Fragments from Home

I came to you in the night-

or so Linda told me-

Daddy brought me

Limping in his grief

Bent over in his shame at giving me up.

"Can you take him?

At least until I get settled."

I can imagine Papa

Standing, arms crossed

In the dark corner by the dying fire.

Silent (for he was a silent man).

Unable to comprehend the grief or the shame.

Weighing what a baby would mean

In a household of a wife, three children, a granny woman, and a hired hand,

The youngest girl nearly a baby herself.

"Just til I get settled.

I have a job on a rig in Young county, Texas.

When I get settled, 

I'll come back for him."

Limping and bent he left,

The little girls watching his red tail-lights disappear

Up the sandy road.

So you brought me to your bed

And to your bosom-

A warm sweet place-

While Papa pretended to sleep

With his face to the wall.

In the glow of the remaining embers

You cooed me to sleep.

...

At breakfast I sat above everyone

On a tall metal stool made by

My great-uncle Ray.

Biscuits and gravy,

Sausage and eggs,

Jelly and molasses,

Between Papa on my right and Mama on my left.

I would sing (I was always singing)

Until Papa would say,

"Don't sing at the table!"

Then Granny Eller would smile

And begin to hum under her breath.

Catching her old, wizened face,

I would laugh.

Partners in crime.

...

On the floor

In front of the devouring fireplace

I devoured magazines and books.

Reading the pictures-

an Andrew Wyeth, an Edward Hopper-

Surrounded by the Rosetta Stone of text.

I am still reading pictures

And the Rosetta Stone has been deciphered.

...

The grassless yard

Swept regularly with a broom

(Grassless and swept for fear of snakes and fire)

This was my first world-my kingdom.

Sometimes I would hunker

Under the castor bean plant

Watching my world,

Like Jonah of old, 

Watching what God would do.

My world was inhabited by

Chickens, geese, guinea fowl,

Cats and dogs,

For a time, a pet fox squirrel.

Insects would skitter across the dusty floor of the yard

Leaving their tracks in the sand.

Flowers every where

Planted by my Mama's loving, strong hands.

A cedar and chinaberry tree

Among the old oaks.

Granny would stroll in the cool of the day

Singing "Barbary Allen."

In the fastness of my umbrella-ed plant

I saw

I observed

I watched

I wondered.

And I understood more than

The big people would allow.

...

I became a collector

Of bugs and bones

Of stones (rare on that sandy hill)

And discarded pieces of metal.

I learned to catch bumble bees

By trapping them inside hollyhock blooms

With trembling fingers.

Once I caught a horned toad that

I hypnotized by rubbing his yellow-white belly.

But, in my world dangers lurked-

Copperheads and coon-tailed rattlesnakes,

Cowkillers, and, in the dark places, black widows

With red hourglasses on their shiny bellies,

Goat heads and sticker burs as big as my childish thumb,

Wasps and yellow-jackets,

Cactus spines and rusty nails.

I learned to be careful-

And to be intrepid.

...

Once I went with Linda and Mary Lou

To Papa's spring-fed creek

Under the oaks and sycamores.

We dammed the lazy flow,

Dribbled sand castles from our fingers,

And chased water bugs that skimmed

Over the water's surface

With magic feet.

Provoked by some real or imagined slight,

I threw my aunt's birthstone ring into the sandy current.

It could not be retrieved 

So we trudged home

In silence and sobs.

A keen peach tree switch 

Awaited my naked legs.

As an old man

I still regret the childish, malicious act.

The ring is still there 

Under three-score years of sediment.

...

I rode in grand-daddy Black John"s old wagon

Atop a pile of freshly cut 

Post and Blackjack oak

(the memory of the tannic smell remains)

Singing and shouting

Almost above the roar of the tractor.

A little prince

Happy and carefree

Insulated by the love that surrounded me,

That formed me, 

That would keep me

In the dark and ugly days

That were coming,

Coming,

Coming.

