Authors: Raymond Carver
They withheld judgment, looking down at us
silently, in the rain, in our little boat —
as three lines went into the dark water
for salmon. I’m talking of the Hood Canal
in March, when the rain won’t let up.
Which was fine by me. I was happy
to be on the water, trying out
new gear. I heard of the death,
by drowning, of a man I didn’t know.
And the death in the woods of another,
hit by a snag.
They don’t call them
widow-makers for nothing.
Hunting stories of bear,
elk, deer, cougar—taken in and out
of season. More hunting stories.
Women, this time. And this time
I could join in. It used to be girls.
Girls of 15, 16, 17, 18—and we
the same age. Now it was women. And married
women at that. No longer girls. Women.
Somebody or other’s wife. The mayor
of this town, for instance. His wife.
Taken. The deputy sheriff’s wife, the same.
But he’s an asshole, anyway.
Even a brother’s wife.
It’s not anything
to be proud of, but somebody had to go
and do his homework for him.
We caught
two small ones, and talked a lot, and laughed.
But as we turned in to the landing
a light went on in one of those houses
where nobody was supposed to be.
Smoke drifted up from the chimney
of this place we’d looked at as empty.
And suddenly, like that—I remembered Maryann.
When we were both young.
The rare coin of those mint days!
It was there and gone
by the time we hooked the boat to the trailer.
But it was something to recall.
It turned dark as I watched the figure
move to stand at the window and look
down. And I knew then those things that happened
so long ago must have happened, but not
to us. No, I don’t think people could go on living
if they had lived those things. It couldn’t
have been us.
The people I’m talking about—I’m sure
I must have read about somewhere.
They were not the main characters, no,
as I’d thought at first and for a long
while after. But some others you
sympathized with, even loved, and cried for —
just before they were taken away
to be hanged, or put somewhere.
We drove off without looking back
at the houses. Last night
I cleaned fish in the kitchen.
This morning it was still dark
when I made coffee. And found blood
on the porcelain sides of the sink.
More blood on the counter. A trail
of it. Drops of blood on the bottom
of the refrigerator where the fish
lay wrapped and gutted.
Everywhere this blood. Mingling with thoughts
in my mind of the time we’d had —
that dear young wife, and I.
Cutting the stems from a quart
basket of strawberries—the first
this spring—looking forward to how
I would eat them tonight, when I was
alone, for a treat (Tess being
away),
I remembered I forgot to pass along
a message to her when we talked:
somebody whose name I forget
called to say Susan Powell’s
grandmother had died, suddenly.
Went on working with the strawberries.
But remembered, too, driving back
from the store. A little girl
on roller skates being pulled along
the road by this big friendly-
looking dog. I waved to her.
She waved back. And called out
sharply to her dog, who kept
trying to nose around
in the sweet ditch grass.
It’s nearly dark outside now.
Strawberries are chilling.
A little later on, when I eat them,
I’ll be reminded again—in no particular
order—of Tess, the little girl, a dog,
roller skates, memory, death, etc.
I had forgotten about the quail that live
on the hillside over behind Art and Marilyn’s
place. I opened up the house, made a fire,
and afterwards slept like a dead man.
The next morning there were quail in the drive
and in the bushes outside the front window.
I talked to you on the phone.
Tried to joke. Don’t worry
about me, I said, I have the quail
for company. Well, they took flight
when I opened the door. A week later
and they still haven’t come back. When I look
at the silent telephone I think of quail.
When I think of the quail and how they
went away, I remember talking to you that morning
and how the receiver lay in my hand. My heart —
the blurred things it was doing at the time.
Franz Liszt eloped with Countess Marie d’Agoult,
who wrote novels. Polite society washed its hands
of him, and his novelist-countess-whore.
Liszt gave her three children, and music.
Then went off with Princess Wittgenstein.
Cosima, Liszt’s daughter, married
the conductor, Hans von Bülow.
But Richard Wagner stole her. Took her away
to Bayreuth. Where Liszt showed up one morning.
Long white hair flouncing.
Shaking his fist. Music. Music!
Everybody grew more famous.
“Lately I’ve been eating a lot of pork.
Plus, I eat too many eggs and things,”
this guy said to me in the doc’s office.
“I pour on the salt. I drink twenty cups
of coffee every day. I smoke.
I’m having trouble with my breathing.”
Then lowered his eyes.
“Plus, I don’t always clear off the table
when I’m through eating. I forget.
I just get up and walk away.
Goodbye until the next time, brother.
Mister, what do you think’s happening to me?”
He was describing my own symptoms to a T.
I said, “What do you think’s happening?
You’re losing your marbles. And then
you’re going to die. Or vice versa.
What about sweets? Are you partial
to cinnamon rolls and ice cream?”
“Plus, I crave all that,” he said.
By this time we were at a place called Friendly’s.
We looked at menus and went on talking.
Dinner music played from a radio
in the kitchen. It was our song, see.
It was our table.
I lay down for a nap. But every time I closed my eyes,
mares’ tails passed slowly over the Strait
toward Canada. And the waves. They rolled up on the beach
and then back again. You know I don’t dream.
But last night I dreamt we were watching
a burial at sea. At first I was astonished.
And then filled with regret. But you
touched my arm and said, “No, it’s all right.
She was very old, and he’d loved her all her life.”
Walking around on our first day
in Mexico City, we come to a sidewalk café
on Reforma Avenue where a man in a hat
sits drinking a beer.
