Yonnondio: From the Thirties (12 page)

Nights, sleepless nights. Sad rustle of trees in the unmoving trees and the creak
of bedsprings as the sleepless ones toss.

“How much longer can it last, Jim?” asks Anna. “Six days not down to a hundred
once
. The kids cant stand it.”

“Just the kids? … Whew, if I could get just one cool breath. You’d think we’d get
a little wind out the window.”

“Momma, why cant I sleep?”

Will is sleeping. Will is lying out on his mattress in the yard, under the bleared
stars and the unmoving trees, dreaming of movies, of the shining screen in the darkness
and the gallop, gallop of cowboy horses. Waking to a whining mosquito sting, he stares
into the sky and tries to breathe and feels as if a lasso is looped tight around his
chest a hundred times. Only the trees so high and the cool far stars make him remember
his horde of findings he will sell to Curly tomorrow who will sell it to the junkman,
and the worms he and Smoky will dig by the river to sell; and his hand curves to the
imaginary ball he will buy with his money, and he smiles, tosses restlessly awhile
and sleeps.

“Momma, why cant I sleep?”

In the little room the heat is entombed deathly still and unmoving, sweat almost breaks
out on the walls, and the slit of window is like a hungry mouth that stifled, opens
to suck in the air. Jimmie is moaning, scratching his mosquito bites, doing a dance
on the
mattress with his body, waking and sleeping again, waking and sleeping; and Mazie
wakes from terrible lands of dream to feel the heavy heat still there.

Outside it is better, dragging her quilt out besides Will, but the dark mysterious
night scares her and the mosquitos bite worse and worse and lying there awake she
is thinking of the smoke and fires curling up around the lady in that movie tied there
to the stake, she can hear in her ears the crackling, hot hot, and she is thinking
of Erina, Erina of the twisted jerking body and the fits who dragged away Mazie’s
findings from the dump and moaned Suffer little children the Bible says Children suffer
suffer. She was in Erina’s body, she became Erina, stump arm ending with a little
knob, the spasm walk, the drool. Slapping at a mosquito, missing, then it splotching
squishy under her hand, a lot of blood, she could see it in the vague light, blood;
dragging her quilt back in again.

“Momma, why cant I sleep?”

Ben is sick, Ben cant sleep, Ben is saying, Momma, why cant I sleep, Momma, only he
can’t remember whether he is saying it or not and the air chokes thick in his nostrils,
sits humping up and down on his chest. Fast fast fast goes his heart, where is it
going, it will run out of him, run away. There is a big fire somewhere, that is what
is making it hot, somebody making a fire or it was a fire and he is in the stove,
black all around like something burned.

“Momma, why cant I sleep?”

Down the street they are all lying together, Jeff and Buford and B.G. and Ellis on
one great tick, and they sleep with delicate sharp breaths; and farther down old lady
Dykstra is breathing hoarse and strained, her mouth open, her heart flaying and jumping,
and faint and far are babies crying, well babies, sick babies.

The ice is melting in the iceboxes faster and faster, the melting that is the women’s
despair. Cattle trucks are rattling on the spoke roads to the slaughter houses, thick-packed
lambs and calves and hogs snuffling and swaying and stamping, cattle lowing plaintively.
Far off the freight trains make a sleepy sound; then faster louder faster.

Gurgle gurgle, the river quiet and secret, the weak soiled vapor shawl, a few men
standing and fishing. And for miles and miles the corn in white gold stillness stiff
and parched in black baked earth in the black baked night.

“Momma, why cant I sleep?”

Thoughts of death, in this still heat Mazie waking again and thinking thoughts of
death, doctor doctor will I die yes you
will
and so shall I, the sad rustle of the leaves in the trees with drier sound of coming
fall.

“Momma.” Crying. And momma is coming and wrings out a towel; Ben, Benjy; will she
have to take
him to the clinic? Thank God Bessie is a baby and sleeps, Bessie is all right. There,
Ben, momma has helped the rash, if I hold and fan you and we set outside, will it
help you catch your breath? “Momma, I wish it was mornin.”

The fire is coming into the sky, the still still fire, and suddenly it has blazed
up, the fetid sun, the red red sun. And the dew which is the tears the sweat of the
night is vanished.

Jim and Anna are up, then Jimmie and Bess. Ben is sleeping now and Mazie is sleeping,
no need to wake them, and Will is up, secretly shuffling things under his bed.

