Читать книгу No Gathering In of this Incense - Mark Rhoads - Страница 11

I

The humming birds came to his feeder

regularly enough that he knew each one

by sight he didn’t name them but recognized

their coloring and habits of interaction

and he looked for them to return each day

to the yellow plastic flowers and the holes

where they poked their little beaks

for a sip of red sugar nectar

and when they didn’t return

and it was clear that they would never return

he would go sit in an old folding chair

under the apricot tree remember

standing near the tower looking east

counting his big silver birds as they returned

noting the numbers on their tall tails

and their peculiar markings

II

I see him mopping up the blood

of an 18-year-old gunner

pooled up against the fuselage ribs

under the wooden floorboards

some of it still frozen in fingered patterns

ice crystals visible on the dark surface

his own blood retreating from his skin

until he is the cabin deep in the woods

doors and windows frozen shut

only a thin curl of smoke in the chimney

and in some interior room sits an old man

hunched over a small stove

warming his cold hands

III

He laid his ear

against the cool skin

of the fuselage

reaching blind

into a handful of wire

cut up

by a 20 mm shell

from a 109

he heard it

like he’d heard it

before

the rumble

of the big

Wright Cyclone engines

the whine

of the 109

piercing the formation

cannons

pounding tracers

leading to the target

a shell parting

the thin aluminum

bursting

in the soft tissue

of the left waist gunner

ripping out

the heart that fueled

his boyish smile

the rattle of bone

flecking

against the metal

near his ear

IV

My father and I climbed the long stairway together

but in his mind we were ascending

a path tangled with vines and giant leaves

all dripping in a sticky stifling mist

heady with the odor of rotting wood

and the calls of strange birds

and as he reached the summit

a familiar smoke appeared putrid

with burnt flesh and punctuated

with the cries of the wounded

I was slightly behind and to his left

climbing the long stairway

into the gallery of Reynolds Store for Men

to sit at Mr. Reynolds’ big oak desk

where I would sign for my wallet-sized

official U.S. government ticket

to manhood