Holding the Note

Canto 2

Canto 1: The Day Before the Horses Died

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CANTO 2

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Hear the knocking of the wrench on flange,
the ting and slide of bolts that dropped and rolled
atop the bathroom’s basket-woven tile,
the groans of teenage boys straining ‘gainst
the white enamel cast-iron tub until
the gasket, falling from the pipe, flopped 
onto the floor. The progress made, the boys
observed, was just three inches, judging by
the separated pipes. The younger boy,
with parted hands as gauge of doorframe’s width,
measured the tub, stepped back, and shook his head.

You sure you need this thing got out? asked John.
Hell of a job to get it down the stairs.

Cal glanced into the belly of the beast.
Where once the bottom of the tub had been
a brilliant white, pink stains like dunes formed round
the drain, distorted aureoles of blood.
But worse than this, Cal couldn’t shake the sight
of Merle’s pale body, still as winter frost,
in tantalizing specificity
each time he passed the sunlit tiled floor.
When Cal had stood beside the casket at
his father’s wake, he saw the marks of age
upon his face. Merle’s corpse showed something else.

It’s gotta go. I don’t care what it takes.

They bent again to grip the curled edge
and heaved the tub another inch or so
toward the bathroom door. 

                                        Cal should have burnt
the letter long before he’d ever read
his step-mom’s final words, for now her voice
around his mind’s palate swirled with notes
of customary bitterness. On this
he quickly could grow drunk, and damning Merle,
he swore he’d make a holocaust of all
she loved and pictured leaping flames above
her pile of worldly goods bright on the lawn.
But in the blackout nights of wrath when Cal
lay sprawled across the emerald couch downstairs,
another voice of Merle’s would come and this
with tenderness—infuriating love
so subtle one’d forget it’d ever been. 

Now by the time the boys had got the tub
away from the wall and lined up with the door,
John's sweat had plastered locks of hair across
his forehead, overcome his brow, and struck
him blind. John paused, dabbed shirt to face, while Cal
against his better judgment thumbed Merle's note,
that relic of the dead which he kept close
and folded in the pocket of his slacks.
With that brief touch, the woman’s ghost appeared
as bare as she had left the world, and though
the movements of her mouth were soundless, Cal
discerned the message she proclaimed, her last
epistle writ for none other than him. 

He tensed his grip upon the cast-iron tub,
as if in focusing his energy 
he might dispell the lovely wraith, and shoved
that mass of iron toward John, still unprepared,
who started hollering that his toe was pinched
beneath the claw-foot beast. The boy fell back
and pitched a fit that might, Cal thought, disperse 
the dead for miles around the ranch. Cal rushed
around the tub and forced it off of John,
who took off boot and sock to check his foot
as Cal slid to the ground, his back against
the vanity, and sighed. 

                                       Her ghost was gone,
but Merle’s incanted words still lingered there.

How did this ranch become my life, she wrote,
when all my girlhood dreams were of the sea?
Didn’t my family and my friends attest
a sapphire crown was my sure destiny?
A beautiful, unblemished merchant queen
ruling the waves beside her merchant king?
And gazing in my mirror, I knew its truth.
Yes, I could feel the silk upon my skin,
could see ultramarine reflecting back
from unaverted eyes (how could they take
their eyes from me unless to bow their heads
in grave respect for a goddess of the sea?),
could taste the wine from Sangiovese grapes,
taste mandarins and such exotic things.

Then I met him. 

                          How confident he was
that any man crossing the ceaseless blue
must be a fool. My heart’s desires, he said,
would not be found beneath the waves, for waves
were but the skin of death’s domain and hid
the bones of men lulled to an early sleep
by ocean’s fatal lullaby. Indeed,
that which I most desired, he claimed, would come
from out the land itself, whose veins are gold
or near-enough-to-gold, though black, to trade
for precious things. 

                              I told him I would like
a string of pearls. 

                            Of course you would! he said
and promised that a landed man could send
his servants to the sea for luxuries—
and those but few—that land could not provide.

