by Karen Hesse
well, i don’t know what the klan would make of her.
when she was still down here,
she bought all her shoes
from the jew store.
merlin van tornhout
just can’t keep himself out of trouble.
with all the talk about
leopold and loeb
he goes driving off to
rescue his 15-year-old girlfriend
from an orphanage in burlington
and gets hauled into jail for kidnapping.
boy’s got spirit, i’ll give him that.
his girl told him she wanted out,
and he drove up there to spring her.
they were caught in vergennes,
mary placed in custody
of a policewoman,
merlin arrested and held in the lockup.
he should be back in a few days.
reynard alexander went and pitched for him.
it helps having reynard alexander for a friend.
i should know.
constable johnson told me it’d be better
if i watched my step after the trouble
i got in
trying to help mary.
did you have to buy so many, viola says,
looking at the stack of phonograph records.
harvey closes his eyes and breathes deeply.
when i go in the music store,
i want everything, he says.
viola says:
if you would only sit in the booth and try out half a dozen records
before you buy, you’d know exactly what
you’re getting, you’d
get exactly
what you want.
harvey says:
i did get what i wanted. why should i spend half my life
squeezed inside a soundproof cubby,
when i can come home
and listen in peace in my own chair.
viola says:
we’ll see how much peace you get, mr. pettibone.
i was hoping to put
new linoleum on the floor this month.
now it looks like we might just have to
nail your records down
instead.
we took a pine
40 feet high and
lashed a cross arm
to it and set the
cross in the ground,
its arms stretching above the town. we soaked burlap bags
in kerosene and wrapped the bags around the wood.
at the foot of the
cross i smashed
a railroad torch.
the fire took off
so fast. a divine
sight, neighbor,
the flames spread
from the base to the
top. in a matter of
minutes the cross arm
pulsed with fire. the
flames leaping,
seeking heaven,
neighbor, the white
crucifix scoring
the night
blazed perfect.
perfect.
i don’t care what constable johnson says.
before i left for work,
i went up with johnny reeves and them
and we lit up prospect hill
with a fiery cross.
the kerosene took off so fast.
burned so fierce. christ.
i can still see it when i close my eyes.
i woke up Saturday night
because the light coming through
my bedroom window changed.
on the hill across the valley
i saw
a flame
rising.
but it was
no wild fire. it
was a
cross,
burning.
silently,
silently,
i crept down the hall,
into the closet
where,
at the back,
mamma’s cotton dress
still dangled over her shoes,
and the walls smelled of hair oil and oranges.
in that dark and narrow place,
i opened a hole for myself
but no matter how i turned,
the light from the cross
curled its bright claws under the door.
down in town,
families listened to the independence day concert,
while up on the hill a fiery cross was set ablaze.
it started burning about the time the band finished
the star-spangled banner.
only a lunatic
would ignore the dry conditions,
or the fact that a crackling fire
could spread so easily out of control.
or perhaps it was the work of children
stirred by griffith’s birth of a nation,
that racist rubbish,
which will not fade away.
sara chickering did take me for a walk
on the other side of flat rock
from where the cross did burn
the other night.
sara chickering did grumble about men in their nightshirts
with their filthy wet hems
and i did laugh at her
so serious
and ask her the names for all the flowers,
all the growing plants like
ebony spleenwort and
rusty woodsia.
as we did walk through the meadow
back to sara chickering’s house
we did see flowers with more good names
like violet and saxifrage and cowslip,
and we did see birds with the most happy namings like
meadowlark
and bobolink
and savanna sparrow.
they did make a music in the shimmery air
and there were flickers and
orioles and
bluebirds turning circles.
and as i did look up to give thanks to sara chickering for all the namings,
a whippoorwill had singings
and the music did come from sara chickering’s mouth.
i was born protestant.
but i’d join the catholic church
before
i’d throw my lot in with the klan.
i never thought much about it before.
if esther hadn’t needed a place the last minute
with all those fresh air kids coming to town,
i never would think of it still.
i might have joined the ladies’ klan.
become an officer, even.
klan can seem mighty right-minded, with their talk of family virtue,
mighty decent, if you don’t scratch the surface.
there’s a kind of power they wield,
a deceptive authority.
i think a lot about it these days.
the klan says they don’t stand against anyone.
but a catholic, a jew, a negro,
if they got arrested,
and the judge was klan,
and the jury was klan,
you can’t convince me they’d get a fair trial.
it took having the hirshes here
to see straight through
to the end of it.
someone did wrap a letter over a stone and they did send it
through sara chickering’s kitchen window.
i have not knowings what the letter said.
daddy would not give readings of the words to me.
he did say a hiss word like steams coming from the teakettle
and make slow shakings of his head.
sara chickering,
when she did read the letter,
she made angry sayings.
when sara chickering does get angry she is
walking
so fast,
like a dog who has needs for squats.
she does go so fast
sparks are coming on the braided rug.
daddy did say he would sit at the table and not have sleeps.
sara chickering let me have sleeps in her bed.
daddy did say nobody not anybody not even klan is hurting little girls
and
i can have sleeps with no fearing.
i like
having sleeps with sara chickering
except it does make me
hungry in the hot night
when sara chickering is all
smelling
of spicy green tomatoes.
ira hirsh
saw in the paper
an ad for a flat on main street.
five rooms,
completely furnished.
he asked if he should take it.
get the klan to leave me alone.
i can’t imagine life without that child under my feet,
asking a thousand questions
with that odd way of hers,
talking to the animals
and the plants
and the furniture
as if everything
was talking back.
i can’t imagine life without that child.
i told mr. hirsh so in so many words.
damn klan.
to think of what they could drive from my life
with their filthy
little
minds.
