The darkness to come
He cornered me early, started talking when I walked into the fire hall and had not let up. A perpetual cigarette dangled out of his mouth and his conversational style was mumbling ramble pierced by awkward silence and intense stares into the crowd. Whenever he made a point, one or both of his arms shot out and swept the air around us clean. Invariably, this resulted in contact, usually with the thick hand or arm of someone beefy and bearded (there were many at the Saturday night dance) whose back tensed up before he turned around. But everyone knew Paulie, and the bearded men laughed and thumped him on the back, hearty gestures which almost knocked him over, before they belched in our faces or leered at me. Finally one of Paulie’s arms landed on my shoulders. He let it hang there, limp and damp. I sent him to the bar to give him something else to do. And then Steven walked in.
Two weeks ago, I slipped out of Steven's truck without saying goodbye. I unplugged my phone and spent evenings into late night on the tiny back porch reading Russian novels and swatting mosquitos, sometimes burning incense as a cleansing ritual. I was leaving for Illinois soon and needed to make a clean break. But there he was in front of me, radiating heat, his faded jeans held up by a cracked belt, his plaid shirt blurred by years of wear. He looked hungry. Lonely. I plunged my free hand into my pocket and gripped the other tightly around my empty plastic cup.
Steven moved closer, smelling fresh as the bay in the morning, his familiar hip almost touching mine. He opened his mouth to speak when Paulie floated back from the bar, a white ghost in a crowd of sweating men in sleeveless shirts and women with wrinkled butterfly tattoos nestled in sagging cleavage.
Blame it all on my roots, showed up in boots and ruined your black tie affair. The band launched into Friends in Low Places. The lead singer's eyes closed as he gripped the neck of the mike. He was pigeon-toed and the points of his cowboy boots intersected at the mike stand. Steven grinned and reached for my hand. As we twirled away, Paulie tipped one beer into his mouth and then another and vanished.
What do you do when the feeling lingers, when someone's touch is like fever against your skin? I was already lightheaded, Steven's hands firm against the small of my back, his chin against my cheek. The song was background to the buzzing in my head. As the band wrapped it up, Steven led me through the crowd and out the door. Outside, it was quiet. We felt no need to speak. The waning gibbous moon was bright, heavy as an egg, the cool air a reminder that fall was imminent. We walked arm in arm to his truck and kissed against the driver's side door until he opened it. I accepted my fate.
The wind tangled through the truck, the fields rustled as we rushed by, and when I shivered Steven pulled me closer. The corn was August-melancholy, still green but going brown at the edges. Spotlit by our high beams, it shuddered in anticipation of the harvest, of the darkness to come. With a crackle of gravel, we pulled into the driveway, briefly illuminating the cottage before Steven cut the engine and helped me out of the truck. He led us to the edge of the cornfield out back. Here the landscape was still, monochrome in moonlight. Framed by dark cornstalks, Steven's face looked serious, purposeful. As he kissed me I thought, "This is happening right now. I am happy right now."
This is part of a short story (in ultra draft format) that I am picking up again. Because I craved the contrast is an earlier excerpt. I keep on editing it and reposting when I see how awkward/unbalanced/sloppy/overwritten it reads. It's been a while since I've written fiction. This is my warm-up.
Image by eggman.
I originally called this post "Fever." For a great version of the song (though with an irritating video), listen to Shirley Horn singing it. It might wipe "Friends in Low Places" out of your mind.
Swann song
I miss the tall ginkgos with their rotting
fruits, the way the berries felt beneath my
feet with just enough crunch, a pleasure to
step on. The sidewalk was covered with ginkgo
leaves, too, bright yellow fans dampened with
the rain. A storm had come through the night
before, had knocked the leaves off along with
the fruit. The air was full of the smell of
them, acrid, rotting, sweet.
We were lost and I was defensive about it,
but if you were going to be lost, this was
the neighborhood to be lost in. The street
was tunneled in by wide brick rowhouses,
voluptuous Victorians with turrets and
whimsical windows accented with stone. Each
house had a set of black iron steps, shiny
and slick, one-two-three-four, up to the
entry. The steps made little caves over doors
to English basements, a term which conjures
up mold and damp and a view of other peoples’
ankles, the angling of a dog’s leg as it
releases a spray of urine against low iron
window bars.
He got angry with me after I got angry with
him and we had an embarrassing fight in front
Martha, a hissy fit that revealed more than
we intended. A tense moment with the map
revealed my mistake and our luck: we were
three blocks from Adams Morgan, a short walk
to a few cold beers and a platter of
Ethiopian food. The three of us marched from
Swann Street to 18th Street, walked uphill
against a thin wind. It was getting dark,
people were bundled up against the cold. We
walked without talking, single-file past the
homeless, the crazies, the young people with
their know-everything attitude. And then we
shared a meal with all the awkwardness of
something being over, knowing we had years to
go before it would really end.
This is from a Round Robin
prompt this week, my (slightly edited)
response to a very different photograph.
Photo by
Antediluvial.
The bitter scent of coming winter
I remember preparing a meal for him in the decay of autumn, after the leaves had dropped from the trees and lay rotting in the gutter and the breeze was turning cold and harsh. I was just 21 years old and could focus on the kitchen, had the time to think about cooking, and it was all still new, too, love and cookery. There was a recipe in Gourmet for roasted fall vegetables. I skinned and hacked a heavy butternut squash, added knobby shallots, garlic, and chunks of red potato, then tossed the vegetables with olive oil and roasted them in the oven. Near the end of cooking, I added slivered sage leaves, the bitter scent of coming winter.
Sage takes well to butter and olive oil, get
crisp and intense, medicinal over gnocchi,
tucked among thick slices of potato. My
husband and I grow sage in our front yard.
The plant sits between the flat-leafed
parsley and the lemon verbena, its silver
green leaves upright, purple flowers still
drawing honeybees. I’ll have to trim it soon,
deadhead the flowers and clean off the spider
webs in preparation for the feasts and
sadness of fall.
Here is the original recipe, from
Epicurious. Add 2 tablespoons
slivered sage in the last ten minutes of
cooking to recreate my more winter-scented
dish.
Roasted
Autumn Vegetables
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
1 pound shallots (about 24), peeled and
trimmed
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cut
into 3/4-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
fresh thyme sprigs for garnish, if desired
In a bowl, toss together the potatoes,
quartered, the shallots, 4 tablespoons of
the oil, the bay leaf, the
dried thyme, the garlic, and salt and pepper
to taste. Spread the vegetables in an oiled
large roasting pan and roast them in the
middle of a preheated 375°F. oven, shaking
the pan every 5 to 10 minutes, for 25
minutes. In a bowl toss the squash with the
remaining 1 tablespoon oil and salt and
pepper to taste and add it to the pan. Roast
the vegetables, shaking the pan occasionally,
for 10 to 20 minutes more, or until they are
tender. Discard the bay leaf and garnish the
vegetables with the thyme sprigs.
Gourmet
October 1990
Image: Attractive sage
bush, much nicer than ours, from
eHow.