Grass

I once worked for "social welfare" on the far-northern coast of California. Tedious menial labor, to be honest. Minimum wage. There was this tiny Portuguese woman, whose backyard had a white picket fence, a patch of green grass. . .I'm trying to remember her name. I used to bathe her in the mornings, powder her shoulders and get her dressed, but she never went out, that I know of. Her husband died. And though the house within was immaculate, she'd send me around with a clean cloth day after day, dusting nothing from furniture of the thirties. She worried that people, I guess, would think she was dirty.

Late mornings, we'd sit down to genuine so-called Portuguese soup, but after that she'd gradually fade. Took to speaking, flute-like and feverish, to empty chairs. One day she opened up the garage, introduced me to her husband. She couldn't sleep nights at all anymore, so fell to dreaming half the day long. Later it was monkeys. In the garage.

I don't know. Who's to say about "dirty"?

And then there was Mabel, ninety-some years old, who lived with her sons back of a lumber operation, the dust forever blowing through all their affairs. I was hired to sweep it back out. I remember their rooms were all choked, and dim. I remember pushing whole broomfuls of sawdust down the one hall, and out of corners where it liked to settle.

Mabel was always asking did I study my Bible? And on and on about her ancient Scottish forebears. How long they resisted the Roman invaders. I'd say, America and Rome. In some ways a little alike, don't you think? But she never would answer. I think my talking that way made her angry.

One afternoon, soon as I stepped through the door, she flustered admonished sit down, sit down. Her daughter's house had caught fire the night before—they all suspected the "good-for-nothing husband"—a five-year-old grandson burned alive.

I didn't know what was proper to say. We sat awhile in rocking chairs and rocked: menial labor, minimum wage.

Dust went on gathering over the floor.

And, finally, a Yurok man, fulblooded I think, named Dewey George, his trailorhouse crammed with ceremonial regalia. I knew enough of local tribes to know that, for them, all things had a meaning—feather, cup, hour of day—though meanings for a long time now have been vanishing.

I'd cook Dewey big greasy steaks, get down on my knees to clip the most direful nails. One day he made a rude pass, but was almost charmingly contrite just after. That's when he carved me a genuine so-called Yurok canoe. It was full of people all out of proportion, heady red bodies the red wood of the boat, and everyone went without eyes. He called them hunters.

*

I've traveled in, say, a dozen Greyhound buses, all across the country. Mothers and kids in back, crazies and drunks and middle class oddballs, like me, around about the middle. One time this girl up front, paraplegic, I think, was faring some kind of private marathon, one coast to the other and back nonstop. We talked a bit in one of those bus station restaurants, chile and oily eggs and reheated potatoes. Dust of Utah or Wyoming blowing for miles all around us. The girl was in pain, I could tell, and said she felt sick, her trip a good four days at least. But she never did explain. I thought maybe she was going to die. I thought death must have something to do with meaningless, circular adventures.

Today I'm revelling alone in the sun alone. This is Moorhead, Minnesota, where it borders Fargo, North Dakota. The border (the Red River) slinks along in tremendous half-loops, sign of near stagnation, if I remember Geology. But this particular river, I might as easily claim, is also zany, erotic, wanting nothing whatsoever to do with human boundaries. It was this park where, several days before, an elderly woman I swear was watering trees.

Now an old guy in baggy pants and a hunter's cap is out meandering around. Every time he shuffles near, he continues the "conversation," begun who knows where, with who knows whom. Memorial Day and there's no place to go, everything closed. "They'd starve a man on a holiday," he says, and ambles, circles away.

When he circles back, and I suspected he would, he comments on the weed-infested grass. We discuss Park Management.

In the distance to the west of me now, across some heavy traffic, a train is creeping towards the border. The city station isn't far, and I wonder what the people in charge there think they are doing. The train so slow, finally, it's perfectly still—

one small bell clanging and clanging—

and now the train is moving slowly backwards.