The Sound

by David Mason

  Each word he spoke then seemed to weaken him,

  and when he drove away I sat there crying

  though I couldn’t tell my mother what it meant.

  I was only seventeen when I met Jim.

  He lumberjacked in the camp out to the lake.

  I always liked the woods, so green and nice,

  the ferns in bunches, trees covered in moss.

  When I was little I was scared to walk

  alone for fear the Indians would get me,

  but Jim made the woods seem lighter than before.

  His family was Welsh. They all was singers.

  Next to Doctor Hale you’d think he was small,

  more my size, but he was a strong camp boss.

  Men always said he was good to work for.

  Once he let his whiskers grow like the men

  and I said they was awful-looking things.

  “What’s the matter, Sally,” says he. “Seen a ghost?”

  “Jim,” I says, “you’ve ruined your face.”

  “Ruined?”

  I told him I wouldn’t stand for any man

  who looked like a porcupine. That day he shaved.

  He had wavy black hair and shiny eyes,

  could eat like a mule and still dance all night.

  He used to say there was music in the Welsh

  and fight in the Norse—that’s the stock I come from.

  Jim was always a truthful husband, and I

  told him only the one white lie. I said

  my father used to call me Sally Peaches.

  I suppose I wanted Jim to call me that,

  but it never felt right when he said the name.

  Then one year that northeasterly come down.

  We’d been on the farm a while. Jim bought the place

  so I wouldn’t have to cook in a camp.

  There was peach trees on it just for me, he said.

  The cold he caught in that storm turned bad,

  sank down in his lungs and worked there rasping him

  with pain. I sent a neighbor for Doctor Hale

  and all day set with a fear he wouldn’t come.

  Finally I heard his buggy—he never

  his whole life would drive a car—stop outside,

  and saw him stoop to come in at the door.

  He went to work while I stayed in the kitchen

  brewing tea. Outside the leaves was blackened,

  rattling in the wind like sick men breathing.

  Made me dizzy just to think of it.

  When Doctor Hale come out he was pasty and old.

  He took his glasses off, rubbed a sore spot

  on the bridge of his nose, give me a flat look.

  He said, “Jim’s been asking for Sally Peaches.”

  There we were in the kitchen, six feet apart

  and silent as the frost on the windowpanes.

  The black leaves was death, though. I knew for sure

  they would take someone. That year Mama died.

  That year, while the trees was still all blighted,

  Doctor Hale was killed. His horse took a fright

  out on Mountainview Road, pulled his buggy

  off a bridge and threw him into the river.

  There’s foxes on the road. People suppose

  it was the foxes give that horse such a scare.

  You never saw so big a funeral

  as his. The church spilled people into the street.

  The paper said a whole era was gone.

  He was the last of the horse and buggy doctors.

  You won’t believe me, but I saw him again.

  I tell you I saw him here in this very room

  twenty-two years ago, the year Jim died.

  It wasn’t too long after Kennedy

  that Jim took sick again and I could see

  the blood draining out of his face, his lips

  a pale purple, skin damp and hands ice cold.

  I did the only thing I knew to do

  and prayed to God not to take him away.

  It was dark. The house rattled in a wind.

  I sat there in the kitchen by the stove

  muttering this prayer, and the room changed.

  I wasn’t alone any more.

  I turned and saw a man beside the door,

  knew him by the wire rims of his glasses,

  his smile peaceful though he was made of rain.

  I heard his voice with so much gentleness:

  “Sally, hush, all our illnesses will end.”

  When he said my name it was like the sound

  grew inside me till the tears just had to fall.

  I could almost feel his big hand on my hair.

  By the time I dried my eyes he was gone.

  For eight long months Jim wasted away.

  I remember cursing God for what he did

  and I know in his heart how Jim cursed God.

  Sometimes I wanted Doctor Hale to come,

  but the dead can’t be faithful anymore.

  I got up in the middle of every night

  to give Jim his pills. Already it was like

  I lived alone in a house with many voices.

  One of those nights I saw he’d gone at last.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know

  why I thought there was one more thing to do,

  a last thing, because Jim was Welsh and I knew

  there was something you had to do for the Welsh.

  I thought about how fine he used to look.

  How his eyes was bright. How he sang at camp.

  I looked out the window and could feel him

  lying there in the cold bed at my back.

  I knew what he was telling me, and left

  the window open for his soul to go.

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  David Mason is the former Poet Laureate of Colorado. His previous books of poems include Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, The Country I Remember, and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, won the Colorado Book Award and was featured on the PBS News-Hour. Mason is the author of three essay collections, including Voices, Places and a memoir, News from the Village. He wrote the libretti for Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter and for Tom Cipullo’s award-winning After Life. Mason divides his time between Colorado and Tasmania, and teaches at Colorado College.