Surely, you have something to say, you said.
That was when she spied me, still in my cotton pajamas, perched on the stairs. She spoke to you without taking her never-morebeautiful eyes from me. It won’t happen again, she said.
Then you saw me and no doubt you saw in my eyes my anger with you and you tried to make the necessary shift, tried to return her to her rightful role in the play. You began to cry.
She turned to you and held you while you sat at the kitchen table. She comforted you and while she did I caught you peeking to see if I was still there, then you returned quickly to your business, surprised to have found me. Watching you cry for her restored my faith in you, made me smarter. I knew that you were really hurt by what she had told you, but I also knew that hurt you displayed was completely artificial, manufactured for her and maybe just a little for me.
Cold Are the Crabs That Crawl on Yonder Hills
For you, by me, or for me, by you. The water is high and the mountain is blue. The children are screaming there’s nothing to do while the rain falls on many, but not on the few. I’m lightly sautéed with butter and thyme, turned over twice but never in time. The flame that you cook on is blue at its core. It’s hot, yes, it’s hot, but it will burn me no more. I’m there then I’m here. I’m near then I’m far. It’s too far for our legs; it’s too near for the car. The hills are too flat and the plains are too steep; the water’s too hard and the rocks are too deep. You loved me on Monday and on Wednesday again and up in the mountains but not on the fen.
Cold Are the Cucumbers That Crawl Beneath
Cucumber, I. Twitch a finger here. Twitch a finger there. Fuck with them any way you can. I’m dead, but they don’t know it. Forget the adage let sleeping dogs lie. How about we let dead men die?
You hold my hand.
I hold your hand.
I write this for you.
If I wrote, this would be it.
If you wrote.
Yes.
I will always be here.
And I.
I’m dead, son.
I know that, Dad. But I didn’t know you knew it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of more than twenty books, including Assumption, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, Erasure, and Glyph.