Whirligig, A Short Story by CB Adams

Whirligig was originally published in River Styx literary magazine.

Whirligig was originally published in River Styx literary magazine.

By CB Adams

On the anniversary of her father's death, Evan and her mother ate his favorite dinner in silence. Pork chops poached in sweet cider. Thick stalks of wild sparrow grass baked with butter in tin foil. A bitter salad of field greens and fiddlehead ferns dressed in hot bacon drippings, white vinegar, and a pinch of sugar. Angel biscuits. No dessert, but black coffee.

There was nothing to say of the man who was not there—better to taste his absence, let it fill you.

A small votive candle on the table was left unlit as an act of remembrance, and the evening and the darkness gently and completely rose around them. From a cobalt vase, a single stem of lily of the valley, cut with her father's Japanese singing shears, suffused the room with its fragrance. In the stillness the meal was measured by the clink and scrape of their silverware on the heavy porcelain places. Evan felt close to hearing the droplets of sweat slide down her glass filled with amber iced tea.

Her mother looked at her and whispered, "My cherub, my crystal, my love," then bowed her head and fell asleep at the table, having tasted little of her meal. Evan carefully wiped a thick tear from the old woman:s eye, where it hung like a glycerin pear, and carried her to bed. The furious cancer of an unknown origin left little to carry, and the chemotherapy had thickened and poisoned her tears. Evan placed her mother on her side and unpinned her thin, gray hair. Then she molded a single cotton sheet around her, shrouding her from the evening's cooling air. As Evan bent to kiss her mother's cheek, she noticed the spot where the tear had been was now red and angry. At the doorway she looked back and realized her mother's life was being pulled from her one breath after another, the way it was rumored that certain cats could draw the breath from a baby. Breathe slower, she prayed, holding her own breath. She closed the door and left her mother for the night.

From the back door of their house on the outer road, Evan heard the drone of the mercury vapor light over the ham door. She crossed the driveway, her boots crunching and turning white in the pea gravel, then she stood in the stilipoint of light as moths, gnats, and black flies swam in lazy loops overhead. The air smelled like it could rain. Evan's father, who named her after himself, loved weather, especially storms, because they made you feel more alive.

Inside the barn, she slowly opened the door to her father's workshop. She sat down in the dark in a lawn chair with frayed nylon webbing and stared at the silhouettes on the workbench. She smelled the gassy odor of the dark green tarpaulin covering her father's whirligigs. Evan had not looked at them since the day of his funeral, when she pulled them from the front yard because her mother said, "It wouldn't be right."

She reached into the drawer of the small desk and took out the bottle and the empty Mason jar he had kept hidden there. She looked at the night through the window then poured herself three fingers of the store-bought whiskey, which he always called "shine" because he liked the sound of it. From the drawer she pulled another honk, this one filled with strangely cold water, drawn from a spring deep within the Mingo Swamp, and poured it into the jar. "Always drink the shine on a moonless night," he told her once, never explaining why.

Evan quickly drank her father's bourbon, feeling its hot smoke burn within her, and thought of the times when he brought her here to see a new whirligig he had built. He would blow on it to show her how it worked, then she would follow him outside as he placed it among the others. He stood among his creations and urged her, "Come on. Come on. Be Daddy's little whirligig." She would spin for him until she was too dizzy to stand.  She would fall and he would laugh as she lay clutching the ground. 

One by one, she took the whirligigs from the barn and set them up in the yard. When she was done, she stood among them, her arms outstretched, and turned slowly around. The wind picked up and she heard the whirligigs spin into life. Evan twirled faster, turning her hands like airplane flaps, waiting, wishing to be airborne.

After she fell tinder the massive oak, Evan turned and looked into the hollow place in its base. She reached into the nook. Her arm disappeared into the tree, the way a veterinarian has to run his arm to the shoulder to rum a breech calf inside its mother. She brought out the twigs she had placed there years before. They were smooth now, polished and brittle like old chicken bones. One for each time. There were not many, only a handful, but they were enough. She threw them into the night air but did not hear them fall.

She turned on the whirligigs. She hated her father's creations, controlled by the wind, tethered to the ground. Her boot found each of them in the darkness. The man chopping wood, the waving lady, the mallard with wings like propellers, the clown flying the ridiculous airplane. Evan was not done. She fell upon the pieces, allowing them to pierce her skin. She felt again her father pushed against her like a strong wind. His angry hornet words — kiss it, kiss it. And hot liquor breath that made her cough and gag when his mouth was on hers.

The ground held her for the rest of the night. In the morning, she knew her mother had been standing unsteadily on the porch, staring at her and the remains of the whirligigs for a long time. She sat up and looked at her mother. She knew. Her mother knew. The air was still. Evan looked away from her mother and returned the twigs to their secret hollow place. Next year seemed a long way away.

Inspired by Darkwood & Dedicated to Musician David Darling

Poses, A Short Story by CB Adams

Poses

C.B. Adams

     They meet at a college art class called Anatomical Drawing. Lying on his side, his head on his curled arm, he is the model providing the anatomy. She is here because it is required of all art students, even though her major is photography.

