Читать книгу So Long - Lucia Berlin - Страница 12

In the sixties, Jesse used to come over to see Ben. They were young kids then, long hair, strobe lights, weed and acid. Jesse had already dropped out of school, already had a probation officer. The Rolling Stones came to New Mexico. The Doors. Ben and Jesse had wept when Jimi Hendrix died, when Janis Joplin died. That was another year for weather. Snow. Frozen pipes. Everybody cried that year.

We lived in an old farmhouse, down by the river. Marty and I had just divorced, I was in my first year of teaching, my first job. The house was hard to take care of alone. Leaky roof, burnt-out pump, but it was big, a beautiful house.

Ben and Jesse played music loud, burned violet incense that smelled of cat pee. My other sons Keith and Nathan couldn’t stand Jesse—hippie burnout—but Joel, the baby, adored him, his boots, his guitar, his pellet gun. Beer-can practice in the back yard. Ping.

It was March and cold for sure. The next morning the cranes would be at the clear ditch at dawn. I had learned about them from the new pediatrician. He’s a good doctor, and single, but I still miss old Dr. Bass. When Ben was a baby I called him to ask how many diapers I should wash at a time. One, he told me.

None of the kids had wanted to go. I dressed, shivering. Built a piñon fire, poured coffee into a thermos. Fixed batter for pancakes, fed the dogs and cats and Rosie the goat. Did we have a horse then? If so, I forgot to feed him. Jesse came up behind me in the dark, at the barbed wire by the frost-white road.

“I want to see the cranes.”

I gave him the flashlight, think I gave him the thermos too. He shined the light everywhere but the road and I kept bugging him about it. Come on. Cut it out.

“You can see. You’re walking along. You obviously know the road.”

True. The dizzy arcs of light swept into birds’ nests in pale winter cottonwoods, pumpkins in Gus’s field, prehistoric silhouettes of his Brahmin bulls. Their agate eyes opened to reflect a pinpoint of dazzle, closed again.

We crossed the log above the slow dark irrigation ditch, over to the clear ditch where we lay on our stomachs, silent as guerrillas. I know, I romanticize everything. It is true though that we lay there freezing for a long time in the fog. It was fog. Must have been mist from the ditch or maybe just the steam from our mouths.

After a long time the cranes did come. Hundreds, just as the sky turned blue gray. They landed in slow motion on brittle legs. Washing, preening on the bank. Everything was suddenly black and white and gray, a movie after the credits, churning.

As the cranes drank upstream the silver water beneath them was shot into dozens of thin streamers. Then very quickly the birds left, in whiteness, with the sound of shuffling cards.

We lay there, drinking coffee, until it was light and the crows came. Gawky raucous crows, defying the cranes’ grace. Their blackness zigzagged in the water, cottonwood branches bounced like trampolines. You could feel the sun.

It was light on the road back but he left the flashlight on. Turn it off, will you? He ignored me so I took it from him. We walked in his long strides in the tractor tracks.

“Fuck,” he said. “That was scary.”

“Really. As terrible as an army with banners. That’s from the Bible.”

“Oh yeah, teacher?” He already had an attitude, then.