Youth, Love, Death

Youth: When I brought the News

I thought I was going to be a millionaire. With morocco-bound books for looks everywhere. And even a drive that went for a mile through the trees and little lakes and lilies. So in my best serious face I stood in line for the job and told the nervous man I'd work very hard.

Every afternoon loaded down I set off on the outskirts of town folding papers with a sleight of hand and flicking them across the gray porches. And even in an open window for a laugh which I thought I needed. And as I proceeded along this frontier road picking berries, grapes and peaches I said hi to the rival newspaper boy and told him he was underpaid and you'll never make the money I've made. But it was a lie.

Because Friday I collected and most said come back tomorrow and I objected but turned my sad face away and mumbled it was only a dime. And you'd think it was a crime every time I rang a doorbell and even those with chimes and added up the weeks they owed. In there they sit warm and reading, with smells of steak and pizza pie. Out here lips chapped with frost I might die, dancing on my cold toes. There's only so much I can stand, you savage hearts.

But I was glad at times along here in the sun on these quiet roads where some buildings were built in the sky out of trees and near the river. The green the grass the cliffs and hills and bridges bent over the trains. Cool summer halls to click heels and spin down the stairs on my educated wrist. Noisy with the news. And deep in my own unsavage heart I loved nothing better than delivery.

And Saturdays in autumn afternoon kicking through the leaves I came to ring the bell and knock on the door and say I beg you pay me please. And the heads with after-lunch eyes came out too beaten to refuse. In my little book I marked them paid and with some quiet charm of mine I tried to make them feel it was not the end of the world. And maybe there would be a new woman's page soon. Or a competition for a prize.

But some heartless called me liar and lingerer. Napping under trees, banging on doors and a whistler in halls. I whispered something about freedom and they shouted don't come back no more and slammed the door. I walked away with young tears melting with despair. They'd all be sorry when they found me Christmas Eve shoeless and starved, dead in the snow.

And weeks went by till one Sunday dawn in black winter I brought my pencil. I wrote across the front page how does It feel to cheat a Child. And tucked the paper carefully in the door. Monday creeping through the streets I saw the raging faces watching from windows everywhere and a man on a porch shaking a fist which he said would break my head. And fearful but forceful I told him drop dead. And ran.

I prayed for spring when I could sing once more and steal the cooling cookie from a window sill. With the sun such a fat red thing up in the sky. And count my blessings instead of money. But things were sad instead of sunny when Mr. Brown screeched up in his sporty car. I wore my slack jaw. He wagged a finger, confound you D, the News is deluged with complaints, your public relations are a scandal, the customers claim you're a nuisance and a vandal and did you write how does it feel to cheat a child? I did. Confound you D, don't you know the customer is always right? Come along with me and apologize. I said no. He said so, you're fired.

Never to bring the news again. Or trap a customer on the street or write my editorial across the front page. A failed millionaire with no morocco-bound books for looks anywhere.

Love: Pins and Medals

Sitting back here with flowers on the curtains, cologne in the air and tinkling music with all the comfort.

My first real girlfriend I met not far from here by saying hello and she looked in my face for signs of disrespect. In her brown sweater and skirt and all I wanted was to know her to go for a walk up and down the paths around the school. Where spruce trees grew in their blue tips to touch the windows and there were little hills and mountains for miles around and lakes clear and magic. And I'll never forget her or when she touched me on the shoulder asking for company to come with her for cake and cola. I said sure. In her house I sat on the edge of my seat while she brought it in. She stood in the middle of the floor and yawned. I put my mouth deep in the chocolate cake, cream and soft eating. Otherwise I was shy worrying whether I said what she wanted.

I whistled going home that afternoon and jumped up to sit on a mail cart thinking of her looks and waiting for the train. And later in our little nipping at love I asked her with her handkerchief twisting in her hands to come to a dance. And arrived that evening in cool late spring, a bright tie to make my suit feel new. She was dressed in blue with pleats round her skirt a sort of endless thing I thought, her legs rich round and 17. With two dollars and a bath and my feelings tied up inside me we stepped out from the shaky car of a friend saying hello to all the others under the maple trees. Down steps between palms to where the band was playing. I danced better than ever before. She was looking up at my face and sometimes putting hers on my shoulder. While they dripped candle wax to make funny bumps I tried to be talkative and tell her what I wanted to mean. When the rest went to a bar for drinks we sat alone in the back of the car waiting till she took a cigarette, lit it and threw it away so that we were kissing.

