University of Northern Iowa

Raison D'êtreAuthor(s): Charlie SmithSource: The North American Review, Vol. 273, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), p. 29Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124987 .

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TOM D R U R Y

chest, curving my fingers to its sides. I don't see why not, he said. Photo by the grandson.

He moved his flat chewed thumb over a square of glass on top of the camera.

This is where we see what we're taking, he said.

Everything was turned upside down in this glass. The farmers looked like they might begin to fall one by one

into the sky. Harlan pushed my finger over a red button. See? he

said, hot breath on my ear. Should we click the button? But I didn't want to. Too many had crowded into the

field, all of them, all their machines pressed together. I moved the camera to one side and the picture changed. Trees rooted down from the fenceline and blurred along and then my grandfather's house filled the little square,

white and slant-roofed with its collar of evergreens. The

yard stood perfectly still, the picnic table and tireswing. Then something flashed in the glass. Yellow light blotted out the boxelder, flared in the windows, streamed down the corners toward the roof; my grandfather's house was

burning. What is it? Harlan said, leaning over me. Say, you're

catching the sun there. You're losing your aim, sport.

Then the picture shifted, I felt him turning me back toward the men. But it hadn't been the sun. I'd seen flames and black smoke, people gathering on the edge of the yard to watch it go up. I'd seen all of it and it wasn't

any sun.

I twisted away. The heavy black box fell from our hands and bounced off the corner of the tailgate with a hard metal sound.

Jesus Christ, Harlan said. My camera?somebody take him!

When I looked up my grandfather's house was white on the horizon, nothing moving. Uncle John caught me

roughly like a sack of feed but then he set me down and I ran, through the broken stalks, through all the thick legs planted like trees, into the standing corn. Sharp leaves

grazed my face and the gold color cut into the overhead

sky. I knelt on the ground with my breath swelling in my

chest. Somewhere footsteps thrashed and everywhere I saw layers of brittle stalks. I waited. With my finger and thumb I drilled through the mat of husks and into the dirt.

Digging felt good. I used both hands. The dirt came out in chunks, it was getting ready to freeze. When the hole

got big enough I took from my coat the red tobacco tin and laid it in.

I looked at the bright red color and then covered it

over, pounding the dirt flat with the edge of my fist. They won't get to this. They may crush it down with tractor tires but they won't find it below the ground.

And then it will snow and all winter the red will lie

waiting under the white. One day in spring my grand father will begin to plow, and his curving metal blades will

drag up this can, force it up through the earth. The sun will hit it and he will climb down, curious, glad for the

spring again. He will turn it over and over in his hands. He will think it fell from his own pocket sometime when he was working and you couldn't notice something that slips away unheard in the loud noise of the tractor. D

Charlie Smith

Singed, rent, or whatever,

the dirty boys bait their hooks

with roaches, which are bitter and stink and won't make fish

rise, either today or tomorrow, or tomorrow when the green

gloves of spring once more begin to strangle the town, and old women

pour onto the avenues

for confabs and accusations,

becoming proof of God's

existence in this part of the world, which for a moment, as the small boy draws back the striped plastic pole becomes a song of tenderness,

like a hot night on the sixth floor

when, above the stinks and

cries, your sister

reaches across the milky light to fan you for a minute, just a minute,

though she doesn't really mean it, or she doesn't do it long enough for you?or her?to know

if she means it; but that moment

is like a peach somebody hands you in a battle trench, or like the door

you opened once, where you shouldn't have been, to see a beautiful woman

slipping into a silver, sequined dress . . . and so

the arms draw back, the tip flashes in the sun, it is

spring, or about to be, as all the scrawny boys dare the river

to kill them, which is all they do

these days?no matter what it looks like?keep death

in its place, which is

everywhere like lint

or sweat, by daring it to change, as they will not; all they know

and remember

and plan for become performance, a tinny, sharp routine

danced for quarters and the moment

when the knife appears.

September 1988 29

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