18
The butcher had a daughter. The butcher worked in the back of the shop and the butcher's daughter worked in the front of the shop. When people passed the shop, it was the butcher's daughter they saw through the window. Everywhere the butcher's daughter went the townspeople recognized her from the butcher shop, but if they saw the butcher they did not know him, except that the butcher's nails were black, because blood had dried beneath the butcher's nails, and the butcher had a thick pad of skin on his thumb from always chopping with the heavy knife. The townspeople did not connect the butcher's face with the butcher shop. Instead, it was the butcher's daughter that they pictured when they thought of the butcher shop. The butcher's daughter was a very black girl, black eyes and hair and she laughed so that the dark inside of her mouth was always visible and her large dark lips covered her white teeth. Men made special trips past the butcher shop to look at the butcher's daughter. Other girls in the town were very black but none of them caused the men to make special trips just to look through the window at the darkness inside their big, wide mouths. One day, an old woman bought a calf's liver from the butcher shop and died. When the townspeople thought about the bad liver that killed the old woman, they pictured the butcher's daughter and they could not be so angry anymore. The butcher's daughter was a very black, very merry girl and the townspeople connected her face with the butcher shop and her dark and full body that the men liked to look at through the butcher shop window, and they were not so angry about the death of the old woman. In the back of the shop, the butcher cut the meat and in the front of the shop, the butcher's daughter stood behind the counter with meat behind her on the hooks. Then a pig-sticker moved to town. He was young and strong and soon the townspeople were bringing him their pigs to stick and cut into good pieces of meat. The townspeople still came to the butcher shop for the heads and livers and hearts and tongues and skirts of cattle and sheep, but they bought their bacon from the pig-sticker. One day, a woman fed a calf's liver from the butcher shop to her young son and he died. The woman came into the butcher shop and slapped and scratched the face of the butcher's daughter. The butcher's daughter walked around the counter. She pushed the woman backwards so hard that the woman fell through the butcher shop window and the glass went into the woman's body and deep into the kidneys and the rump of the woman and she bled in a great spout and quickly the blood thickened and turned very black and the woman died. The butcher was cutting meat in the back of the shop. He did not come to the front of the shop. He did want anyone to connect his face with the dead woman who had fallen through the window in the front of the shop. He cut meat in the back of the shop and the butcher's daughter covered the woman with her apron in the front of the shop until the woman's people came and took the woman away. In the evening, the butcher asked his daughter to go away. The butcher loved his daughter. She was a very black, very merry girl and the butcher had no one else to stand in the front of the shop, but the butcher had decided that she had to go away. The butcher's daughter left the shop merrily. The butcher's daughter thought she might marry the pig-sticker, who was young and strong and did a good business and would soon have a shop of his own, but the pig-sticker had decided to marry the steel-grinder's daughter. Everywhere the butcher's daughter went, the townspeople recognized her from the butcher shop and they closed their doors to her. Men pelted her with old black-spotted meat. A washerwoman said she would hire the butcher's daughter. Instead of a bar of soap, the washerwoman gave the butcher's daughter a sponge of old meat. The butcher's daughter squeezed the sponge of old meat and the pink water ran down her wrist and stained her sleeve. The butcher's daughter became thin and her eyes grew a crust and she was grayer and grayer and less merry and black. Men no longer recognized the butcher's daughter except that the butcher's daughter had blood on her sleeve and the butcher's daughter had a very wide, very big, very dark mouth in which the teeth also darkened. The butcher's daughter could not chew the scraps of meat and the husks of old bread that the men threw to hit against her head and her back when she walked through the town. Rather, she sucked a rag that she dipped in what their wives left uncovered.
19
I gather the crumpled pages from the corner. I put them in the fireplace. The map is stuck to the wall where the food has wetted it. I scrape the map. I peel the map from the wall and put it in the fireplace. There is nothing to make the papers in the fireplace burn. There is no flint and steel. There is no phosphor. It is cold and dim in the nursery. I am tired. I lie down on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Spot lies down. Tamworth lies down. This is where they sleep in the nursery, on the carpet in the nursery. I like to the lie down on the carpet. There is no carpet in the field. I lay in the field. I stood up. I fell down. I lay in the field, the field the farmer chopped from the forest. I lay in the field. I cut a lump on my foot and a worm came out. It was a very black worm. The jackdaws circled me. They pecked my hands, my feet. A fat girl from the dairy passed by me. Good morning Mister Magpie, she said and I tried to strike her with a rock. There were no rocks in the field. There were furrows. I pushed my hands deep in a furrow, but there were no rocks. I threw clods at the milk pail. The clods came apart in the air. Mister Magpie, the fat girl said, but they were jackdaws. The fat girl swung her pail back and forth so that her fat wrist creased. She did not know jackdaws from magpies. I laughed on my back in the furrows, looking up. The fat girl's head was beside the blue sky and she did not know anything at all. In the dairy, Mister Cow, said the fat girl, but it was a wolfhound. I laughed at the fat girl, her fat bottom on the stool and her fat wrists creasing as she tugged at the udders of the wolfhound. The clod did not reach the pail. The clods came apart and the dirt fell onto my face. I wanted to strike the fat girl with a rock. Why weren't there rocks? In the ground, there are rocks. Someone had cleaned the rocks from the furrows, had dragged the rocks away in the sledge. It could not have been the farmer, the man who owned the field and the dairy and two daughters with hats. The farmer did not drag a sledge through the furrows, picking rocks. He rode on a horse, his short legs flapping on the sides of the horse, his short arms flapping the reins on the neck of the horse. Perhaps it was the fat girl from the dairy. She came in the night to the field and filled her pail with rocks so I could not strike her with rocks in the day. But in the ground, the rocks are always rising. The rocks rise up from deep in the ground so that when you pick the rocks from the furrows soon there are more rocks, many more rocks, rocks that float to the top of the field. The fat girl could not have taken away all of the rocks in the night. The rocks would come back. She would need to keep picking rocks, walking the furrows, picking rocks, and then when would she milk in the dairy? The farmer's two daughters are great big girls. They must drink great quantities of milk. They must treat their skin with milk below the hats. I have seen the two daughters dipping ladles in stone jugs of milk. At the top of the milk is the cream. The cream rises to the top of the milk and the two daughters drink the cream, great clots of cream. They don't know if the cream is from a cow or a wolfhound. I laughed again in the furrows. I dug harder for rocks and found only clods. I threw clods at the pail. Finally the fat girl was struck by clod. The clod broke apart on her teeth through the open lips as the fat girl said, Mister Magpie, Mister Magpie, and the jackdaws circled all around her. The fat girl dropped her pail and it tilted over in a furrow and loose dirt tumbled from the pail. There was no milk in the pail. There was dirt in the pail. What did the fat girl milk that she should have only dirt in her pail? The fat girl was crying and stumbling. What do you milk? I said to the fat girl. What do you milk in the night? The fat girl was crying. She milked the grave of the farmer's wife. That is what she milked. The farmer pressed her to the ground and her fat wrists creased up and down and the dirt went between her teeth. That is what the fat girl did in the night. Then who picked the rocks? I picked the rocks. That is why the farmer allowed me to sleep in the field, to sleep in the field all day with the rocks rising beneath me while I slept.