Nick's Night, and: Gill Bronsen's Dream

Abstract

Nick's Night "You'll not believe he won't be back," they heard Nick Nolan jeer; "that his time won't be stumbling, limp and pace, but disappear." He roared to the boys on the evening of the day his brother died; he roared to the boys from his whiskey, and no one cried. His brother had been the younger at least by twenty years. Nick said it was better, when dying, to see things clear and not be a clinging bastard, and not be a son of a bitch who cursed the degree of a wounding he couldn't patch. The day'd been a reflex of moments each moment a curse and a blow; Nick's brother was dead in a moment and not before. And the moment could not be sundered – "By the powers" cried Nick, "to his health." But at noon of that day by his power his brother fell. [End Page 161] Then Nick with a leap gained the bar top to favor the boys with a song; but the taste of his tongue was bitter and the boys were gone. Gill Bronsen's Dream Beneath the quilt his grandmother had made in 1950 for his uncle Grace Gill Bronsen wondered how the day would break if it turned out his dream was true, and that his father hadn't died alone that night (except for him who wasn't any help, and who just short of wishing it would have his father dead out on the Slim Buttes road than rolling drunk, indecent, swamped with gall and jagged slittings of sheer rage against no one who was particular, yet all and everyone who cracked his midget code). But stronger than his dream was where his left arm should have been, except that night he'd seen it swinging ragged, grim, and bare (and knew it had to go), as mottled as a hectic, starving dog ripped crossways by a pack of other dogs would mottled be, or like a mealy length of stinking scarf that over years had mildewed under leaves too damp to blow astray, would mottled be [End Page 162] no matter he should rip it up and hang it from the nearest tree. That night he'd watched his arm and willed it often to obey in earnest every word he said until he turned and watched his father's floundering grow less and less profound where underneath a foot of ditch run-off three quarters of him lay. His grandmother exclaimed his uncle Grace would not have died like that. "That ditch is not the way your uncle Grace would die, with you attending to his floundering and all, the run-off slobbering his jaw, your arm in ribbons and your tee-shirt tracked with tread; not uncle Grace." But that was several years before she spun herself into a calm so permanent and still she passed for dead. "If only I had known my uncle Grace," Gill Bronsen thought from deep within his quilt, "I wouldn't have short leavings and the scraps of sayings, oaths, and wonderings-out-loud." He'd have his uncle, text and tack, to ward and warn and interfere and undertake no matter if his nightmares all came true, no matter if Jack Bronsen shucked his shroud, or if indeed he'd never caved his chest against a flagstone counter near the ditch wherein he floundered on Slim Buttes road, his eyes on fire and his vision quenched, but lived instead beyond his mangling to instigate, to flay, and follow this with more until whatever deed it was he'd do would stink enough to kill a toad. [End Page 163] Gill Bronsen loved his granny, uncle Grace, but loved his father less with every breath he'd taken since his birth. And now, with one arm gone and twenty years gone by he still woke cursing possibilities that wouldn't die. His uncle couldn...