“Will you get it for me today, my ’monica?” begs Jimmie as he trundles down the street
with his father. “Tonight will you bring it, tonight?”

“You going to have a harp, make music for us all maybe?” asks Mr. Kryckszi, joining
Jim. “Stay out of the sun today now, little Jim.” Looking at its festering orange
straight ahead. “Not good. A hundred and ten in kill room, more in casings today,
you see. Oven. Maybe already. Afraid for Marsalek, for Mary. I talk to Misho, to Huff,
to Slim. We have to slow it, I tell them, get break too. Misho talk for us to Wild
Man Ed.” Shaking his head: “No good.”

“That prick Ed,” says Jim. “How else’d he make straw boss?”

“Wild Man Ed say Bull Young tell him is no sweat. Bunch lazies.”

“Lazies! That pusher. Beedo
*
hisself, in person.” They are over the viaduct now.

“You see, a hundred and ten—maybe hotter.”

“Be hell,” says Jim, looking down at the plant. “Be hell.”

Hell.

Choreographed by Beedo, the B system, speed-up stopwatch, convey. Music by rasp crash
screech knock steamhiss thud machinedrum. Abandon self, all ye who enter here. Become
component part, geared, meshed, timed, controlled.

Hell. Half-seen figures through hissing cloud vapor, the live steam from great scalding
vats. Hogs dangling, dancing along the convey, 300, 350 an hour; Mary running running
along the rickety platform to keep up, stamping, stamping the hides. To the shuddering
drum of the skull crush machine, in the spectral vapor clouds, everyone the same motion
all the hours through: Kryckszi lifting his cleaver, the one powerful stroke; long
continuous arm swirl of the rippers, gut pullers; Marsalek pulling leaf lard, already
faint in the sweated heat, breathing with open mouth.

Breathing with open mouth, the young girls and women in casings, where men will not
work. Year-round breathing with open mouth, learning to pant shallow to endure the
excrement reek of offal, the smothering stench from the blood house below. Win-dowless:
bleared dank light. Clawing dinning jutting gnashing noises, so overweening that only
at scream pitch can the human voice be heard. Heat of hell year round, for low on
their heads from the lowering ceiling, the plants’ steam machinery. Incessant slobber
down of its oil and scalding water onto their rubber caps, into their rubber galoshes.
Oh feet always doubly in water—inside boots, outside boots. Running water overflow
from casings wash. Spurting steam geysers. Slippery uncertain footing on the slimy
platform. Treacherous sudden torrents swirling (the strong hose trying to wash down
the blood, the oil, the offal, the slime). And over and over, the one constant motion—ruffle
fat pullers, pluck separators, bladder, kidney, bung, small and middle gut cutters,
cleaners, trimmers, slimers, flooders, inflators—
meshed, geared
.

Geared, meshed:
the kill room: knockers, shacklers, pritcher-uppers, stickers, headers, rippers,
leg breakers, breast and aitch sawyers, caul pullers, fell cutters, rumpers, splitters,
vat dippers, skinners, gutters, pluckers.

Ice hell. Coolers; freezers. Pork trim: bone chill
damp even in sweaters and overshoes; hands always in icy water, slippery knives, the
beedo piece work speed—safety signs a mockery.

—All through the jumble of buildings old and buildings new; of pens, walkways, slippery
stairs, overhead chutes, conveys, steam pipes; of death, dismemberment and vanishing
entire for harmless creatures meek and mild, frisky, wild—Hell.

Today—the fifth day of hell-heat added—104° outside, 112° in casings. Seven o’clock.

Ooh it’s so hot, Mazie waking up feeling charred and smoldering, and going into the
kitchen, her legs scabby and blood-splotched with open mosquito sores scratched too
much, and Bess cooing at her, Ben up and in a chair, his eyes looking too big and
too sick.

Not hungry. Her head hurting and hurting. Having to help pit and peel the canning
apples and peaches.

“Havent I done enough, Ma? Cant I go out and play? It’s too hot in here.”

“If you get back ’fore noon,” Anna says, thinking: Better now before the sun’s really
up. “This cannin’s got to get done today.”

But it was even hotter outside. The sun burned on her back, but her head didnt hurt
so much, only the light seemed fire.

Annamae ran out when she saw her. “What we gonna do today?” Mazie asked listlessly.

“The findins! There was new things dumped yes-tidday. Maybe we’ll pass a ice truck
or wagon.”

