Proving Grounds, The

Repair Shop

30 rePAir shoP Howard and Birdie Hurley lived on the west side Of East Berne, flush against the birches And Siskin-filled pines Birdie would feed From the front window of their trailer Each time we came by. Howard owned the local Repair shop right across the way, Cement with oil stains and an old Playboy calendar Permanently wrinkled on Miss July. My father loved To hang out there and I’d sit on an overturned Wooden Coke crate just listening to their voices Echo through the back room where the old carburetors And engine blocks were kept, voices as steady As the stream that ran behind us, its flow So strong it ran even in a deep freeze. I loved the shop, to rest my head on cold cement And hear Howard, my father, speak easy, Voices rising only for laughs or some crack About Republicans orTricky Dick. It was The only time of the day I could listen, The only time he did speak, instead of that hissed Undertone about the way my mother, his bosses, And everyone else had failed him, until the doors My mother locked to keep him out Were shattered by his fists.The year He broke her bedroom door six times She decided to leave, and since Birdie Hurley Was her only friend, asked could we stay there For that first night. But Birdie’s Face turned as dark as the Sister Fates I’d read about in Greek mythology, and when She turned her eyes down and shook her head I thought I’d seen what the Fates knew: this is what men Do, broken-down doors like cars breaking down Or machine shops, the snow, those Siskins, the unfrozen stream— The beer they drank the lubricant that kept their axels in place, Their rage the gasoline in their big-barrelled chests. ...