How we Lie

We lie along earth’s dark breast in faint wisping doze tangled like the limbs of those delicate mulberry trees swaying into each other to cast a recluse against the desolate blue sky that condemns this hay field to crack and blister, the dirt mangled was alive. There’s growing peace for now until the shade is swept bare and there is no intimacy left among natures ornaments, so it's our turn once more to bear the burden, no more long summer afternoons to throw down amongst the dirt and dust and give yourself to experimentation the intoxicating nature of the sun where boys could be boys underneath these crooked trees that bear witness to desire without judgement of the way mulberries nectar stains your tongue.

“We’ll never sell” my grandmother struck like a broken record as she haphazardly rummaged through freshly collected mail beside the kitchen counter, the smell of morning dew still encased the sealed papers as it flooded my nostrils infiltrating the caked soot along my face. Taking a glove, I'd wipe in an attempt to be human once again. Looking back, I wish I had the pride of something to hold onto, the good kind of ego. Generations of Hirshfield's passed on carved land and a promise that you’d defy sunset. Life was a tradition to toil away and I wish I could truly appreciate the fruits of this labor. The farm was worth less each day, however, and I knew well my grandmother would bury herself beneath the paneled floor before the rats and developers came through. None of that mattered now though as she gently delivered each offer letter into a shoebox, once it was filled it’d be stored away on a shelf somewhere to be reminisced on but never forgotten, like Christmas decorations. I was sure there were countless shoeboxes, they were my family's answer to the photo album. A testament to the character of our ancestors. This particular box seemed to be given a new life from what once was a boot box, judging by the wear of the carboard my grandfathers, it’d take a week and a half to fill. 

I had no desire to care for this burden like a treasured heirloom yet on empty days where the simple pleasures of freshly cultivated breeze shuffling though cool blades of grass to wrap me from head to toe against feverish delusions so that I may dilute my better senses and wade through stalls of manure in which its violence is welcomed as its natural. To grow up amongst an ideal faltering is a sad thing and worse is the expectation that I may bear a shuddered tradition that has no grasp for respecting my lived experience. If only they knew what happened in hazy afternoon delight where songs were sung among fields of bluebonnets cascading, you’d put it to the torch in the name of your god that decries sin in the seed sown amongst the weeds and briar thorns, the wildflowers. I wonder how my lived experience was so solitary here. “There was a fire” I spoke with disregard and the remnants of another life fell in a pattern around my feet, ash tainted the wood floors. She simply stared into my pale green eyes, now sore red, before sliding a cloth across the kitchen table and moving towards the screen door. The smell of rot had reached the porch and she simply stared at the smoke cloud across the hill. I met Mason in the heat of the last raindrop of June, swaying among stalks of yellow gold now repurposed as bales on this trailer. There was a viciousness to making hay. I remember the rashes that would swarm your arms and legs, striking your skin like needles and the wire indent along your palms proved experience. The dust and mold of mangled earth clouded your lungs and eyes to tears. He would laugh in the amusement of my inexperience; I was foreign to nature’s power. It seemed the field and horizon melted away in an instant, swirling together as myself and the day laborers were carried away, intermingled among the stacks six or seven high squares of yellow and green. I’d later learn a fire broke among the friction of hay bristles and cracked earth. No rich meadows for my leisure I’d never seen anything so seamless did the remanent almost purposely melt away to give way to a new harvest, judging by the jerking halt of the trailer that sent men in a frenzy towards the smoke, the disregard for what took hours, months of waiting only for wire to come undone in an instant as three bales hit the ground. I merely sat and watched in amazement of nature's spite for man.

Uncle Clevland stood on the back porch taking a long drag as grandma brought out a tea jar cooked in the sun and honey glazed glasses with some crackers and sausage on a platter. He’d sit back in one of those ole rocking chairs glued to old porches that creak and teeter to split in two before you ease yourself up again. Uncle Clevland owned horses and spent most of his time racing down at Retama Park, he wore bowling shirts with grease stains on them, yet his jeans were always starched. There was a creek, more of a creek than a river down the hill from the porch with willow trees just about melting as the previous night’s rain slid down the bark. I found myself here often, feet stuck in the mud, skipping rocks to drown in the shallow, there were no fish left here. There’s a rowboat with a hole in the bottom pushed up against the edge of the bank. I couldn’t make out their conversation though I’m sure it had something to do with the fire. Uncle Clevland probably touted blame on how one of those careless boys dropped a smoke in the hay pile and caused all the world’s problems. He said this while sipping honey tea and smothering a camel in the ashtray. He had a scowl when he spoke and oft showed his yellow teeth fined like needles. Grandma just nodded her head and waved that Gypsie fan. The rain came shortly after the fire started and Mason caught a ride back to town from his sister. His father was the butcher and they lived in an apartment above the meat shop. He was good with his hands, had a careful touch for carrying dead weight all day. There was a worker's hierarchy in a place like this. The drugstore owner was more important than the mayor and everyone wanted to be friends with Lou who ran the gas station. Father Teagan was reassigned from the town over after Father Mallory “moved upstate.” People don’t like Father Teagan here; he teaches forgiveness as if it’s forgotten here, received like it’s an insult to our perceived Christian values. Which in this community it is. I didn’t like to be around the house when Uncle Clevland visited, he didn’t know how to talk to kids. He’d listen to the racetrack radio and enthuse me about the ‘parts’ of a woman and chastise me for not remembering the last time he told me, all while trying to pass a sip of the hooch when grandma wasn’t looking. “It’ll make your sticker peck out” he’d say. On those days I walk along the creek past a rusted barbwire fence entangled in bull nettle and poison ivy yet past this fence lay a rugged parched land of yellow gold. Your average farmer like my grandmother sees the sunflower as a nuisance, as too prideful for its own good. Yet I imagine she’s never smelled the head of a sunflower, a scent ever so slight, yet in my opinion it rivals sweetcorn, sweet potatoes, vanilla, or gasoline. Some describe it as dull, yet I find something reliable and comforting in the way the earthy texture doesn’t seek to overwhelm you, but merely remind you. Sunflowers don’t all come in yellow though the ones that look like the sun have always been my favorite. The life even among the dust and still air of particularly hot days. I thought how easily this field could ablaze.

