Free All of Us by Raymond Carver Page B

screamed—“Yaaaah!”
    Then swore and swore. Legs numbing as I saw what.
    That fat, dark snake rising up. Beginning to sing.
    And how it sang! A timber rattler thick as my wrist.
    It’d struck at Miller, but missed. No other way
    to say it—he was paralyzed. Could scream, and swear,
    not shoot. Then the snake lowered itself from sight
    and went in under rocks. We understood
    we’d have to get down. In the same way we’d got up.
    Blindly crawling through brush, stepping over blow-downs,
    pushing into undergrowth. Shadows falling from trees now
    onto flat rocks that held the day’s heat. And snakes.
    My heart stopped, and then started again.
    My hair stood on end. This was the moment
    my life had prepared me for. And I wasn’t ready.
    We started down anyway. Jesus, please help me
    out of this, I prayed. I’ll believe in you again
    and honor you always. But Jesus was crowded out
    of my head by the vision of that rearing snake.
    That singing. Keep believing in me, snake said,
    for I will return. I made an obscure, criminal pact
    that day. Praying to Jesus in one breath.
    To snake in the other. Snake finally more real
    to me. The memory of that day
    like a blow to the calf now.
    I got out, didn’t I? But something happened.
    I married the girl I loved, yet poisoned her life.
    Lies began to coil in my heart and call it home.
    Got used to darkness and its crooked ways.
    Since then I’ve always feared rattlesnakes.
    Been ambivalent about Jesus.
    But someone, something’s responsible for this.
    Now, as then.
Reading
    Every man’s life is a mystery, even as
    yours is, and mine. Imagine
    a château with a window opening
    onto Lake Geneva. There in the window
    on warm and sunny days is a man
    so engrossed in reading he doesn’t look
    up. Or if he does he marks his place
    with a finger, raises his eyes, and peers
    across the water to Mont Blanc,
    and beyond, to Selah, Washington,
    where he is with a girl
    and getting drunk
for the first time.
    The last thing he remembers, before
    he passes out, is that she spit on him.
    He keeps on drinking
    and getting spit on for years.
    But some people will tell you
    that suffering is good for the character.
    You’re free to believe anything.
    In any case, he goes
    back to reading and will not
    feel guilty about his mother
    drifting in her boat of sadness,
    or consider his children
    and their troubles that go on and on.
    Nor does he intend to think about
    the clear-eyed woman he once loved
    and her defeat at the hands of eastern religion.
    Her grief has no beginning, and no end.
    Let anyone in the château, or Selah,
    come forward who might claim kin with the man
    who sits all day in the window reading,
    like a picture of a man reading.
    Let the sun come forward.
    Let the man himself come forward.
    What in Hell can he be reading?
Rain
    Woke up this morning with
    a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
    and read. Fought against it for a minute.
    Then looked out the window at the rain.
    And gave over. Put myself entirely
    in the keep of this rainy morning.
    Would I live my life over again?
    Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
    Yes, given half a chance. Yes.
Money
    In order to be able to live
    on the right side of the law.
    To always use his own name
    and phone number. To go bail
    for a friend and not give
    a damn if the friend skips town.
    Hope, in fact, she does.
    To give some money
    to his mother. And to his
    children and their mother.
    Not save it. He wants
    to use it up before it’s gone.
    Buy clothes with it.
    Pay the rent and utilities.
    Buy food, and then some.
    Go out for dinner when he feels like it.
    And it’s okay
    to order anything off the menu!
    Buy drugs when he wants.
    Buy a car. If it breaks
    down, repair it. Or else
    buy another. See that
    boat? He might buy one
    just like it. And sail it
    around the Horn, looking
    for company. He knows a girl
    in Porto Alegre who’d love
    to see him in
    his own boat, sails full,
    turn into the harbor for her.
    A fellow who could