Shirley

Before the Cold Came I knew we were taking our picnic to the woods—I made the sandwiches, chopped the salad. But when we got there, a table? I was stunned. He’d carried it down in the afternoon, and the chairs. He’d laid a cloth, fixed a bouquet. We passed the cuke/tomato container back and forth. Same with the mango pudding, and the blueberry bars. The salad’s leftover juices I drizzled on the ground got licked up by the dog. We warmed our hands on our coffee cups, the evening chill picking up. I bragged that I had better shoes than he—my old laceless sneakers with their tongues flopped frontwards, too slaphappy loose to walk far in. Mine, not his, shielded the toes. Mine turn numb in the cold. It’s a condition. We had to pack up. When I picked up the bouquet to bring it home, there were spicebush seeds in the bottom.      

Would that another’s face could melt the hate. Sometimes it won’t. Would that a song could calm the qualms, wash away sins, roll down justice. Sometimes it won’t. Still, soak. Soak, honey. Just soak.      

One Thing After Another The protests in Harrisonburg, in front of Representative Cline’s office, can be elating. The sun beats down, hot enough to boil your arm hairs, and you get the sullens chugging by in their rusted trucks or shiny, with gargantuan tires. But lots more people, turning their heads in time to catch your niggling band of the righteous, beam and toot their horns. The solidarity buoys you. The staccato honking, the cheers, the screams. The noise echoes downtown, one block south. “But what’s the point?” I asked Johann, last time I joined in . He and I were standing in the middle of the street. Nobody was running us off. Alt h ough th e swaths of rural red— voters loyal to Cline — assur e him his job , the city is blue as the thundering sky. Maybe t he Trumpies only dr i ve in for t heir groceries. “ Aren’t we just talking to ourselves?” I asked Johann. “Sometimes Paulson and I consider holding a neighborhood picnic, getting acquainted with the locals .” ...

Passing a spotted leopard at my favorite shop , I had to stop and pat it . Fierce, meaty bodied, pricey. Strangely pinkish but gorgeous, nothing I could’ve dreamed up. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Neither could I just go and buy it. When I finally went back it was gone. There was this other thing, though, only $5. It seemed not too much to waste. I scrubbed its belly stains. Squeezed its paws, let them drip into the sink. Hung it out under the African sky .      P.S. I thought up that perfect last part and then Paulson told me tigers live in Asia. Asia, Shirley, Asia.  

Whose Place is this? (cont’d)   This encroacher, in July, gets the prize. Though, as it didn’t really encroach, I’d have to put in a different category. Its visit was more, well, just that—a visit. I don’t know what made Paulson look out the window, but there it was, shuffling around in the sunshine. Buster was lolling on the porch. The bear would get him. Otherwise he’d be Algy. In a panic, quietly as we could manage, we let him in. Dumbest dog ever. No clue. He padded along when we rushed to other windows, unable to see out, himself. We kept snapping our phones, jaws on the floor. We watched till it clambered to the top of the log pile, like in King of the Hill, and melted away.   My brother, himself a Baer, decreed it a young one, probably male. He said the ears on an older bear are smaller relative to the body. A bear must grow into its ears. Also, Paulson claims this one’s gone gone. He says it was just passing through, moving from one mounta...

Whose place is this? That’s the question. Where does your ground start and mine begin?   The dirt under the beans—that’s ours. As are the actual beans . We just ate the last bagful in the freezer, from last summer. I don’t mean we ate sitting in the freezer. Shortly the itty bitty blooms popping from this summer’s plants will send out little fetal tails, each sheltering its own fetuses, and in just days the tails will burgeon almost to bursting. But that’s not my point. My point is, like last summer, bunnies got into the bean patch. Like before, my husband had to hot-wire it with his floppy, galvanized fencing mesh and no more plants got nibbled down to the quick. Whose bunnies were they, though? And now what were they supposed to eat? I’m not sure. Apparently they didn’t move on to other people’s beans, because the other day, noticing Buster’s strange behavior down below the garden in the thick grass, I rushed to the spot and found not only the cutest little furballs in various...

For When You’re Scalding, Part 2 Here’s what not to do: go to the creek. Or not the one near our driveway, anyway, downstream from the neighbor’s cows. We once called the shady bank and frigid, lazily trilling water our beach .  We’d hike down and let the grandkids drag their toes through the silty undertow. I don’t know what we were thinking. The herd is still sizable, and where the meadow lies below the road—there’s a steep drop-off —the cows are still grazing the grass down to the quick and guzzling their drinks. On the hottest days, driving past, you can see them lined up in the water like a choir, or like blackbirds on a wire above a city street. Birds only splat pearly white spots on the windshields. But cattle as they wander their acreage and streams drop pies of substance, steaming when fresh. The patties congeal as they dry, producing miracle nutrients for gardens. That’s looking at the bright side—you do want cow pies—but were somebody enamored with these bovines, unfa...

For When You’re Scalding Here’s what you can do when it’s too hot to think: dream a cold dream. Dream one like my husband’s. He was on an iceberg, very very big and high. You couldn’t see the end of it. There was little to occupy people. How did they make love or go to the bathroom? It was too cold. He saw single-lane roads, a few cars. Track treads, not from tires. He pedaled a bicycle-type vehicle down to the edge but then realized he’d have to bicycle back up. People could come for a month but they never lasted that long. Everything was too harsh and difficult. It was sort of like a lab to see how humans could adapt to long-term isolation and no heat, in a spacecraft or on Mars. Everything had to be geared toward protecting the ice from heat. Though, there was no way of making that heat. And there was always the risk of the iceberg cracking apart. But sensors could predict this and sound warnings. That’s all I wrote down. Dreams say something about who you are, of course. Th...

We went to see the Wizard. It wasn’t the same as what I remembered. What I remembered was the house in Kansas circling during the tornado, towed by a rope. Here they had some strange tower-like contraption with ribbons blowing while Dorothy lay knocked out on the bed. When auditions were announced for a production in Keyser WV, back when my husband and I had only four grandchildren, for some dumb reason I heeded the call. You had to come prepared to sing, your own backup music along. I chose a duet piece recorded by I don’t know who. I probably didn’t realize it originated with the Beatles. The lyrics made no sense to me, which made it hard to cement them in my mind, so I had to try and try and try. Two of us riding nowhere / spending someone’s / hard-earned pay / You and me Sunday driving / Not arriving / On our way back home . . . The genius part, I thought, was my adding a n extra line o f harmony, heartbreakingly beautiful. The director listened for a few seconds and dismis...