“Warmer than a blister bug in hells pepper patch in July and pouring” George said as he slid an iced glass of coke across the wood bar top peeling with red paint and joined me in watching the skies crash and the rain drip along the stained-glass windows of Minnie’s. He leaned his fat head against his palm while wiping his forehead with the same brown rag used a second earlier to wipe dishes. “If this keeps up, we’ll sure have a flood grounds like concrete n it'll run right off.” George was the owner of Minnie’s named after his wife who passed a couple years ago yet he couldn’t bear to change the name, it’s the only café in town and my personal favorite time waster when Gram sends me into town for any number of errands. I like to think George enjoys my company. My gaze drifts from the patter against the window to a headless oak tree that looks monstrous with only its spindly limb’s exposed through the fog. A line of muddy cows gather beneath the branches sat atop the shoulders of work worn hilltops falling apart with mud, the flesh of the earth and soon there will be no more hills. “We like it when things are hidden from us.” George gestures to the encroaching hot fog. Soon enough the sun will shine. He was a bit of an enigma to me, his one strap blue and white stripped overalls hung tight on his broad shoulders and barrel chest, he towered over the bar top and often had to stoop over rather uncomfortably to work. Standing straight barely came from smacking his head along the ceiling. His face was flat and simple aside from a fat button nose and cauliflower ears stuck out on his bald head. When he spoke, it was in a slow drawl like molasses and a month of Sunday afternoons, like he was half-heartedly rounding his thoughts as they tumbled out and his jaw would drop and hang on certain words. Yet I remember distinctly the University of Texas diploma hung in his office and the stack of books, Beowulf and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and others arranged around his desk. As the green door, also peeling in rows, swung open and George outstretched his head past the interior no smoking sign to light a spark for his Marlboro and watch the rain from beneath the covered porch I stared at him and thought I agreed. There are some things I would prefer remain hidden.

The only place I could see Mason was at the meat shop. I'd often go through the back entrance; Mason’s Pa drove a penny-colored Plymouth two door he kept parked in the back alley. The back of the butcher’s was like an old pool hall where men sung bawdy rhymes, oft in German, as they slung around slaps of meat. Oxe tongue and ribs and links of sausage over their shoulders. I’d crouch as I walked to avoid the backfire of some hulking man in a bloodied apron working a knife in the air and backdown the cutting board then in the air once more. The floors tilled in white were slick with grease and blood thick and dried along those countertops. White light barraged down from overhead rows feeding a headache as I crossed the threshold past a chestnut oak door and up the stairs to the family apartment. Mason’s Pa Mr. Geller was short and thin like a beanstalk; he reminded me of Mr. Peanut in the newspaper. He always wore wide rimmed glasses and thick penny loafers and his head glistened like a polished hard boil egg. Mr. Geller didn’t talk much and preferred the usage of a variety of disgruntled facial expressions. Mrs. Geller was a great big woman who always seemed to have curlers in her hair and smacked her lips when she talked. She had hands like a bear's paw and was always smiling with those great big teeth and always hugging and she’d say Ostrożnie often, always saying Ostrożnie when she hugged me. She scared me when she’d say mój chłopcze, mój słodki chłopcze, my sweet boy and she must have thought I was her son too. 

When I climbed the last steps, and the heaven's sun painted me gold, I heard and saw nothing of them at that moment. Three louvered windows side by side with their red shutters swept open let the sky soak the room and give it life. Crates of produce sat abandoned in the kitchen, potatoes with the dirt and dust still left for taste, carrots uprooted, tomatoes shining beet red. The brown patched couch with that ugly itchy polka quilt and deer heads mounted on the wall innocent in life but menacing in their death and everything else but people and sound. Then all at once Mason emerged from the pantry bearing a butcher's knife, a freshly peeled potato and low rise Levis. The shirt, the white one with holes strewn about in all the right places was now a rag slung over his shoulder. He gave me that wide grin and said some stupid line like “I think I liked you better covered in soot”. Then I'd say, “maybe we should burn down your place next time”. Then we’d both smile and laugh and I’d throw myself onto the couch and watch his muscles twitch as he cooked. That’s how we’d talk to each other, a conversation of one-liners and pretend to be dull for fun. Mason cooked often when Mr. Geller worked the shop till late and Mrs. Geller did whatever she did all day. He made Bratwurst with golden baked potatoes and sauerkraut soup, the only sauerkraut soup I ever liked, steaming with white beans and crisp bits of bacon and green onions all swirling together. Then we’d sit on the couch and twirl our feet in the air and eat. It was silent when we ate, I think it was a mutual fear that whoever spoke over the food would ruin it, neither of us were confident that our conversation could best the meal laid before us.