So the Major sent you.
What? the Major? … sent? I wouldn’t say sent … how did you—?
“Client” is her word. She sent you. To the clinic, she calls it, the sick bay, she says, the hospice, the ER, the laboratory. To spy. She insists I steal stuff. I am supposed to pretend that a book needs repairs, and then I squirrel it away down here. She says I stole dimes from the overdues — nickels and pennies, too.
I can’t imagine Miss Bruss would say that.
Well, on your imagination … work.
[…………………………………………….…]
It took strong healthy winds to pull the mud-brown leaves from their noisy crowds in the oak trees, and Joseph was fascinated by the way in which they whirled off toward the valley, spinning and dipping until a cul-de-sac captured them or a little windless area let them land at last on a distant road or lawn, each leaf having fled the consequences of its shade, each note running from its sound. He would watch one leaf setting out and try to guess where it might go, but he had no success whatever. They spiraled out of sight and were swallowed by sullen skies. Autumn leaves had inspired so many poems and pop songs, too. Dead leaves, Joseph thought, shuffling through them as he walked to work, people say dead leaves, but what is really dead about them? He was lonely. That was his cruel epiphany. These leaves chatter like monkeys in their trees. He realized it with a pang that was more immediately painful than its cause. They flutter just as moths do in the least breeze. Lonely, lonely. It bore repeating. Once they leave their tree they grow lonely as they once grew green. Blown about because they no longer have any connections. Some pretend to be children chasing one another through the streets. Nevertheless, loneliness made him observant. Leaves do seek piles, and they speak like crumpled paper to the feet that crush them. As if he and his own shed skin might be conversant friends. Joey imagined himself a released leaf. Wasn’t it his dad’s design to become disconnected? Loneliness should be a sign of success. He thought of edges brittle as old paper, of veins brown as dry creeks, of mottled liverish patches on his mother’s aging hands. He remembered them to be juicy in their youth, flesh that insects would choose to chew. Now they huddle in every hedge and hollow where they pretend to suffer the damp anxieties of impoverished refugees. Like me. He said that out loud. And watched his breath dissolve.
[…………………………………………….…]
Portho? him I haven’t hide nor haired. The Major excluded him with a wave of her pencil.
Portho is not likely to challenge you again — not anytime soon.
Portho knows I always forgive him.
Oh, have you had run-ins before? … with Portho?
He isn’t important. Not that no-account. Not Portho.
[…………………………………………….…]
He remembered having to memorize in school “If I could ever be the last leaf upon the tree …” Unlike the initial robin or cuckoo of spring, no one ever noticed when the first twig lost its cover or, during an attack, some unnerved soldier initiated the retreat by dropping his weapon and turning his back. Indians, he’d read, buried their dead on elevated platforms as if they were already halfway to heaven. The sun would bleach the bones the birds cleaned. Skulls could be used to frighten trespassers, he supposed, or warn of their owners’ magical powers.
Fluff from the cottonwoods, as well as those released by milk- and bindweed packets — perhaps the souls of the Indians, too — sailed in the same errant way, scudding along like bits of cloud or bobbing gently at even the rumor of a wind, until suddenly a stave of locust fronds would spin like a dancer down the side of the sky and cause clusters of those seeds to waver out of the way like pedestrians maneuvering a congested walk.
[…………………………………………….…]
Miriam said that she had read in the Woodbine Times of the death of an old and much-beloved professor of music. She thought the college would surely be looking for a replacement. Joey should let them know he was nearby and available. Joseph tried to explain to her the absurdity of her suggestion, but Miriam just grew angry and started blaming him for a lack of ambition. This failure was soon attributed to his runaway father and then, after a moment’s reflection, pinned to most men because most men lived on the love of women like weevils in a biscuit. To conclude, she said: Debbie phoned; she phoned on that damned funnel. Really? Joey was surprised. It seemed to him that Debbie had run away as effectively as their father. Miriam’s glower was replaced by a gleam. Your sister is pregnant. I’m going to be a grandmother.
[…………………………………………….…]
On days of calm, Joseph watched white coils of smoke rise slowly from the coal fires still popular in a town so close to the mines. They were soothing, the way they grew, as if to hurry anywhere would be simply gauche. All over hillside, in icy air, the gray soot steamed straight as a palm until it cooled and gradually smeared the upper sky. The world was coming down with the cold.
Yes, there were so many causes for everything that nothing could be conjectured with any certainty. The apparently hollow firmament was a rush of rivers, streams, creeks, trickles of air, and frequencies of transmission, the earth itself was quietly shifting in its sleep, and through uncountable homes and firesides shivers of pleasure or apprehension were vibrating like the strings of an instrument. At twilight the intensity of every color became an outcry, and a step on the street an announcement as leaves rushed to be crushed by someone’s feet. Every evening, Joey watched the lights come on in much the same order: first in the house with the widow’s walk, then in the yellow cottage and the hired rooms of the bed-and-breakfast; door lights were notes in an expectant score, kitchens warmed the lower floors, while late at night bathrooms played at shining like a second sky. Yet the general scene was solemn, silent; the world went about its customary affairs as it had in other ages, other times. On the page of a picture book there could be peace.
[…………………………………………….…]
You will never gain weight, Joey, even if I were to put you to bed and feed you Würstelbraten by the fat forkful, Miriam said. You’d kick the covers and fever your fingers pretending to play the piano.
If the sausages you thread through the beef were the size of Faschingskrapfen, I wouldn’t need to sit stiller than my chair. Joey used the German to please her. She believed immobility encouraged one’s body fats to cool.
Joey, you ought to practice curling up in cold weather like the squirrels and bears do. For Christmas I will fry you some fritters if I can find a brick of white lard, but here … in this country …
Goose grease, Mother, Joey said, is the answer to everything.
Ach, who can afford a goose … in this country … it is chickens, chickens, chickens. Frozen in bags. In plastic. Their guts in cellyphane like gumdrops. Here everything is plastic, my job is plastic, spoons are plastic. They pretend they’ve made them from beans. Lieber Gott … raincoats are plastic. Old days, we had deer from the woods, ducks from the lakes, grouse, is it? sheep. We had geese.
You had plenty of chickens, too, Mother, didn’t you? dirtying the yard.
What would you know? hah! Britisher! we had chickens, but never chickens, chickens, chickens.
Well, dear, anyhow, the Braten was delicious.
It was all right, though the gravy could have used a plop of yogurt. Still, in this country …