by Betty Culley
that was the highway
for the logs,
the place to dump
the sludge,
the hydropower
for the paper machines
my father used to fix.
I can walk to the river
from the house.
The river is the same
as it always was,
wide, shining, moving
in spring, summer, and fall,
frozen in winter.
I ask Mom
why we don’t sell
Number 23
and move off DEAD END.
She says that since the mill closed,
no one is looking to buy a house
in Maddigan.
I don’t know if that’s the real reason
or if it’s a game of chicken.
We don’t move
and neither does Clay’s family.
It’s like moving
would be saying
we take the blame.
Coffee
Hunter is back.
I guess it fit
into your music schedule,
I say.
I’m not doing this for college,
if that’s what you think,
he says.
Sometimes I’d rather be here
than home.
It’s quieter here,
and I can think better.
Got it,
I answer,
and I do.
I haven’t yet seen
soup in the soup kitchen.
Tuna noodle casserole,
mac and cheese,
beef stew
are all popular.
And coffee.
The coffee urn
is like a statue in a church,
not that I go to church.
People gather around it
and worship.
I never drank coffee before,
but I try my first cup
and I’m hooked.
The Eddy
Sometimes a word gets through
to me in school.
Like watching a show in Swedish
and an actress says okay.
It was like that in world history today.
Demilitarized zone.
It makes me think of the eddy—
the bend in the river
where Jonah, Clay, Rainie, Piper,
Justine, and I used to meet
on Saturday nights.
Mom always said,
Don’t go down to the river
in the dark.
It’s not dark, we’d say.
It’s half dark.
It was always half dark,
once our eyes adjusted.
When it’s half dark
on Saturday,
I go down to the river,
and it’s all still there.
The cement boat ramp,
the aluminum dock,
the roiled river,
full with the winter’s
ice melt,
running fast and muddy
the way it does every March.
“Demilitarized zone.”
How could I have forgotten?
It’s cold at the ramp,
the wind rough off the river.
There’s still patches of snow
along the banks.
Clay is there.
Even in the half dark,
he looks skinnier,
his hair longer
like he’s trying to hide himself.
I can’t guess how I look
to him.
I came down here
every Saturday
the last five months,
Clay tells me,
I wanted to know
how you were doing.
Sorry, I say, I was busy.
Clay looks out at the river.
I texted you about
a thousand times,
I say.
I got rid of my phone
five months ago,
he says.
The bend in the river
has places where the current
reverses itself.
Maybe it is a place where time could go backward
and forward at the same moment.
Here at the eddy with Clay,
like the old days,
it feels possible.
I speak,
playing our old game—
Tell Me Three Things.
There is only one rule.
You have to tell the truth.
I think about Clay’s father’s
Bugz Away van.
Tell me three things
about bedbugs,
I say.
Clay holds up
one finger.
Bedbugs do not fly.
Second finger.
They can survive for a year
without a blood meal.
Third finger.
Adult bedbugs
are about the size
of an apple seed.
I forgot how good Clay is
in science—
in middle school,
he did an experiment
measuring pollution
in the river
downstream from the paper mill.
My father
was alive then,
and he still had his job
at the mill.
Millwright
on the night shift,
keeping the big machines running.
When Clay asked,
my father told him all about
the chemicals
they used.
Methanol
Ammonia
Hydrogen sulfide
Hydrochloric acid
The hydrogen sulfide
gave our town
its smell.
When the smell
went away,
so did the jobs.
The paper mill
sponsored the school science fair.
You can guess that
Clay didn’t win a prize.
How is your mother?
Clay asks me.
(That’s what I mean
about Clay being nicer.)
Scary, I say,
and he looks away.
I don’t ask about Gwen.
My hand reaches out to his
and holds it
for the first time,
like I hold Jonah’s now.
This is my science experiment.
Do all boys’ hands feel the same?
His is cold
yet a little sweaty
in a nice way.
It squeezes back.
That never happens
with Jonah.
Since Jonah came home
from the hospital,
I’ve gotten to know every inch
of a boy’s body.
I thought there were
no mysteries.
But holding Clay’s hand
is like hearing
a foreign language—
I can only guess
what is being said.
Hippies
I peel carrots away from me.
Hunter peels them toward himself.
It’s not supposed to be
a contest,
but I know I’m right.
Peeling away goes faster.
Why are you here?
Hunter asks.
Tray art.
I don’t elaborate.
It’s good to leave something
to the imagination.
Maybe we can get together
sometime,
Hunter says,
you could come to my house,
if you don’t mind a crowd
of kids.
How many is a crowd?
I ask.
Oldest of six.
First they created the
babysitter,
Hunter taps his chest,
then the rest of the babies.
Like a blended family,
his kids, her kids,
their kids together?
I ask him.
No, my mom
really loves babies.
My parents are kinda
back-to-the-land
hippies.
My father used to say
there were two kinds of
hippies
in Maine.
The trust-fund hippies
and the don’t-know-what-they’re-getting-into
hippies,
I say.
I guess then we’re the
don’t-know-what-we’re-getting-into ones.
It occurs to me
that even repeating something
not so nice
is not nice.
Sorry, that’s just something
my father used to say.
He was born in Maine.
So were my parents,
Hunter says.
Memory Metal
Every day in chemistry class,
I open my textbook
to the same page.
It lists the names and numbers
and nicknames
of the elements
that make up everything
in the world.
Antimony, 51, Sb
Tantalum, 73, Ta
Californium, 98, Cf
They don’t make any more sense
than the rest of the sounds
I hear in class.
Ms. Roy fits red and green balls
on the ends of plastic sticks.
They’re called molecular models
but to me
they look like dog chew toys.
She holds one up,
her mouth moves,
and these sentences break through:
A memory metal is an alloy
that remembers its original shape.
