THANK THE MAN FOR EVERYTHING
Richard St. Germain
In the events before recycling, there were newspaper drives. Cars were mobbed and washed, then driven off glisteningly. The houses were going to be green and brown and blue again, but the white ones would always be white. What was the color of the shutters? It was a color none of the houses was going to be. If the railings rusted unless they were painted, what were they made of? But they rusted anyway. They needed more than repainting, these railings. Something was going to be done to them. I am not going to explain it. But I will explain how the trees crowded and looked down on them expectantly. How the stacks of newspaper swayed. The stacks were tied with newspaper twine. Wind made the trees try to touch the houses. The trees were resistant to this. They were different—indifferent. They were not much more than the ground turned around. I say they waited, and paint came off the railings, not falling unless it was pried up to uncover the rust that was underneath it. And normal relations maintained among the neighbors, the normal neighborly functions maintained among them, perpetuating by their display. They gave advice about the railings even if theirs were unpainted, their railings. If the railings rusted they were not made from aluminum, I knew. Maintaining the neighborly relations was all they were doing. But their children possessed an uncredited understanding. The neighbors were manipulated, imitated, pitied, spoofed. They knew. The faces of rocks could be re-turned to faces of the earth the faces of the rocks had been allied to, to keep the earth beneath them teeming. Desiccation spread. Heralded presences, I’ll say later. Names, what can I get for them? Why don’t I say the trees were distracted enough by the wind to scour the low-moving clouds? And how a strip of noise from the highway would pare off into the neighborhood. And admit there was a neighborhood, with these trees and with these houses, with these railings and these newspapers stacked in their garages. That neighbors come with neighborhoods will be allowed. And neighbors, maintaining neighborly relations, will talk about railings. If children are with them, will talk about railings. Will caution the children. The children will have selected sticks extracted by the wind from the trees and sticking from the grass as if it had been stabbed. But the children were hidden—not to the neighbors—but from the trees and noise, from the highway and wind, from whatever children are allowed to be hidden from they were hidden. The clouds seemed to be in a hurry to go beyond the trees. Maybe the clouds knew that suddenly they were superfluous and soon to be a memory, and in the memory seen as fleeing, leaving the houses and rocks and trees—consider this a recapitulation—under a sun that was unseen, at least by me, in the minutes of sky I was prescribed to see—allow the sky; its reach; and a sun in it, unseen—and I will say precipitously, precipitously clean. Nothing helps me. Help me. See a railing, the paint on it lifted. You know what there is to see. Aboy, me. You see the sun; not me. You do not see the children that I see, or where they were hidden, either. You see all the common fabrications. What distinguished sticks from that sun-tricked scaffolding that had abandoned the canopy, other than the grass it was in? Embarrassments abounded. She had thought of water, call it God, name in a word. But the railings—whatever they were made of—were going to be saved. As were the newspapers, but for another purpose. Say amen with me. The house will never be another color again. It will never be white forever. It will be the color of one of the other houses. We are not going to let them all be all of the same color, we, we will not allow it. Save green for the grass and the trees. Make a boy sing.
O once there were three fishermen
Once there were three fishermen
Fisher, fisher, men, men, men
This helps me. A boy did not sing. If you hear singing it is not me, unsealing rocks from the earth, watching the worms retreat. This is what you see: a boy, me. You can hear me singing. There is enough brief quiet, as there would be during a fall. The screen and porch-type doors have whispered into their latches, cleaving, except in the intermediate spaces, the outside from the insides it surrounded. Grass grows as prophesied, makes the streets distinct, grows around the houses, occasions separations, and these are streets, where it is safe for cars to be. Nothing, still. Still, a boy could sing.
Once there were
I would say I. I saved the railings. Be afraid for me.
My hat it has three corners
Three corners has my hat
The sun made lies of every color. Grass made lies of streets. Cars made liars of sidewalks and driveways, where it was not safe for cars to be. Sidewalks and driveways were the names I learned later. I learned the names of children, which I used to seduce them.
Way down on the old plantation
That’s where I was born
The trees were not expecting me to seduce the children, for sticks to drop onto bodies and for me to retrieve them, for me to keep the sticks, to repeat what the trees did and seduce the children. The desiccation heralded presences of underground springs. Children would lie in the seeps. Littler ones could be found “drounded” or floating but only asleep after the children discovered the highway. The children discovered the highway. You could smell the smell of something coming from somewhere that made you hungry for something you could smell. You smelled the grass and trees and flowers that crowned them. You smelled the insides of the houses. Something was for supper, you knew that. It had to be cooked, or else it was just salad. You could have just salad, you knew, but you could not have anything else, you could have that or else nothing she was going to tell you, if she was your mother. You knew there were other mothers that let you have anything but they were not your mother, she was, she was going to tell you, they were not going to clothe you and feed you, but she was, she was going to listen to you, listen to you, was there anything you did not have, could not do, or were not told? And if she did not know what to tell you, what did she tell you, what? She told you there: there were the streets and houses. There were the rocks and trees: go, go, go. And you did. And there were streets and houses, rocks and trees and flowers that had fallen off them, there were the streets and noisy unpared strips streaming underneath them, and there she was again, your mother, looking for you, afraid for you. But you were afraid for her. There was the neighborhood, you told her. Go. Did she know me? Did she see me scraping those railings and think I was being directed to the proper activities for a boy like me? Did she know what happened with those sticks? There was the building your father worked in, there was the gas station he got you the free cups from. My mother got me the free road maps. There was a choice for everything there was there but signs and arrows helped you, attendants attended you, waitresses waited for your pennies and gave you what you were smelling. I licked it off your skin. The neighbors guided me back to the railings.
