hot cross bun
three a doctor
four a brother
bake them done
five a reverend
six a shepherd
eat each one
seven a preacher
eight a teacher
we're not done
nine a minister
ten the sinister
end has come
Listen, Pike, you are a stone ghost now, a trick of the light, and perhaps you know already what I'm trying to say, for you've been through it all and died of love, the best death. My face is muffled in my mother's clothing. Her rhinestones injure me. See: my feet are going. Fish flee the forefinger of my aunt. The sun streams over the geraniums. What has this to do with what I feel, with what I am?
Aunt Janet sits carelessly on the edge of her chair, her hands like fruit that's fallen in her lap. Her gaze is soft and watery. The past has overtaken her, just as you, Pike, have overtaken me. I was nearly twelve, you understand, and I would search her eagerly like a lover. But her grief was all inside her, Pike. She might as well have been of stone or plaster like that sentimental saint. And when in my room I would weep, for I was fond of weeping in those days, I realized my grief had no connection with my tears. Anyone might see how they streamed, but no one could know how they burned. Then I tried the private parts of fatty Ruth on my aunt and mother. Oh I was like the searching prince in Cinderella, hiking every skirt. But they've been badly misnamed. There's nothing really private to those parts which I later heard the boys in seminary call the banks of the river Urine, nor did they have the slipper's size; for although all the girls and ladies wore it, none of them seemed nicely fitted. One day — it was sometime after my "experience," perhaps three weeks or a month, and Janet had come according to her custom to nose our fish and stir them up — after her kiss had smeared cosmetic on my cheek and she had cocked her fist and painfully speared my side, congratulating me because I'd ceased my shaking (a pillow for your mother's head, she said); after she'd lit on the edge of the simple ladder chair she fancied because it was as light and delicate as herself, and had taken breath toward one of her favorite "ticklish topics," since her conversation consisted entirely of prefaces, forewords, and introductions to pink tumescent subjects which she safely never touched; and when she had, following an especially long and devious preamble to what I guessed was the problem of the unwed mother, sunk behind the sea which rose suddenly in her eyes as it always did, I saw her — mind this Pike, are you awake? — I saw her, poised on the edge of her chair as I've said her habit was, let go and slowly topple over. We helped her up at once, of course. She didn't seem hurt or even ill. Slipped off, my mother said, because she has to perch and never minds what she's doing. You may think it's my diseased imagination — it has a beggar's body — I freely admit it — but I see her still, whenever I wish, letting go and falling, her skirts flattening and streaming behind her and then ballooning as she turns in the air. I had penetrated the quality of the act, Pike, and I was dreadfully shaken by my knowledge, though I tried not to show it and got away as soon as I dared. She'd had too much of life, and she'd let go of it at last and left the wire. In my dreams sometimes I see her too, slipping from a window sill or off a windy mountain ledge, her skirts rising about her as she descends and revealing beneath them the private parts of fatty Ruth. On she somersaults until I've lost the sense of heads or tails and she has spun herself into a single, broadly grinning, comic mask.
Pike speaks: that was the face of truth on fatty Ruth.
By god Pike you're right. The head of Medusa, with Medusa's softly whiskered grin. Were you turned to stone by such a sight? Morton, I remember, rubbed my back. Humility, my boy, is also important. The hymnal he gave roe was dog-eared at all the customary places and it always fell open at A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Now there was a man who made a downy pillow. Pike… when I stopped trembling and fainting, the ladies wrapped me in their warm arms and cooed in my ears and gently ruffled my hair. Aunt Janet's chair had skidded, tipping when she fell. Both were light but my aunt was voluptuous. I held her like a lover, receiving her soul. It was then I felt my whole interior shudder. It was nothing like the palsy of the body. I have that still. It was a fright of the spirit, a terrible ghost-fear. Hats shaded me. The petals of the potted plants were turning purple. She rose through the circle of my grasp, rubbing herself ecstatically against me. Well why not? I was the vulgar flesh receiver, wasn't I? And wasn't it all over, the harsh press and scruple of life? There ought to be some sweet to console her for the fall. So she thought. But it was her limp spirit I held, as helpless, flung over my arm, as a wrap. This was my first use of the godly eye, Pike, and in the beginning I was no better for it. Beads and cameos and buttons cut me. Morton squeezed my arm, the dirty old butt. In the moment that we lifted her, I saw her estimate the age of the zinnias. Ghostfallen, Pike. You know what that means. She was ghostfallen, yet she troubled to guess how recently my mother's flowers had been cut. Well I'd declared for God, my mother said, and smartly dressed auxiliary ladies came to look at me and whisper about Jesus. A fat lot of good it would have done to insist I hadn't chosen him, I'd chosen the Lord of Hosts, His Tent, Tights, and Trapeze, not the aime thing at all; so I refrained. My prematurely wrinkled aunt held out her head. Its lips were spread with love. Now what do you make of that?