      The skritch-skritch of charcoal on paper relaxed him and now he dozes naked on the platform, tired from studying all night and taking an early morning exam.

      She reaches out and lightly touches his hip bone. It has fascinated her, that part. Beautiful, the feel of the bone, pushing knob-like against the smooth white skin that flowed around it.

      He opens his eyes and pushes himself up to a sitting position. She backs away, embarrassed.

      "I'm sorry," she says. "I just...I don't know."

      He rubs his chest and stretches. "Forget it." Then he stands, and she watches as he steps into his fluorescent green shorts and pulls on his t-shirt.

      "Can I?" she hesitates. "Can I ask you something?"

      "Fifteen bucks an hour," he replies.

      "What?"

      "That's how much I get paid to do this. Everybody asks."

     "Oh, no, that wasn't it. My question, I mean," she says. "I wanted to know if you'd pose for me." When he doesn't respond, she adds: "I'm a photographer. A student, anyway."

      "I don't think so," he says, trying to smile. "No more pictures." 

      "But you're...don't take this the wrong way...I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're so…pretty.  That’s the only word.  And I could pay.”

      He shakes his head.

……….

 

      “Of course, I guess—no.  I knew that he was always something special, something beautiful.  He's such a pretty boy," his mother cackles. "But then, every old hen thinks her chick's the best." 

       The guest nods and looks at him. His mother continues. "I hoped we'd win, but you know those contests, you never know what they're looking for, but whatever it was, they found it in him."

      Then she adds: "Oh, don't get me wrong, it hasn't always been a blessing. Sometimes when I took him shopping, he'd get spooked walking through the cereal section and seeing those rows of his face staring back at him. He'd run back to the car, screaming. Lord, those days...."

      She reaches for a thick orange scrapbook with yellowed clippings sticking out at odd angles.  The visitor glances at her watch, then the door, then to the framed cereal box on the wall.  On the box the boy is smiling and lifting a spoonful of flakes toward his mouth. The visitor remembers buying her children that brand.

      The guest looks at him again. He looks away, and when his mother starts explaining how she started the scrapbook when he won the cereal contest, he leaves. He's ten now and has been on boxes of Fruit 'N Flakes since he was four. His mother sent a picture of him smiling to a promotional contest and his picture won. Since then, countless people have stumbled into early-morning kitchens and tipped his face into a bowl, Fruit 'N Flakes spilling from his head.

      Only now he's too old. The sponsors have held another contest. For publicity, they had him choose his successor. But not really. They told him who to say.

     And now his mother spends her time talking to people like the guest about those exciting years when he had his own section in the grocery store.  “More famous than the Gerber baby,” she says, talking to anyone who might be able to use him now. 

     He meets her again at a student art show.  Her photographs cover one corner of the gallery.  She does the standards of college art photos—kitchen utensils on a chopping block, birds on a power line, a cluttered desk, rust stains on the wall of a building, sheets blowing in the wind. She does them well, but he notices there are no people in her pictures.

     "You like them?" she asks, waving a trembling hand across the static images. This is her first show and she's nervous.

      He smiles and nods.  She smiles back, then turns to straighten a print on the wall.  He returns later and asks her for a date. He likes her because he thinks she is different. She says yes, remembering the day she touched him in art class.

      The photographer is nice and and the woman in charge of the children seems pleasant.  But he’s fourteen and thinks he’s too nice to be working with the smaller children.  He’s ready to start growing body hair, looking and dressing older.

      “It’s time to change,” the woman says to him.  "You're doing underwear next." He's bashful about being nearly naked. This isn't like cereal boxes. He checks the door twice before taking off the dungarees and sport shirt he modeled first. Then he unwraps the scratchy white briefs. He pulls thin strips of tape from the sides, then puts them on.

     The woman impatiently knocks on the door. "Are you ready yet?" she asks. "It's time to go."

      He opens the door a crack and says, "They're too big. They fit like bags. I need a smaller pair."  The woman pushes the door open. "Let me see," she says, sticking her hands inside the waistband and pulling a little.  He feels her long, cold burgundy nails against his first wisp of pubic hair and steps away.

      “This is the only pair the store sent over,” she says.  “They’re fine”. 

       Two weeks later, the supplement is printed in the Sunday newspaper. The pages are slick, splashed with full color. The background is white. He has one foot on a wooden box; his elbow rests on his knee. To the careful viewer, his penis is visible--just barely--through the gap in the leg band. The paper gets dozens of calls, mostly from men.

     He refuses to go to school for weeks. He spends his days listening to his mother talk to the agent, the agency, the lawyer, and representatives from the newspaper. His story is detailed on the local evening news, and covered by the newspaper itself. His mother wants to sue everyone so he can have a nest egg for college. There's a settlement of some sort, but after the lawyers and the agent, little comes from his embarrassment.

     He hears her talking to a friend on the phone. When she lowers her voice he knows she's talking about him.  He steps closer to the bedroom and listens while she describes the muscle pockets on the sides of his buttocks.  She calls them “butt dippies” and laughs with the friend on the phone. 

