For Dia de los Muertos

It’s a hard thing to make such a trip, we know. Such a long drive, but finally you see the first signs for the town, twenty miles now, then the gas stations, fast food. You cross the river, which in August is nearly dry. From the bridge you get a glimpse of stumps and boulders under water half the year.

At the exit, you peel away alone, sorry to leave the companionable flow of traffic. You shared so many billboards with them, and all were signs of hope: clean restrooms at the Exxon, the best steak and eggs in California, air conditioned rooms with cable TV at the Best Western. If only you could keep moving too. But you must let them have all that, even the frigid motel room with blackout curtains, towels on chrome racks, little soaps and obliterating sleep. This is your exit. And none of them, not even the truckers and farmers, can imagine your destination.

You roll up slowly in front of the house, not sure for a moment it’s the one. But there’s the sycamore towering behind it, and the red brick chimney. … Oh, look at the grass. Wasn’t someone paid to keep it alive? And the eaves of the house, always crisp white, are cracked and faded now. The mailbox leans in the weeds.

If you park over the oil stain left by their last Buick, you won’t step out and get it on your shoes. In fifty years, he parked five cars right here, all stout and practical Americans. He believed in oil changes, good tires, power windows. He believed in opening doors for ladies, buckling up, keeping the radio low. When you showed up after college with that Datsun hatchback, he was appalled. He tried not to show it, but you knew.

You hold the screen door back with one hand, and use the key. No use knocking: they can’t be home if they were called away. We can’t stand it either. We share your shock at the rooms stripped of furniture, the shampooed carpets, the nail holes in the walls patched and painted. Intolerable, the empty closets – a few wire hangers – and the echoing silence. It’s sad, the refrigerator open, unplugged, bearing only baking soda through the long hot afternoon.

Or maybe the dog on the rug wakes up and runs to you, licking your hand. You rub her ears as he wakes in his place on the sofa, where he’s nodded off watching the Dodgers and reading the paper over and over again, waiting for you. He’s happy to see you and relieved. You shake his hand as a grandson does, and see his cheeks are just a bit more sunken than before.

He hates to think of people coming down through the pass and all the wrecks there have been.

Trucks lose their brakes you know, and some folks won’t slow down in that bad wind.

I know Papa, but I’m fine.

Did you make good time?

Yes. Traffic wasn’t bad.

You say traffic was bad?

Not bad.

Oh. Well. Your Grandma’s in the kitchen I think. And there’s a rumor we’re going to eat lunch one of these days.

She’s there by the stove in the light from the window. Singing. … Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home! … There’s a pan on every burner and the oven working too; cold water running in the sink and ears of corn rolling in the pot. And you know there’s iced tea in the fridge – brewed in a glass jug on the porch in the sun – with maybe just a little more sugar than it needs. But nothing’s too much or too good. You hug her and she holds your hand.

What time did you leave home?

Oh about seven.

That’s early.

Not too early.

Did you have any rain in the mountains?

No, no rain.

It’s pretty up there when it snows.

Yes it is.

We’ve been up there when it was snowing. You remember?

I sure do.

You remember the snow blowing and traffic jammed to a stop. A man knocked on the car window, trying to sell the watch off his arm to buy gas. It was a hard night, but exciting for a kid.

Well, you can put your bag in the guestroom and wash up if you want. We’ll have lunch directly.

You set your suitcase on the four poster bed with the quilt that she made, and look at the walls. We see photos of aunts and uncles gone to God or far away. Your mother forty years ago, with a lace-collared dress, smiling. There’s one of you and your brother, with Easter baskets, and one of your Dad leaning on a car.

Down the hall, you peek in their bedroom, with their separate beds and nightstands covered with bottles of pills. A strong odor of Ben Gay and a long acquaintance with pain. And in the bathroom, you look at the shelves with niches full of empty blueglass bottles; small ones that once held possibly perfume, and glass figurines of animals and birds. The framed print over the toilet depicts a woman washing her child in a tub, in the days before plumbing.

They never use the parlor but for company. The hard candy in the dish on the table is fused into a mass, a year or more beyond hope. It’s just for show, like the wax apples in a wooden bowl you made in shop class. And the yellow silk roses in a basket on a stand beside the window, which looks out on the street where now the realtor is parking a silver Toyota.

