by Sam Savage
As did my mother, with her hair, pulling most of it out.
I have always been crazy about birds.
Even so, I don’t care for Poe.
And of course it was a crow, not a raven.
The shops had screen doors and slow-turning fans on the ceilings when I was a child.
The grocery store, the hardware, and the feed store had floors of broad wooden planks with wide cracks between them.
When you jumped on the floor of the feed store a cloud of dust came up.
The drugstore had a floor of black and white linoleum tiles. You had always to step only on black tiles or something awful would happen.
I remember Thornton, one day when he was angry at me, deliberately walking on the white tiles.
The colored man who worked in the feed store had a daughter who was born with six toes on each foot. Her father chopped the extra ones off with a kitchen knife, Mama said.
I remember Mama cutting okra at the kitchen table. She looked at my bare feet and at her knife and said, “Hmm, looks like this child’s got too many toes.”
I remember pretending to be frightened, and at the same time actually being a little bit frightened.
The odd phrase: “She was half pretending.”
I was half frightened, I think, because I sensed that my mother was only half pretending.
We, meaning my brothers and I, liked to pretend we were orphans.
The cat sits in a patch of sunlight and washes itself. It likes pretending it doesn’t care about my sparrows.
I lean across the desk, close to the open window, and wave. The cat stops washing and looks.
I remember a wizened halfwit named Doc who rode a bicycle. He was the only grown-up who rode a bicycle in that town.
The time Thornton and some other boys ran behind and pummeled him with dirt clods.
I have a clear mental image of his face, the skin of his face like creased leather, but I can’t tell from the image if he was a white man or a Negro, pedaling as hard as he could.
I remember when Brazil nuts were called nigger toes.
I remember black boys swimming in Johnson Creek below the bridge, where one day we saw a very small boy with skin as white as a fish’s belly.
“Look, there’s an albino Negro,” Edward said.
Which was how I learned the word albino.
Mama told us only trashy people said nigger toes.
The times Thornton fought Edward to sit in front, screaming shotgun, shotgun, running out the door and down the front steps, racing for the car. If Thornton reached it first Edward would drag him out, while the dogs ran around the car barking.
The time Papa grabbed Edward by the shirt collar and jerked him back so hard he fell down.
The school had tall windows that opened with cranks. Only certain boys were allowed to turn the cranks.
The car had fuzzy brown upholstery that tickled my legs if I wore shorts. We were not allowed to wear shorts at school.
The time Miss Alfa said she was going to squeeze the mush out of me in first grade, and not understanding what she meant and being frightened.
The time Thornton wouldn’t let me speak to him at recess anymore, turning away and walking off, when I was in second grade.
Looking at the clock and closing my eyes and counting to a hundred and opening my eyes and looking at the clock.
I remember people asking me how I liked school, and saying “fine.”
On our way to the store after school Edward stopped and yelled phooey and slung his books into a water-filled ditch. Then Thornton yelled phooey and threw his books, and then I threw mine, I believe, though I don’t actually remember that part.
When we got home Papa took Edward out by the clinker pile and whipped him.
The time Edward said he wanted to be a jockey and ride racehorses, and Papa said that was a good way to end up a nobody.
The time the whole school walked to the cemetery on Confederate Memorial Day and stood among the graves and sang “Dixie” and “The Bonny Blue Flag.”
The time I put Thornton’s paper dolls in the fire, after he wouldn’t talk to me at school.
Lester flips through Road & Track while he eats. When he comes across something that interests him his eyes bulge and he stops chewing in order to move his lips as he reads.
Lester is crazy about cars.
We walked to the store after school and rode home with our father. We went a long way down the same street the school was on, over the train tracks and on down that street, turned at the Presbyterian church and on down past the Amoco station, Baptist church, drugstore, movie theater, pool hall, beauty parlor, ten-cent store, ice house, furniture store, every day after school the same, walking behind Edward and Thornton.
I remember a penguin on an iceberg and the words “It’s Cool Inside” on the door of the drugstore and on the ticket window at the movie theater. I remember stopping to look at movie posters. I remember a movie cost twelve cents, but I don’t remember any of the posters.
The times we walked faster to get quickly past the pool hall on hot days when they had the door wide open, propped back against the wall by a dilapidated green armchair set out on the sidewalk. I remember pool tables one behind the other receding into the dim far distance, each in a cone of light cast by a metal-shaded lamp suspended above it, cigarette smoke drifting and curling in the cones, beer and tobacco smells floating out onto the sunlit sidewalk, and the hard bright clicking of the balls.
I understood that the men in the pool hall were different from us, that they came from the country or from parts of town we didn’t go to, that some of them worked at the hosiery mill by the railroad tracks, but I don’t know how I knew this.
We stood by the loading dock at the icehouse and waited for them to open the door and drag out a big block of ice, and when the wave of cold air hit us we opened our mouths and said “aaah.”
