One With Others. C.D. Wright
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turning dark in the grass. Papers collected on the porch.
If I put my face to the glass, I can make out the ghost
of her ironing board, bottle of bourbon on the end.
+ + +
HER FORMER HUSBAND: I’d come home from work and she would be in a rage and I just couldn’t understand it.
They were a poor match. He says so to this day. She said so then. They barely tolerated one another. But they were Catholic [another “error bred in the bone”]. If he looked at her, and she looked at him, in nine months she was back at the lying-in.
[My best guess: She woke up in a rage, eight days a week.]
Her friends—the musician, the poet, the actor:
GERT: She taught me how to live. Now she has taught me how to die.
And I: She was my goombah. My rafiki. It was the honor of my life to know her. Honor of my life.
ELLIS:
A crowd/ Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
[Yeats she knew inside out. Inside out.]
A MAN KNOWN AS SKEETER [his whole life]: Oh yeah, I remember her, she celebrated all her kids’ birthdays on the same day.
I talked to a number of people. In person. On the phone. Mostly, the phone. When I could get anyone to talk to me. I made so many calls:
Can we talk later because I’m trying to cook for my family
He’s not here now
He’s fishing
I’ve got to go to the hospital to see my brother
He’s about to pass
I’ve got to go to Memphis
I’ve got to work the night shift
Out at the big pen
I work there since the plant shut
Can we talk later
I’m on Neighborhood Watch
And the kids are walking out
There’s no food here
I’m left holding the baby
You’ll have to speak to the hand
This was my rest day
He’s fishing
I’m working at the polls I’m on poll watch
I’ve got to go to Little Rock for my checkup
My pressure’s gone up
Since he got laid off
He’s always fishing
When he can’t go he’s home watching
The fishing channel
So, how is the fishing
Oh well, you know
It’s lots worse elsewhere
The woman who lived next door to the old house came outside to pick up her paper. I asked if she had known my friend V who lived there in the 1960s, and she allowed that she did.
Flat out she says, She didn’t trust me and I didn’t trust her.
Then she surprised me, saying, She was right. We were wrong.
[I heard just a fraction of the terrible things that happened back then. A fraction.]
Then she shocked me, saying, They have souls just like us.
I see my friend, midthirties, waking up in stifling heat. Her seven towheaded children balled up in their dreams. Socks and shorts dropped across scuffed-up floors. The funk of high-tops bonding with the wallpaper.
She wakes up seething but eases the screen door to. I see my friend breaking a stem off the bush at the side of the house and breathe in, sweet-betsy. She nudges a slug with her toe.
MR. EASTER: I’m about like you though about a snake. All these years on the river I only saw a poison one about three times.
The chaplain for the state police brings up the rear in his own car with refreshments for the men.
The only sure thing were the prices [and the temperatures]:
2 pounds of Oleo costs 25¢.
And 5 cans of Cherokee freestone peaches are $1.
The Cosmos Club president held a tea at her lovely lakeside home.
Two more Big Tree boys make fine soldiers.
A Rolling Stone was found in the bottom of his swimming pool.
Rufus Thomas and his Bear Cats will headline at the Negro Fair.
And Miss Teenage Arkansas [a comely young miss] is saluted once again for her charm and pulchritude.
Sunshine fresh Hydrox cookies, 1 lb for 59¢.
The assistant warden, at 300 pounds, is the one identified for administering the strap at the Arkansas pen [a self-sustaining institution]. Several say they were beaten for failing [to meet cotton quotas]. Others more often than not did not know why [they were beaten]. One testified to more than 70 [beatings]. The strap is not in question. In question is when it is to be administered.
THE VERY REVEREND PILLOW [at Bedside Baptist]: The injury that the rock-hard lie of inequality performs is unspeakable; it is irremediable, can be insurmountable. And very very thorough. No peculiar feeling to the contrary can be permitted to gain hold. You get my meaning.
Back then, in case of rain, I would be lying if I did not say to you—you would be ill-advised to step under the generous eave of certain stores or [in the unforgiving heat] to take a drink from a cooler or even try to order catfish [at Saturday’s]. And don’t even think about applying for the soda jerk job [at Harmon’s] or playing dominoes [at the Legion Hut].
Back then we could not be having this conversation. You get what I’m getting at.
Back then I would not be at this end of town unless I was pushing a mower or a wheelbarrow, the teacher [retired] told me over a big Coke at the Colonel’s; even at that, back then, I would not be here, if the sun was headed down.
[How far did a man have to walk just to pass his water, back then?]
The river is impounded by
the lake; below the lake the river
enters the lowlands, it slithers
through cypress and willow. And the air
itself, cloudy or clear, stirring
with smoke or dust or malathion,
if you get my drift, must not
be construed to be indivisible. No more
than blood. There is black blood
and white blood. There is black air
and white air; this includes
the air in the tires blowing out
over the interstate between town and
river, the air that riddles the children
when a crop duster buzzes
a schoolyard, the air that bellows
from the choir of robes
when the Very Reverend Pillow
bids, Be seated,