More Tired
I'm more tired than I've ever been in my whole life I tell Squirrel after a particularly harrowing string of days. Go to sleep, she says before hanging up. The next day she sends me a plane ticket to visit her at the Left Handed Captain's house on the shores of Lake Secession.
Packing List
Middle Seat
ipod: shuffle: first song
Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Once in the backyard,
she was once like me,
she was once like me.
Twice when I killed them,
they were once at peace,
they were once like me.
Hold to your gun, man,
and put off all your peace,
put off all the beast.
Paid a full of these, I wait for it,
but someone's once like me.
She was once like me.
I once was better.
I put off all my grief.
I put off all my grief.
And so I go to hell, I wait for it,
but someone's left me creased.
And Someone's left me creased
Tenderness by the handA Good Man is Hard to Find
Once in the backyard,
she was once like me,
she was once like me.
Twice when I killed them,
they were once at peace,
they were once like me.
Hold to your gun, man,
and put off all your peace,
put off all the beast.
Paid a full of these, I wait for it,
but someone's once like me.
She was once like me.
I once was better.
I put off all my grief.
I put off all my grief.
And so I go to hell, I wait for it,
but someone's left me creased.
And Someone's left me creased
Crawford's Country Store
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources: 7 day fishing license 90994213Issued: Crawford's Country Store
$11.00
Yeah, Mang
The back wall of the country store is lined with jigs, lures, weights, hooks. Bait. Tackle. There, the Left Handed Captain, stands, talking crappie and bass with his high school buddy Dixon and another guy who stretches out his hand and says Max Crawford, ma'am with a nod. Their voices are slow and cool and deep and I find myself floating on the surface of this particular lagoon with no trouble at all.
It doesn't take long
Aww hell, Kate, I whisper to myself. Don't you practically do this very thing for a living? Skin is skin and a needle is a needle. It doesn't take long before I can reach into the bucket, fish out a minnow, thread the hook through its lip, and cast in under a minute. I let my line drift, let the tethered minnow think he is leading the charge. And then I reel him back in.
Certain Sensibilities/High Life
We pass the boiled peanuts back and forth across the boat and I marvel how much the afternoon tastes like my childhood in Japan, all salty legumes and dried bits of fish on my fingers. The Left Handed Captain is a man of certain sensibilities, some of which extend to the lining of his intestinal tract, so he leaves the six pack of High Life to me and drinks something from a bright colored can that is supposed to taste like sweet tea, only no sweet tea your mama would make. When we stop to fill up the tank, he comes out of the shack with a giant dill pickle and my heart almost explodes trying to contain the perfection of the day.
All is indeed lost
The land is wooded, with gentle hills and patches of good pasture between the stands of trees. I watch for houses with handsome bunches of cattle and imagine knocking on the doors of these homes and asking for work or if there are any awkward, taciturn bachelor sons who need the love of a good woman. I'm a hard worker, I'd say, and what's more I'll make biscuits on weekdays and pies on the weekends. As we pull into Abbeville the Left Handed Captain points out the Burt Stark mansion and tells me this is where the Confederate Generals decided to surrender, where Jefferson Davis looked at the great price of secession and declared All is indeed lost. I picture his nice full head of hair and high cheek bones. I wonder if any of his great great great grandsons are awkward taciturn bachelors still farming these parts, hankering for a piece of good pie; secretly wanting a more perfect union with the north.
Handful of hushpuppies
Squirrel dips the crappie fillets in buttermilk and flour and drops them into the skillet while I stand over the kettle of bubbling peanut oil and wait for the hush puppies to roll over in their bath. The Left Handed Captain keeps the daiquiris flowing, his mother opens jars of pickled okra, and his father teaches us dice games. We laugh and laugh. At the end of the night I put a handful of hush puppies, heavy as musket balls, into the pocket of my apron and sneak down to the dock to throw my edible rocks at the lake, my only weapons against Secession.
Girls are shitheads, too.
