Almanac

one

Fingers fell flat, five little sausages draped in sweat-clung soil. Bones that should have known better tried lifting flesh and skin and fat, set against themselves in twitching protest and dug deeper into the soft dirt spread in circular mounds around freshly planted seedlings. Grow, Little One, he said and chuckled at himself. The soft green head of a tomato vine and all he could do was wait.

Coughed silently as his shoulder managed to work itself around, a single bent knuckle casually tracing the arc of a gardener’s rake and then stopping. Mud eats tomato slices with cottage cheese. Mud eats cherry tomatoes out the carton, maybe dips them in sugar. Bites it in half, dips it in sugar, sucks out the juice. Gooey seeds ran down her cheeks. He wiped them off, even now. You ain’t changed, Mud. A little girl makin a mess of yourself.

I ain’t got pigtails no more. I can wipe my own face. And she grabs the paper towel out of his hand. It rips in two and she speeds away. He’s left holding the frayed edge of the towel, and he twists it around his fingers tight until it hurts. This happens at the last family reunion, and no one sees the resemblance. She is her mother’s daughter. One day in the high chair, Mud beating the table with her little plastic spoon and her mother yelling at him, rah war rah, don’t do your thing, and Mud beats in rhythm and screams and thinks boy, will he do me wrong.

two

The sunken cushion took him with a wheeze. He leaned forward, ran his tongue along the back of his teeth and down the roof of his mouth, slowly pushed air through the thin, tight gap of his lips. He opened the scrap of paper, squeezed his left eye shut and watched as the numbers broke apart and danced across the surface. He ran the fracture along each digit individually, turning them to jumbled shapes he could never hope to understand, folded the paper again, lifted the edge of the telephone, and slid it back underneath.

I’d like to call my son. Been two years and
the car’d be long gone in normal circumstances
by now. Fallin apart to begin with. I’d like to
call my boy. He’d take Mud by the hand and she’d
squeeze him tight and together they rigid like a
pile of cinder blocks. Stone cold eyes. Who you
callin daddy. Why you gonna hurt Mud like this.
She still misses Mama.

He called his son and it rang six times and then clicked to a machine. Well, uh, he said, this is your father. Just wantin to know how things been. He hung up and ate a pizza covered in hot peppers and sausage and he ate it slow like his life depended on it. And then he called Mud and it rang six times and then clicked to a machine. Well, uh, he says, this is your father. Just wantin to know how things been. Called your brother but no answer. I want to right things between us. So I called him. I’m going to apologize to him. Make things right. He hung up and drank some bourbon and then it was time for bed. Thought through the window he could see the tomatoes shimmer in the moonlight but of course this couldn’t be true.

three

Mud nowhere for seventeen days. Where could she have been. She could have been home but not answering his calls. So he went on the train to her home and would maybe call up her brother on speaker phone while he was there and things would be right. Halfway there and the pain. Inched away from the woman beside him. On a train, and she slight, skirt, long dark hair. Eyes across the rain-splattered window. Who she was missing. The man who caressed her sides and married her in a courthouse. The man she never really loved, but he was hers the same and she did not same him. He elsewhere. The same wife of someone new. Look at this, he was dying, and this woman was smooth syrupy thighs leading to what he knows he eats and smells and swims inside. His arm is frozen, and his body is soaked, and he doesn’t want this woman to help him.

four

He fixed himself against the shelves, his palm numb along cold steel, brittle nails tapping feverishly against the cellophane wrapped noodles by his side. He closed his right eye, counted ten small square tiles at his feet, took comfort in this reliability, counted ten more, and dodged a woman pushing her young daughter by. Her arm darted past his head and came back with a package of ravioli, her face shrunken by the smell coming from this crumpled nuisance of a man. His gaze met the confused stare of the child pulling away from him. He felt his mouth open, and he was almost sure words spilled out.

I had a heart attack. I almost died.
As a matter of fact, I did die. But
I had a spiritual rebirth. I woke up
in a hospital, and I was alone, and
I thought, what sort of man am I that
I can wake up alone and almost dead.
A dead man, that’s who. My daughter
came by later, see, I have one daughter,
her mama died a long time ago. She
wanted to see my will. See, there were
two things. I was smoking—no, there were
three things. I was smoking, I was
drinking, and I was having a fun time
with a lot of women. This was my second
chance to get it right. Now, my daughter
been living with this for some time. She
seen me drinking, she seen me come home
with these women. What kind of home did
I make for her? Now she’s older and ain’t
got no job. She gets some money from her
boyfriend, but she always needs money
from me. And of course I ain’t got much.
And I said to my daughter in the hospital,
Mud, I can’t see you, You’re all blurry.
And I thought about crying. A grown man
crying because he can’t find his glasses.
But this was my state. I almost died. Now,
Mud, I says, you treat people irresponsible,
they’ll be irresponsible. I’ve been irresponsible
by you. Your mama’s gone, and I have those other
women, and your brother don’t trust me since
the thing with his car. You’re gonna have to
trust me. I’m gonna give you 100 percent of
my love. Sometimes I only gave you 70-30.
Sometimes I’m sure it was only 60-40. But now
it’s gonna be 100-0. And she came up close to
me, so I can see her—I can see things right
up close. She has her mama’s eyes—boy. Big and
soul and they cut right through you. She says,
Daddy, you gotta save some love for yourself.
I don’t want 100-0. You gotta save some love for yourself.

five

The girl didn’t care about nothing, but the mother, he was a poor forgotten man and she’s finder’s keepers, eh? She invited him over to dinner and he brought a salad and vinaigrette. She makes a good lasagna and the wine was red and fruity. He don’t drink wine but he did tonight and the woman took him to his bed and he knew that little girl was up there sleeping but does it matter that she was sleeping. Mud never slept. After he was in the bed with this woman he got out of it and he called his son and there was no answer, but it was 2 in the morning.

Mud, he calls Mud, he calls her and says Mud I do have love for myself but it is really for you it is not meant for me and please take it I can’t it will do me no good and these women think it will be for them and it will do them no good and Mud says come home and I’ll come home and we’ll talk about this and they go home and the sun is rising and dew on the cherry tomatoes. They pick the tomatoes with the sun creeping up over the roof and they are silent except when they go for the same tomato and their fingers touch. He squeezes her hand and she squeezes the tomato and it bursts in her hand and she scrunches up her face and thinks oh that’s gross and he laughs and runs the hose over her hand only she never picked up the phone.

This was a joint writing experiment I did with Bill last summer.