And so he told me of the verdant tracts
where species of grass flash like gemstones in
the gentl’st wind. Of how the rolling hills
outmatch the roiling sea since they are signs
not of the imminence of death, but peace.
Of how few owned quite so much land as he.

Now, listen closely, Cal, for I was near
your age and vain (I’m sure you’ll think me still)
and gullible as Eve when I arrived
to watch, beside your father, hired men
with arms and faces slick with blackened gold
scurrying 'round colossuses of wood;
the derrick testified to an oil seep,
to riches without end, and all for me.
Abdicate your claim to a shifting throne
atop the unruly sea, it seemed to say,
and rule this man’s stable barony.

Your father kept from that initial seep
only enough to slake a young wife’s dreams—
a duchess's trousseau if set against
the country wives with whom we always dined,
but meagre when compared to tens of thousands
spent constructing derricks greedy for
the oil your father hoped his land contained.
A fortune gambled; fortune never gained.

How many months did happiness, though false,
indwell our home? I see it clearly now:
Your father’s bid, espousing romance, hid
an ill-conceived design at husbandry.
A child needs a mother, true. But how
could I at seventeen consider you,
a four-year old, my son? A mother? No.
Where parents wield authority and mold
their child beneath their unrelenting hands,
the two of us were given surer bond: 
I was a first-born daughter, you my late-
born brother, choosing for ourselves to love
or hate. Since I was not your origin,
I knew a greater honor would be mine
should you decide to view the world as I.
And so I tried to make you love me as
a sister does. Do you recall how I
at first delighted you? Swinging you round
and through the waist-high grass, so evergreen
it seemed it’d never die? Laughter inspired
by faces made right under Father’s nose?

I used to smile. I did. Before the black-
gold veins of mother earth evaded us.
No other seep produced more than a day.
I didn’t need to see the bank accounts
to know throwing good money after bad
for worthless derricks meant we’d soon be just
another ranch. The final derrick drilled 
exhumed a spring, a subterranean stream
that gushed until the flooded ground became
my own forsaken sea but fouled by oil.
And as I watched the iridescent blooms
rippling atop the wind-blown water’s skin,
the breeze brought in a haunting melody,
a soothing song with which I had been known 
to hum my childhood self to sleep, a tune
cut short, a single rumbling note sustained 
by oceanic lungs, condemning me
poetically, as goddesses are wont 
to do when scorned by mortal vanity.

The day we tore those wretched derricks down,
your father, to remit his final debt,
produced the promised double-strand of pearls. 
How odd it felt to clasp around my neck
the symbol of my hoped-for royalty
but made manacle now and teth'ring me
to horseshit friends, locked in a horseshit town.

I thought my pain was evident and hoped 
sympathy for your cherished sister might 
endear your heart to me, that we might stand 
against your father’s bullish silence, force 
open his eyes so he would see our joy
diminished day by day. But yours did not.
You relished in the land your father owned,
the stench of horses, and the sun which marked
you with your father’s brand, for you were made
a captive of this ranch, the same as I.
And I resented how you couldn’t see 
your reins, while I still wore the bridle bit.

The ocean, though, had not forgotten me.
And while its tune had turned from lullaby
to song of imprecation, I took heart
even in this, my reprimand. Some day,
I thought, this curse might find its cure, and my
penitent lips would kiss her shores when out
of exile I returned. Thalassa! How
I’ve longed to see your streets again, to hear
the rapture of the waves against your wharf,
to smell the incense of the sea whom I
incensed when I forsook her waters in
my vanity. Thalassa, I repent.
Such was my refrain those nights as I 
awaited jubilee—I repent.

But were we free, Cal, when your father died?
His death meant bitter quiet in our home,
emptier rooms the better to display
how far estranged my little brother was.
For I still saw in you, as I do now,
that boy with brown, straw-woven hair, who brought
me chorus frogs to name or, as I hung
the laundry, doused me with a bucket to
entice a chase that’d end in ticklish glee.
No animosity or petty fight
protracted through the years could shake our bond, 
devoted as I was to this idea:
Our souls, dear Cal, were forged the same. This ranch,
this town, could never circumscribe our hopes.