     Later, he takes a bath, sliding down so that only the tips of his mask-like face are above the water: forehead, nose, cheek bones, lips and chins.  Through the water he can hear faucets and toilets being used in other apartments. 

     She comes in, leans against the door and looks at him, then she looks down at her own softer, fuller body. She never asks him what he sees in her, because his piercing blue eyes and sharp, angular good looks scare her, as if they might one day cut her into long strips, like film. They've been living together for a couple of months now, but still, he fascinates her--his blondness, his beauty. She studies him whenever she can.

     She remembers watching him apply the lanolin-scented depilatory to his chest, abdomen, and legs after returning from New York.  She had enjoyed his smoothness when they made love, as he slipped over her body like a new sheet.  Now, the hair was coming back, sharp and dark, and she wants to ask why he wanted to be hairless then, but she won’t because he refuses to talk about that part of himself.

     Still submerged, he follows her with his eyes as she walks over to the tub and kneels down. Her finger is cool to his skin as she traces LOVE on his warm, slick abdomen. It's a game they play, like trying to figure out vanity license plates.

     When she asks, "Well, what is it?" the words and the movements of her mouth don't seem to match, like an over­dubbed foreign movie.

      He raises his head from the water and props himself up with his elbows.  “Don’t talk about me like that.”

     "Like what?" she asks.

     “Personal stuff, like butt dippies.”

     “Oh, come on.  That was just Carol.”

      “It was personal and telling it was like giving it away.” He lowers his head back into the water.

     “Talk to me, will you?" she says. 'What does that mean?"

      From underwater his words are loud and push hard against his ears. "It's like the Indians who believed that if you took their picture, you'd steal their soul. Something is taken. It always is."

      Until he boarded the plane he hadn't been that anxious, but now that he is seated and looking out the small, oval window that smells of old liquor and cologne, he wants to be in New York instantly. He left her sobbing on the concourse, her face wet, red and puffy. She said the night before that she was afraid he'd to go to New York and never come back. He told her it was only a photo shoot--money. He wouldn't have to do art classes for a while.

     He thinks he sees her now, standing with the others behind the large, nose-smudged window.  She looks like she is crying at her own reflection.

     His agent had sent his portfolio to the magazine and he was chosen to be New College Man of the Midwest.  Everyone said this was the plum assignment—to be only twenty and featured in the largest men’s fashion magazine.  Other assignments would inevitably come, his agent assured him.  Soon, he’d be national.

      The magazine arranged for him and all the other young men to stay on one floor of the hotel. When they all meet that night, he thinks they will feel like a team because they share the common bond of the good-looking. They are all beautiful people, pretty boys. They don't sit, they fashion¬ably slouch. They don't lean against a wall, they strike a pose. And, they don't even think about it.

But they look at him, searching for an indication--a moment perhaps. Some talk about Judy Garland and Helen Morgan as if they were alive. He remembers Garland from those old black and white films she made with Mickey Rooney. "Hey kids, let's have a show!"

      Things go well, but the last day of the shoot, everyone is ready for it to end. They are relieved when the art director gets the pictures he wants. They decide to celebrate. The evening quickly fades to black.

      The next morning, his head pounds and there is a strange taste in his mouth. He tries, but cannot, remember much from the night before. He looks down and sees his roommate's arm across his stomach, then catches a sliver of memory about being in a bar filled with men.

      He pushes himself out of bed. His head is dizzy as he weaves toward the shower. His flight home leaves in two hours.

      "How're you doing? You OK?" his roommate asks be¬fore he reaches the bathroom. He can't answer the question. He steps into the shower. As the water hits his porcelain body, he catches his breath.

      Later, as he steps back into the room, he sees another of the models talking with his roommate. 

"Some night, huh?" says the model. "We're leaving New York talking. The new Glam Boys."

     "Yeah," says his roommate.

     When he doesn't answer, the model asks, "How's things?" He shrugs and continues packing.

     "He isn't talking," his roommate says.

      As he walks down the hall, he hears one of them shout after him. "See you in the funny papers!"

     On the plane he sits alone. He is positive everyone is looking at him. They all know. When a man touches his arm to inquire whether the seat next to him is taken, he pulls away and says yes. The contact seems primal and lecherous. He is heavy with the attention he always receives, unable to escape from under his own attractiveness:

     Across the aisle, a mother sits with her two children: a boy and a girl. The little boy is cute, but he has a flesh-colored bandage catty-cornered across his forehead. Good, he thinks, always keep that bandage on. Keep away from perfection. The mother smiles at him. He looks away.

            "I want you for my final project," she says. It is the first time she's asked him to pose since that day in art class.

     He says no.

     She asks why not and he replies, "It will change things between us."

     "But I need you," she said. "A photograph is only as good as its subject."

     "A picture is only as good as the photgrapher."

     "Why won't you help me?"

     "Why me?"

      "Because people look at you. I've seen them."

     "So what. They cry at movies, too," he says.

     She begs, then hectors, him for weeks. Finally—on the day his agent called to say the New College Men feature didn't get him any new offers--he agrees to pose for her.