I never kissed anyone like her before except just once quickly somewhere and the next day we rushed back to her house hand in hand stopping only for six colas for the cake. By days we saw each other in history class and lunchtime went to have milk and crushed egg sitting on the grass. I threw my feet up carelessly anywhere while biting my bread saying I failed everything last month but didn't care. She said she wanted some sort of ring or pin of mine to wear. I gave her a medal I won throwing the weight. I was afraid to ask her for something. She showed me how nice my medal looked hanging around her tan neck. And going back through the breezy green corridors to class she said she couldn't let me have her sorority pin because it was too expensive. I went to physics where the teacher was always doing tricks like making things jump or go the other way. He called me sunshine boy because I sat by the window with my shoes off and I thought that when he made these explosions and sent stuff flying round the room we were just supposed to get a good laugh. I didn't hear him when he said it was magnetism and the atom.

One day as I stood in the sun outside school she came up to me and said she couldn't go out with me or see me Sunday because she'd been asked up to Yale for the weekend. So I said well I better have my medal back then. She said if you feel that way all right. She put her head up and bouncing all the brown curls of her hair, walked away.

On my way here tonight when I got off the train to get the bus I saw her waiting with her hands folded on her diaphragm which went out like a shelf over her pregnancy. I was so changed that when I stuck my face where I was sure she could see it she just looked and that was all. Standing there in the chill near the cemetery the bus came. I thought watching the tall white tombs go by and she waddling through her motherhood that it was a pity I could not have come one night to her bed during the dark of these last few years.

Death: A Grave

I was on my back with a book at midnight in Connecticut. A storm filling the Housatonic river and a fox barking at the lightning coming down into this mountain of trees. They said on the last page that they buried Herman Melville on a rainy day in Woodlawn Cemetery on the outskirts of New York.

Later in the month I got on the train and went to the city to visit. Through Danbury, Stamford and New Rochelle and along the Bronx river where years ago they could sail a battleship. Now it's dammed, small and smelly from sewers. Lovers come down here in the summertime. And kids swim in the parts that are deep and twins once dived off a ledge and got stuck in the mud and never came up again.

I went up the steps of the station, stood on the bridge watching the cars on the new highway. All that smoothness, comfort and curves, Roll you everywhere on the soft wheels. I went through the big iron gates and up into a cool stone mansion with typewriters and quiet pleasant people. A young woman took me to a chair and table and went through the files. She came back with a card and a map and drew a line along the winding avenues to an X which she said was on top of a hill.

I strolled by all the marble, granite and bronze doors, late blossoms and lovely trees. In there richer than I am alive. A man in a gray uniform saluted and smiled. I climbed a little hill up fern-and-ivy-lined paths and stopped under a great elm tree. There were four stones, one with a scroll and feather pen. Through the trees I can see the mausoleums and the stained glass and doors for giants. And down there on the New York Central tracks the trains are roaring by to Boston. I came here to see if it were true and it is. And as everywhere the gravestones say the voice that is silent the hand that is still or even my Mabel I'll never forget you till we're together again. I went reading and wandering until I went out the gate again.

A few blocks away I stepped into a bar called Joe's. And sat up on a high stool and ordered a glass of beer during this dark afternoon. A smell of cheese, oil and tomato pies. Some lazy jazz out of the jukebox. Behind the bar a man with his white sleeves neatly rolled up on tough hairy arms said I've seen you here before a few years ago maybe five or six, I remember your face. Yeah I remember you, I never forget a face. Got a memory for faces. He brought me a shot of whiskey and another beer and said this is on me. When I left he said yeah I'll see you again.

I walked back to the station and waited for the train. Others were going by bound north for suppers in the country, swaying on the center tracks with lovely lighted windows, white napkins and fresh evening newspapers. Some were aluminum with red stripes. Once in a while a woman would look at me from a train to Chappaqua, Valhalla and Pawling.

When I got back and drove along by the dark empty fields with round shadows of cedars and down my own lonely lane through the pines and further to the little clearing in the woods I heard the Housatonic rumbling below and saw three deer standing in the headlights. I had spareribs with onions and lemon juice and a bottle of beer. After that I wrote a letter to a man in Europe and said:

Will we all

Be watering

Lawns

Some time later

In Connecticut?