Nothing again, nothing, and no matter how hard you listen, you can’t hear the baseball on the TV anymore, or Papa telling the dog how good she is, or Grandma singing Shall we Gather by the River, poking the pot roast with a fork. There is only carpeting and paint and hot stale air in the room with you. The dog was good indeed, is long since buried by the barren orange tree, down at the bottom of the yard.

Of course we understand, we pity you. We should have stopped you going in. But the offer coming up the walk must be accepted. It’s just a house.

Just A House by Kyle Kimberlin
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Listen:

He always has a hard time facing his complicity with the world when things go wrong. It’s not his fault, being mostly just caught up and swept along. He gets out of bed and opens the blinds. The sun is up and he sees the window is dirty and spattered, giving him a sadly marred view of the old clothesline, the broken concrete patio, the budding plum tree. Any other day, he would deny his part in all of this. Not his fault that God insists on driving the rain at an angle to the glass, nor that the man who used to come and wash the windows died last year on a cot in the YMCA. But just at that moment of dawning denial, he remembers the day.

It is Saturday, and it is his birthday. And it is his custom, on this one day every year, to admit that he is, after all, the one guy who is always around when things go bad. Other people are around for some of it, and some are there for most of it, but when it comes right down to it, he is the greatest common denominator. He blinks through the grime and thinks of the Windex under the sink, and the paper towels hanging there.

What he really wants is to sit on the edge of the bed for two hours or three, watching the news, to see if he can find variations in the reports from yesterday. He always hopes that it will change, that he hasn’t already missed everything that is going to happen. But since it is a special day, he needs to get moving. He is burning daylight.

He eats oatmeal with honey and raisins, listening to a country station. Hears a song about a long haul trucker whose wife died home alone, while he pulled a long load of pipe through a cold Georgia rain. All the trucker had left was a photo in his wallet and the cat they found together at a shelter, who dozed in the sleeper while he drove and drove, trying to outrun his grief. Despite the comfort of oatmeal and coffee, he thinks he can relate.

With his face shaved, belly full and shoes tied tight, he feels damn near heroic. Fit to go forth and stand fast to the winds of personal responsibility. On the hall table, he finds his paycheck. He bends and rubs the dog’s ears and head, reassures her of his swift return, and goes out. And behind him there is commitment in the sound of the lock.

*   *   *

His dog wakes up. She gets to her feet in the space between the couch and the coffee table, where she feels safe when she is alone, and goes to the center of the room. She stands a moment to get her bearings.

It is day. The man is gone. I can smell him not here.

The sliding glass door is open just enough for her to go out and no more. There is a broom handle in the track at its foot.

Across the patio, between the potted bromeliads to the grass. She pees. Back on the patio, she drinks from her dish, turns around three times and lies down on her Astroturf mat.

The world is made of grass and birds, things to eat, and everything is full of sound. It all smells wonderful. There is the fence, and everything beyond it is suspect, a threat. It must be warned to stay away.

I like the park. I watch the birds and growl at other dogs.

For my food, I give the man a great and happy yelp.

A cloud moves across the sun and it grows cold in the place where she lies. From the barbecue she smells the meat that was cooked there last week.

When I was little there were toys and a ball. I went around with the ball in my mouth. I could run from the beach to the trees! Now I have water and food twice a day. I walk between the places where I sleep.

She rises and decides to go inside, back to her place by the couch. She stands and barks her loudest bark, just to hear her voice from the metal garden shed bounce back to her.

*   *   *

A small dark cloud moves across the face of the sun. He notices the dimming as he stands in line at the bank. A potted red begonia in a bright brass pot beside a desk, deep green and reflecting long fluorescent lights. His mother had begonias, roses, mums. She watered them and sang

I come to the garden alone
while the dew is still on the roses

She might have said these leaves have been polished for hours by an angel with a can of wax. His mother believed in angels, loved to cook. He thinks about corn and buttered baked potatoes, until it is his turn.

He hands his deposit slip and check to the teller. They both say good morning and she turns to her computer. That’s when the cloud moves on and lets the sun come out. He notices her hands as she types and lifts a receipt from a stack of blanks.

