Cardinal Points

Home Again

.:. Home Again Do the hospital sheets cool my father's face-swept with fever, unshaven, a mystery immediately before me? He speaks, incoherently, of years ago as I ready the bowl of water, soap, brush, and razor. I shave that same face daily thoughtlessly before the mirror, but now I feel the mortal heat of his cheek, touch again his rough beard untouched since I was a child swung up in his arms each weekday evening. On alert after 5:30, I watched from the limbs of the live oak out front or listened in my room for the door to swing open singing Home again home again, jiggity jig. I lay in wait, master of the distance between us, seeing him standing in the aisle, bus rocking away from the tall white buildings and soaring bridge downtown. Hand looped in the leather strap, he sways from stop to stop up Canal Street as weary shoppers and sales ladies rise to exit at Claiborne, Broad, Carrollton. Every movement is clear. At Metairie Road he steps down in his suit and hat, into the sunlight and heat, to wait for his next ride. Beads of sweat gather 36 beneath his eyes and he loosens his tie, leans back against a low fence, the ten thousand bleached white tombs of Metairie Cemetery shimmering behind him. That last bus he takes daily will come soon enough. Soon enough it will take him past the blocks of dead in their bright vaults and his stop will come, bus doors folding back to give him the white sidewalks of his own street. Will I ever know what moves my father? What desire beyond this-to walk, tired and content, toward the distant green oak where his son hides. Toward his house, his front door, the cool rooms where he will sing out and lift me to his ruddy, rough face, to the all-but-Iost scent of after-shave I breathe and will always remember. 37 ...