     They came to this far corner of the state looking for a place to shoot his picture. A portrait in natural light was the assignment. They made love even though he didn't want to and she did. Now he lies on his back, shrinking. Lately he has been distant, slipping away. She knows. That's why she wanted the lovemaking, to connect with him, touch him.

     It was over now, and she felt unashamed for tickling the bottom of his neatly defined pectorals, running her warm fingers across his rippled stomach and deep into his jeans until he acquiesced. It was something she wanted from their day together, from the light wind softly blowing through the trees, and most importantly, from him.

     She sits next to him on the blanket, fondling the webbed cotton strap of her camera bag, twirling it first one way then the other. He stares into the trees above.

     "You know," she says, "you could be in one of those coffee-table books. You're David. Adonis. A great fallen statue."

     He rolls his eyes. She opens her bag and takes out her camera. She peers through the viewfinder, and he cov¬ers himself with his hands.

     Later, she finds the place for his portrait. Here, the young man in her photograph will be slouching against a tree, his head slightly bowed, his eyes melancholy, but somehow evocative. His body will be lithe, taut, and supple. At rest, but capable of action.

     "Just stay where you are," she says, squinting through the camera. "I think I've just about got you the way I want you. Keep that look."

      The day's final rays of sun filter through the trees at a low angle, illuminating his tousled, golden hair.

      "This is it," she says. "Don't think about anything but this instant. Think only of this photograph."

      As she presses the shutter, he raises his head and sticks out his tongue.

     "You ruined it!" she screams.

     He smiles as clouds roll overhead. The sun slips down. The light changes. That image is gone. There is nothing left to take.

Author's Note:

I once saw an anthology of poems by Sylvia Plath. One section caught my eye because it was called Juvenalia. I like that term for one's early works. This story certainly fits into this category. It was my first published short story. It was also chosen as one of the winners in the Missouri Writing! competition sponsored by the Missouri Arts Council back in the mid 80s. They printed a promotional poster, which I have since lost. But I remember being embarrassed by the black and white photo of a mule in a muddy pasture. It was not enough that the competition name had an exclamation point, as if to tout the fact that Missouri had writers. They also made it appear that those of us who won the competition were something out of Deliverance. Still, I present this bit of juvenalia to demonstrate my potential and perhaps how little I have followed through on it.

  

 

Mumbly Peg, A Short Story by CB Adams

Mumbly Peg

by C.B. Adams

Originally published in River Styx literary journal

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     My grandfather had beautiful hair. Everyone said so. Even other men. Still, when he turned fifty, my grandfather stopped going to the barber. He was like that. He could go along for years and then, for no apparent reason do something like stop going to the barber. My grandfather let his hair grow long, until it fell in lazy waves past the back pockets of his overalls. Sometimes he kept his hair in place with a sterling silver napkin ring. Usually, he braided it. When I was eight years old my grandfather's braid scared me because it reminded me of a second spine growing from his head.

     Because my grandfather's hair grew slowly — no more than a couple inches per year — the color of the braid told the story of the past twenty years of his life. At its end, where the braid hung by his wallet, the hair was thick, coarse, and dark brown as a buckeye. It sprouted from the end of the braid like a feather duster. These were the years when my grandfather still worked as an engineer for the Cotton Belt Railroad. At its midpoint, the color faded abruptly to gray. This marked the death of his wife, my Grandma Marvel. I dreamed once that the tears, which everyone said he withheld after her passing, had flowed instead through the thin straws of his hair, bleaching the color of each strand. The newest hair growing from his head was almost translucent — the color of Scorch tape still on the roll. These were his retirement years.

     My grandfather taught me the game of Mumbly Peg one evening when I was twelve. My parents and I had driven south from St. Louis, where we lived, to Illmo, Missouri, my parents' hometown. My grandfather had invited us to a small family reunion at his house, where he lived alone. My great-aunts, Josephine and Ruthann, had spent the afternoon cooking in his kitchen. We had fried chicken with skin the color of mahogany, scalloped potatoes smothered in Velveeta cheese sauce, fresh sliced tomatoes, green beans simmered with smoked hamhocks, and long green onions served from Mason jars filled with ice water.

     When dinner was over, my father, grandfather, and two great-uncles left the table to sir outside and talk. My mother called this unnecessary activity tuneweaving. 1 remained and fiddled with my food as my mother and great-aunts cleared the dishes and discussed family news. I didn't want to leave. I loved listening to the women talk. My mother pointed me toward the back of the house.

     Outside, I stood on the screen porch. My great-uncles, Lyle and Bertram, sat holding hands on the porch swing. They were my grandfather's younger identical twin brothers, though they looked older. It was difficult to understand my great-uncles when they were together because they communicated in a mishmash language which only they understood. They offered me something that sounded like "Ma-Hallow" as I looked around.

     Through the screen door 1 saw my father leaning against a black walnut tree with a cigarette in his hand. A bourbon glass was propped in the crook of the tree. My father neither smoked nor drank hard liquor at home.