My hat it has three corners
Three corners has my hat
And had it not three corners
It would not be my hat
Strips of noise disappeared between the houses. Men got out. The men were in cars and ties and jackets. Forget these men would ever wear ties again. They would give their ties to the children and show the mothers how ties came untied and children could get out easily, the knots unknotted and the ties untied and children fell easily on the grass beneath the trees. But the mothers would—no—the children were, no, the children were not going to wear the ties the men were giving to the children. The men were going to keep their ties. God damn it. God damn.
Now I did work and I did play, so
Happy all the day
Til Angelina Baker came and
Stole my heart away
Some of the children knew the men as fathers or as gas station attendants. They introduced me. I was a boy, they said. I lived in one of the houses with my mother. The neighbors helped them—us—with everything, they said. Everything the men saw the neighbors had helped them—us—with, they said, after they waited and waited and showed it to us. Their mothers wanted them to use the path instead of the grass, they said, but there were pieces of path in the grass too, they said. Put the pieces back, they said. Lean off the railings. They could reach the trees without ever falling, they said, but the rust would get on their hands. Their mothers would not know where the rust was coming from, they said. Houses and streets did not rust. They had seen cars in parking lots outside the buildings their fathers worked in, they said. Men were reading maps, drinking from cups so hot the men could not touch them. Men were reading the numbers of miles from cities the men were from, from signs up so high the children could not see them. Men waiting at the gas stations behind other men waiting at the gas stations were making other men wait behind them. The men who were first were waiting for the gas station attendants to let them pay for something. Men were telling men ways to get places. Instead of going here, they were saying, go here here and go here here, and when they got there, go the other way instead, they said. The children asked the men if that was how they got here. Show them, they said to me. Show them, the neighbors said, again. Show us what, the men said.
Angelina Baker
Angelina Baker’s gone
Left me here to be alone and
Weep from night ‘til morn
Men do not come unexpected. The grass was green, the shade complete. The rocks were all enumerated. If you could see—really—you would not know which would have the victory, grass or street. You would see, or—really—feel, chunks of walkway in the grass, and see pieces of brick piled like scree beneath the railings. Where the men in their endless quest with lawnmowers could not go there were stems of grass that could be appended to your teeth. Mothers might come out of the houses and kneel in the seeps, showing you how they found their children, how the sticks fell as they carried the children into the houses. She will be among them. She would not forgive me. Do you see the men locating their jackets and ties again, invoking the neighborly relations to relate their goodbyes again, shedding children as they marched to the highway again and again and again? Do you see a boy asking gas station attendants if they have seen the men? The gas station attendants were exfoliating rolls of pristine bills, to show the mothers greasetipped fingers did not leave a smudge. Men were waiting for their free cups. Men who were fathers were telling children to come to them. The littler ones did not listen, did not want their grasps answered by the hands of the men who were fathers. I did not blame them. Men were never fathers to me, I told them. My mother needed men to help me with the railings after the neighbors told her to fix them, I said. Forgive me, I said. Forgive the men, the children said. Forgive her, at least, they said.
My hat it has three corners
Three corners has my hat
And had it not three corners
It would not be my hat
I am a number of miles from a city a sign says I am a number of miles from, on a highway the sign says I am on. I am eating from a tray made from recycled paper, even drinking from a cup so hot I cannot touch it. Wind takes these things away from me. The men pay me and thank me. The mothers ask me to sing them something, the fathers ask me how to get from here to here, and the children ask me, will there be something to eat? Will there be houses and trees? When will there be houses and trees again? I tell them to sleep and when they wake up there will be houses and streets again, and rocks and trees, houses and rocks and trees again and again and again. Where do I sleep, they ask the gas pumps behind me, and behind these the railings that protect us, behind these the uninterruptible teeming. Do I have a mother and father like they do, they ask the mothers and fathers. They want to see what is between me and the neighborhoods they know they will wake up in. They want to see what will happen to them by seeing what happened to me. The mothers thank me for singing, the fathers wrap the children with straps. Say goodbye, they tell the children. Thank the man for everything. They find ends of straps to attach to ends of straps they find. Are you in, they ask the children, are you ready? You are in, you are ready, you challenge the tyranny of sleep, there is the free cup from the gas station, there is the jacket your mother folded and put beside you, there is the mirror you see your father in, he is telling you how far it is, how long it will be before you see anything, and how if he sees anything worth seeing he will tell your mother to wake you and you will see it, everything you see you will see again, and when you want to sleep you will not be able to, he tells you, you’ll see. You’ll see, he repeats. You see the gas pumps and buildings receding. When you see the houses and trees again you are being lifted and carried, you are being lowered and covered, but there is a bed there. You are only asleep. There is the free cup your father left beside you. The men ask if the boy they remember was me. There he is, I tell them, he sees the wind scouring the highway, the children lying in the street, the mothers telling men to go, go: can you help me? I ask them. They want to see what has happened to them by seeing what happened to me. You were always with the children, they tell me. Our ties were tight, our jackets were dirty, they tell me. But their ties are tight, their jackets are clean. They tell me to say goodbye to my mother for them, say goodbye to the grass and the trees, and the sticks and seeps and bundles of newspaper stacked inside the garages. Say goodbye to the men. They are leaving. If you hear someone singing, it is not a boy, it is me.