On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave, and: Before My Mother Moves South, and: Northern Cardinal in Winter, and: Mississippi Gambers after Dusk

Abstract

On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave, and: Before My Mother Moves South, and: Northern Cardinal in Winter, and: Mississippi Gambers after Dusk Rob Shapiro (bio) On Visiting Faulkner’s Grave He said time is dead as long as it’s beingclicked off by little wheels; only whenthe clock stops does time come to life. i My stepbrother pinned a shotgun shell to his breast pocket when he got married, wore aviators even though dark pastures of clouds brushed above the delta and turned, suddenly, to rain. He planted his footprints deep in the black dirt to see how much the land could hold, how quickly it committed us to memory. And because this was Mississippi, he named his son for himself—the same way his father named him. ii Framed and gawking, the dead decorate my family’s walls— [End Page 64] local ghosts looking out, captured in crops of cotton, the white fields ripe as if blooming with snow. Always, a bloodshot sky just out of reach— always, they refuse to smile for the camera aimed like a pistol at their hearts, its aperture drawing in their sweat-drenched collars and rolled-up sleeves— their work-boots muddied in the same soil tilled year after year. iii When I visited Faulkner’s grave, grazed my hand on the granite stone lined with empty flasks and whiskey fifths, I could have walked the mile down to the house where my stepbrother was raised. And I’ve read of doom, the lord marching his angels out of Mississippi. I’ve read of generations held in the rough arms of countryside— the bluffs and fields and sky. iv He sends photographs to Carolina, prints taken with his father’s old Kodak. I imagine my stepbrother working [End Page 65] the darkroom until dawn: lightheaded from fixer fumes, his fingers uncoiling loose spools of film. Tin sink. Safelight. His son bursting into focus from the shallow darkness— already looking back. Before My Mother Moves South Another week of flurries and frozen rain.You let the sheltie out into the stiffwinter dawn, still thick with stars and fogwhile upstairs, my sister and I sleep—the three of us living togetherfor the last time. Snow-chained truckssand the street, rattle through the darkpast the For Sale sign buriedbeneath our bulldozed banks. Come spring, you’ll be kneelingin the flooded front yard, white statuetteof Saint Joseph held to your chest.Too superstitious not to try prayerto sell the house, you’ll break openthe half-thawed earth and pushthe figurine deep inside the tangled dirt,speaking to it, bargaining. Mother, I want to keep you in that housea little longer, standing by the window [End Page 66] watching the sheltie pace the yardand sink through the melting drifts.The radiator clinks its cast-iron heart;you stir your coffee, spoon rattling rim,and look out at the linden treescradling abandoned nests like palmscupping water—you wait there for the skyto brighten, to disappear behind the rushof snow that falls and clings to nothing. Northern Cardinal in Winter My father is not the feather nor the red crest,but the song sung from the canopies— the slender trill needling through frost and frozen light,woven through the hills outside my bedroom window. And you might think I mean my father is beautifulor far off, some small echo I can’t trace. Truth is, I find he follows like that flickering voice lifting over power linesand fresh snow, that bright fragment I’ve always known. [End Page 67] Mississippi Gamblers after Dusk Gathered on the lawn between the chicken coop and the pond, still high from spring’s thaw, we watch my stepbrother kneel on the jetty beside the thicket of cattails loading tube-launched fireworks. Across the water, rows of barbed wire border the pastures, fence us in as gunpowder cracks like a sheet of ice, sends a Mississippi Gambler streaking across the swath of summer sky until it bursts into light, familiar constellations that drift down, disappear. We grip cans of beer and call to each other...