Table of Contents
Titles available from Hawthorne Books
For Monica, for Mavis.
The corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with nails he’ll dig it up again!
T.S. ELIOT
The Wasteland: I. The Burial of the Dead
Equinox
THE MOON SPUN. THE POPLARS BORE TRINKETS OF FRACTURED of stuttering light. The mud sucked his boot heels as he walked through the fen. Though warm, it had rained. It would rain again.
A hundred yards down he reached the dogleg. Music sifted through the branches overhead. He stepped his feet left right sidewise up the spongy bank. Beyond the fen lay the ravished cornfield, harvest come and gone. Was there really a party tonight? Was it a dream, or something else?
Ruckle and hiss of the feathered reeds. Whispers and laughter from the damp dead corn. He looked over his shoulder the poplars their boles sunk down into the fen. He licked his lips. He pushed his way into the stalks toward the music the glow of the bonfire.
The cornfield surrendered to a plowed-under clearing bodies and crackle of voices. The bonfire thrust spears at the dark shapes dancing. He stepped from the wall of cornstalks. He went along the wall toward the crowds gathered before the kegs the meat turned on spits the boiled ears of corn.
The cup of beer was wet in his hand. The leaves of the stalks brushed his arm as he walked along the wall. Past the roadway cut into the field. Past the bonfire. Past more bodies danced and drunk and laughter.
The band played in a nest of cables and amplifiers and speakers on the plywood flatbed of a truck. What would happen when it rained again? Would the guitars toss sparks, spawn fledgling moons, darkness and silence? Would the bonfire hiss or scream? What would happen to him? It was here the arm slipped through the crook of his arm the key into the lock. A dream or something else, he could not look.
I cannot believe I found you here, she said. Surprised to see me?
He raised his cup the beer that stung his throat on the way down. The kind of beer that made his feet cold and wet.
No, he said.
Well if you’re not surprised to see me then you must be happy to she said. Her fingers scratched his chin. I like the goatee it looks so good I almost didn’t recognize you.
She held him close she took the cup of beer from his hand. She raised the cup to her lips. Bracelets slid down her wrist. His fingers brushed her thigh. She wore the cutoffs she’d had on the day she. And the warmth that was. And fragrancy of daffodils. He curled his fingers in his fist.
Where have you been? he said.
Aren’t you even going to tell me how good I look without my glasses? She batted her lashes and smiled. I wear contacts now, she said. This woman I just ran into Gina she said I have the greatest eyebrows and I had to agree I mean things like that get noticed when the face isn’t hidden don’t you think?
The fen was the last thing he remembered, the way the moon sawed through the trees the flashing shovelblades of light the last things.
Where have you been? he said.
She took another drink. She licked foam off her lip she handed him the wet cup. Oh you know here and there, she said. Mostly up in Seattle couch surfing bumming even did a little dancing my god you would not believe how much money can be made for that sort of thing. I mean it was time I left here anyway I was going absolutely nowhere I was going insane. It’s like I feel so much more at peace and freer now.
He
