All of Us (16 page)

Yesterday, snow was falling and all was chaos.

I don’t dream, but in the night I dreamed

a man offered me some of his whiskey.

I wiped the mouth of the bottle

and raised it to my lips.

It was like one of those dreams of falling

where, they say, if you don’t wake up

before you hit the ground,

you’ll die. I woke up! Sweating.

Outside, the snow had quit.

But, my God, it looked cold. Fearsome.

The windows were ice to the touch

when I touched them. I got back

in bed and lay there the rest of the night,

afraid I’d sleep again. And find

myself back in that
dream…

The bottle rising to my lips.

The indifferent man

waiting for me to drink and pass it on again.

A skewed moon hangs on until morning,

and a brilliant sun.

Before now, I never knew what it meant

to “spring out of bed.”

    All day snow flopping off roofs.

The crunch of tires and footsteps.

Next door, there’s an old fellow shoveling.

Every so often he stops and leans

on his shovel, and rests, letting

his thoughts go where they may.

Staying his heart.

Then he nods and grips his shovel.

Goes on, yes. Goes on.

This morning I remembered the young man

with his book, reading at a table

by the window last night. Reading

amidst the coming and going of dishes

and voices. Now and then he looked

up and passed his finger across

his lips, as if pondering something,

or quieting the thoughts inside

his mind, the going

and coming inside his mind. Then

he lowered his head and went back

to reading. That memory

gets into my head this morning

with the memory of

the girl who entered the restaurant

that time long ago and stood shaking her hair.

Then sat down across from me

without taking her coat off.

I put down whatever book it was

I was reading, and she at once

started to tell me there was

not a snowball’s chance in hell

this thing was going to fly.

She knew it. Then I came around

to knowing it. But it was

hard. This morning, my sweet,

you ask me what’s new

in the world. But my concentration

is shot. At the table next

to ours a man laughs and laughs

and shakes his head at what

another fellow is telling him.

But what was that young man reading?

Where did that woman go?

I’ve lost my place. Tell me what it is

you wanted to know.

Lighten up, songbirds. Give me a break.

No need to carry on this way,

even if it is morning. I need more sleep.

Where were you keeping yourselves when I was thirty?

When the house stayed dark and quiet all day,

as if somebody had died?

And this same somebody, or somebody else,

cooked a huge, morose meal for the survivors.

A meal that lasted ten years.

Go on, sweethearts. Come back in an hour,

my friends. Then I’ll be wide awake.

You’ll see. This time I can promise.

A little sport-fishing boat

    wallowing

in the rough waters of the Strait.

I put the glasses on him.

Old guy in a canvas hat,

looking grim. Worried,

as he should be.

The other boats have come in

long ago, counting

their blessings.

This fisherman

had to be clear out to Green Point

where giant halibut school.

When the wind struck!

Such force it bent the trees

and caused the water

to stand up.

As it’s standing now.

But he’ll make it!

If he keeps the bow into

the wind, and if he’s lucky.

Even so I look up

the Coast Guard emergency number.

But I don’t use it.

I keep watching—an hour, maybe less —

who knows what passes

through his mind, and mine,

in that time?

Then he turns in to the harbor,

where at once it grows calmer.

Takes off his hat then and waves it

like mad—like an old-time cowboy!

Something he won’t ever forget.

You betcha.

    Me neither.

I look up and see them starting

down the beach. The young man

is wearing a packboard to carry the baby.

This leaves his hands free

so that he can take one of his wife’s hands

in his, and swing his other. Anyone can see

how happy they are. And intimate. How steady.

They are happier than anyone else, and they know it.

Are gladdened by it, and humbled.

They walk to the end of the beach

and out of sight. That’s it, I think,

and return to this thing governing

my life. But in a few minutes

they come walking back along the beach.

The only thing different

is that they have changed sides.

He is on the other side of her now,

the ocean side. She is on this side.

But they are still holding hands. Even more

in love, if that’s possible. And it is.

Having been there for a long time myself.

Theirs has been a modest walk, fifteen minutes

down the beach, fifteen minutes back.

They’ve had to pick their way

over some rocks and around huge logs,

tossed up from when the sea ran wild.

They walk quietly, slowly, holding hands.

They know the water is out there

but they’re so happy that they ignore it.

The love in their young faces. The surround of it.

Maybe it
will
last forever. If they are lucky,

and good, and forebearing. And careful. If they

go on loving each other without stint.

Are true to each other—that most of all.

As they will be, of course, as they will be,

as they know they will be.

I go back to my work. My work goes back to me.

A wind picks up out over the water.

I’ve wasted my time this morning, and I’m deeply ashamed.

I went to bed last night thinking about my dad.

About that little river we used to fish—Butte Creek —

near Lake Almanor. Water lulled me to sleep.

In my dream, it was all I could do not to get up

and move around. But when I woke early this morning

I went to the telephone instead. Even though

the river was flowing down there in the valley,

in the meadows, moving through ditch clover.

Fir trees stood on both sides of the meadows. And I was there.

A kid sitting on a timber trestle, looking down.

Watching my dad drink from his cupped hands.

Then he said, “This water’s so good.

I wish I could give my mother some of this water.”

My dad still loved her, though she was dead

and he’d been away from her for a long time.

He had to wait some more years

until he could go where she was. But he loved

this country where he found himself. The West.

For thirty years it had him around the heart,

and then it let him go. He went to sleep one night

in a town in northern California

and didn’t wake up. What could be simpler?

I wish my own life, and death, could be so simple.

So that when I woke on a fine morning like this,

after being somewhere I wanted to be all night,

somewhere important, I could move most naturally

and without thinking about it, to my desk.

Say I did that, in the simple way I’ve described.

From bed to desk back to childhood.

From there it’s not so far to the trestle.

And from the trestle I could look down

and see my dad when I needed to see him.

My dad drinking that cold water. My sweet father.

The river, its meadows, and firs, and the trestle.

That. Where I once stood.

I wish I could do that

without having to plead with myself for it.

And feel sick of myself

for getting involved in lesser things.

I know it’s time I changed my life.

This life—the one with its complications

and phone calls—is unbecoming,

and a waste of time.

I want to plunge my hands in clear water. The way

he did. Again and then again.

Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping,

as they say here. It’s rough, and I’m glad

I’m not out. Glad I fished all day

on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back

and forth. I didn’t catch anything. No bites

even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!

I carried your dad’s pocketknife and was followed

for a while by a dog its owner called Dixie.

At times I felt so happy I had to quit

fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,

listening to the sound the water made,

and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind

that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.

For a while I even let myself imagine I had died —

and that was all right, at least for a couple

of minutes, until it really sank in:
Dead.

As I was lying there with my eyes closed,

just after I’d imagined what it might be like

if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.

I opened my eyes then and got right up

and went back to being happy again.

I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.

This morning was something. A little snow

lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear

blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,

as far as the eye could see.

Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went

for a walk—determined not to return

until I took in what Nature had to offer.

I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.

Crossed a field strewn with rocks

where snow had drifted. Kept going

until I reached the bluff.

Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and

the gulls wheeling over the white beach

far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure

cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts

began to wander. I had to will

myself to see what I was seeing

and nothing else. I had to tell myself
this
is what

mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,

for a minute or two!) For a minute or two

it crowded out the usual musings on

what was right, and what was wrong—duty,

tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat

with my former wife. All the things

I hoped would go away this morning.

The stuff I live with every day. What

I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.

But for a minute or two I did forget

myself and everything else. I know I did.

For when I turned back I didn’t know

where I was. Until some birds rose up

from the gnarled trees. And flew

in the direction I needed to be going.

from a letter by Renoir