The Book of Days

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  “Don’t cry for me, boy!” She’d practically yelled it, and lying there with her long white-yellow hair matting the pillow, her face pulled upward, as if she were forcing herself to levitate, she’d scared him badly. Scared him so that he was almost afraid she wouldn’t die, and he’d have to cope with this new fierceness in her. She didn’t fear death– it was simply another aspect of living which she demanded to experience fully: those last few moments.

  Like Jeffers, sometimes he felt he’d rather see a man die than a hawk.

  In a clearing he found a dead hawk, the body torn and spread across the ground by carrion feeders. He crouched and studied it, hoping it might give him some answers. Hoping it might give him anything.

  Like most birds, hawks had little to do with their offspring after they had left the nest. Theirs was a fierce parentage.

  The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, the wing trails like a banner in defeat …

  He wondered if it had died in pain. He knew that it had died alone. We all die alone. But perhaps that isn’t bad. Perhaps we owe it to ourselves the purity of those last few moments. Like prayer, a private thing.

  Hermits were not brave men. Cal was not a brave man. Sometimes watching the ones we love die– and they do die, they die a little more every day– cannot be borne. Watching our children lying on the dark ground with their broken wings, waiting for the night feeders to come, is intolerable.

  But the small deaths cannot be stopped, any more than the rush of decay that eats this dead hawk’s fierce heart.

  Today Cal knew that he would be returning to his family before long. Linda and the kids might hate him now– certainly there would be anger, certainly there would be fierceness– but he would return to them in any case. And watch the fierceness leave their eyes. And watch their wings be broken. Because it was his duty, and his passion, to stand beside them those final moments and guard that ultimate solitude.

  Because it was his responsibility. Because it was his watch.

  Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying

  JAN. 11

  1973: the controversial documentary “An American Family” begins its 12-week run on public television.

  If a film crew came to his home now, who would they hire to play him? Don Knotts, maybe. They’d have to make it a comedy, otherwise people would be too embarrassed to watch it.

  Or perhaps they’d use an inanimate standin. A basket of dirty laundry. Or two basketballs stuffed inside a pillowcase. Scenes of the stuffed pillowcase helping the kids with their homework, lecturing them firmly but gently about their behavior, making love to the wife.

  Maybe they wouldn’t even recognize him when he came home. Maybe they would think the stuffed pillowcase was the real father, and Cal just some desperate imposter come off the street.

  Scenes of Cal waiting outside the back door as the stuffed pillowcase plays with his children, helps his wife make dinner.

  Scenes of the camera man and the director winking at the stuffed pillowcase and laughing. Everyone likes the stuffed pillowcase. The stuffed pillowcase has the most wonderful sense of humor.

  Scenes of Cal waiting, waiting, folding down into his clothes until he is no more than a pile of rags.

  JAN. 12

  1876: Jack London, author of Call of the Wild, is born.

  1971: the television comedy “All in the Family” premiers.

  Cal had discovered that a morning routine of hiking through the nearby hills helped clear his head, and clarity was obviously something he was in desperate need of. The last few days were like waking from a long dream, waking into shame. Some days he could not believe what he had done.

  Today he found two bobcat cubs, the mother nowhere in sight. They attacked his feet like aggressive kittens. He squatted and played with them, careful to keep their claws away from his face. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but he couldn’t help himself. The male animals, the fathers, what did they think of? What were their thought processes? He’d read somewhere that some male animals eat their offspring. That some male animals kill their offspring and then play with the bodies as if the children were prey. Human fathers were more benign, he supposed. They left their children alone.

  No, there he goes again. Such pessimism. Such a dark outlook on the world. It was that kind of despair which had led him to run away from his children in the first place. He had to wake up. He had to think clearly.

  One of the bobcat cubs had reached up and put a deep scratch across his left cheek while he was off in his little gloomy dream. He nuzzled the top of its head, leaned over and bit it playfully on the ear.

  JAN. 13

  1834: Horatio Alger is born.

  1901: A.B. Guthrie, Jr., author of The Big Sky, is born.

  In Cal’s dream of his life, life is hard but fair, and full of promise. In Cal’s dream of his life the world is big, and wild.

  In Cal’s dream of his life the world is larger than life, and freedom and distance are the only things worth having. Cal’s dream pulls him away from his wife and children toward the distant mountains in the west. There life burns with a fire that can be seen several states away. There the sky stretches and stretches simply to contain all the stars his dream imagines.

  In Cal’s dream of his life the path is savage yet beautiful, the dream attainable yet doomed. Geography defines his character. History is a letter home.

  In Cal’s dream of his life his strength is unimaginable, his ability to find a further wilderness unchallenged.

  In Cal’s dream of his life he reaches the mountains alone, his grave unmarked, his dream of his life unmourned.

  This dream of his life made a pretty good novel, but it was no way to live, and certainly no way to teach his children how to live.

  JAN. 14

  1898: Lewis Carroll dies.

  1914: Henry Ford introduces the assembly line to automobile manufacturing.

