Free Sign Languages by James Hannah Page B

wet and stretched until they fit.
    Today it’s a raccoon. Sometimes it’s a possum or a dog or tabby cat from somewhere far off. Or maybe they’re let out here by people tired of the trouble. Once I helped a man chase down a beautiful red bird-dog who’d escaped when he’d stopped to take a piss. He’d given me two dollars and a can of beer from a yellow cooler he had on the passenger’s side. He asked about something I had on my jacket or in my hair and I think I told him all about it. And he asked more and I saw he understood everything I said.
    I dig good and deep. The raccoon whole, not a sign of broken skin anywhere. Those are the best kind. Before I nudge him in with my toe, I squat to look at his face. His teeth are exposed in an even line. Tiny and sharp. Locked into either a snarl or a grin. And I consider Mothermae’s opened mouth and the man I stepped over once leaving Luxor. At this point I always worry about dying and not being buried at the house with her, up under the pears. If it’s not sudden, I could go to the priests. Or lay down out here with a note pinned to me. Or maybe just stay inside with the birds banging into the walls.
    This morning I rise before the sun and bring up the bacon and light fat pine pieces in the stove. There’s bacon and one egg from the priests and a handful of chicory coffee in the pot of rolling water.
    â€œSilly old man,” I mutter, eating at my table made out of a door. But I still don’t think much about the grate or my silliness about it—my making it into some big deal which it’s not. Instead I get up and gently pry out tacks with my thumbnail and take the ancient yellow pieces of paper and sit down in the open doorway; beyond my feet the new dark green mint running in all directions like crazy. And though I don’t lift my head still heavy from sleep, stiff from the cold nights and warming days, I think beyond the scraps. “Bruno Hauptman Executed.” We’ve had that forever, huh, Mothermae. I watch her hands take it down. Putting it back, she matched tack and hole perfectly. “State Rep. Wallston Convicted.” “The Eagle Has Landed.” Sometimes some of the story. Never all unless it’s there right on the back. In the gift box they put pamphlets and tracts. About Mary mostly. Seldom about Baby Jesus grown old on Father Stephen’s chest. Never God himself, I think. But sometimes the green-eyed younger one slips in a Reader’s Digest or, once, an almanac.
    I have read those. Looked at the pictures. But these from our walls are the best. I remember where I found this one about white men on the moon. It was the year the drought burned up the garden, the pears dropping easily, still the light green of mossy places in Bridgett Creek. As hard as stones.
    The year white men landed on the moon. I imagined I could see them that summer. But black folks would have showed up better, I laughed. Like periods in the newspaper. Like ticks on the white face of a Hereford in the farthest pasture up the hill from the grate, the road going on to Monterrey Prairie 8 miles away. There there were black folks, white men, too. But I’ve never been that far. The white men on the rising orange moon closer than those at the Prairie.
    Today I’m anxious to get there; too anxious maybe. I know I’ve cheated; I’m going a day early. Once a month. And I thought about traveling there once every two months and right now my mouth’s dry as can be.
    I hurry myself up. I wash my face, put back the bacon, ignore the sprouting lantana, the first white veins showing along the buds of the tea rose. Though I walk down the road trying to recall its fragrance. “Milton it’s wonderful. Milton, look at what you’ve found us,” she’d said, me pulling her up the road. She stood about here and looked around but I pass on, walk through the memory. Don’t stop to look back. Pears.