Squirrel and I leave the Left Handed Captain to his book by the falls. We tell him we want to go shopping! and then over our drinks, laugh at how he believed us, two rumpled old gals that we are. We find a bar called The Velo Fellow and I fall for it immediately, for the rhyming name, half french and half english, for the bicycles everywhere, for its cool dark sanctuary. Squirrel tells me all her sadness and worry about the Left Handed Captain and then I tell her of my exhaustion and fracture. The bartender listens as he dries a flat of clean glasses and doesn't even ask before bringing us another round. Men are such shitheads! Squirrel says after we've said just about all that needed saying. Yeah. But girls are shitheads, too I remind her.
Moonshine cocktails
In Greenville we meet the Left Handed Captain's friend from college. He has dark, dark hair and bright blue eyes and the best manners of any man I've ever met, a real southern gentleman. He takes us to a distillery where they make moonshine. The rawness of the liquor burns its way down my throat and I feel the wiring of my insides, already stripped and frayed, spark. Back at his house the southern gentleman makes moonshine cocktails with strawberries and home-made ginger ale while we get ready for the party. I put on my new dress (pink and black flowers, pockets), pink lipstick, a brave face. Outside hail the size and weight of quarters pelts the bathroom window, snapping the dogwood and azalea blossoms from their stems.
This is how the conversation goes
He tells me he is 22, almost done with a degree in philosophy. I catch him staring at my breasts. I am in no mood to be charming and certainly no mood to be charmed.
So you're from Washington, DC?
Yes.
There are a lot of great museums there. Do you like art?
It's okay, I suppose.
You know what city has great art museums?
Do tell.
Florence.
Florence, South Carolina? I've never been.
Oh...um...I mean Florence, Italy. It's beautiful!
Yes. Most of Italy is, I hear.
Do you like music?
Some.
You should listen to this guy called Sufjan Stevens. You'd really like him.
Easy now, Old Gal. Only spinsters call young men whippersnappers.
I bite my tongue and smile for the first time.
Thank you for the suggestion. I'll have to look into that.
Yeah! He's great. Hey...are you on facebook?
Turn away and stamp your feet
It is Palm Sunday and the pews are filled with men in pastel polo shirts and women in sleeveless sundresses. The choir mistress is ancient and perches unsteadily on a stool, looking at the congregation over her beaky nose like an egret gazing over the water. A woman announces from the doorway that there are lemon meringue pies and seven-layer salads left over from the church social on sale, a bargain at $7 apiece. Across the way I see Max Crawford from the country store. The minister notes how good it is to have Sister So and So back after all the trouble she went through with her sugar diabetes. We wave our palm branches during the hymns. You sing hosanna now, the minister booms from the pulpit, but when God's plan doesn't look like what you want do you turn away and stamp your feet and yell CRUCIFY HIM? At the end of the service we file down the aisle and leave our palms at the alter.
After church, sitting on the dock at Lake Secession, I think of the poem
I read every Ash Wednesday,
of reading it this Ash Wednesday, 33 days prior, in particular,
in the poetry corner at a man's house.
I read every Ash Wednesday,
of reading it this Ash Wednesday, 33 days prior, in particular,
in the poetry corner at a man's house.
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us
Secession, rebellion, submission, redemption. We turn and we turn and we turn again.
Teach us to care and to not care
Teach us to sit still
(from Ash Wednesday, by TS Eliot)
Spare half hour
The airport restaurant overlooks a sculpture garden. We eat salads and talk about the weekend in the spare half hour before I must go through security. I look at these two people across the table, people who I love so much, who are trying to figure out what it means to love each other. I wonder what will become of all of us, about all the ways we could die, or kill each other, trying.
Middle seat, again.
Are you coming or going? the man in the aisle seat asks me. Both, constantly. I close my eyes and sleep.--
(for Squirrel, JPB, and JLR).
2 comments:
I feel simultaneously inspired and sad.
this is stunning writing. heartbreaking, beautiful.
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