  Small versions of Cal were running all over the lawn. He thought they were rabbits at first, with blurred pink faces that might have looked like anyone. But these looked like him. It was a most peculiar thing.

  He stood in the middle of the lawn, watching as the small versions of himself scrambled over each other trying to gain an audience with him. “You are mass producing,” the most successful small version of himself told him. “It has really gotten quite out of hand. You don’t quite know what to do with yourselves.”

  And then that version of himself was pulled down into the mass of other Cal miniatures and torn apart into bloody bits.

  Cal sat down on his lawn and watched as his miniature selves tore each other apart. He found it hard to feel pity for the victims of this carnage. After all, it was himself, or himselves, that he was seeing, and self-pity was the least attractive trait Cal could think of, especially after all these months of indulging himself in it.

  The tiny voices joined together in a chorus of miniature Cal screams.

  “This really, this really is quite self-indulgent,” Cal said to his small selves massed below.

  But they were all dead by then. So the problem of his narcissism was solved.

  JAN. 15

  1892: The rules of basketball are published for the first time, in Springfield, Mass.

  So these are the rules, my children:

  1. The ball is spherical, however you might wish it otherwise.

  2. No pointless aggression. In fact, be prepared to discover that all aggression is pointless.

  3. Honor thy coaches, referees, and especially father, as some days he will need it the most.

  4. Don’t take too much time out– it may put you hopelessly behind.

  5. Make substitutions only when necessary. Respect your starting team.

  6. Appreciate the boundary markers– they’re usually there for a reason.

  7. Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t dwell on the past.

  8. Don’t dribble in public. It embarrasses people and they won’t want to be seen with you.r />
  9. During the game you may be offered a free shot. Be skeptical. Remember that nothing is ever really free.

  10. Take your children to the game. Show them how it’s played. If you make a mistake, admit to it. It’ll only make them respect and love you more.

  JAN. 16

  1920: Prohibition begins.

  Once his children had passed a certain age, Cal had a hard time telling them No. Early on it had been much easier. “No,” when their toddler legs staggered them toward the busy street. “No,” when they reached for the hot iron. “No,” when they put nasty, or dangerous things into their sweet little mouths.

  But as they got older, and more recognizably human, or rather more like adults– that special class of human beings– they wanted objects. They saw things– in stores, on television, in other children’s hands– and they wanted them. They saw people doing things: driving cars, climbing mountains, sky diving, and they wanted to do those things. They wanted privileges. And when Cal told them “no” it felt as if he was telling them who they were, who they were going to be.

  This didn’t mean that he felt a person was what they owned. But he knew a person was what they could imagine. And could they imagine things if they weren’t permitted to hold them in their hands?

  “No, you can’t have that.”

  “No, you can’t hold that.”

  “No, you can’t go there.”

  “No, you can’t imagine that.”

  “No, you can never be that.”

  “Once upon a time there was a little girl who once upon a time held the entire world in her delicate but strong little hands. But pieces kept breaking off. Pieces of this world kept escaping her, jumping out of her hands and scurrying away, hiding in the shadows where she couldn’t tell what they looked like, so that she could only guess. She would try to remember what the lost pieces of the world looked like. She would say things like, ‘Once upon a time there were things once upon a time. And once upon a time I knew their faces and if I only try hard enough I’ll remember them once upon a time.’ But try as she might she knew she had completely forgotten them, her guesses were never very accurate, and when she looked at herself in the mirror she discovered vast areas of her own face in shadow, indecipherable, impossible to fit into the puzzle her life had become.”

  JAN. 17

  1706: Benjamin Franklin is born in Boston.

  Poor Richard, always full of advice. Just like a father: always advising, defining, lecturing, making their minds up for them. Poor Father. Poor Cal.

  Eat to live, and not live to eat.

  He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

  The cat in gloves catches no mice.

  Being a father is saying all these things and more. Being a father is filling your children’s heads with as many words as possible, as many scraps of information and advice and truths and half-truths and warnings and inspirations as you can in the hope that something useful may stick, that some preparation can be made for a life for which there is no preparation.

  Being a father is trying to come up with the magic words which will keep your children healthy, successful, and alive. Even when you know no such magic words exist.

  Poor Dad. Befuddled and grasping for just the right words to say, the words that a child might wrap up and keep beside a heart for a year, a decade, a lifetime. If Poor Richard could only have taught that, given him a plan.

  But eventually you run out of words and then you hold your children tightly and you try to kiss every hair on their head with a father’s magic kiss. Or maybe you run away just as all your words have abandoned you. Or maybe you “do the right thing.” These are, of course, not the only choices available to you, but at the moment they are the only choices you are able to see.

  And like a coward you abandon them. And you don’t even give them any words to help them make sense of this.

  So Poor Richard, Poor Dad, what do you have to say?

  Lost time is never found again.

  JAN. 18

  1912: Robert Scott and his expedition reach the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen has beaten them there. Scott and his party die during the return trip.

  Of course there was every possibility that Cal would return home and find that no one was there waiting for him, his family having moved in his absence. Or worse, they might have just disappeared and no one would have any idea where to find them.

