Free All of Us by Raymond Carver Page A

directions.
Energy
    Last night at my daughter’s, near Blaine,
    she did her best to tell me
    what went wrong
    between her mother and me.
    “Energy. You two’s energy was all wrong.”
    She looks like her mother
    when her mother was young.
    Laughs like her.
    Moves the drift of hair
    from her forehead, like her mother.
    Can take a cigarette down
    to the filter in three draws,
    just like her mother. I thought
    this visit would be easy. Wrong.
    This is hard, brother. Those years
    spilling over into my sleep when I try
    to sleep. To wake to find a thousand
    cigarettes in the ashtray and every
    light in the house burning. I can’t
    pretend to understand anything:
    today I’ll be carried
    three thousand miles away into
    the loving arms of another woman, not
    her mother. No. She’s caught
    in the flywheel of a new love.
    I turn off the last light
    and close the door.
    Moving toward whatever ancient thing
    it is that works the chains
    and pulls us so relentlessly on.
Locking Yourself Out,
Then Trying to Get Back In
    You simply go out and shut the door
    without thinking. And when you look back
    at what you’ve done
    it’s too late. If this sounds
    like the story of a life, okay.
    It was raining. The neighbors who had
    a key were away. I tried and tried
    the lower windows. Stared
    inside at the sofa, plants, the table
    and chairs, the stereo set-up.
    My coffee cup and ashtray waited for me
    on the glass-topped table, and my heart
    went out to them. I said,
Hello, friends
,
    or something like that. After all,
    this wasn’t so bad.
    Worse things had happened. This
    was even a little funny. I found the ladder.
    Took that and leaned it against the house.
    Then climbed in the rain to the deck,
    swung myself over the railing
    and tried the door. Which was locked,
    of course. But I looked in just the same
    at my desk, some papers, and my chair.
    This was the window on the other side
    of the desk where I’d raise my eyes
    and stare out when I sat at that desk.
    This is not like downstairs
, I thought.
    This is something else.
    And it was something to look in like that, unseen,
    from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.
    I don’t even think I can talk about it.
    I brought my face close to the glass
    and imagined myself inside,
    sitting at the desk. Looking up
    from my work now and again.
    Thinking about some other place
    and some other time.
    The people I had loved then.
    I stood there for a minute in the rain.
    Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.
    Even though a wave of grief passed through me.
    Even though I felt violently ashamed
    of the injury I’d done back then.
    I bashed that beautiful window.
    And stepped back in.
Medicine
    All I know about medicine I picked up
    from my doctor friend in El Paso
    who drank and took drugs. We were buddies
    until I moved East. I’m saying
    I was never sick a day in my life.
    But something has appeared
    on my shoulder and continues to grow.
    A wen, I think, and love the word
    but not the thing itself, whatever
    it is. Late at night my teeth ache
    and the phone rings. I’m ill,
    unhappy and alone. Lord!
    Give me your unsteady knife,
    doc. Give me your hand, friend.
Wenas Ridge
    The seasons turning. Memory flaring.
    Three of us that fall. Young hoodlums —
    shoplifters, stealers of hubcaps.
    Bozos. Dick Miller, dead now.
    Lyle Rousseau, son of the Ford dealer.
    And I, who’d just made a girl pregnant.
    Hunting late into that golden afternoon
    for grouse. Following deer paths,
    pushing through undergrowth, stepping over
    blow-downs. Reaching out for something to hold onto.
    At the top of Wenas Ridge
    we walked out of pine trees and could see
    down deep ravines, where the wind roared, to the river.
    More alive then, I thought, than I’d ever be.
    But my whole life, in switchbacks, ahead of me.
    Hawks, deer, coons we looked at and let go.
    Killed six grouse and should have stopped.
    Didn’t, though we had limits.
    Lyle and I climbing fifty feet or so
    above Dick Miller. Who