     My grandfather sat on the stone steps leading to the porch. He was wearing the sterling silver napkin ring, part of a set he and my grandmother received as a wedding present. A fancy letter "B," for Benson, our family name, was engraved on its surface.

     The sun was setting. The cicada chorus had warmed up and was joined by a chirring section of crickets. I opened the screen door and let it slam behind me, hoping to startle my grandfather. 1 knew better. My grandfather had the disposition of a mountain. I should have remembered Thanksgiving the year before when I spiked his iced tea with salt instead of sugar. With the round blue container tipped over his glass, I became the Morton Salt girl on the label, pouring and pouring, until the bottom was thick with a saline sediment. Throughout the meal, I asked my grandfather how his tea tasted. Each time, he would pick up his glass, take a long drink, and then smack his lips.

     "Best iced tea 1 ever had," he said, showing not one whit of displeasure.

     I should have also remembered the time I grabbed his braid and tried to climb it like a rope. My grandfather stood stock still with his arms crossed. 1 lifted my feet off the ground and swung from the braid, imagining his face drawn taut as a drum, his eyes pulled back like a Chinaman’s.

     "Say uncle," I yelled. "Say uncle."

     My grandfather did nor make me stop. He did not say uncle. He waited until my arms gave out and I fell to the ground, then he walked away.

     The screen door banged twice before settling into its frame. My grandfather scared into the deepening woods behind his house. I reached out and turned the napkin ring as though it were a motorcycle throttle.

     "Vrooin 'room," I said, twisting the ring.

     "Hey, boy," my grandfather said.

      My grandfather never called me by my name, which was the same as his and my father's. We are all named George Washington Benson. My name is George Washington Benson V, an unavoidably pretentious name, so everyone has called me Wash. My father went by George, my grandfather by GW.

     I sat next to my grandfather and watched as he reached behind his head and adjusted the napkin ring. Then he repositioned his hair by twisting it around his wrist. I had seen girls at school do the same thing. He wore a blue chambray workshirt, buttoned to the top, with a bolo tie made from a perfectly fluted Clovis Point arrowhead. When 1 was younger, my grandfather would tell me how he had stolen the arrowhead from the skull of an Indian skeleton at a secret burial mound which only he knew about. He said the arrowhead had special powers that protected him from being scalped.

     My grandfather leaned away, reached into his pocket, and opened his hand just below my chin. "You ever see one of these' he asked.

     "Its a knife," I replied.

     "Not just any knife," he said. "A Case."

     He held out a three-Waded pocket knife. It's blackened bone sides were smooth and shiny from the years it had sloshed inside the pocket of his striped Pole Cat overalls, the brand favored by railroad men of the Cotton Belt. At one end of the knife was an oval nameplate with the word "Case" barely visible.

     "It's got four X's on the blade. It'll hold an edge forever," he said, opening the knife's blades and pointing out the X's at the base of the longest. "They don't make 'cm like this anymore."

     My great-uncles murmured and nodded in agreement from the darkening screen porch. To demonstrate the knife's sharpness, my grandfather rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. The skin on his forearm was covered with thick white hairs that curled like hoarfrost. He neatly shaved two hairs from his forearm. He blew them from his arm, and they floated down and landed on the dark stone pathway.

     "This was Poppy's favorite knife," my grandfather continued. "You look a little like him, boy. You think you look like Poppy?"

     I shrugged. Poppy had died when I was nine. He had always seemed like an old man to me, someone who called me Tallywhacker or Scallywag. He spent most of his time sitting in a brown leather chair with a seat cushion indented like the head of a scoop shovel.

     "I miss that old man," my grandfather said. He turned his attention to the knife in his hand. "Yessir, Poppy gave me this knife the night you were born. He told me, 'Take good care of this knife and pass it on when the time comes."'

     My father was still leaning against the tree. "I didn't know that," my father said, kicking one of the walnuts on the ground. It was green and black, like a moldy ping pong ball. "You never told me that story•."

            "Well, it wasn't your damned pocket knife, now was it?" my grandfather replied. What he really meant was, "That's what you get for marrying Sandra and moving to St. Louis."

     "You never change, do you, Dad?”

     My great-uncles let out a phlegmatic, manly cackle. Then my grandfather held out the knife to me and asked, "Want it?"

     I nodded and extended my hand. He placed the knife across my palm. It was warm from lying near his body and felt heavier than I had imagined.

"I'll play you for it," he said, taking the knife back. "You ever play Mumbly Peg?"

     I shook my head. In St. Louis we played games like Little League, Kick the Can, and GI Joe.

     "The game of Mumbly Peg is an ancient Indian game," my grandfather said, looking up at my father with disdain, as if he were a parenting failure for not showing me how to play it. "It's a game of concentration, skill, and knife throwing, in that order."

      My father began to protest, "Dad, I don't—"

     "Now, listen up," my grandfather continued. "The game of Mumbly Peg is played sitting down." He opened one blade on each end of the pocket knife. "You begin at the top of your body." He set the point of the knife just above his forehead and held it in place with his finger on the top blade. "Then you flip it." The knife spun from my grandfather's head and landed point first between his feet. "If it sticks in the dirt, it's a good throw. If it doesn't, it's the next fella's turn."

