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Romey's Order

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments.....................xiFlint-Chant.........................3Picture.............................7Turn................................9Strand..............................11Object..............................15Skin................................17Map.................................19Drift-Raft..........................20Tablet..............................21Box.................................23Nullaby.............................24Story...............................25Drill...............................26Diorama.............................28Filmstrip...........................30Rage-Lodge..........................32Skillet.............................33Campground..........................34Scroll..............................36Bell................................40Fosterling-Song.....................41Hutch...............................42Roses...............................44Clary...............................45O...................................47Chord...............................49Notes...............................53

Chapter One

Once upon a time a ditchpipe got left behind behind Azalea Industrial, back in the woods backing on to the Ashley, where old pitch-pines and loblollies grow wild. A mild pesticide-mist was falling and mingling with paper-mill smell and creosote oil the morning he found it. The boy shook and sheltered in its mouth awhile —hoo-hoo! hey-O!— and bent and went on in. It was like a cave but clean. He C-curved his spine against one wall to fit, and humming something, sucked his shirttail. He tuned his eyes to what low light there was and knuckle-drummed a line along his legs.

What the boy called inside-oku called him back. He was hooked right quick on the well-bottom peace of the pumicey concrete and how sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded. Tight-curled as he had to get —like a cling-shrimp one day, a pill-bug, a bass-clef, a bison's eye; an abalone (ocean-ear!), antler-arc, Ark-ant, apostrophe another— sure as clocks a cool clear under-creek would rise, and rinse him through, and runnel free. Hanging in a green-pine O outside were sun-heat and smaze and BB-fire and Mosquito Abatement. Inside there were water-limber words (and a picture-noisy nave), shades of shade.

PICTURE

This is the house (and jungle-strangled yard) I come from and carry.

The air out here is supper-singed (and bruise-tingeing) and close. From where I'm hid (a perfect Y-crotch perch of medicine-smelling sweet-gum), I can belly-worry this (welted) branch and watch for swells (and coming squalls) along our elbow-curve of river, or I can hunker-turn and brace my trunk and limbs —and face my home.

Our roof is crimp-ribbed (and buckling) tin, and tar.

Our (in-warped) wooden porch-door is kick-scarred and splintering. The hinges of it rust-cry and -rasp in time with every Tailspin-wind, and jamb-slap (and after-slap), and shudder.

Our steps are slabs of cinder-crush and -temper, tamped and cooled.

See that funnel-blur of color in the red-gold glass? —Mama, mainly: boiling jelly. She's the apron-yellow (rickracked) plaid in there, and stove-coil coral; the quick silver blade-flash, plus the (magma-brimming) ladle-splash; that's her behind the bramble-berry purple, sieved and stored.

Out here, crickets are cricking their legs. Turtlets are cringing in their bunker-shells and burrows. Once-bedded nightcrawling worms are nerving up through beanvine-roots (and moonvines), —and dew-shining now, and cursive:

Mama will pressure-cook and scald and pan-scorch and frizzle.

Daddy will river-drift down to the (falling-down) dock.

I myself will monkey-shinny so high no bark-burns (or tree-rats, or tides) or lava-spit can reach me.

I will hunt for after-scraps (and -sparks) and eat them all.

TURN

A bright-hot morning; me and Daddy; a fever-cloud of glassy-eyed iridescent flies. Up ahead, invisible heat-devils waver over our (brownbottle) boomerang of river; our rank-pink curves of bait-bucket chicken-neck marinate, and jellify, and stew.

We are walking the oyster-shell zig-path from my blood-home to the water, three hundred and eleven crunch-steps from back door to dock. This is Daddy's day off, our day for blue-crabbing. That neon hum you're hearing? —The colored jinks of flies.

They're all here today, every local-grown species, every flying insect with a taste for something spoiled: heavy-hipped houseflies and hairy-chested horseflies, bloated bluebottles, glossy greenbottles, dirtspeck-tiny screen-huggers too high-strung to swat. One minute back, they were hovering hairnet- (and halo-) style above my bald-headed daddy; now they are down-diving, and landing, in dark clots and clusters, on his eyebrows, neck-bones, knees.

Ninety-nine.

Along in here, our switchback crumbles down to shell-shards and powder.

One hundred.

His breath comes out vinegary when he turns.

Now he's the stagger-leggèd man, sun-squinting facing me so his eyes draw tight and Japanese like Mama's. He is fishing through the fly-fog for my name.

Romey-boy ... he tries saying, slow-slurring it long, long, until the word-sound goes strange in the air and bends back on itself, like a shell-road or a river.

Ninety-nine.

Ninety-eight.

Ninety-seven.

The sand-bar has shown up (and shone) and I'm home-headed; that's my crab-net, and my lunch-bag, and my yellow fly-blown bucket, dragging there behind me like a ruined foot.

STRAND

Alphabet, sluice the porch.

Bind (and try to braid) our river-wrack and leavings.

Used to, it was cackle-berries and cat-heads with him when he dry-docked home.

Daddy: Mama, don't cook all the running out them yellows!

Me: And raise them biscuits big, for sopping!

Other egg-names of ours I've kept are hen-drops, and coop-mines (and -moons), and chicken-lights, and dumpties.

Here is the fillingstation-shirt he got from when he pump-monkeyed for money. The name-eggs (red-stitched and patched to where his chest would go) say Eugene on one side and Esso on the other. Happy Motoring! is tiger-tailed in script across its back.

Gas-smell's the main meat. Grass-sweat. Gnat lotion, neckwise. Ghost-whiffs of GOOP for gunky hands.

His hands (and mine, hammering) made this hutch. I reckon your rabbit could use her a cabin or someplace. Chicken-wire's right airy, and cleans. Let's drive some stilt-legs down to set her up, so dogs don't help theirself to supper.

(Instinct —they can't hardly help it— makes them try.)

Jim Beam & Jim Crow drive him through, like Jesus does some others.

Sure I'm evergreen for Wallace but I'm not no KKK.

Leaf. Leave. Leaves. Leaving. Left.

Have I said yet how mudworms (and flickery mind-minnows) live off leaf-chaff and blown bark-slough and home-grounds and gravel? Son, rearing you some is easy: they durn nearabout feed theirselves!

Time was —or truer, nights were— he'd porch-beach finally, or suddenly yard-founder, from nowhere.

One time I kerosened an ancient oak to lure him home.

POLAROID

The charcoal-stump of it.

The hole.

The rain-pond, ringed with...