A feral calico cat
used to sleep in my truck
like a ghost leaving
the driver’s seat warm
but gone when I’d arrive.
Heard me, sharp ears.
Sometimes on the console
she’d leave a bat with wings intact,
a baby rabbit, neck broken. Rent paid.
I set out kibble, she wouldn’t touch.
Never bore kittens though I’d hear
nights of yowling, fights.
Later, her ears failed. I’d open the door,
she’d startle awake. Leap. Clawed
my shoulder once in her haste.
Near the end she’d eat the kibble
but still got skinny, ribs outlined.
One day I found the food untouched. She’d vanished.
Like most animals, she knew how to die.
I tell you this because a while ago
in the garage I found two children,
boy and girl curled together
in a filthy sleeping bag half under the truck.
On the girl, arms like wire. On the boy,
a scar like purple rope between ear and nose.
Eyes that hold fear and keep secrets.
I try to say Estas a salvo aqui — you are safe here.
They refuse to follow into mi casa.
Quickly in the house I grab fleece jackets,
a box of Cheerios, a jug of milk
plus bowls and spoons. I come back out.
Boy and girl are gone.
There’s an underground railroad
of farmworkers up the coast of California
but my garage would be off the main track.
An hour later I’m loading corrugated drainpipe
when a frantic woman shows up. She’s short, ragged,
missing one eye. Her language not Spanish, not English
but with fingers on her face she indicates the scar—
those were her kids. With a mother’s super sense
she’s tracking like a bloodhound.
All I can do is point to where they slept
and offer her some Cheerios which she declines.
She takes the jackets. And then she’s gone.
I return home after dark.
Running late that morning I’d left
the milk and Cheerios on a tool box.
Now nowhere in sight. Might’ve been an animal
except the bowls and spoons are upside down
on a smoothed-out shop rag, washed and dried.
Never see the kids or the one-eyed mom again.
Probably migrated north with the harvest.
This much I know: Later, maybe a year,
one morning on the console of my truck
I find a jelly jar of wildflowers,
a paper bag of pears.
.....
First published in Live Encounters. Thank you editor Mark Ulysses.
photo by skeeze
Joe: similar themes for a cold La Honda nite:
ReplyDeleteThe darkness of the light filtered through the rustic leaves of the tall trees. Tall, ancient redwood trees -- seemingly, capturing the faint light in the damp canyon for their own needs, leaving almost darkness below. And below, in the funky 60's cabin, the unknown neighbor lay on the lime-rust linoleum kitchen floor, sleeping off another bender. This was his family's summer cabin, passed down a generation, with passed-on happy memories of warm summers in the shade. But this was Winter, one of the coldest Winters in the redwood forest, where the rain's residue turned all the surfaces moldy and slick, like the slimy, gooey trail left from the strange-looking, psychedelic-yellow banana slugs of the forest. This glow of yellow, perhaps a metaphysical reminder of the day-glow eternal Springs of 1965 La Honda -- Spanish for "Profound", some say -- that to this day lends a touch of Magico to the dark edges of this forest.
Days later, the neighbors at the end of this muddy road found him there. Stiff. Curled up like a forgotten pet, empty bottles of whiskey and rye scattered about the dusty, unkept lime-rust floor that cast a deathly hue in the barely used kitchen. Another soul lost in the darkness on Memory Lane, just a short walk up the canyon from the paved Highway 84, at the junction of mud and asphalt, where the mailboxes and the garbage cans competed for space. So close together, that at night, when the stars were obscured by thick fog, instead of retrieving a handful of mail from friends or family, you could possibly find your hand buried in a neighbor's aluminum trash can.
Also in the kitchen they found an old cassette player from a previous generation -- still running, still playing. Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits: Over and over, like a ghost or spirit that refuses to die, endlessly raging against the dying of the light.
Postscript: For my music loving brother of La Honda
Wow!
DeleteLocal philosopher Dave Meyrovich may be contacting you. We were classmates thru grade school and La Escuela Superior en Pescadero. -Russ
DeleteDid you ever get to The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle?