What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (2 page)

my father caught the baby mice

they were still alive and he

flung them into the flaming

incinerator

one by one.

the flames leaped out

and I wanted to throw my father

in there

but my being 10 years old

made that

impossible.

“o.k., they're dead,” he told me,

“I killed the bastards!”

“you didn't have to do that,”

I said.

“do you want them running

all over the house?

they leave droppings, they

bring disease!

what would you do with

them?”

“I'd make pets out of

them.”

“pets!

what the hell's wrong with

you anyhow?”

the flame in the incinerator

was dying down.

it was all too late.

it was over.

my father had won

again.

in the sun and in the rain

and in the day and in the night

pain is a flower

pain is flowers

blooming all the time.

the 3 of us were somewhere

between 9 and 10 years old

and we would gather in the bushes

alongside the driveway about 9:30

p.m. and look under the shade

and through the curtains at Mrs. Curson's

crossed legs—always

one foot wiggling, such a fine

thin ankle!

and she usually had her skirt

above the knee

(actually above the knee!)

and then above the garter that

held the hose sometimes we could see

a glimpse of her white thigh.

how we looked and breathed and

dreamed about those perfect

white thighs!

suddenly Mr. Curson would

get up from his chair to

let the dog out and

we'd start running through strange yards

climbing 5 foot lattice fences,

falling, getting up, running for

blocks

finally getting brave again and

stopping at some hamburger stand

for a coke.

I'm sure that Mrs. Curson never

realized what her legs and white

thighs did for us

then.

if you gotta have wars

I suppose World War One was the best.

really, you know, both sides were much more enthusiastic,

they really had something to fight for,

they really thought they had something to fight for,

it was bloody and wrong but it was Romantic,

those dirty Germans with babies stuck on the ends of their

bayonets, and so forth, and

there were lots of patriotic songs, and the women loved
both
 the soldiers

and their money.

the Mexican war and those other wars hardly ever happened.

and the Civil War, that was just a movie.

the wars come too fast now

even the pro-war boys grow weary,

World War Two did them in,

and then Korea, that Korea,

that was dirty, nobody won

except the black marketeers,

and BAM!—then came Vietnam,

I suppose the historians will have a name and a meaning for it,

but the young wised-up first

and now the old are getting wise,

almost everybody's anti-war,

no use having a war you can't win,

right or wrong.

hell, I remember when I was a kid it

was ten or 15 years after World War One was over,

we built model planes of Spads and Fokkers,

we bought
Flying Aces
magazine at the newsstand

we knew about Baron Manfred von Richtofen

and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker

and we fought in dream trenches with our dream rifles

and had dream

bayonet fights with the dirty

Hun…

and those movies, full of drama and excitement,

about good old World War One, where

we almost got the Kaiser, we almost kidnapped him

once,

and in the end

we finished off all those spike-helmeted bastards

forever.

the young kids now, they don't build model warplanes

nor do they dream fight in dream rice paddies,

they know it's all useless, ordinary,

just a job like

sweeping the streets or picking up the garbage,

they'd rather go watch a Western or hang out at the

mall or go to the zoo or a football game, they're

already thinking of college and automobiles and wives

and homes and barbecues, they're already trapped

in another kind of dream, another kind of war,

and I guess it won't kill them as fast, at least not

physically.

it was wrong but World War One was fun for us

it gave us Jean Harlow and James Cagney

and “Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-Voo?”

it gave us

long afternoons and evenings of play

(we didn't realize that many of us were soon to die in another war)

yes, they fooled us nicely but we were young and loved it—

the lies of our elders—

and see how it has changed—

they can't bullshit

even a kid anymore,

not about all that.

I came home from grammar school

one day

and my mother was sitting,

crying

there was a woman there with a large nose

and my father was there.

my mother said, “come here.”

I walked over and she said,

“do you love me?”

I wasn't quite sure but I told her,

“yes.”

then my father said to me,

“get the hell out of here.” and my mother

said, “no, Henry, stay.”

“I'll kill you,” I told my father.

“oh, christ,” said the woman with the big nose,

“I'm getting out of here!”

“who do you love?” my mother asked my father.

my father began crying,

“I love you both,”

he said.

“I'll kill you,”

I told him again.

the woman with the big nose grabbed her

purse and ran from the house.

“Edna! wait!” screamed my father.

he ran out of the house after her.

I ran out too.