     "What's a Mumbly Pee I asked.

     "I'm getting to that," my grandfather replied. "Go over to that sycamore and cut me a piece of branch thick as a pencil and about so long." My grandfather indicated the length by showing me the distance between his extended thumb and forefinger. He pulled the Case knife from the dirt, closed the shortest blade, then handed it to me.

     When I came back with the stick, my grandfather took it from me and stripped off its bark with the knife. In the dusk it was white as an old chicken bone. Then he whittled a sharp point on one end and held it up.

     "This is the Mumbly Peg," he said. "Push it into the ground as far as you can."

      I put my palm over the end of the Mumbh., Peg and sec my weight on it.

     "That's good enough," my grandfather said. "Let's practice a few times before we start."

     We sat cross-legged, facing each other about three feet apart. The dust was soft and brown, like Hershey's cocoa powder.

     "You start," my grandfather said, handing me the knife.

     I balanced the knife on my head and felt the blades prick my scalp and forefinger. I flipped the knife. It cut my head and landed on its side.

     My grandfather leaned over and rubbed his thumb over my wound. "Put some spit on it and be careful next time," he said. "Try again."

     This time, I was aware of the knife, its points, and its heft. I was careful to hold it in place. Instead of flipping it, I gently guided it off myhead, the way good divers arch and fall from the high platform to the water below. The point stuck.

     "My turn," my grandfather said. The knife flew easily off his head and into the ground.

     "That's not so hard," I said.

     "We're just getting started. This time, you start with the head. If you make that, you move to your right shoulder, then your left, then the elbows, knees, and finally both feet. After that, you can pick any other part of your body."

     He said, too, that whenever I missed a throw, it was his turn. If he surpassed the throw I missed, I had to pull the stick out of the ground with my teeth while saying the words Mumbly Peg, and then we'd start over again. Each time one of us got the peg, it would be rapped deeper into the ground. The loser was the one who couldn't pull the peg out.

     Aunt Roo came outside and asked, "Who wants what for dessert?" She took our orders and went back inside.

     From far away, rising through the orchestra of cicadas, crickets, and locusts, came a diesel locomotive's blare, half trumpet, half French horn. My grandfather looked toward the west end of town, where the train station and roundhouse were located.

     "The Mo-Pac. Right on time," he said.

     "How can you tell the difference?" my father asked.

     "Just do," my grandfather replied.

      My great-uncles agreed with voices that moaned in the high voice of truck tires on hot, black pavement.

     "They all sound alike to me," my father said.

     "That'd be right," my grandfather replied after a long pause.

     My father reached down and picked up a walnut. Then he threw it at the tin roof of the shed in the back of the yard. We listened as it hanged on the roof, rolled down to the gutter, traveled the length of the shed, and exited at the downspout.

     "Good thing it rolled out," my grandfather said. "Otherwise you'd he up there cleaning my gutters."

     My mother and great-aunts arrived with our desserts. My mother brought gooseberry pie to me, my Father and grandfather. Up on the screen porch, Aunt Joe looked at my great-uncles and said, "Well, look at the love birds. Get up, Berrie, and let me sit next to my husband. You go on over there and sit with Roo."

     My great-uncle Bertram turned and kazooed a message to his brother. When they started laughing, Aunt Joe said, "For Pete's sake, get over there where you belong."

     Slowly, my great-uncle Bertram stood and walked over to sit next to his wife. Aunt Roo gave him his piece of pie, hut he and my great-uncle Lyle looked longingly at each other across the porch.

     "Lawzee, you two certainly pine for one another, don't you," Aunt Joe said to no one in particular. "How'd you ever put up with these Siamese Twins growing up, GW?"

     My grandfather, sitting on the concrete steps outside the screen porch, spat into the dust and waved off Aunt Joe's question.

     "You can't understand these two," Aunt Joe said, pointing to my great-uncles. "And you," she said, indicating my grandfather, "you don't hardly talk at all anymore."

      My grandfather reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Zane Grey novel.

     "Don't you ignore me, GW," she said as he thumbed to the page with a turned-down corner, "or I'll cut off that pony tail and heat you with it."

      My grandfather didn't care. He loved Zane Grey books. I remembered standing before the bookcase in his woodworking shop, staring at his dog-eared paperbacks. He had hundreds, maybe thousands of Zane Grey books. Many times he had shown me the covers with hard-faced cowboys. He would always say, "I've read 'em all. Many more than once." Sometimes, when he would show me one of his favorites, his eyes would get a faraway look and he stopped talking. On the cover would he a cowboy staring off into the barren desert. My grandfather would forget I was there as his finger traced the lines on a cowboy's face, as if the cover offered a secret Braille message to all those who were lonely cowboys at heart.

     My grandfather put down his book. He looked me in the eye and made a show of eating his slice of gooseberry pie. "Nothing better than a slice of eyeball pie," he said.

I looked down at my slice and saw it staring hack at me, unblinking.

     "Eat up, boy," my grandfather said. "It doesn't get any better than this."

