How He Survived, and: Cabin

How He Survived

That summer, my father dug graves by hand,twenty-five dollars each. Vietnamwas sending back bodies faster thanthey could be buried. He was in collegein a dry town in North Carolina.Moonshiners sucked white lightningfrom mash and heat. Ski slopeson Sugar Mountain cut like riversthrough the trees. Nixon promisedto bring more boys home, saidI want peace as much as you do,but they kept coming in boxes,flag-draped and rolled off planes.Years later, I watched my father go quietwhen Neil Young climbed the stageto sing “Ohio” in front of the same flagand I knew he was back there,working for hours in the mountain’s shadow,waist deep in a grave that could have been his.

Cabin

At night behind a flimsy plastic window shadewe watched as a stump slathered with bacon greaselured foxes in. From the truck, we swept fieldswith spotlights looking for deer. I learned to seetheir green eyes in the false light.I lived for my father then. I strained all day to spotthe lone elk he so badly wanted to see.In summer, hummingbirds whirred at the red feederuntil the bear pawed it down while we were gone.In the yard, we shot BB guns at cans,my cousins silent because, without practice,I could hit at every distance and right in the middle.Our shower was a garden hose rigged to hotand a watering can that tipped over the back stepswhere, one night in winter, I stood in the steam and heatand it began to snow. The driving flakes blew past,sometimes caught in the fog of the shower, and somehowI was not cold, even as the porch stepswere freezing, even in my nakedness.I saw myself, then, the way a fox might see itself.I turned my body toward the white fieldswhere I followed tracks until they were lostin the creek. The moon was fixedover the mountain like a great eye.