  Or some other man would already be there, Linda having taken a more dependable mate into the house to be her lover and father to his children.

  So he must plan out his return home carefully, like an expedition, with all contingencies factored in. He ran different scenarios through his mind, plotting out what he would do in each case.

  Cal arrives home to a surprise party. Somehow they knew he was on his way. There are party favors, balloons for the kids, and a huge cake that says “Welcome Back Cal!” Linda smiles at him as if it’s all been a big joke.

  Or, Cal arrives home and finds tall weeds growing in his lawn. The aluminum siding is caked with mud, as if a heavy rainstorm had just passed. Inside the rooms are empty, except for various greeting cards from people he does not know strewn about the floor. In one corner of Parker’s bedroom is a pile of dead roaches almost four feet high.

  Or, Cal arrives home and finds his wife and children in the back yard with a man he does not recognize, eating barbecue at the picnic table he built himself. When he says hello, everyone looks at him blankly. When he steps hurriedly forward the strange man stands up and blocks his way. “What do you want, mister?” the man asks gruffly. “You’ll get no hand-outs here. Go on back to the shelter before I call the police.” And the stranger pushes him, and his family does nothing to help him. In fact they appear to be on the stranger’s side, gazing up at the man with admiration.

  Or, Cal finds a parking lot where his house used to be.

  Or, Cal finds the entire neighborhood under water.

  Or, Cal finds a cemetery where his house used to be, with a headstone for each member of his family as well as each of their friends.

  Or, it has been snowing for weeks, and Cal can’t find his way through the blinding white. A bearded man in a heavy parka smiles at him, holding onto a pole which he says is clear proof he was here first. Cal wanders around for months in a landscape featureless as a blank sheet of paper, dying on the long way home.

  JAN. 19

  1807: Confederate general Robert E. Lee is born.

  1809: Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston.

  During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day …

  People said they had not seen the father in months, since just after the news came from the defense department. Cal had known the son well, had gone to school with him. Even back then the son and the father had not gotten along. People said they had not seen each other in years.

  Cal was not the social worker type. He wasn’t even the friendly type, who might just drop in on someone in need of comfort. But inexplicably he was drawn there, to the Civil War mansion they called “The General,” with its uniformly placed windows, its exterior ornaments of brass, its epaulets of marble. The clouds rolled in behind him as he drove the narrow, weed-clotted lane to the drooping porch and frowning door. The thickening air muffled all sound and felt charged with electricity. This was not The General as he remembered him. He had the broken stare of the prisoner-of-war.

  He felt almost light-hearted as he bounded up the steps, like a boy on a new adventure, but as soon as his feet hit the porch the lightness was no more. Now he was almost consumed with despair, thunderstruck by the sins he had committed against his family and almost forgotten the brief time of this mission of mercy. It required all his will power simply to knock on the door: a hollow thumping like a hand palsied, flapping against rotting wood. He stopped his knocking almost as soon as he began it, fearing that the wood might cave and clutch his hand.

  But almost instantly the door began to shift, changing from gray to black as
it was pulled inward. And then the sagging face of an old man appeared, the structure of him seeming to lean precariously inward.

  “What, do you want?” the wreckage of his mouth creaked.

  “I just wanted to offer …” Cal began.

  “Your condolences,” the father interrupted. “Or perhaps you want to fix things. If you have a hammer, some nails,” the man gestured at the decay around him, “then fix away.” He turned, then looked back around. “But save some of your nails for me.” The old man slammed the door.

  Cal felt foolish, but still remained on the porch a few minutes. He could feel the house moving in anticipation of the coming wind. He went back to his car and got in.

  On his way back down the narrow lane he heard the louder creaking, like the joints of some arthritic giant, and then the ultimate collapse, loud but of a single, momentary sound, like a heart attack, or the first realization of some terrible news.

  JAN. 20

  1942: the Wannsee conference is held in Berlin, during which the “final solution” calling for the extermination of European Jews is proposed.

  In the cartoon in Cal’s imagination the world is run by green pigs. Green pigs run the banks and the stores; green pigs are the mayors, the lawyers, the police officers. The world is defined by the needs of green pig skin, organs, and proportions.

  Almost overnight the green pigs discover that there are pink pigs in the world. They’ve been hiding themselves, covering themselves with the same wondrous black mud that is the green pigs’ birthright, just so that they will be indistinguishable from the superior green pigs.

  For that is the way of the pink pigs. They are naturally sneaky; they have a talent for deception. And if given half a chance, they will hog all of the rich, black, wondrous mud.

  The green pigs are up dancing, kicking their shiny hoofs high, celebrating the annual festival of Mud. While behind them, deep within that very same mud, the pink pigs are plotting.

  A young female green pig is kidnapped by a band of hairy pink hogs and made to do unspeakable things.

  A sexually-transmitted disease arises among the green pigs: their flesh warps, peels away to bloody pink underlayers, and they become so ugly one would think they were pink pigs themselves.