DRY CRIK Journal

THE NIGHT THEY SAVED UNCLE LYMAN
FROM THE HANDS OF GOD

Berry days.
the whole region
came to town
for the parade –
25 entries,
counting the Lamprey kids
and their red wagon
pulled by two dogs.

The whole day
was noise and colors,
kids chasing kids
and papas chasing mamas.
It was Berry Days,
and juicy, sticky
summer days.
Hot enough
to offer the Bishop
a beer in public.

The boys ate dust
on the diamonds,
fanned away the bugs
in the field
with their mitts,
sweat in their crotches
harsh as corncobs.

That evening
everybody –
everybody
danced.
Four bands took turns
all into the late
cool hours past righteousness.
Lemonade inside –
beer and whiskey out.

Toward midnight
they missed Uncle Lyman.
The men went looking
while the women
gathered the kids for home.
They found him
behind the church,
cross-legged on the lawn
by the picnic table.

Old Mary
the born-again Christian
was unbuttoning
the second button
of Lyman’s blue shirt,
his overalls’ suspenders
were off his shoulders
and spread on the
ground like
angel’s wings.

The men hesitated,
then one of them
called out Lyman’s
name as if
calling a lost pig.
Mary jumped up,
ran around the
church and
out of sight.

Lyman didn’t move.
When the men
got to him,
he was snoring.
They pulled up his straps,
backed the pick-up
and loaded him in.
Nobody told the women.

Not long after,
Born-again Mary
got sent to
the State Hospital
at Blackfoot.
“thought she was God,”
someone reported.
The men smiled
but wondered
just what Lyman
might have missed.

THE WIDOWER’S LAMENT

“Jakob,”
she would say.
Her lips
would come together
like a kiss.

He misses
her most
in winter,
morning and
night,

her warm skin,
her breath,
the honeyed smell
of her wet hair,
the sound of “Jakob.”

Even the flaps
of skin
where breasts
and nipples
had been

he remembers
even the scars
heated his hands
beneath the blankets
in the dark, cold nights.

Now he curls
around an empty space,
warms his hands
between his thighs,
and wakes to sorrow –

his name unspoken.
He touches the cows
like an embarrassed lover
Sips coffee
with his eyes closed.