Inheritance Quitting time. I walk
past pallets of brick, two-by-fours, sixes under a loose tarp bearing bare wood for rain's warping hands. It's not my job to tie it back down. I stumble over stones, rag weed, send lizards crawling for shadows, and think about the woman we're remodeling for.
This morning I studied her silhouette behind closed blinds.
Arms raised, the form slid into a dress I pictured as cotton, loose, waved when she walked and when she finally came out back, I began framing her new room. I nailed the studs to treated lumber, raised the wall, checked for plumb. She said, I believe my husband will be pleased. At home, my wife and I eat Rubens, potato salad, drink a few
beers. I try to tell her this life is a story everyone knows the end
to, that I refuse to become my father, my grandfather, any of the
men who build homes for strangers to live in, construct rooms of redwood and cherry for others to walk through, install toilets for them to shit in, put up cypress ceilings for them to stare at while making love. She wraps up my hands in hers and says Baby, it's in your blood. After the table is clear, I show my son pictures of homes, point out the carved JBR on the backs of cabinets and bookshelves, tell him about his father and father's
father, and how those names lay on one another like bricks. I describe the holes, the crevices, the way the mortar can break down over
time. Tonight we pretend we are driving my blue S10 past the soul's horizon.
We have two bags in back, a harmonica, and a dead bee on the dash. Sheet lightening and cornflower clouds our company. We head west for Texas sand and Gulf wind, nights so cold we'll think we're still in Ohio with kerosene heat. In dashboard light, I listen to tires hum. He unrolls the window, touches his sloped nose, looks in the rearview. The gas gauge wavers left, lies down. A door
opens. Our footsteps. Sky-flash and rain-buzz. My boy is limp when I
lay him in bed, pull the sheet to his chin. He's soft in dream. The
wind's fist lifts his curtains. In
streetlight glare, I glimpse the dogwood I planted when he was born. Full bloom. Maybe tomorrow, after dinner, I will teach him words, tangible
words, words like mahogany and chestnut. Words he can carve his name into. First published in Bottomfish, now called The Red Wheelbarrow |