At first the man seems just like any
other man, wearing a hat, drinking a beer
in the middle of the day. But next to this man,
asleep on the broad sidewalk, is a bear
with its head on its paws. The bear’s
eyes are closed, but not all the way. As if
it were there, and not there. Everyone
is giving the bear a wide berth.
But a crowd is gathering, too, bulging
out onto the Avenue. The man has
a chain around his waist. The chain
goes from his lap to the bear’s collar,
a band of steel. On the table
in front of the man rests an iron bar
with a leather handle. And as if this
were not enough, the man drains the last
of his beer and picks up his bar.
Gets up from the table and hauls
on the chain. The bear stirs, opens its
mouth—old brown and yellow fangs.
But fangs. The man jerks on the chain,
hard. The bear rises to all fours now
and growls. The man slaps the bear on
its shoulder with the bar, bringing
a tiny cloud of dust. Growls something
himself. The bear waits while the man takes
another swing. Slowly, the bear rises
onto its hind legs, swings at air and at
that goddamned bar. Begins to shuffle
then, begins to snap its jaws as the man
slugs it again, and, yes, again
with that bar. There’s a tamborine.
I nearly forgot that. The man shakes
it as he chants, as he strikes the bear
who weaves on its hind legs. Growls
and snaps and weaves in a poor dance.
This scene lasts forever. Whole seasons
come and go before it’s over and the bear
drops to all fours. Sits down on its
haunches, gives a low, sad growl.
The man puts the tamborine on the table.
Puts the iron bar on the table, too.
Then he takes off his hat. No one
applauds. A few people see
what’s coming and walk away. But not
before the hat appears at the edge
of the crowd and begins to make its
way from hand to hand
through the throng. The hat
comes to me and stops. I’m holding
the hat, and I can’t believe it.
Everybody staring at it.
I stare right along with them.
You say my name, and in the same breath
hiss, “For God’s sake, pass it along.”
I toss in the money I have. Then
we leave and go on to the next thing.
Hours later, in bed, I touch you
and wait, and then touch you again.
Whereupon, you uncurl your fingers.
I put my hands all over you then —
your limbs, your long hair even, hair
that I touch and cover my face with,
and draw salt from. But later,
when I close my eyes, the hat
appears. Then the tamborine. The chain.
They were in the living room. Saying their
goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ears.
They’d been through a lot together, but now
they couldn’t go another step. Besides, for him
there was someone else. Tears were falling
when a horse stepped out of the fog
into the front yard. Then another, and
another. She went outside and said,
“Where did you come from, you sweet horses?”
and moved in amongst them, weeping,
touching their flanks. The horses began
to graze in the front yard.
He made two calls: one call went straight
to the sheriff— “someone’s horses are out.”
But there was that other call, too.
Then he joined his wife in the front
yard, where they talked and murmured
to the horses together. (Whatever was
happening now was happening in another time.)
Horses cropped the grass in the yard
that night. A red emergency light
flashed as a sedan crept in out of fog.
Voices carried out of the fog.
At the end of that long night,
when they finally put their arms around
each other, their embrace was full of
passion and memory. Each recalled
the other’s youth. Now something had ended,
something else rushing in to take its place.
Came the moment of leave-taking itself.
“Goodbye, go on,” she said.
And the pulling away.
Much later,
he remembered making a disastrous phone call.
One that had hung on and hung on,
a malediction. It’s boiled down
to that. The rest of his life.
Malediction.
The gondolier handed you a rose.
Took us up one canal
and then another. We glided
past Casanova’s palace, the palace of
the Rossi family, palaces belonging
to the Baglioni, the Pisani, and Sangallo.
Flooded. Stinking. What’s left
left to rats. Blackness.
The silence total, or nearly.
The man’s breath coming and going
behind my ear. The drip of the oar.
We gliding silently on, and on.
Who would blame me if I fall
to thinking about death?
A shutter opened above our heads.
A little light showed through
before the shutter was closed once
more. There is that, and the rose
in your hand. And history.
There are five of us in the tent, not counting
the batman cleaning my rifle. There’s
a lively argument going on amongst my brother
officers. In the cookpot, salt pork turns
alongside some macaroni. But these fine fellows
aren’t hungry—and it’s a good thing!
All they want is to harrumph about the likes
of Huss and Hegel, anything to pass the time.
Who cares? Tomorrow we fight. Tonight they want
to sit around and chatter about nothing, about
philosophy
. Maybe the cookpot isn’t there
for them? Nor the stove, or those folding
stools they’re sitting on. Maybe there isn’t
a battle waiting for them tomorrow morning?
We’d all like that best. Maybe
I’m not there for them, either. Ready
to dish up something to eat.
Un est autre
,
as someone said. I, or another, may as well be
in China. Time to eat, brothers,
I say, handing round the plates. But someone
has just ridden up and dismounted. My batman
moves to the door of the tent, then drops his plate
and steps back. Death walks in without saying
anything, dressed in coat-and-tails.
At first I think he must be looking for the Emperor,
who’s old and ailing anyway. That would explain
it. Death’s lost his way. What else could it be?
He has a slip of paper in his hand, looks us over
quickly, consults some names.
He raises his eyes. I turn to the stove.
When I turn back, everyone has gone. Everyone
except Death. He’s still there, unmoving.
I give him his plate. He’s come a long
way. He is hungry, I think, and will eat anything.