No trucks; the streets glittered empty like in a dream. And there was nothing really
new on the dump. It smelled sewer, smelled garbage, smelled crap ’cept right at the
river-bluff edge. Grubbing, Mazie found a torn magazine with funny words—a furrin
language, painting pictures, different colors and patterns. “Wallpaper for our dollhouse,
it’ll make wallpaper.” But out of one of the pages, a little girl’s eyes stared at
her, big eyes, black, almost holes, from her face lots and lots of lines going all
kinds of ways, so much lines you couldn’t look at them all but you had to try while
your head got dizzier and dizzier. And scareder. It was something like you, like something…

Mazie tore the little girl and the scary lines into teeny kite bits but didn’t have
any breath to blow them; lay down on her belly looking down over the bluff and fluttered
them away instead. No cool wind came up. The tracks and trains flashed hot; the river
flashed too though a dirty haze lay on it as if it were too lazy to move.

“My momma don’t let me go down by the river,”she told Annamae. “Will your momma? She
says bad
people’s there that hurts girls.” She grubbed with one hand for what turned out to
be an old doorknob to throw down to where she couldn’t go. It landed right on the
open gondola of a sluggish freight train. All the way to California, she thought.

There was Will, going down the road with Smoky. “Where you going?” she hailed, scrambling
after though getting up so fast made her head pound and be dizzier.

“No place.”

“Then I’m going too.”

“Oh no you aint. We dont want no tattletale girls.”

“I am too
goin
.”

“Oh no you aint. Run, Smoke, run,” scooping a handful of pebbles and dirt to fling
at her.

She chased them a block, but then fell and skinned her knee and they were out of sight.
Where the pebbles hit, it stung and prickled like the mosquito bites. She scratched
them all open again, sucked at one on her arm, for she was so thirsty, so thirsty.

The sun seemed to have a big tongue that was licking her back and her head hurted
worse and worse and the lines going in all directions round and round. Everything
looked glassy and wavy in the heat.

Ginella was in her tent. Mazie stood outside the glittering curtains. Katie and Char
were fanning her;
Ginella was Queen Tut or Nazimova, lying on her rug, pretend smoking. “Googly,” she
said languidly, seeing Mazie. “Gwan and melt. We dont want any Miss Uglys around …
Unless you got ice.” Yesterday she had passed their house when Mazie was holding Ben.
“Fishface,” she had said coolly, cruelly to Ben, “Whyn’t you close your mouth, Fishface?”

Miss Ugly!

Annamae was still scrabbling in the pile for stuff. Ellie was there, eating a huge
peach. “My grandma gave it so I wouldnt make noise. She’s sick, maybe she’ll die.”
Proffering a bite.

“My little brother’s real sick too,” said Mazie, wishing she could add self-importantly:
he may get dead too. (I dont mean it, Benjy.) “Let’s go look for a ice truck.”

“No, it’s lucky here,” objected Annamae. Her face was flushed. “See?” Holding up a
tiny round mirror.

“That’s mine,” lied Mazie, thinking of Ginella. “I put it there and now you took it.
Give it back.”

“It’s not either yours. I took it out of a compact, didnt I, Ellie? It was all moldy
and greeny, ughy ughy, and I had to clean it, didn’t I?”

“Give it to me,” swiping for Annamae’s hand. “All right, dont. I dont want to play
anyway.”

Erina was coming. Wavering in the heat waves, dragging along, jerking funny; skinny
with her bones
sticking out like great knobs and the tiny arm stub that hung down and ended in a
knob. Coming closer, coming right to them. Flickering out her faded tongue and the
spit slobbering down. “Pennies,” she said. “Little girls, do you have any pennies?
For ice cream. It hurts. Pennies.”

“I dont have none,” faltered Mazie, backing toward Ellie and Annamae, who shook their
heads mutely to signify that they didn’t have any either, unable to look away from
the running sores on her legs and her pitiful arm.

“What you think you’re staring at?” advancing ferociously as they kept backing. “Pfeh,”
she spit.

Ellie surrendered what was left of the peach to Erina. There was no place but the
river-cliff edge behind.

“I’ll go home and ask a penny,” said Annamae.

“Me too,” said Ellie.

“Payday my papa buys us Eskimo pies,” said Mazie faintly. “I’ll give you mine, Erina.”

“Now,” said Erina. “I’m burnin. God is looking at you. That is his burning eye up
there.”

She will push me over the cliff, thought Mazie. I have to run quick like Annamae,
like Ellie. But it was a bad dream where you couldn’t move. The lines going dizzy.