     We finished dessert. The light in the darkening sky made everything look deep, old, and mellow. My mother walked over to my father beneath the black walnut tree. We all watched her, even my grandfather, who had returned the Zane Grey novel to his back pocket. My mother took the cigarette from my father's hand and put it to her lips. I had never seen my mother smoke before. She elegantly and deeply drew in the smoke. Then she exhaled, and the smoke hung in the air like laughter. My great-aunts crossed their arms and stared at her. My great-uncles winked at one another. Then my mother picked up my father's glass in the crook of the tree and drank the remaining whiskey. With this, even my great-uncles began ro pay closer attention. My mother leaned against my father on her tiptoes and kissed him long and fully. I held my breath until I became light-headed. That's how long the kiss lasted. The big band of cicadas, crickets, locusts, grasshoppers, mosquitos, June bugs, and all of the insects in the night rose around us as my parents began to dance. 

     I finally took a breath. They didn't really dance, but they could have. That's how powerful and potent their kiss was. They could have dipped and twirled to the dusky

song rising in the falling light. They could have mamboed, waltzed, tangoed, cha-chaed, and mash potatoed to the rhythmic syncopation of a million insects in a jitterbug jam session. Within that kiss was the life my parents had made for themselves away from their hometown. Unwinding from that kiss like a familiar movie came the essence of my parents played our in overlapping, quick-cut scenes: the first time my mother watched my father in his baggy basketball jersey glide into the air and make a lay-up, the moment she asked my father our on their first date, that first electric kiss, followed by high school homecoming dances, graduation, an athletic scholarship for my father, and admission at the state college for them both. Then more homecoming dances, late nights warmed by strong black coffee and long conversations about the meaning of life. And, too, lavalieres, roses, and basement fraternity parties with warm kegs of beer from the land of clear blue waters. Then "Pomp and Circumstance," the "Wedding March," a secret honeymoon, and singing "Moon River," long nights of making loud love, their defiant decision to move away, that first night's rest in St. Louis followed by first jobs and a first mortgage and a brand-new '59 Chevrolet Bel-Air. A little later, the birth of a son with the preposterous name of George Washington Benson V (at least I hoped I was in that kiss), homemaking, and making a home, love handles and Sara Lee Pound Cake, a miscarriage and a dozen and a half alumni weekends, Thanksgivings, Christmases, New Year's Eves, and Roman candles by the score on the Fourth of July.

      It was all there in that kiss.

     When it was over, my mother said, "I love you, George," then she turned to enter the house.

     "I love you, too," my father replied.

     My mother turned to me and asked, "Want to come inside and help me pack up?"

     My grandfather replied, "We're playing Mumbly Peg."

     "Yeah," I said, "I'm gonna get Poppy's knife."

     My grandfather slid the napkin ring from his hair and let it fall around his shoulders. Then he began to braid his hair with the dexterity of an old beautician.

     He said, "Boy's got to win it first."

     This caught me by surprise. My father always let me win at games. My mother and great-aunts went inside to pack a basket of left-overs for the night trip home.

     "We really do need to start back,” my father said.  “It’s a two-hour drive”.

     "I know how far St. Louis is," my grandfather replied.

     The mercury vapor lights on the shed droned to life. My grandfather motioned to his twin brothers. Lyle stood and turned on the light over the steps. It was a yellow hug light that made our faces look red. My father stared at his watch.  "Shouldn't take long," my grandfather said, sitting down in the dust and indicating for me to do the same.

     The game of Mumbly Peg, as my grandfather had said, was a game of concentration, skill, and knife-throwing, in that order. I was master of none of these, though my inexperience was offset by my grandfather's age, arthritis, and the several finger's worth of Kentucky Gentleman he had consumed. Feeling the knife push into my skin heightened my awareness and made me think of Indians playing this game by the flickering light of campfires. My father shifted from foot to foot and jangled the change in his pocket. My great-uncles, reunited on the porch swing, cooed like mourning doves.

     As the game progressed, my grandfather and 1 both missed an equal number of shots. Each time, the Mumbly Peg was driven deeper into the ground. The end of the sycamore stick, which naturally tasted bitter, began to exude the taste of each other's spit, gooseberry pie, tobacco, the sharp rang of bourbon, the soapy-mint taste of Sen-Sen, and something I assumed was simply the flavor of old age. Each time I had to bite the Mumbly Peg, I took longer to lower my head over the stick, and I pulled harder to shorten the time it was in my mouth.

     "C'mon, Dad," my father said. "This could go on all night."

     "In the old days, games were played for days, if the players were good," my grandfather replied. With his long hair roped down his back, my grandfather could have been Sitting Bull, Roaring Thunder, or even Sacagawea.

     "Not this game," my father said. "I've got to go to work tomorrow."

     "Let's make it interesting," my grandfather said. He pounded the Mumbly Peg until only a half an inch was visible.

     "Neither of you will be able to pull that up," my father said.

     "Depends on how much the boy wants the knife," my grandfather said.  From the porch, now dark, my great-uncles mooed like humpback whales.

     "Go ahead, Wash," my father said, throwing up his arms. "Play."