I remember “Let’s wreck the train,” the time Thornton and Floyd Denton put trash on the railroad tracks, hauling bricks, rocks, a rotten log with ants in it, I remember in particular, and piling them all on a rail.
The time I put a dime on a rail and couldn’t find it afterwards, looking everywhere in the rock ballast between the ties and in the grass next to the tracks, Thornton saying I was stupid to put a dime.
We stood by the tracks and waved to the people in the windows flashing past.
The time a girl about my own age looked out a window at me, and then, turning her head, continued looking even as the train was rushing her away.
Imagine looking from the window of a speeding train at a child in a short summer dress standing by the tracks on the outskirts of a small Southern town, a tiny white figure against a hill of rampant kudzu dwindling in the distance as the train speeds northward even as you continue to look, pressing your cheek against the window glass, until she has entirely vanished.
Remembering it now in just that way, as if I were the one on the train, waving good-bye to myself.
When Edward was older he came home on his own, and later still Edward and Thornton had cars. I was not going to school anymore by the time they had cars.
Edward’s car was a black Ford. I sat inside while he washed it and then rinsed it off with the garden hose. I put my face against the window and he shot spray at it.
I remember knowing Fords were better than Chevrolets.
I don’t remember what kind of car Thornton had.
I remember waking up on the backseat of Thornton’s car when Papa shone a flashlight through the side window, the time I ran away.
Edward and Thornton were crazy about cars.
Edward went away in his car, spinning the wheels and throwing up dirt and gravel.
I have an image of my father standing on the front steps in a hat, coat, and tie. I want to say that he is watching Edward go.
Last night I turned off all the lights and sat in a chair by the living room window to watch a lunar eclipse, more keyed up than I have been in
a long time, not agitated, though, just happy to be caught up in waiting for something other than meals, walks, death I suppose, and Thornton, in this case just a lunar eclipse, and so wasn’t as burdened as usual, when I fell asleep and missed it.
I find myself thinking, “What in the world will I write next?” pronouncing the words in my head, because that is what my mother was always saying, sitting at this desk also.
Even though I am not at a loss for words.
Unlike her, who would grab her hair at the temples and pull at it and rock side to side, saying, “It won’t come, why won’t it come?” or look up at the ceiling and say, “Make it come, Lord, please make it come,” and other such histrionics, after she was the way she would eventually become, sadly.
I can’t imagine what it was like to be my mother.
I am not a writer, is the problem.
One can’t put everything into words.
Maria reaches in and closes the door to my room. Even with it closed I can hear her vacuuming in the hall, the vacuum cleaner knocking against the baseboards.
Maybe I’ll get Thornton to rent me a cottage at the beach, one with a screen porch overlooking the ocean, where I can sit and listen to the surf and the seabirds and be completely alone, even if that means keeping house and making meals for myself. I can get a dog. I would rather have a dog than Maria, I will tell him.
I am shutting windows, doors, pulling down blinds, shrinking into the cupboard of the self, I understand that.
The sentence, “She wanted to be alone with herself.”
Wanting for a little while at least to be alone without myself.
Wanting to save my mother from drowning, when I can’t stay afloat myself, clinging to this inventory of tiny things.
The times we rode the bus to school, on fall mornings when Papa took Verdell and went hunting or when he drove the truck to High Point to buy furniture.
I remember “The least he could do is leave me Verdell.”
The time I touched my forehead to the bus window and recoiled when it made my head vibrate, and doing it again on purpose.
The time I looked out the bus window and saw a pig hanging by its hind legs from a tree limb, strung up like that so they could bleed it, Edward said.
I remember the fascination of the pig, the mingling of horror and attraction engendered by the image of the pig. I remember Mama hushing me when I tried to talk about the pig.
I remember Thornton drawing in crayon a picture of the pig and writing at the bottom, “The Death of the Pig.”
I remember, later, a photo of Mussolini and his mistress strung up like that.
I remember always knowing that we were superior to other families of our acquaintance.
I thought of us vaguely as “illustrious.”
Yesterday after breakfast I lay on the sofa with my eyes closed. Even from there, in the Sunday quiet, I could hear sparrows on the windowsill, chirping. I could hear the ruffled flutter of their wings as they came and went, and the faint tick tick of their beaks on the feeder.
Maria has found my brush under the sofa, covered with dust and what looks like dog hair, though of course it is not dog hair.
The time I was walking to the store from school and saw Thornton fighting on the ground with another boy, the other boy sitting on his chest, and some older boys in a ring around them shouting and laughing, and Edward was there, leaning in, yelling pointers to Thornton, urging him to buck the other boy off.
When Thornton saw me he started crying and the other boy got off his chest and Edward turned and walked away. I couldn’t see his face. He walked with his arms crooked and rigid and his shoulders hunched, because he was ashamed of Thornton, I could tell.
