noodles called spaetzle, and in porkpie hats called homburgs. In Coleman Younger’s answers were accounts of the days of the Dutch boy, Alf Bowden, Creve Coeur Gap, and numberless others, for the war went on unblunted by my famous deed. Jefferson’s eyes fixed on me when the talk shifted to baseball and the World’s Fair, then he quietly left the house, easing the door closed behind himself. I knew then that he was lost to me.
“I could not turn him away,” I said. “You gained from him—a great bitterness to drive you.”
“My boys will not inherit such from me,” Jefferson said. “They will not find that I killed my own people in the service of traitors, or that I scalped possible cousins for sport.”
They littered Creve Coeur Gap. Their uniforms were valuable plunder, and their sourdough bodies began to rise with the sun. Little Arch Clements started it. They all watched me, and I knew it. They came off with a steady pull, a sound like that of a toothless grandma sucking on a cob of corn accompanying them. I saved mine for some time before flinging it to the river.
“I took no pleasure in that,” I said.
“I take no pleasure in you,” my son said.
He left me to myself.
I went back to work. The voice in my blade called out chop! chop! And my hand obeyed. Slash! Stab! The wood flew until only nubbins survived, and these I ground beneath my boots.
My hand had carved I knew not what, I had not restrained it, and what it wrought was bark chips and wood curls, sawdust and splinters.
Could this be? Could my passport be such?
The chips and curls would not mend. No other design would grow from them. I gathered a handful of the fragrant flakes and raised them to my face. My nostrils rested on the little pile, my tongue touched their salt. Nothing but wood chips—the large rendered small, and confusing.
I blew on them and they began to spray about, then I tossed them to the corners.
Oh, that voice in my blade had divined me well. I would seek no other monument.
Dream Spot
It’s always a mess when they want to trumpet their love, say the words that make it all clear and everlasting, announce that a hard bond has formed between them that will never break, snap, melt, never, then want Dalrymple to come up with some retort that proves it back. He had to guess. He never did quite feel it, but gave a try at thinking his way into love, love with her, the one sitting close, imagining himself deep inside her spirit, toward the very bottom, where it’s fearful and wet and her secret hopes splash about. But the light goes out on that picture before he can find any feelings of his own down in all that black wet, and he’s got to say something.
Just tell me what you want to hear.
Well, that sure ain’t it.
How about trout?
I get carsick on that road—you know that.
I like how they let you catch them there first. Plus it’s a pretty spot.
You can’t say you love me, can you?
I think it all the time.
You just can’t say it.
Aw, Janet, I love, love, love you! Love, love, love.
That’s it, add insult, mockery. It’s a weak man can’t say love.
She’s put her finger right on the button about him, which is embarrassing. It’s so general, his problem, so everywhere among men, that he wants to add a wrinkle to it, some invented misery that makes it seem like he at least had a special sort of problem with love that was all his own. But what on earth would that be? That he was raised by foreigners who spoke a different language that had lots and lots of words but none of them were love? Or he can’t reach his emotions good since his tragic baby went down with the ship or was lost in the fire or whatever? But he doesn’t have any such excuse to give as an answer and instead opens another beer, looks out the window at the foggy hollows and damp dark bark, the vast forest of trees stripping down for the winter snooze.
The road is skinny and curvy, with no shoulder and deep gullies alongside, and plenty of people die alone in those severe gullies, impaled, twisted awry in their bones, bleeding out in slow drips, wondering why none of the kids in back is making a sound. Miss a curve, fly downward, see you in a day or two, my friend, maybe not so quick. Janet is snug against her window, eyes closed to slow the carsick welling in her chest. She’s itty-bitty and wears glasses of the type ancient ladies favor, with little swan wings on the frame, stems hooked to a silver chain. Her hair is penny colored and lies down in a wide flat noodle that sticks to her forehead, a style she found while watching a sinister late movie in black-and-white that kept Dalrymple guessing just which sharpie actually had the bag of money to the very end. Her look makes her seem like a lady he should’ve met in some other life, one when there was more horn music, not so much this one. She’s searched out clothes that go with her look, and this dress is crinkled black stuff with veil material across the high part of her chest and partway down the arms. Her shoulder blades are pale, the bone sharp and pressing on her skin, and she keeps a filterless cigarette burning between her fingers, raises each one and slowly adds bright red lipstick circles to the paper, red circles smooched at the same place every time. She does not inhale, but waves the butt about near the window like she’s erasing the visible world with smoke as they motor along the blacktop.
There’s suddenly a person ahead, hunkered at the edge of the road with a knapsack laid down, wearing a long green army coat and a knit cap pulled over the ears. The situation is so obvious the hitcher doesn’t bother to throw a thumb out, just stares at the car, the stare suggesting the occupants should do the right thing by their fellow man, their fellow bum, their fellow teenage runaway.
Stop, Janet said. Stop—that’s a woman. A woman in green, adrift and alone, way out here in the woods and mist.
Dalrymple always enjoyed the way Janet said things when she was off her meds. Her words then put special color to events, events he usually witnessed but hadn’t noted any special color or significance to until she retold the event a minute after it happened. She’d built him a bunch of favorite memories that way. He’d hate to lose her.
What kind of woman is that?
She’s lookin’ like a man out here, so men passin’ won’t snatch her up and keep her chained in the basement.
You sure got a bad thing about men.
I got a bad thing about everybody if you pay attention.
Thirty yards past the woman Dalrymple stopped the car. He and Janet turned to look backwards over their seats, out the rear window. They watched the hitchhiker, who watched them in return. The hitcher bent to sit the knapsack upright, expecting to heft it to her back soon, run toward the car, say how ya doin’, ask where they were heading. Janet stared hard, waving smoke from her view.
She craves you.
She what?
Craves you.
That’s a great word. I guess I always have done that myself, crave stuff.
The hitcher walked in tight circles around the knapsack. She undid her long coat and held it parted with her hands on her waist. She wore an old sweater that must’ve been looser on her once, and green pants with lots of places to keep small things handy.
Janet threw a butt from the window, lit another. Her eyes were tightening behind those eyeglasses.
You are why she’s here, my love. You. She’s been looking for you all along without knowing it. She