     1 rushed into my throw. The knife fell flat in the dust. My grandfather picked it up and prepared to throw. He made both knee shots. It was my turn. 1 looked down at the Mumbly Peg.

     "Tell you what," my grandfather said. "I can't pull up that stick, not with my dentures. So, if you pull it out, you win."

     He was going to let me win after all. I lowered myself on all fours and set my face over the peg. As 1 neared it, my lips touched the ground and dust went up my nose.

     My grandfather said to no one in particular, "I ever tell you about the time we bet Chigger Phelps a dollar he couldn't eat dog shit without throwing up?"

     My father said, "God, Dad!"

     My uncles switched from whale sounds to the chirps, squeaks, and clicks of porpoises at play.

      I set my teeth into the wood. All the strange tastes were now concentrated and growing on the end of that stick. There was a new one, too. I was sure I could now taste dog shit.

      My grandfather said, "Yessir, he took us up on that bet. So we went and found a hot pile of dog shit right on the curb." I hit the stick and pulled as hard as I could. My teeth snapped together as they slid from the end. I put my mouth back on the stick and tried again.

     My grandfather said, "Chigger did pretty good, too, until he got down to that last bite."

     My great-uncles apparently liked the sea life, so they began making the high-pitched calls of a thousand sea gulls gathered around a garbage scow.

I pulled and pulled on that stick. 1 knew someone in China had a hold of the sharp end of the Mumbly Peg and wasn't letting go. The dust turned into dog shit, all warm and mushy. I said "Mumbly Peg, Mumbly Peg" to keep from listening to my grandfather's story.

     "Dad, stop it," my father said. "Wash, let's go."

      I stayed and pulled harder on the Mumbly Peg.

            My grandfather said, "Course, Chigger puked that dog shit back up. Every bit of it."

     I jumped to my feet, cupped both hands over my mouth, and ran toward the screen porch. My grandfather laughed.

     My father said, "Cut it out, Dad."

     My great-uncles brayed in the dialect of hyenas.

     My grandfather said, "Chigger could've kept that dog shit down if it hadn't been for that last bite. Said he couldn't stand the thought of a hair in his mouth."

I ran inside the house to the bathroom, where I hung my head over the toilet, fighting, waiting, hoping, afraid to throw up. I gulped huge mouthfuls of air until 1 got my grandfather's story out of my head and could taste only mud in my mouth. My teeth hurt from pulling on the Mumbly Peg. I checked in the mirror to make sure I hadn't become buck-toothed. My eyes were bloodshot. I wetted a hand towel and dabbed my face and neck. My mother came in and wanted to know if I was all right. I nodded yes, slowly.

     "What was going on out there?" she asked.

     My father stood at the door. "You okay, Wash?"

     "I want to go home," I said.

      We said our good-byes together. Out on the screen porch, my

great-uncles waved and offered — in unison — something that sounded like "So long." In the kitchen, Aunt Roo and Aunt Joe patted me on the head and told me they had packed an angel food cake into our going-home basket.

     My parents and I got in the car and waited as my grandfather walked slowly from around the back yard. He told my father to drive safely, then motioned for me to roll down the window. He reached into his pocket and brought out Poppy's pocketknife. He opened the blade and held it up. I waited to receive the knife, but instead my grandfather reached behind his head and cut off his braid with one stroke. Then he laid it in my still outstretched hand. He closed the knife and returned it to his pocket, and we left.

     Later, as I slouched in the back scat of my parent's old '59 Chevrolet Bel Air, I watched as my mother sat close to my father. She tuned the radio to a crackling station that played songs from their dating days. My father unfolded his arm across the back of the seat as my mother kissed his neck and laid her head on his open shoulder. I stroked the braid, heavy and warm, lying across my lap. Outside, a train ran parallel to the highway. I wished for the Case pocketknife, wanting to feel its metal in my soft pocket. My father turned and looked at the train in the darkness. The hum of the engine raised an octave as he increased speed, and the train slowly fell behind.

 

Note: When Poet and River Styx Editor Richard Newman named me the "Best Unheralded Writer" in St. Louis in 1998 in The Riverfront Times, he wrote, "My only complaint, from a purely selfish perspective, is that I wish he wrote, published and promoted himself more: I would relish a collection of these squirrelly stories any insomnia-ridden night."

Mumbly Peg was my last published story. I wrote another I am equally proud of, but it has been rejected by many literary journals (including River Styx), and never for the same reason. This trail of rejection (comes with the territory), and my general ambivalence about whether I still have stories worth telling, converged in more than a decade-long fictional nuclear winter. I am fictionally flummoxed, which is far worse than having writer's block.

In preparing this and selected other stories for inclusion on my website, I have been re-reading my old work. It feels like someone else wrote those stories. I am reminded of something Fernando Pessoa wrote: "Recalling who I was, I see somebody else."

Maybe I will write fiction again. I always imagined that I could be like Norman Maclean of A River Runs Through It fame. He was writing a new book when he died, but really, he was a one-book author. But what a book. To write just one book that good would be enough for me.

I am haunted by his words: “One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.”