When We Are Clay Again

Abstract

When We Are Clay Again Jolene Barto (bio) You were a creature of the highway, a growling ghost with a rib cage visible underneath a thin layer of Tennessee clay-covered fur. You were never mean, but at first you had the ferocity of a buzzing hornet, too afraid to stay in one place. When Grandfather found you by the side of the road, I remember your wild eyes and the blustering yips. The space between [End Page 97] your claws was webbed and freckled. A tongue, rubbery and long as my hand, lolled to one side and when I reached for it, grandfather snapped, “Don’t be a damn fool. That ain’t no toy. That’s a Canis lupus familiaris.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I had seen Grandfather’s study, seen his trays full of brittle-winged insects with tiny yellowed pieces of paper underneath them: Actias luna, Danaus plexippus, Eumorpha achemon. The first night you stayed with us, we tied you to the fishing boat that lay dormant and winterized in the garage. My sleep was punctured by your thin howls, so long that I felt them stretch inside me. I padded sock-footed to the garage and cooed you with my lips against your neck, hot from panting. When I brought you back into the house, I heard Grandfather grumble from his sleep, “You’ll regret that. You’ll never get her out of the house now. She knows her place in the pack, and she’ll always demand to lay at your feet.” He was right; every night I felt the warm press of your ribs against the arches of my feet. I never wanted you to leave though, even when Grandfather shook his head mournfully, resorted to his unscientific term: “That’s just a mongrel. Supposed to be a farm dog.” But he never shooed you away, even when you chewed through the edge of his favorite oak chair. His face pushed back a gnarled grin and he grabbed your two lopped ears and growled, “You’re a piker, young creature.” You followed me through our farmlands, over creeks, clean across snowdrifts. Your head was forever alert in the crosswinds, nose twitching alive in the cool breezes that lifted off pond water and moss-covered woods. Gone were the flittering twitches of your skin, rippling nervously whenever a strange wind blew, when an errant twig snapped. We two, thief-thick, roamed to the edges of Grandfather’s farmland, all the way to the rusting train trestle, defunct when [End Page 98] the railroads rerouted into the middle of town. We walked with Grandfather, tempering our gait for his strong—yet limp-hinged—stride. He would point at felled trees, leaves wide as a fist, knuckles of black walnuts. “They won’t tell you their real names in school,” Grandfather told us, grabbing a handful of soil and crackled underbrush. “Everything’s got its own name, first and last: Juglans regia, Liriodendron tulipifera, Acer saccharum. Everything deserves to have a name. We’ve all been moving towards those names for millennium, trudging through the dust and ooze of this space rock. We all deserve names.” I would whisper your name into the gruff of your neck, tell you secrets throughout the blossoming years. I told you the story I had folded inside myself about holding my mother’s cold hands at her funeral. I revealed the bruises from where a wild pack of youths (Homo sapiens) found me behind the bricked back of the schoolyard, pulled my hair until a clump of it was in their fists. I was a forgotten daughter, much like you, and we didn’t belong to anyone, not really. But we found solace in our solitude, a pack of only two. Coyotes would eye us with suspicion. You growled shamelessly at the wild boar that trampled through the bean garden. Together, we howled at the star-freckled night sky. At first, it was only a limp. Grandfather examined you, prodding the bones of your ankle, him whispering lowly to the both of us: “Talus, tibia, fibula.” There was something in his eyes, a growing dark...