The time Edward and Thornton were fighting each other and Mama screamed at them to stop, and Edward stopped and Thornton hit him in the mouth.
The time we climbed out of Edward’s bedroom window and sat on the porch roof, Thornton and Edward smoking cigarettes one after another. Thornton got up and walked to the edge and looked down. “Dropping a brick from up here would be a good way to kill somebody,” he said.
The time Edward hit Thornton in the face with a tree branch and almost put out his eye, Mama said.
The time Thornton dropped a metal trash can loaded with bricks down the stairwell hoping to hit Edward who was talking on the phone in the hall below and missed by a mile but splintered a floorboard.
Rummaging in a drawer for my yellow socks, not finding them, and sitting on the bed while Maria looks in the drawer. When she fails to find them, she sits down on the bed beside me, and we wonder aloud about the socks.
Going past the pool hall with Thornton one day when the door was open and we couldn’t help seeing inside, we saw several men bunched around a table near the door. A tall bald man we recognized from the feed store was leaning across it, elbow drawn back, preparing to shoot, and standing opposite him, holding a cue stick, was Edward. He turned his head and looked, and nothing in his face revealed that he knew us. I have a clear image of how he looked at that moment. His hair was slicked back and he looked mean and furtive.
The time Thornton and Edward stood in the yard and shot at cans with a pistol, and Mama told them to go away from the house if they were going to shoot, and they went out on the dike and threw tin cans and bottles in the water and shot at those.
They shot at a bullfrog. The bullets splashed around it and it disappeared, and on the way back we saw it floating upside down. They tried to reach it with a cattail but it was too far out and the cattail broke.
Edward held my hand and I shot at it.
First the brush, now the socks.
I remember walking down the highway to Dillard’s Esso, which was the only place except coloreds’ houses close enough to go to on foot from Spring Hope, walking on the pavement if we were barefoot, because of sandspurs in the grass, and stepping off it when we heard a car, unless the pavement was too hot to walk on, then walking cautiously in the grass anyway.
Sitting on the pavement crying and covering my foot with my hands to stop Edward from pulling a sandspur out, the time he walked off and left me.
The times we hitched rides to Dillard’s on a buckboard, dangling our legs off the back, the mule clip-clopping no faster than we could have walked.
Mary-Jo Dillard was Edward’s girlfriend the whole time he was in high school, and sometimes she came out to pump gas in our car instead of Mr. Dillard. I have a clear image, almost photographic, of pretty blonde Mary-Jo smiling at me through the rear window of the car.
I was crazy about Mary-Jo Dillard.
The time I was ashamed after I told Edward that Mary-Jo Dillard had pumped gas in our car and he just shrugged.
I remember thinking the Civil War was fought between North Carolina and South Carolina, and when I found out otherwise, being happy I hadn’t actually said that to anyone.
I was embarrassed the time in school when I didn’t know what my father did for a living.
I was embarrassed the time my mother came to school and read her poems.
I was embarrassed when, after stealing a Snickers bar from the drugstore, the lady found it in my pocket.
The time my mother bought a toy army tank for Thornton’s birthday, and when the salesgirl handed her the package my mother said “Tank you,” and I was embarrassed.
I remember standing at the tall mirror in my room and being embarrassed by the way I looked, wishing my arms and legs were fatter.
I wished I looked like Maureen O’Hara.
I liked the word buxom.
I remember hating the way my pale skin became red and splotchy when I was overheated or flustered or when I cried.
I disliked the word pasty.
I remember “Eve Taggart looks like a maggot,” at school.
I remember standing at the mirror and watching myself scream.
I wasn’t homely, I was plain. I had a beautiful soul, Mama said. Now I probably have no soul at all, though the word soul remai
ns weirdly resonant.
Like the word home.
Thinking about that now, standing in the doorway to my bedroom, looking at the bed, the little pine table by the bed, the dresser, the bookcase, the two windows, the air conditioner, the framed photographs on the bookcase, and saying the word home to myself, then pronouncing it out loud several times, as an experiment, and being reminded of the expression “The words rang hollow.”
If I had had a child it would have been different, I suppose.
And Thornton too without children, so it will end with us, probably.
Which is for the best. I don’t see that we represent anything anymore.
Images like pictures, frozen like snapshots mostly, but memories of sounds as well. The ability to hear them again in the silence of thought somehow.
The sound of my father’s whistle when he came through the door after work, four notes, two high, two low, and my mother’s answering whistle, softer, higher, hearing it in my head now and noticing how it resembles the song of a chickadee. I can’t imagine my father intended it that way, though my mother, who could imitate dozens of bird songs, might have.
Followed by the sound of ice in highball glasses, and a (mental) picture of them side by side on the sofa in the library, my mother lighting a cigarette, and then lighting a second cigarette by holding it to the smoldering tip of the first and handing that one to my father. I remember them sitting there smoking and rattling the ice in their glasses.