A Shadow in Yucatan (4 page)

‘
Why hi Steph...we
don’t often see y’here...Come sit down a second...No, Philip,
you’ve had one’

The two year
old diversion makes it easy to begin, to crouch, to squat, to find
yourself sitting with a spade.

‘
He’s really growin
bigger’

‘
Yeah, he eats an
awful lot...No, Philip, mama said...What the hell honey, sure, you
go ahead’

The tilting
toddler sets off towards the man, trips over an exposed root, gets
up and carries on.

‘
Lisa, tell me
really...Is it easy...y’know...on your own?’

‘
What? With a kid?
Sure, it gits like second nature...
Why? What made y’ask?’

‘
I’m
expecting.’

‘
No! Y’poor
thing...Don’t honey...
Don’t consider it...For God's sake git it fixed...It’ll finish all
y’chances...might as well resign...
I know Philip’s gorgeous...but if I hadn’t had him, I’d have done
it differently.’

Philip’s
clamour in the distance is more visual than heard.
Sim hoists him on his shoulder, ignoring the wet pants, hey up,
comes giddy-up galloping over the grass...

‘
There y’are...go to
Mama...she needs ya...hell she don’t...

‘
Sim meet Stephanie,
Stephanie, Sim...Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth, Tarot-tell
time...advice for a girl in the family way?

‘
Hitched to a steady
fella?’

‘
No’

‘
Then I don’t really
see a choice...Ten minutes and sixty dollars is really all it
takes...So, y’ave no money? What kinda excuse it that?
You only have to say the word...Josh and me’ll pass the
hat...’

‘
Thank you’

‘
Don’t thank me.
Belongs t’all of us...S’long Lisa...meet on Thursday Steph?
Now you be good, young man...Ok Josh, wowee, watch it, here she
comes...’

With a Truckee - Hitching
North

‘Bye bye Miss
American Pie
Drove ma Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry...
An good ole boys were drinkin whisky an rye
Singin this’ll be the day that I die... This’ll be....’

‘
Gum?’

‘
Thanks.’

‘
D’ya sing?’

‘
Why d’ya
ask?’

‘
Dunno. Helps
some.’

Everglades
awash with saw-grass to the borders of peachy Georgia; the smoke
grey road cuts the water-flow.
It was laid by the card-sharper’s hand.

‘
Who would’ve
thought there was money in it?’

‘
There are always
them as do.’

‘
You would’ve had to
wan’it bad.’

Yonder St
Augustine. Over the scales of the alligators into the arms of the
ladies with lace fans and satin caps...

‘
Whoops...easy
now... and the silver salver for the collection, our heritage an
all...
Pay no mind to the Seminoles...we pay ‘em fur the wrestlin...an
most of ’em are tame.’

There are bird
hides out on the flats, for them as can stand the mosquitoes, the
ever murmuring midges...
To spy through the heat the spearing fish fowl, drying its
wheel-spoke wings.

The spoonbill
imitates the sloth.

The heron
simply blinks.

Buzzards are
doggone dust in the eye, mayhap you’ll brown up a bear...

The heat is a
white welt on the skin, and the silence a sting in the ear.

'Whew...can you reach
me some ice from the bucket?’

‘
Sure. What you
gonna do?’

‘
I tie it around the
back of m’neck...y’git cool...y’also git wet...’

‘
Y’oughta get air
conditioning’

‘
Try tellin ‘em that
in Vermont.’

T for
Tallahassee. If its neither chrome nor concrete,
it’s hibiscus or a swinging seat.
Evenings are blister crackers, cambric, cottage cheese.

‘
D’ya ever
stop?’

‘
Sure...bouta mile.
I’ll buy ya a sundae...D’ya like coffee ice-cream?’

‘
Prefer
pistachio...coffee’s ok’

‘
Pistachio looks
like peppermint...it’s a cheat...but y’have what y’want’

Into blue-ridge
County, heat haze moonshine, and the mythical hillbilly boys, all
bib-tucker freckle, gawn t’ground in Nashville Tennessee...only the
sparse spine mountains, followin like pickpockets, kickin each
others heels.

On the local
station, nuthin but down-beat denim, nasal as snot...

‘
Ah reckon Ah could
do as well.’

