Free A Shadow in Yucatan by Philippa Rees Page A

ain’t
ya?’
    Wally’s all
concern.
For all his hard won sinew, he’s a family man.
He loves his children, loves his loving too...
    ‘ Honest, I don
know’
    Fearing another
bout with bile, she half turns away.
Slowly redeemed, her shoulders sink; the sulky sea turns
chill.
The strutting flicking feathers hunch. The shadows too blanch
dim...
Evaporating light...the light holds everything
    She thought she
saw...
His eyes see emptying.

    *****

    A candid light
returns, a flood-lamp sun, angled to define both weight and
line.
Her sweating hands smooth skirt, and fasten shoe...
He plants his feet still deeper in the mud
    'Oughta find out
soon‘
    He scratches an
elbow.
She bends her head.
A dried reed rattles. A lifting sail subsides...
    ‘ It’s no good hangin
out. What is, is bound t’be...
I know a doc, works way up-town, a regular medic, not some knife
happy loon
I don suppose you’d go to y’ own.
If you drive up past Funland, past the ole dry dam...
Tell you what, come back. I’ll write it down.’
    Stephanie
follows, servile, blind, searching for water through her seeping
mind...
The sea, the sky, and buried somewhere under salt...the
effervescent tongue refreshing view...
But in the distance, at her feet, she sees only a child asleep.
    A banjo, a bag,
split, full of diapers, nuts and mixed dried fruit...
a diet for a life, the open road.
The weightless child asleep, and loneliness the load.
    She folds the
paper, thanks him, leaves him to the leaves, and goes.

    *****

    Two saffron
monks, pale-pated, cross the grass.
Their discourse falls in folds, their hands elaborate, perennial
truth perhaps...
(Perhaps the price of rice.)
The shafted pencil-light writes clearly on their crowns; the ankles
trace the shadows, but the bare feet laugh...
    Avid for a
taste of their measured paced-out peace, Stephanie picks an unripe
lime.
Bites bravely through its grim green skin...
The eyes goddam-it water, the astringent palate smarts...
She sucks at it regardless...squeezing and recoiling, she kicks off
her shoes...
disdains the easy somersault, accepts the broken glass...
    ‘It’s good, it’s good, some
ways it’s great! I’m dressed in polished poplin..
Inside I feel all new... ’
    Then euphoria
hits the sidewalk. She begins to smooth her hair.
    The sleek glass
door is guillotine to any thoughtless tread...
The receptionist surveys any likely unwashed head...
Stephanie is pole-axed, overpowered, drained by air-conditioned
talcum, re-circulated scent, plushy velvet drapes, glossy blown-up
prints.
    Ye Gods is this the
morgue? Must I undertake the corpse?
Lacquer for internment, ritual oils and masks...
Go daub your dead with war paint
let’ em paddle their own hearse.
    ‘ Why there y’are
honey...Mrs. Beale’s in number three...
She says she’s pushed for time...make it snappy, there’s a
dear...
Just a wash and shingle...no, today no facial hair...’
    Thank God tomorrow’s
Friday. I’ll just get through this week.
    ‘ Say please pass my
lighter. And Joe?...out back...Joe! Joe!
    Oh Joe, order lemon
tea'.

Saturday
    Twenty-eighth street South, holds
credit potential and promise.
Once a grove of palms, rattling perpetually...
Now a lattice, plotted on points, two trees to each house, each
pruned to the axis of the unfettered cable...
Only the occasional fruit, silently ripening...seed
accurate...
The perpendicular plumb-line bomb

    (A small cycle
was found crumpled in the cover it bucked into un-steered; a hedge
in bloom with passion flowers...)
    Often enough to
latch-key mind, whether to call the tree man?
Or wait for the hurricane?
    This is the old
quarter of the Grove, built
when folks were bright with hope and standards
before the boom and greenback brass..
They were clean shaven then, and not too clever,
they built small with chain link fences,
they laid paths and still sink flowers.
    (Five years, on
average, before a sleek Estate is parked fenceless further south,
protected by the German Shepherd and