taught me a game
called "scrub." Sort of baseball
for two kids with few friends.
One on the pitcher’s mound, the other at home plate.
In an empty lot at the edge of town,
he'd call strikes and fouls, no matter which of us
stood to swing. Only he could tell
for sure which grounders singled,
which his phantom shortstop scooped for double plays.
Bottom of the ninth, he'd claim I'd popped out
to his invisible right fielder.
He was my big brother,
and we laughed about it years later
when finally I challenged his advantage.
We'd both struck out in college,
couple times each. Both divorced, stuck
in routines smaller than we'd dreamed.
He claimed I'd beat him once. I couldn't recall
charity more than a string of wild pitches he'd overlooked
after I'd walked him a dozen runs,
and he didn't want his game done too soon.
Those were good times, a few hours
between brotherly jabs and insults,
between the cruel pleasure
of knuckling each other in the shoulder
or deep in the gut.
The bed sheets! Mom shrieked, bolted
and gashed her forehead halfway up
the cellar stairs when Dad grabbed
her by the ankle, yanked her back,
boot-heeling a hole in big brother’s upper lip
after he’d dashed up behind to defend Mom
while the rest of us huddled, storm sirens
screamed and out the narrow windows
above a twister tore from the sky
a torrential hail of debris, snapping
our climbing tree, toppling the clothesline
and ripping Mom’s load of whites from its pins.
Mom found it in the kitchen cupboards.
A little jewelry box felted black, gold
latch and trim. Dad’s mother had passed
and we were rummaging in the ruins
of the old farmhouse, packing
what might be worth something and burning the rest.
Inside the box lay one blonde curl
of perfumed hair. Whose, Mom asked,
whose? Dad shrugged and went on sorting
tubs of scrub rags, a steady rain
of dust floating in on sunbeams
through torn curtains and murky glass.
And smoke from the fire my brothers
tended outside. Mom smoldered
a lot of late, and Dad did his best
to keep out of her way. Must be important,
Mom said, if someone kept it all these years.
Dad squirmed like he’d snagged one foot
in a trap. He’d been promoted
from crew foreman to an office job.
He smelled like cologne in the mornings
instead of sawdust. Could be anyone’s hair.
Could be no one we know. Could be mine,
he said without turning to face her.
You were blonde? Mom said.
I think so, Dad answered. Both of them
hushed to hide from us whatever it was
ready to combust between them.
Something about office floozies filing invoices
too nearby. Dad lifted a wooden crate of kitchen tools
and escaped outside. Mom studied the box,
opening and closing, touching the lock of hair
as if she were testing it to come alive.
The wooden floors creaked
as the stock manager lumbered up the aisle
under his armload of boxed merchandise.
Lousy whore,
he hissed at the lady in cosmetics,
stacking what he'd stashed
at her feet and dashed away. His neck
ablaze, his starched collar blotched with sweat.
I’d overheard from the aisle nearby,
a boy who loitered, enchanted
by the scent of her, ensnared by the ribbons
bannered in her hair.
When our eyes met, I flinched. Her gaze
blinked and shot past.
She swallowed hard, lifted a box and slid
behind the glass defenses of her station,
feigning nonchalance
amidst perfumes and plasters. Her lipsticks
like gold bullets in their racks.
As founding editor of Many Voices Press, Lowell Jaeger compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.
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ISSUE:
F A L L
2012
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