...

On cold nights 

I would sleep with Papa

In the middle room.

"Don't fan the covers."

"Get in my crook."

He smelled of sweat, and tobacco smoke,

And once a week,

Of Old Spice.

Or I would sleep with mama,

Smelling sweet from her talcum and cold cream,

Pulled close to her big warm breasts.

"Don't twiddle my hair," she would say.

...

Some days

I would be watched by Granny.

We would go to the winged-elm thicket

Where she would gather green twigs for her snuff habit.

She would chew their ends into brushes.

Or, on hell-hot days

We would descend into the storm cellar, cool and musty.

The back wall was a tapestry

Of color and reflected light.

Row upon row

Of canned tomatoes, okra,

Corn and peaches.

She would sing with her reedy voice,

And, I, with her.

"Old Suzanna" was our favorite

With "Shall We Gather at the River" a close second.

She would delve into her old trunk,

Her treasure chest

And retrieve from its musty depths

An ancient album in faux tortoise shell.

Turning its thick gold-edged pages

She taught me my history,

My Ancestry,

In pictures.

"That's your great grand-daddy, my husband, Mister Smith."

"That's your uncle Pat in his uniform in France."

"What is France?"

"A place across the ocean."

"What's the ocean?"

"Hush, Shitpot!" ended the interrogation-

For a while.

...

The dominating presence,

The omnipresence in all this world was Mama,

The meekest of dominant women.

("Mama," or "Big Mama" to distinguish her from my

"Little Mama"-now deceased.)

Beautiful.

Stately.

Happy.

A lilting voice.

Omnicompetent-

Calmly planting a flower,

Or weeding a garden,

Or gutting a chicken.

A queen baker and cook.

A seamstress and quilter.

A gardener of flowers and vegetables.

Making a wealth of beauty

With a dearth of resources.

Bearing and raising seven children

And then me, an eighth.

Living with an irascible and hateful mother-in-law 

With kindness and equability.

Plagued with bad health ("Woman Trouble" from too many big babies),

Up first in the morning and to bed last at night.

Cooking two big meals for eight every day.

Laundering on a wood fire in the kitchen yard

With a big black cast iron pot.

Canning produce in the hell-hot summer

Over a wood stove.

Carrying water in the winter whose

Frozen surface had to be broken.

Weeping over her wayward sons.

Worrying over her girls

Holding faith in the face of so much

That beggars belief.

And loving a motherless boy

In her late middle age.

Taking care of me

When she could barely take care of herself.

Teaching.

Training.

Correcting.

Guiding.

Comforting,

And, all the while,

Praying for what I would face,

What I would become.

Building a wall about me

That the shocks and assails

Of the near future

Would bring.

...

Papa and I in the woods.

The hickories are cadmium yellow,

The oaks taking on their russet hues.

The Winchester '90

Is in his hand,

The barrel points like a finger to the tree tops.

"How long, Papa?"

"Just sit tight, Toss."

In the loft of a giant cottonwood

Ablaze with fall

The little thing pokes its head out from behind a branch.

The rifle cracks

And "the hairy-tailed rat" (his description)

Lands in the leaves with a thud.

He takes his long-bladed Case knife

And pierces its hind foot, 

Cuts a green twig and passes it through the wound.

I was the Carrier.

The bushy tail bobbed all the way home.

...

I am surrounded by brothers and sisters

Who are my uncles and aunts.

And surrounded by their loves and hates,

Their knowledge and ignorance.

My own ignorance is lessened

By what they teach me.

My prejudices strengthened by their ignorance.

Johnny Roy would push me on the tire swing 

Under the big oak,

Twisting the tire

Until I was drunk with joy.

The world swirled giddily and mixed with our laughter and shouts.

He would amaze me

With his prowess as a marksman,

Breaking pop bottles with the old

Single-shot Winchester

That shattered into shards

Of glorious light.

Sometimes he would let me shoot.

Linda, the older sister,

Shared Granny's role a s

Keeper of the child.

Next to Mama

She was mother to me.

Her strong maternal self found purchase in me.

(She would not have children of her own for years.)

So she doted,

Protected,

Corrected, 

Instructed,

Spoiled,

And delighted

In the Child.

"Tom Cat" was her nickname for me...and still is.

In her love and care

I learned to trust love and care-

And to take it for granted.

In my near future 

Such love and care would dry up and blow away.

And trust would wither in that desert.

But the memory survived

And in its survival,

I survived.

Mary Lou- five years older-

Was my near sister.

We were grubby colleagues

Keeping boredom at bay by our

Explorations and experiments.

Going for the mail

We ran in our bare feet from shade to shade

Across the tracks of boiling sand.

We watched dung beetles- "tumble bugs"- 

Roll their fragrant balls.

We dug up doodle bugs-

"Doodle bug, doodle but, won't you come home..."

We laughed at Granny

As she circled her lilac bush over and over

In her dementia.

Once, tiring of my company,

She sent me off to the army.

I returned, after a very brief deployment,

A hero.

...

From time to time 

Daddy would come-

Once with a car trunk full of catfish,

Some still heaving with life.

And then, just as quickly, he would go,

Holding back tears

As I released mine with abandon.

Once, he said,

"I'll come and see you next Saturday, We may go fishing."

Saturday came.

Breakfast finished, I sat in 

My little read rocker on the front porch

And watched the road

For his black Ford...

All morning.

At dinner time (the noon meal)

I wolfed down my food

And returned to my post

A little sentry.

Watching and waiting.

Waiting and watching.

The hot afternoon crawled past,

The setting sun painted the road gold.

I sat and watched,

And waited,

And rocked,

Buoyed by his promise.

A big yellow moon

Kissed the horizon.

The twilight faded into blue tones.

In the early dark,

Mama came and with a thick voice said:

"He's not coming honey; he must've got held up. Bed time. I made you a milkshake before bed."

The promise melted in my heart-

The first of melted promises.

(Sixty-plus years later...

It is Daddy's seventieth birthday.

I am hundreds of miles away to the North-

Engaged in business.

I call late in the day to wish him

Happy birthday.

"I watched the road all day long. thinking you might come," he said.)

And he settled

After another marriage.

("One too many," Papa said, "And to that human being if she is a human being.")

He settled.

And, he came for me.

He kept that dark promise.

He came in the night

And Mama put my few things 

In a brown paper bag.

She wept.

Papa stood in the corner by the fireplace,

Red eyed and swallowing hard.

Daddy took me in one arm

And the brown paper bag under the other.

I clung screaming to the door facing.

We drove up the same watched road,

The road home, 

And, now the road away from home.

At the hard road, exasperated at my crying, he exploded,

"Well, go back then!" and put me out in the dark-

The dark that had been my terror before,

But, was now my ally-

My way back to Mama and Papa.

To John and Linda and Mary Lou,

To home.

Through the shadows of the big trees

At the old well I ran.

I could just glimpse

The yellow lights from the windows

Of the old house.

I was almost free.

But, he had followed me in the black Ford

With the lights off

On that familiar road in the moonlight.

I was captured-again.

Home was lost,

Lost,

Lost.

...

Where I was taken in my captivity

Was a world away from what I had known on that hill.

It was a dark place,

And its darkness dyed my soul.

It was a place imbued

With sadness and violence

That has left a chasm of sadness

That remains in my old age.

But, surrounding that pit,

Like fall trees and Mama's flowers,

Were the memories of when

I was a little prince,

Loved and adored,

Taught and corrected,

Made moral by the purity and decency 

Of the people

In that beloved place.

The darkness and sadness

Could not and would not have

The Final, Destructive Word

For I had known life,

And love,

And joy,

In the life and love of

That man

And that woman,

And all the others.

...and I would come to know these things...

Again.