To live here is to live alone. Can you
imagine life wed to the homely girls
these country dames produce? Your mother must
have been the last fair face above a pair
of breasts from Hatch to Wadsworth county line.
So I considered how we might escape,
how I unveil the glamours of the sea.
Thalassa gave her beauty prodigally
to girls with sea-bright eyes (like mine) and hair
that falls in golden waves or darkling tides
so pure they hold a star-sprent gleam,
with waists that, Cal, I swear, the Venus could
not boast a form the eyes would find more pleasing.

But what a fool I was, believing I,
who claimed the ocean’s glory for myself,
could break the curse that had transfigured me
into a ranchhand’s widow. Juno changed
Callisto to a bear, and did that maid
regain the form that had so tempted Jove?
Below Polaris hang her ursine legs,
forbidden rest within those cradled waves.
None can revoke the judgments of the gods. 
The plum-dark ocean sings, will sing, and sang
its charge against me as its breakers pulled
Thalassa to the deep and blued the cheeks
of all her gorgeous daughters, save for me.

But do not think me spared because I lived.
While I shovel manure, scrape afterbirth
from knock-kneed colts, and watch black bruises form
beneath my once elegant nails, on thrones
of pearl my sisters reign with coral crowns.
Whereas my body in a filthy pit 
will rot and none bring me to memory,
the sea exalted them; their tragic deaths
sailors will sing each time they pass that port
no less immortal than Atlantis since
it was likewise submerged. I am destroyed;
they are reborn. And yet, though I submit
to obscurity in death, let my demise
bear fruit. For though your father’s passing failed
to break our chains, I set you free, dear Cal.  

There’s nothing for you here. There never was. 

Soul of my soul, go find your destiny,
and when the ocean sings, remember me.

But Merle was no emancipator. Cal
felt no relief dismantling the tub.
He felt about as free as Sisyphus
and wondered what would end the tasks Merle’s death
had set before him. 

                                First, his father's gun
became a stone to mark his hand like Cain's
with fratricide (for all akin to Wren 
were kin to him). Each time the boulder dropped, 
there was another stall, another brother 
horse to raise his hand against. A spire 
of flame brightened their marble eyes, mirrored
the Smith & Wesson's muzzle flash, and quenched
to lifeless black. Two days his shovel broke
the ground and sparked against the flinty bones
of mother earth to dig a common grave. 
It took a day for him and John to grab 
their hooves and drag their bodies from the stalls
and roll them, one by one, into the pit
from first light till the sun was tucked behind
the mound of dirt. And then another day
rising before the dawn to bury them. 

Still Merle was wrong. Escaping from this ranch
had never crossed Cal’s mind. Instead, he thought
erasing her, however long that took,
would be the better course. The vision Cal’s
father had sold to Merle—triumphs of grass
first green then gold against the silver sky—
was not an aftermarket part of Cal
but was inborn. His early memories
conflated nature with the mother he
had lost. She’d taken him each dusk to sit
in stillness as the vesperites would flit
and feast, and as she watched the western sky
saturating from indigo to black,
Cal watched her features disappear, dissolve
into the land she loved. She must reside
here still, he thought. How could he leave her side?

No ghost of Merle’s would chase Cal from his home.
And so he rose to exorcise the tub
with John once more attired for the rite.
They laid their hands upon the bath and said
each one a silent prayer, but just as they
began to lift, there was a knocking at 
the stairs, the shuffling footfalls of two men 
in bowler hats and suits. They came right to
the bathroom door, as though they knew just where
Cal could be found. These men were so alike
they could have traded eye for eye or tooth
for tooth and been no less themselves. Each wore
a patterned ascot tucked into his vest,
had sideburns of white hair along his jowls,
and bore concise lips out of which no spare
word might escape. Except the hands of one
were fastened round a leather case, the next’s
around the scrimshaw handle of his cane,
Cal would have thought his vision duplicate.

Knock, knock, said John. And who the hell are you?

We are the bank, said the man with the cane.

