Figured Dark: Poems

Archie Babcock Explains the Accident to John Berryman’s Biographer

Archie Babcock Explains the Accident to John Berryman’s Biographer “Trouble,” Berryman had written in his poem, “Travelling South,” “but trouble that would soon be past.” —Paul Mariani, Dreamsong: The Life of John Berryman He should have never gone to sleep so near the road. My brother Gordon thought dead animal, or a package fallen off the REA truck that ran from Detroit to Mackinaw. This was 1939, years before the bridge. He steers close and something pops a lamp. Whap! Still don’t know what it was, so we go back to look. A bloody mess and that boy, blowing bubbles out his nose. Put a dent the size of a melon in Gordon’s ’35 Ford. You should’ve seen that kid–– name was Bob Berryman?–– spitting porcelain, like he’d eaten Aunt Ad’s tea cups. I remember thinking, That fella’s gonna want a new mouth. We tossed him in the rumble seat and scooted back up north. ■ ■ He moaned through Topinabee, his face like a chewed plum, all twenty-three miles to the State Police. 24 The desk sergeant said, What am I s’posed to do with him? Haul his ass to General.” Gordon’n me lugged him between us, the kid’s head waggling ’round, blood purpling the linoleum floor. “Lord have mercy!” the orderly said, when that boy fell into bed. A trooper’d tailed us from the post so we told him what we knew. You say that kid was somebody? He looked like nobody. This was the Depression–– bums along the road were common as skunks. Sure, we’d been drinking, but we’d driven that boy all the way to Cheboygan. The cop took our names and let us go. ■ ■ Three days later, that kid’s brother, your John Berryman, is drunk at the Pinehurst. Who amongst you knows the Babcocks? Well, ever-body knows the Babcocks, though it was the waitress, Elsie Hollipeter, let slip we lived near Wolverine. Aunt Ad says, “You boys better hightail it.” So we grabbed two sleeping bags and head for Wildwood. Hell, I could go there now and no city boy could find me. Brush thick as a lawyer’s file and trails the Chippewas don’t know! The next day, John Berryman shows at Uncle Les and Aunt Ad’s. He’s wearing a business suit, wire glasses, carrying a book of poems, talking 25 Troy and Agamemnon. Aunt Ad thought it so strange, she made him write it down. Well, she ain’t heard from Archie, “Pro’lly fishing; could be gone for weeks. Too bad about your brother’s teeth, but Lester don’t know nothing and Russell’s only three.” Berryman posed by the mantle, finger marking a place in his book, then sat at the kitchen table, mumbling Agamemnon. Then he walked to the iron bridge and stared for the longest time into the Sturgeon River. ■ ■ The war came and I saw worse on Tarawa and Saipan. You say that poem’s famous? Read it for me again. And let that young man rise. In the flowing dark The pines consumed the moon and the moon of blood. Well, he’s right about the moon. Gordon’n me were in Wildwood, camped on Nine Mile Hill, where you can see the valley and trouble along the road. Gordon stood at the fire, the moon, blood-red the way it says, simmering along his shoulder. Must’ve been that same moon. Gordon? Dead these thirty-eight years. Caught a Mauser through the heart at Bastogne. 26 That Berryman kid––he was passing through. Shouldn’t have slept on the goddamn road, but we were country people and no one meant him any harm. 27 ...