Edna got into my father's car and

began to drive it down the

street. she had the

keys. my father ran after the

car. he managed to reach in and

grab Edna's purse. but Edna

drove off

anyhow.

back in the house

my mother said to me:

“he says he loves her. did you see her

nose, Henry?”

“yes, I saw it.”

“christ,” said my father, “get that kid
out
of

here!”

“I'll kill you!” I told him.

he rushed toward me.

I didn't see the blow.

my ear and face burned, I was on the

floor—

and inside my head

a flash of red

and a ringing sound.

it cleared. I got up and rushed at him,

swinging. I couldn't

kill him.

a month later

somebody broke his arm in a fight

and it made me

very happy.

my mother, father and I

walked to the market

once a week

for our government relief food:

cans of beans, cans of

weenies, cans of hash,

some potatoes, some

eggs.

we carried the supplies

in large shopping

bags.

and as we left the market

we always stopped

outside

where there was a large

window

where we could see the

bakers

kneading

the flour into the

dough.

there were 5 bakers,

large young men

and they stood at

5 large wooden tables

working very hard,

not looking up.

they flipped the dough in

the air

and all the sizes and

designs were

different.

we were always hungry

and the sight of the men

working the dough,

flipping it in the

air was a wondrous

sight, indeed.

but then, it would come time

to leave

and we would walk away

carrying our heavy

shopping bags.

“those men have jobs,”

my father would say.

he said it each time.

every time we watched

the bakers he would say

that.

“I think I've found a new way

to make the hash,”

my mother would say

each time.

or sometimes it was

the weenies.

we ate the eggs all

different ways:

fried, poached, boiled.

one of our favorites was

poached eggs on hash.

but that favorite finally

became almost impossible

to eat.

and the potatoes, we fried

them, baked them, boiled

them.

but the potatoes had a way

of not becoming as tiresome

as the hash, the eggs, the

beans.

one day, arriving home,

we placed all our foodstuffs

on the kitchen counter and

stared at them.

then we turned away.

“I'm going to hold up a

bank!” my father suddenly

said.

“oh no, Henry, please!”

said my mother,

“please don't!”

“we're going to eat some

steak, we're going to eat

steaks until they come out

of our ears!”

“but Henry, you don't have

a gun!”

“I'll hold something in my

coat, I'll pretend it's a gun!”

“I've got a water pistol,”

I said, “you can use that.”

my father looked at me.

“you,” he said, “SHUT UP!”

I walked outside.

I sat on the back steps.

I could hear them in there

talking but I couldn't quite make it

out.

then I could hear them again, it was

louder.

“I'll find a new way to cook every-

thing!” my mother said.

“I'm going to rob a god-damned

bank!” my father said.

“Henry,
please, please
don't!”

I heard my mother.

I got up from the steps.

walked away into the

afternoon.

all people start to

come apart finally

and there it is:

just empty ashtrays in a room

or wisps of hair on a comb

in the dissolving moonlight.

it is all ash

and dry leaves

and grief gone

like an ocean liner.

when the shoes fill with blood

you know

that the shoes are dead.

true revolution

comes from true revulsion;

when things get bad enough

the kitten will kill the lion.

the statues in the church of my childhood

and the candles that burn at their feet

if I could only take these

and open their eyes

and feel their legs

and hear their clay mouths

say the true

clay

words.

down in New Orleans

this young pretty girl

showed me a room for rent and

it was dark in there and we stood

very close

and as we stood there

she said,

“the room is $4.50 a week.”

and I said,

“I usually pay $3.50.”

as we stood there in the dark

I decided to pay her $4.50 because

maybe I'd see her in the hall once in a

while

and I could not understand then why

women had to be like she was

they always waited for you

to give a sign

to make the first move

or not to make the first move

and I said,

“I'll take the room,” and I gave her

the money

although I could see that

the sheets were dirty and the bed

wasn't made

but I was young and a virgin,

frightened and

confused

and I gave her the money

and she closed the door behind her

and there was no toilet and no sink

and no window.

the room was damp with suicide and death

and I undressed and lay down on the bed

and I lived there a week

and I saw many other people in the hall

old drunks

people on relief

crazy people

good young people

dull old people

but I never saw her again.

finally

I moved around the corner

to a new place

for $3.50 a week

run by another female

a 75-year-old religious maniac

with bad eyes and a limp

and we didn't have any trouble

at all

and there was a sink

and a window

in the room.