WHAT THE WIFE SAID: How did a bat get in here? Who left the front door open?
WHAT THE BAT DID: Flew low, over Jen’s head in bed so that she had to bring the covers up over her head. It reminded me of the spacecraft. Why was everything flying so low? Why did everything want to be so close to us?
WHAT I DID: Opened up the window and let the bat out into the full-moon night. I could see the moon on the grass that was frosting. It reminded me of a Christmas bulb my mother used to put on the tree when I was a child. The bulb was frosted, sprayed on with something white and granular, something like snow.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Something is wrong when something in nature reminds you of something man-made. It should be the other way around. Is this the result of the human race having been around too long?
THOUGHTS WHILE SHOWERING: Maybe we don’t need a milk cow, maybe we need cattle raised for beef. A milk cow you have to be at home twice a day to milk. Ah, but the good taste of fresh milk. Maybe we need both dairy and beef.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: Pop, we don’t have a barn.
WHAT I DID: I looked around for a place to put a barn. Too close to the house, you would be sorry in the summer for the flies. Too far you would be sorry in the winter, walking all the way across the snow and ice. Besides, put up a barn and they will tax you. They will count the added square footage. They will consider the property improvement. The cost of raising a barn and the added taxes and feeding the cattle the hay that is now so expensive will undermine the profit.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Steamed squash and rice.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: I really could be a vegetarian. We would all be better off if we were. Who needs meat?
WHAT I SAID: All those dogs on the meat wagons.
WHAT I THOUGHT: I am one of those dogs.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID AFTER DINNER: Whose sneakers are these on the floor? Who left the butter out? Whose books are these? Whose sweater? Whose crumbs? Can’t you clean up after yourselves? Don’t leave a wet towel on your bed. Flush the toilet. Can’t anyone flush the toilet? These papers will get ruined on the table in the kitchen. Do you want your papers ruined?
WHAT THE CHILDREN DID: Ran outside.
WHAT I DID: Ran outside. We went and looked for trees that would be good for raising my deer stand. There’s a hill and ridge below where a stream runs through. There are game trails going down the ridge. There is already a wooden deer stand there someone put up long ago where Sam could hunt from while I hunted from my tree stand at the same time. This would be a good place for my stand. I thought I could use my stand for other things than hunting, too. I could stand in my stand at night and call to the owls. I could stand in my stand at night and look for the bright lights in the sky, the object moving quickly back and forth, but then I remembered there was a warning that came with my stand. The warning said never to strap yourself into the harness in darkness because you may make a mistake, you may not be able to see where your leg should be going through a loop. You could be strapped into nothing. Also, you may not see a rung as you’re climbing up to the stand. Your footing will have no purchase. You will fall like a shot bird from a branch, head over heels to the forest floor heavily strewn with needles of pine.
WHAT SAM DID: Imitated me standing in the stand and falling out and landing with my head on a rock.
WHAT MY DAUGHTERS DID: Jumped on top of him as he lay with his head on the rock being me.
WHAT I SAID: Shhh, if you want to see something in the woods you have to be quiet.
WHAT THE KIDS SAID ON THE WALK HOME: Tell us about when you were young. Tell us about the time you hit that kid with a pipe by accident and he had to get five stitches. Tell us about the boy who died after a hard rain in the culvert. Tell it to us again, they said, how he drowned, how the mother stood on the grass, holding her hand to her mouth, her legs giving way, her skirt darkening as she fell to the wet grass, as if she had peed herself, after hearing the news.
WHAT I SAID: Tell me instead what you did in school today.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: Oh, today, some bad kids. Some older kids, they changed the words on the sign outside the school last night. You know the sign that says COME TO THE FALL BREAKFAST, that sign, well they changed the letters and they made the school sign say COME TO THE FALL BOOB FEST.
WHAT I SAID: I would like to go to that Fest.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: Oh, Poppy.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID THE NEXT MORNING WHEN THE KIDS WERE AT SCHOOL: David, have you scheduled your next exam?
WHAT I SAID: Not yet, Jen.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: You should schedule it soon. What if your levels are high again? Then what will you do?
WHAT I SAID: Cut it out.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Cut it out.
WHAT I SAID: I like living. I’ll cut it out to get rid of it all.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: I knew we should have had more sex.
WHAT I SAID: Want to have sex?
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Now?
WHAT I SAID: It could cure me. It can’t hurt.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Pleased to oblige.
WHAT THE KITCHEN ISLAND SAID: This is not the usual pounding of dough being kneaded.
WHAT FELT GOOD: Her breasts. The sex.
WHAT HURT AFTERWARD: My dick.
WHAT I SAID TO MY WIFE: That was a bad angle.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: I should have worn heels.
WHAT I SAID: I made it to the boob fest after all.
WHAT THE WIFE DID: Laughed, hit my shoulder.
WHAT THE HOUSE SMELLED LIKE: Anadama bread the wife was baking.
WHAT WE ATE FOR LUNCH: Anadama bread, butter, and jelly.
WHAT WE ALL SAW FROM THE KITCHEN WINDOW WHEN THE CHILDREN CAME HOME: A spikehorn, too young a buck for me to shoot, behind the house, eating apples fallen to the ground beneath the apple tree. The children were noisy, too noisy, fighting over binoculars. They almost scared the buck away. Sam pretended he was holding his rifle. Bam-bam, he said excitedly, shooting multiple times. I hit him in the chest hard with the back of my hand. Be quiet, I said. I didn’t want him to act this way when we would really go out to hunt. It wasn’t safe. He ran upstairs, starting to cry, and the moment he ran up, I was sorry, and I wished he’d come back down. I almost ran up after him, but just then the buck scraped the dirt on the hillside with his front hoof, then he turned and stood over where he had scraped and shook his tail, releasing secretions from his glands. He hardly chewed the apples. He mostly swallowed them whole. I could hear Sam upstairs. He was watching the buck from the bathroom window. He had stopped crying now, and I could see the buck lifting his head, listening to sounds coming from our house, from my son above me who shifted his weight on the slate tiled floor of the bathroom, who rested an arm on the top of the clothes washer, who wiped his nose, runny from crying, on his shirtsleeve. Tell no one at school that we have a buck on our land, I told the children. Other hunters will want our buck if they hear, I said. The children nodded their heads.
WHAT THE CHILDREN DON’T KNOW: That their father may or may not need surgery.
WHAT I DID INSTEAD OF MAKING A DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT: Cleared land by the stream. If the banks of the stream are cleared, the children can run to the stream, they can lay their bodies down beside it, watching the small trout as small as their hands swimming.
CALL: A colicking horse.