sara chickering did come with me
and we did gather
sticks and sticks of rhubarbs from the garden.
we did put the rhubarbs in my wagon
and have squeaks, squeaks to town,
pulling the rhubarbs behind us all the places
and we did sell sara chickering’s rhubarbs,
ten sticks a nickel.
and we had comings back with the rattle-empty wagon,
and five jingle nickels.
caught iris weaver
with twenty bottles of bootleg whiskey in her car.
but the man she was with
said it was his hooch and iris didn’t know what all she was carrying.
now i know it was iris running that booze,
but the gentleman’s going to jail for her,
serving the sentence she ought to serve.
if you ask me,
a girl goes and bobs her hair and her head starts
filling with nothing but monkey business.
heard talk around town that
the hearse of a slain klansman
caught fire on its way to the cemetery.
what do you suppose the lord
was trying to say about that?
neighbor,
as the hearse drove
past hundreds of persons
lining the sidewalks,
an act of god,
a thunderbolt
struck the car itself,
sparking it to
smoke and flames.
an act of god,
neighbor,
to express the lord’s anger
that one
of his special children
had fallen.
on arrival in a town,
the klan appears to serve the best interest of
the greater community,
”cleaning” it up, keeping a vigilant eye out for
loose morals and lawbreakers.
they deliver baskets to the needy,
and money to the destitute,
but the needy the klan comforts are white protestant needy,
the destitute white protestant, too.
a catholic with troubles, a negro, a jew, a foreigner?
their problems are of no concern to the klan.
from state to state,
from town to town,
men join who cannot be trusted.
unscrupulous men
who work in the dark
behind hoods and masks.
it takes but ten dollars.
and when that sort of scoundrel
starts hiding under hood and robes,
no good can come of it.
i have reached the pinnacle, neighbor.
tapped by the exalted dragons.
i, neighbor, led the klan
in their opening prayers.
the gathering prayed with me,
neighbor, in the summer morning
with the bees humming in the clover.
they prayed with me as i declared the klan a
movement of god.
heads uplifted, we offered ourselves to the almighty,
calling all
protestants
to band together
for the sake of home and country
and we sang
america.
i was on my way up main street when i saw esther.
she was picking stands of dandelion, talking her strange talk
about birds and kittens, about lewis and
stopping the train
so she could take flowers to heaven and visit her mother.
i walked with her a while, listening,
then waved goodbye at the bottom of main street hill.
i hadn’t gone far
when i heard the train whistle.
i couldn’t see the tracks
or esther
but
i saw my mother,
running
and i
started running, too, toward her,
racing between buildings.
then my mother was gone, but there was esther,
looking up,
still as a rock,
gazing at
that big train,
rushing down on her,
expecting it to stop and let her on.
i pretty near flew
it didn’t seem i could ever move fast enough
but i ran
as the whistle shrieked
as the brakes screamed
as the fireman crawled out onto the grinding locomotive.
the train was nearly on top of her when i leaped,
grabbed esther, and rolled her to safety,
locked in my arms,
the two of us cradled in a mess of seed and dandelion.
leanora sutter
snatched esther from the path of the maine central locomotive,
racing the engine while the fireman crawled out
in the hope of a rescue,
an impossible rescue.
they saw esther on the tracks.
set their brakes
but the train was so heavy,
it ran a quarter mile more
before
screeching
to a
stop.
in that wrenching stretch
the men were certain they’d killed her.
can’t hardly think of anything
but leanora sutter
in my kitchen last winter, wrapped in my best quilt,
and yesterday, esther, wrapped in
leanora,
inches from the railroad tracks,
safe in a nest of dandelion.
i do have the prickle scratches on my legs and on my arm
from where
leanora did push me down in the tangle grass
and sara chickering says in a big scold voice
that i am never, never, ever stopping a train
not ever, never, never on the train tracks.
but
i do miss my mamma and her summer
skin.
wright sutter
received a letter
in the mail
warning him to leave town.
whoever wrote that letter said
they saw the article about leanora
saving the hirsh child from the train.
said,
they’d tie them both to the tracks next time,
make sure neither walked away.
fearing for leanora,
sutter took the
letter to percelle johnson.
johnson
asked the head of the local klan what they knew about such threats.
klan said,
we didn’t send it.
put a colored girl in the paper,
call her a hero,
just cause she saved a kid
from being hit by a train.
a jew kid.
i could have saved the kid.
i saw it, too. that train
tearing along the track.
i saw it, too.
i didn’t run like that colored girl did.
i didn’t try.
maybe i was thinking no one could.
no one could beat that train.
but the colored girl,
i never saw anyone move so fast.
she ran like a deer,
like a deer in a rifle sight,
one you let go
cause there’s no way to hit
a swift brown rush weaving through the trees like that.
i’m not saying she did anything i couldn’t have done,
but when i think on it,
maybe i didn’t try because something,
something kept me in my place,
watching that colored girl run.
bossie did stray from the pasture
into mr. hobart’s garden
where she had eatings of all the good green stuffs
and she did have happy goings up and down the garden rows.
when mr. hobart had wakings up,
he did see our bossie
in his garden,
and he did take his gun and fire at
bossie.
bossie is a smart cow
and right away she had runnings home to us.
the animal doctor did make a good promise that
bossie does not ever have the living coming out of her.
and i am having big glads to hear this
because i do like it better to play with
bossie with the living in her.
some klansmen, goosed on bootleg whiskey, broke
into the basement
of the roman catholic cathedral in burlington
expecting to find
tanks and guns,
airplanes and acid,
ammunition enough to level new england.
all they found was dust,
some worn vestments,
and a dented chalice,
which they stole.
what is the ku klux klan?
is it the patriotic organization it claims to be?