If the material has been de-formed
it will regain its original shape
when it is reheated or left alone.
Does Jonah remember
his original form?
We can’t ever
leave him alone.
Team Meeting
Team Meeting for Jonah.
All his nurses
Me
Dr. Kate
making a house call.
Mom can’t take the time
off work
again.
We crowd in the messy kitchen.
I don’t have an urn,
but I make coffee
in the coffeemaker,
set out sugar and cream.
I guess I learned something
at the soup kitchen.
Coffee makes a bad situation
better.
Team Meeting is:
discuss what’s working,
what isn’t.
What the sounds Jonah makes
mean.
Nurse Johnny gives me a
shout-out.
Liv understands Jonah
better than anyone else.
Dr. Kate speaks up,
You’d make an excellent nurse,
Liv, think about it.
Thanks, Dr. Kate,
but I’d rather be a doctor.
Oh, really?
Dr. Kate tries not to look surprised.
Yeah,
I’ve seen how hard
the nurses work.
Vivian covers her mouth
behind Dr. Kate’s back,
but I can still hear the snort.
Fiddle Music
Hunter and I are both serving.
Beef stew
Yeast rolls
Sliced carrots
Peach cobbler
It’s not like at school.
In the soup kitchen,
I can hear the words people in line say.
Mostly the talk is about food.
“I was hoping it would be stew.”
“No peach cobbler for me,
I’m watching my sugar.”
“My mother made the best yeast rolls.”
I ask Hunter something.
Can you play fiddle music
on that violin of yours?
What do you mean—
fiddle music?
Hunter makes a face
like I asked him if he
could shovel snow
with his violin.
Ya know . . .
And I take a clean ladle
from the drawer,
put it on my shoulder
like a fiddle,
tap my foot, and sing.
Old Joe Clark, he had a house
Fifteen stories high
And every story in that house
Was filled with chicken pie.
There is applause, and smiles.
The food line stops moving
but Elinor doesn’t look mad.
I smile back
and take a little bow.
This is the silliest I’ve been
in five months.
That back-to-the-land
baby-loving mother of his
taught Hunter some manners.
He doesn’t laugh
at my bad singing.
I suppose if I had the
sheet music, I could.
Why?
My brother Jonah
always liked to listen
to the fiddlers
at the fair.
See, I learned something else
at the soup kitchen.
Music
makes a bad situation
better.
Fleas
I don’t lie.
I tell Mom,
I’m going down to the river.
She makes a
faraway face
when I say river.
I know all about
how Dad proposed to Mom
in the middle
of the swinging footbridge
over the Kennebec,
before the last big flood
washed it away,
and how they used to
go out in an old rowboat
to pick wild blueberries
along the banks of the river.
Clay is there
in the half dark
at the end of the dock.
It’s not windy this time,
and the river is calm.
The Kennebec is very deep,
my dad told us,
eighty feet in the middle.
Clay has a funny smell
like the weed-killer aisle
at Agway.
Something smells weird.
Does your dad have you
spray the poison?
No, it’s the truck.
Do you want me to
jump in the river
and wash it off?
We both know
it’s about forty degrees
in the water.
Since the Three Things game rule is
you have to be truthful,
I could say,
Tell me three things
about your father
or
Tell me three things
you wish you could undo
but I don’t.
I say to Clay,
Tell me three things
about fleas
First Finger.
Fleas are flightless.
Second Finger.
Fleas don’t have wings.
Third Finger.
Fleas can jump.
I don’t point out that First Finger
and Second Finger
say the same thing.
I’m practicing to be as nice
as Clay.
Clay doesn’t ask me
three things
but he reaches out for my hand
and hold
s my three fingers
with his three fingers.
He doesn’t ask
Three things about Jonah.
I’m not sure if I’m glad
or not.
Cold
When Jonah gets a cold
he is restless.
His nose runs
but he can’t wipe it,
doesn’t know to cough
up the gunk.
He doesn’t even have the strength
for loud cries.
Cu-rah cu-rah cu-rah
He can’t have
tea and honey.
He’d choke
on a cough drop.
I get into bed with him
in my sweatpants
and unicorn T-shirt.
Liv, I can look after Jonah,
Johnny says.
You need your sleep
for school tomorrow.
That’s okay,
I say,
I don’t need to be awake
in school.
I scrunch up between Jonah
and the metal bedrail.
I hear Jonah’s chest noises,
feel the warmth of his fever
through his pajamas.
Johnny spreads Jonah’s blanket
to cover both of us.
Jonah is less restless
when I’m there.
It’s better to be miserable
together.
After Jonah’s cold,
his Suck-It-Up machine
gets a playmate—
Zombie Vest.
Zombie Vest jiggles Jonah’s
lungs twenty minutes
twice a day,
and Suck-It-Up
gets rid of the gunk.
Dr. Kate tells Mom
Jonah can go to a nursing home
if it is
too much.
He would get
good care.
It would be
round the clock.
No one would
judge her.
Dr. Kate would
fully support her decision.
We could visit
24/7.
Jonah would be in
good hands.
Dr. Kate waits for Mom
to say something.
When Mom doesn’t answer,
she adds,
And you could personalize
Jonah’s room.
Personalize?
Mom repeats.
You mean like a banner with his name?
Mom says banner
like it’s a curse word.
Dr. Kate is starting to look sorry
she brought this up.
Not necessarily a banner,
though of course
it could be a banner.
Things like posters,
or sports trophies,
or family photos.
Posters?
Mom gives Dr. Kate
her blank look,
the one that means
“Why are you telling me this?
How about not.”
And I know right then,
there is no way
Jonah is going
anywhere.
Ears
The school counselor
wants to have a chat.
He does most of the chatting.
Your teachers say you are not