Cal looked at John and rolled his eyes and said,
Well, shoot. Then let yourselves right in. But just
to get ahead of things, I wouldn’t count
on selling me nothing the bank has got.
I do despise a loan. My father taught 
me that. What is it brings you to my home?

And with a solemn smile the other said,
A matter of some sensitivity.
We’re looking for relations of Merle Grant,
regrettably deceased. Would that be you?

Cal spat into the tub and shook his head.

She was my father’s wife. Nothing to me.

I see no love was lost twixt you in death.
Nevertheless, to the extent that you
presume to be this ranch’s heritor,
the designation of relation fits.

The other man then placed his leather case
beside the sink, released the latches, and
retrieved some documents. He spoke before
turning to Cal.

                       We say presume to be
because there is the issue of the lien
against this house. Unless that debt is paid—

My father owned this place outright, said Cal. 
For men so smartly dressed, you sure don't keep
yourselves apprised of basic facts before
you barge into a stranger's house. A man
these parts is like to draw a pistol on
folks who darken his door as soon as not. 

Our underwriters were of course aware
your father owned this residence outright,
and they confirmed the income of this ranch
before they lent against its equity. 
Which is to say, the bank now holds the note,
and more than that, the loan is in default. 

I'm telling you, my father never took
no banker's loan, said Cal. 

                                             The bankman, with
his documents in hand, approached the boy
and licked his thumb for better purchase on
the page and, as he flipped through till he found
the signatory sheet, he said, We are
all firm believers that the written word
has power. Though sticklers over terms, we will
not quibble immaterial facts except
to set the record straight. Your father, once
upon a time, when his designs were to
establish for himself a barony,
certainly did secure himself a loan.
A loan which he quite hastily repaid.
But that is of such little consequence
to the matter at hand, we’ll now move on.

The man had found the page and laid it on
the vanity so Cal might verify
its applicant. 

                     You would not disagree
the undersigned was authorized to take
the mortgage, said the man holding the cane.

His father was nowise affixed by word
or implication on the deed, and yet
Cal recognized the flourished script. The same
delicate hand that had composed the note
Cal carried with him night and day had signed
her name—the M, its curving horns so like
a crescent moon’s, gave way to miniscule,
elaborate but compact; the aspect of
the G implied a different lunar phase,
somehow apocalyptic as it waned
above the remnants of Cal’s family name.

Dammit all, Merle, Cal muttered. Every bit.
How far behind was she on payments then?

The loan originated six months past.
Since then no single payment has been made.
The final notice of foreclosure was
received, and we have verified receipt,
three weeks before the borrower passed on.

The man held out the signed and dated note
preempting any argument from Cal.

The bank has not been uncompassionate.
In light of recent circumstances, we've
deferred the requisition of this house
and all its land, and made provision for
an heir, that should he choose to remedy
the loan by bringing those missed payments up
to date, he shall thereby assume the loan
as it was underwrit to one Merle Grant.

Six months is quite some time, said Cal. Do I
dare ask the sum that I should keep in mind?

The principal and interest every month
is three hundred three. With escrow, then,
Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one
dollars and fourteen cents, the man replied.

John, who had remained in silence since
first apprehending that the presence of
these men foreboded ill for Cal beyond
what could be solved with scoffing words or at
the barrel end of Cal’s dead father’s gun,
could only say, Good God. And likewise Cal
blanched at the sum, inwardly cursing Merle.

The bankman packed his leather case and passed
his twin into the hall. The one who held
the scrimshaw cane looked at the boys and said,
You have three days. Whatever you’ve removed,
be sure that you replace. The tub conveys.

And then they stumped back down the stairs and out
the door, which swung and slammed with creaking hinge,
and left the boys to marvel at this turn 
of fate; three days to raise a sum that Cal
had never seen at once, without a horse
but Wren to sell to raise the funds (and this
was something Cal could never do, for Wren
was the last living soul Cal’s father saw
the moment when eternal sleep befell him).

Despite this insurmountability,
John felt a twinge of guilt at his relief
that he and Cal would, for a time at least,
be spared the stairwell’s treacherous descent.
For such a thought, his penance clearly meant
he would help Cal to raise every last cent.

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