If he shaved very carefully, her hands would feel wonderful on his face. He looks away before she catches him staring. A young man with a red tie comes out of the vault.

It’s been forever since a woman touched my ears, he thinks.

She would be offended by his thoughts.

If I die on the road home, she’d never know. But if she knew I think her hands are beautiful, she would hate me forever.

 *   *   *

The clock in the tower of the school is five minutes slow. What a shame, he thinks, that no one cares. And another cloud is filtering the light, so that all along the gray-black streets the leaves are shining with yesterday’s rain.

Shining Leaves by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

If you stare long enough at that space between the trees – there, where the row of dry junipers leads the eye down to the field of baby’s breath – you begin to see water. It’s a lake, perhaps a sea, lying peaceful and cool, and not a field at all. You can hope that no one comes to cut it, plow it, leave it fallow for winter. That’s what she sees from the window each morning, when she rises and stands alone in the house.

The sun is just up, strikes the potting shed with its white window boxes, and shines on the hollow bones of the swing set rusting in the yard. There is a mourning dove on the crossarm of the power pole, cooing to himself. This was always her favorite time of day. So calming to stand by the window, looking down at the wet grass. The dog sniffs from bush to bush along the fence. She does not see the dog but watches the dove, as countless short and tiny lives wake to the daylight all around.

In the kitchen, she takes the pan and the plate from the sink – where he left them before first light without rinsing the greasy leavings of egg and black pepper – and puts them in the dishwasher, setting it to rinse and hold. And hold is all she wants to do; just to keep a grip on the life that’s casting her aside with centrifugal force. And maybe she could use a rinse of sins as well; a drop of detergent for her guilt and grief. If only he could help her find such things, and stop insisting that by God he’s tried, that she’s had time to get past it, to drag her heart from the shadows; as much time as he’s had, anyway.

The dog comes in and stops to drink from his bowl beside the pantry door, then comes up behind her where she stands at the sink. She hears him coming, nails clicking on the hardwood floor. He presses his nose to the back of her knee. Ignored, he goes to his bed in the corner and lies down.

It’s true she’s had time, and he’s had time. Time has passed. But two years or two hours is all the same to her, who is always in that afternoon of their child on her bicycle, just a little too big for her, with fat tires and a basket on the front – with books going back to the library – riding away. Always away. So small with the trees behind her, and the gravel drive threading into the trees, to where it turns to meet the county road. That’s where she saw her daughter go, around the bend and into the trees. But she never came back out again. She was supposed to come back. That was the promise. Come back from the library with a new book to read, to talk about. She’d suggested A Wrinkle In Time, which she loved as a girl. Just a little time, then home. Not this tearing away, this disappearing to another world.

I don’t know what do to, she tells the dog. She won’t come home. I told her, straight there, straight home. Be careful, don’t dawdle. But you know she’s followed her nose into the candy store – she can’t resist. Now why are you looking at me that way?

The dog knows. He was here and rushed the door, barking, when the officers came. They came in slowly, eyes down, holding their big hats. She shoved the dog in the hall bathroom and shut the door, and told him stay as if he had a choice. He knew at once. He could smell it on them, the pitiful sadness of it, the rough road ahead waste and shame of it. He could smell the coming grief of it; bitter, musky like a possum running down the fence. So he sat on the lime green rug on the bathroom floor and whined, and fought the urge to howl. The dog knows his lady is lying.

He should just leave us here, you know. We’d be alright, she tells the dog. My sister would come from Santa Fe and live with us. I could get a job. He doesn’t care about me and how my heart is broken. It would be good for you, too. She’s got two dogs and we have so much room, a yard that’s big enough for twenty dogs.

The dog digs with his teeth at the hair between his toes, stands and paws at his bed, then turns around and lays back down again. He’s watching her.

He doesn’t care. He only wants to leave. Just sell the house, drag up and go, he says. And how can I? You tell me that. How can a mother do such a thing? She’s much too small to be alone. The days are getting short again, and gray and cold. She’ll be hungry, tired from the ride. I have to be here when she comes.

Lying To The Dog by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under the
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States license, available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.