A Husband on the Marsh, and: What Light Destroys, and: Sufficient Witness

A HUSBAND ON THE MARSH / Andrew Hudgins I'm lost. Which is the point. That's why I come here when I can and walk the marsh. Well, not exactly lost. Over scrub pines, I recognize a cypress that's not too far from the road back home. I know the marsh too well. I can't get lost—unlike when I was just a child. With longer legs, I see above sawgrass. I know the stars. I know which side of trees moss dangles from. I always find my way back home without much drama. Or much fear. Even if I stare into the sun, then close my eyes and follow the two dots of fire scored on the back of my eyelids like stars, I can't get lost. I just get my feet drenched from stumbling into water, clothes scuffed from brushing against trees, my face lashed with limbs, hands slashed by sawgrass. But when I look I know exactly where I am. Or will: This run of rotting fence connects to Parker's land. This smoke wafts from a chimney whose fireplace I've sat by and talked politics. But I get lost in what it means— the marsh. Mary just says, WZio cares? When I was young I had no doubt the marsh—the world—was God's mind. We were God's thoughts as we trampled through the bog, fished, hunted deer, and tried to keep our awe in check. Why try? But then I strated in on meaning, which goes nowhere. So then I thought The Missouri Review · 99 that play was aU there was to it— not least, because out wandering, Td seen the red-tailed hawks I love scream in mid-air on windy days until, God-like, the male bird tucks his wings and plummets toward this mate. A scant half second before he hits, he spreads wing and zooms off. Repeatedly he feints, then veers, as I watch noon sunlight glow red through his tail-feathers. And once, as he bore down, I saw the female flip. The two locked talons and tumbled almost to the pines before they separated and the game resumed. Courtship! I loved it once. But who could bear it every spring? Mary. Don'f be so serious, she says. But play is not enough. Tm of at least two minds—like one strange salamander that I found. These salamanders breed too fast to do it well—three tails, six legs. With heads at either end, it crawled one way until that end collapsed, and then the other end would crawl the other way—till it collapsed. I tried to let it go. But how could it escape? I tossed it back into the mud and left it there, alive when I walked off, but after that, who knows? Tm stuck with stories now. Perhaps this is a better one: Along the Chattahoochee's bank, I saw green cankerworms, in thousands, moil—seethe—beneath the cottonwoods like fat, green, severed fingers, searching for their lost hands. A scene of hell, one Dante overlooked. But later, at night, I went again and found the cankerworms were gone. Instead an equal number of dust-brown moths fluttered over water. They 200 · The Missouri Review Andrew Hudgins turned white, then silver, transformed by moonlight. Exquisite. I left before the magic turned them back to moths. But here, lost, when I could get lost I loved the idea of mosquitoes, lice, and ticks living off my blood, as I lived off the meaning of the marsh. Or off its lack of meaning—back and forth. Mosquitoes, ticks: I loved them as ideas. I never felt so thoroughly that I was just a soul and nothing else than when my body fed their bodies. But, dammit, the actual fact of them was more than I could bear. They hurt. But Td tell Mary what to do with facts: smack them around, and see if they will tell you anything. Some do. Some don't. Some waffle. Hell, she's not convinced. In winter light, the marsh is stark, abstract. Just up and down. The hard-edged light is clear, incisive...