Pike speaks: in women revenge takes the form of religion.
By god Pike you're right. And I had mine. Faithfully I went to Brother Morton's services and sat apart, not proudly or disdainfully, but in an absent mind, as if rapt; and I dare say there were eyes that saw wisps of pink cherubic cloud like straw in my hair. I bent my head and printed in his hymnals with a pencil end, which you can bet I kept most carefully concealed, every dirty word or line, every bawdy jingle I could remember or make up on the spot (I had an aptitude, but eleven isn't an accomplished age), while throughout I'd note the pages of the hymns I'd written on, referring the reader to them, or I would advise the devout to
sing psalm one eleven
if you would see heaven
but for a good time
sing psalm sixty-nine.
Pop pop pop, I'd crack the spines. Oh Pike, my spirit was light then. How heavy it is now. Breathe your spirit into me: I don't know what to believe. My luck has left me. I preach and no one listens. Only the crack in the window widens. Nar. Nar. Nar.
Pike speaks: believe nothing that does not sound well.
By god Pike you have something there. But I have a ringing in my ears, and all those noisy faces…. The fifth face is a pig's, its nostrils aimed like eyes, its cheek skin moistly glistening, teeth like pebbles overgrown with moss, they've stood so long in saliva, stiff white hair in rows above the brow. Hardly Circean. Let us have another number, Mrs. Samson, say, The Old Rugged Cross. Isn't it nice here in the yard, the fresh breeze and the white wickets? My boy, to follow Christ is nice, you will enjoy it. Happy? Proud? Asleep? Pike? Don't leave me, I'm lonely. Oh lord you weren't a jew's-harp religionist? you didn't squeeze an accordion? slap your knee? jig? Not Samson, damn it, but my Kinsman, the stoned man, whose corpse is blind. What's happened to the light? Ah, Pike, the flies have failed us. That Mrs. Pimber has a strenuously knuckled hand, it just occurred to me to think so, not like Mrs. Claude… um… Spink, the fidgety, who is losing her hair but goes bravely anywhere there's music because of her calling. How about a bit of Throw Out the Lifeline, that's rousing. Another muffin? Don't drip butter, the cloth's so white, a beautiful expanse of something clean, and the blue shadows of the silver calm me wonderfully, and don't you feel the coolness of the crystal and the silence of the porcelain? No? Another muffin? coffee? please cream and sugar. See the ghostly spirit spill into the darkness, clouding. Dunk? Only on occasion. Mrs. Chamlay fries the greatest doughnuts; you'll love them, Mr. Furber. There's nothing like country cooking. Well I've always loved what's large. The church must have a sale, a way to get going. For sweethearting charity. Cakes, clothes, and kisses. Prizes of chastity. Ice creams are such fun in July. Think of the long white papered tables under the trees. The cool mouth of watermelon. Pike, Pike! rally! rally to me! Rowdies a rarity although known to happen. Threw stones in the pudding of old Mrs. Jasper. Which was bought by Carl Skelton to sicken his dog. It was quite entertaining. I remember the bowl; it went in her auction. Didn't she have some lovely things, poor dear. A shade of blue not too pleasing for chocolate. Who was it that got it? (Samantha has darkened; her lips are severe.) That fat Mrs. Arthur who moved back to Windham. And not a month here. Pike! A desert, Pike, a wilderness Jerome would not have dwelled in. He'd have gathered up his books and gone to Rome. You lived with Indians — very well — but I've fallen among people. Is there no one who will pity me? Speak and say, oh great recumbency of sky, vast chest and hollow water bottle, would you spit upon your image, eh? Ho, Barlar? Grunn? Petvich? Hooloo? Kishish? Quarckaling? Sull Yully? Nannerbantandan? TuK? Too rooky, won't reply, all tweetered up with ravens, swifts, and fowling hawks. Anyway let's have an answer… some bird of omen… no ghost… shreeeeeee…