‘
Could you take that
kinda trouble?’

‘
Nah. Helps thinkin
y’could. Ah’m gonna pull off in a while and git me forty
winks’

‘
I’ll take a
walk’

‘
Watch out fer
rattlesnakes...’

‘
I ain’t planning to
get to Nevada’

‘
They ain’t the kind
I meant.’

Vaulting down
from vantage height, she bites the two-bit dust.

‘
Shoulda warned
ya’

‘
I’m ok’

‘
Sure y’are’

Into the scrub
forest where the giant shadow falls...
to raise the bracken battalions with their desiccated bows.
They release the tent-peg silence with one rising ringing
dove...
An abyss of cool acceptance, unquestioning as sleep, oblivion in
peeling bark, shedding the fixed grin...
Wet root, wet back, burying your face in green

God is the
groin and armpit of tree,
(A chrysalis revolves on a thread)
His belly is the sweating earth,
His breast a nettle leaf.
Oh Sepulchre! Stone silence

Maria, comfort
me...

'C’mon let’s git. Five
hours should do it.’

‘
Located conveniently in the suburbs’ it
said.
So it is, in this two-eyes-and-a-nose snivelling street, each eye
with its twitching lid.

Special offer for you
lady, you and your yap-yap animated pipe cleaner, tarred about the
nose and ass...

Is it only your
red-eyed dawg that weeps? Do you knit as we pass by?
Holy Mary...Mother of God... pray for me now and in the
hour...’

Death? C’mon? Who said
anything about death?

Twenty two,
buckle-my-shoe. That mini-brick incinerator ready for
count-down?

That ain’t nuthin but
a postal depot for unclaimed mail, sorted and stacked.

Dachau they thought
was a bone-meal plant.

So it was.

What do they do with
the corpses? Sixteen an hour, eight hours a day, six days a
week?

Holy Mary, midwife,
mother, do you hold a murdered baby by its feet?

‘
Second floor at the
top of the stairs’

Calvary at least would
give you time to think, and if it were a sharp-stone path you’d
need to watch your feet…
God, do you care when we thirst? When we twist?
Doesn’t. Never did. Fuckin doesn’t exist.
Mary, bleedin Mary knows, but she just sits and weeps...
When, oh when will someone somewhere speak?’

‘
That’s right. In
here...Now sit y’self down. We’ve all been waiting for the eighth
to form the group...’

Seven febrile
spinsters sit and suck their cheeks, extenuate, then elongate, in
the bowl of a quivering spoon...
Shouting into silence, sinking into sibilance, with canny careful
grins...
They are clad in colour

All colours
here are black.
All movement is mechanical.
All gestures calculate.

‘
Come in,
sit down, we are expecting thee...
’
The high priest dons his black mass mask, prepares the
surgery...

‘
Say, y’know...I
find it kinda close...I’ll jus open the window so we can breathe a
bit...’

The embroidered
air hums an octave of sea.
the notes are single salted, threaten to dissolve...
benedictus, benedicat, the embedded memory!

Two feet on a
beach with phosphorescent skin,
immaculate with winking rings on nail, on anklebone...
The exploding dawn, the hissing surf, the welling wet mud...
Further off the tip-toe crab that drinks the timely surf, washed
back from apprehension, and the terrors of the earth, to float
beneath a carapace, and withdraw its periscope.

The blue bottle
water, and all that lovely lace, squandered on the menstrual moon,
with her hidden and pouting face.

If torn, it
re-forms.
If tattered, it refracts.
When the scurrilous sea abandons it, it furs the collars of the
earth...

‘
Meaning is
in Being. Unconscious that you Are.
Willing is distortion.
I am neither near, nor far...’

‘Oh God! Thank
God! I could dance or weep.
Oh Lord forgive my anger, blessed Jesu, bear with me.’

'Now honey, never
mind. Have a Kleenex...don’t you cry. You’ll be through in
half-an-hour...it really doesn’t hurt....Now where’s you goin?’

‘
Is this the way
out?’

‘
You looking for the
powder room? Honey, are you sick?

‘
No I feel
marvellous. I just want the street.’

‘
You wanna leave?
But what about your fee? You came all the way from
Florida...’

‘
It was worth it. I
promise. You go on without me.’