leopold had not dropped his spectacles,
if the spectacles had not been so uncommon,
they would have gotten away with it.
they would have gotten away
with murder.
it took two of them
my age
to kill one skinny jew boy.
two of them.
planning every detail.
they rented an automobile, killed the kid,
dumped the body, buried the boots and belt buckle
in different places.
they planned for weeks to kidnap,
to kill.
to see how it felt.
to prove they could.
it didn’t matter about jail,
or being haunted by a ghost,
didn’t even matter about going to hell.
if i wanted to, i could kill someone all by myself.
wouldn’t need anyone’s help,
and i’d make damn sure i got some money for my trouble.
but they were rich jew kids.
what do you expect?
caught a
german
carp
just below
the falls.
measured
two
and
one-half
feet and weighed
37 pounds.
caught it on
plain old
silk line.
esther helped.
my daddy said mr. field, the uncle of miss stockwell, our landlady,
was feeling poorly
and i might take myself over to see
if i could be of any use.
when i got there i washed up his dishes
and swept his floor
and boiled some potatoes for his supper.
while i worked he talked.
at first i didn’t listen.
mr. field is a white man
with cheeks shrunk in enough to make his
ears and his eyes too big for the rest of his face.
and a neck so scrawny,
not a collar exists that could tighten around it.
he started in on war stories.
civil war.
he told me about being a bugler for his regiment.
but he said that didn’t keep him out of danger.
he was standing right beside a colonel who was shot through the middle.
mr. field said: i saw the brigade of negroes under general burnside.
like a long streamer of dark silk they were.
he stared off through his wire spectacles,
the lenses so dirty
even if his eyes were clear
he couldn’t have seen much.
they were a sight, he said.
that line of negroes,
marching toward the rebels,
straight as a dress parade.
what happened to them, i asked,
expecting nothing good.
mr. field said: why,
those negro soldiers chased the rebels out.
every one.
i made a pie for mr. field.
he kept talking.
i don’t know if he could see me well enough
to judge the color of my skin.
i don’t know if my color mattered one whit to him.
he just said:
you come by anytime, miss sutter.
you move nice and quiet
and you make my kitchen smell like it
did when i had a wife here. and i do
like a flaky apple pie.
i marched home in a straight line,
with my back tall,
and thought about that regiment of men
like a streamer of dark silk.
when the barn cat did have her six little kittens
sara chickering had takings of the baby kittens
away from their mamma.
what did you do with the little things?
i did ask sara chickering.
sara chickering said the kittens did go far away.
that is what they said about my mamma, too. she did go
far away on the train to heaven.
will the kittens come back? i did ask.
no, sara chickering said. the kittens won’t come back, esther.
if the kittens come back they will eat the birds.
if the birds are eaten they can’t catch the bugs.
then the bugs will come and kill my crop.
that’s why the kittens are gone.
i do like the little kittens. even when they are blind
and have no fur and move around like
pink baby tongues and smell like
warm rubber balls. i do like to watch them.
i did go along the railroad tracks to find where
sara chickering left the little kittens. i did think i could find them
before they had leavings on the train to heaven and
i could be their mamma and keep them in the woods
and make them eat only warm milk and biscuit.
but i could have no findings of the little kittens.
hey, vi, harvey says.
did you know the average woman
is happiest when she prepares food in her own kitchen
and sits down with the family to enjoy it?
viola is cutting up chicken in the back room.
where’d you hear that, harv?
harvey says: johnny reeves was in the store
picking up groceries for old mrs. reeves.
he had a crowd gathered around him
and he was preaching. he said we’d all be better off if we
got the family
out of the restaurant
and back to the dinner table.
he said the average woman,
she loves her home and family first.
she might have got distracted
when she was earning wages
while her man fought in the great war.
but the trend is the other way now.
viola says:
was iris weaver in the store when he was doing this preaching?
harvey says:
no. matter of fact he waited until she left.
viola nods and smiles.
i guess he did.
it’s not hard putting up with mr. hirsh.
; he isn’t like my father.
maybe since he’s so young.
he washes dishes,
helps with chores,
he even does a turn at the stove every few days.
he bathes esther,
reads to her in all manner of voices,
makes us both laugh till our sides hurt.
he washes her clothes,
gets her to school and helps her with her homework.
best man i ever saw.
i know i shouldn’t be running liquor.
and maybe i’ll end up in jail.
but i paid for this restaurant
by transporting hooch
and i’ve made enough
to fork out tuition for two of my brothers
and my baby sister, who is smart as sateen,
and would have been trapped in this valley forever.
when i was taking care of mr. field,
doing the light chores,
keeping him alive with my plain
cooking and housekeeping,
i told him about helen keller and how she was blind all the way
and how i wrote her a letter.
and he showed me a
remington portable typewriter,
almost new.
you have any use for that? he asked.
for your letter writing and all?
no sir, i said.
i would have liked a machine like that to write on.
but if i went carrying a big old
typewriter home from
dickenson street
all the way to
mather road,
constable johnson,
he’d get ten calls before i got halfway to the covered bridge,
telling him how the colored girl
stole some
expensive machinery.
not worth the trouble.
mary said:
what about we get married, merle?
you’re almost done with school,
you got that night job at the paper,
we could live on that.
come bust me out of this place, merle.
i like mary fine.
maybe enough to marry her.
but i don’t know.
she wrote a letter to johnny reeves
asking if he’d do the ceremony and
if we could get married in ku klux robes,
with flowers embroidered over the fiery cross.
and johnny reeves said, yes.
but i never yet have
paid my 10 dollars to the klan.
and mary,