What the Stones Remember

by Patrick Lane

  Behind the tent straggling Saskatoon bushes sprawled above dusty grass, their leaves mottled and their few berries withered and black. I squatted among them and waited to make sure no one had seen, then I crawled to the edge of the tent. My hands searched the edges of canvas for an opening, some crack in the spiked edge that would allow me to get in. The tent was quiet, but there was light leaking through and I found a spot. A spike of wood was loose and I eased it out of the hard ground. The canvas lifted a bit and I tugged it up until I could push my face through to see.

  In the tent I saw men sitting on narrow benches or lounging in the shadows with their hands in their pockets and cigarettes hanging from their lips. On a low stage was the Bearded Lady. She had no clothes on. Her flesh lapped down to her knees and her breasts were pendulous sacks resting on her huge stomach. From between her legs hung a black bush of hair. She was sitting on a low chair, leaning forward into a man.

  I looked around at the men who were watching. They were very quiet, their faces still as if part of them had been pulled inside their bodies and hidden there. But it was the dark child I was looking for, not this. I glanced one more time at the Bearded Lady and the man and then I pulled out from under the flap of heavy canvas and backed away into the dark.

  Near the entrance I saw two men walking away from the tent. I stopped and waited for them to pass.

  The short one said, That wasn’t worth fifty cents.

  The man with him laughed. He flicked his cigarette away and the two of them returned to the midway where their girls waited for them just beyond the shadows. I was just behind them.

  When they reached the light I hid under a trailer behind the Sideshow. I sat there in the darkness for what seemed forever. Two of the dollar bills were crumpled in my fist. I waited for the dark child to come. I was going to talk to him. I would give him the money and he would draw me another picture. It would be a picture the dark child would choose and I knew it would be beautiful. I could tell by looking at his face there in the Sideshow tent that he could make a picture so wonderful it would be better than anything in the world. And I would give him the two dollars, three if he wanted, or even four, but the picture would be mine and mine alone. I knew a hiding place where my brothers wouldn’t find it.

  After the dark child made the picture with his feet we would talk together and tell each other everything. The boy would tell me what it was like to have no arms. He would tell me how he had learned to draw with his feet and I would remember this telling and I would learn it too. It would be like my own drawing and coloring, but nothing I had ever made was anything like what I had seen. A face, my face, growing on paper. For a moment I wished I had no arms and then I wished them back, afraid for a moment, feeling stumps at my shoulders, a sudden emptiness as if my flesh and bones were gone. I thought how wonderful it would be just the two of us together.

  I knew it was late. My mother and father would be home from the Legion by now and my father would be calling my name on the dark streets. I had never stayed out so long before. But it didn’t matter now. The beating my father would give me would be the same if I stayed out for another hour or two.

  I would wait there, I thought, even though I knew the carnival was over. The lights had gone out on the Ferris Wheel and already men were moving over the huge machines. The fretwork of metal was turning into piles of steel stacked on the backs of trucks. Tents were coming down. Far in the distance a fight had begun between some local men and the carnival people. I could hear the shouting and the curses.

  I knew the dark child was gone. He was gone even as I had searched for him. The picture the dark child was going to draw for me would never be made. Though I could see it in my mind, I knew I would never have it. It would have to stay in my dream, indescribable, a shimmer of lines and shading, whirls of black upon pale white paper.

  As I sat there I vowed I would learn to make pictures like he did. The dark child knew how and so would I. For a moment the Bearded Lady and the man appeared in my mind, but they went as soon as they came, the image of them something I didn’t want to think about.

  I was already gone from the carnival, walking across the lot behind the legion. Looking up at the summer sky brilliant with stars, I took off my glasses. The stars became distant explosions among the thin clouds. Dust fluttered around my feet as I began to walk again, my face lifted up to the night. I knew the dark child had seen me in the dim light of the stage. He had taken my face and given it back to me. No matter that my brother had ripped it up. It was there in my eyes.

  I believe with Borges in the immanence of revelation. Chuang Tzu’s conundrum of the butterfly dream is such a revelation realized. I come awake from my meditation on the snail and rest in the equilibrium of now. It is both in-dwelling and out-dwelling and is the snail, the leaf, and me. The dark child too. I can feel his eyes on me still and have only to close mine to see the picture he never drew for me.

  The snails are beautiful, yet I put down slug bait and the snails eat it and die. What does it mean to me that I preserve a garden and then kill the creatures who also live here and whose needs are their own, just as mine are? I twist and turn on this dilemma, but there is no clear answer. The spring flowers disappear under the rasps of the slugs and snails. The slug bait I have placed in the garden is exhausted now and I will use no more. What snails have survived may eat what they will. The plants are no longer tender shoots, but have grown halfway to their maturity. What damage the snails do will be little or nothing now. I carry the burden of their many deaths with me. Thus it is for gardeners: life, death, and the beauty that arises from them.

  I think of this as I gaze at the holes in the lawn the newest raccoon has dug in his search for beetles and worms. I will set up the live trap again tonight and tomorrow, if he is caught, I will take him like the others into the hills. Another decision made and another creature I wish to banish from the garden, but at least he won’t die at my hand.

  My drinking years didn’t protect me from feeling. The difference now is that I feel more and perhaps this is part of healing. My skin is still a tender sheath covering my body. My liver has begun to grow back, the only organ in my body that can repair itself. The rest of me, stomach, heart, lungs, and brain, injured by the years of drinking, will have to get along as best they can. The doctors say it is remarkable I haven’t done more serious damage.

  They speak only of the flesh. There are times I feel I am some misshapen thing, a creature who wears his illness inside the illusion of a body that does not betray the damage done. The people I have turned to for help tell me I feel what all addicts feel. They say I must not dwell on the past with all its traps and seductions, its old habits that are designed to lead me right back where I was before, alcoholic and dying. Perhaps what I need to do is learn to accept forgiveness, but who among the dead will forgive me?

  Death, alcoholism, and disease are words to conjure with this warm April morning. I know I started dying the moment I was born and my life lived so far has been a long path leading toward my leaving. I know that, but I still grieve for time wasted and in meditation do what I can to focus myself and turn away from loss.

  Sometimes that focus can only be found in doing. The monkshood need staking, as do numerous other tall plants that a heavy wind or rain could bend or break, and leggy plants need to be pinched back so they can spread out and prosper. The salad garden I planted is well up with lollo rosa and lamb’s lettuce, arugula, radicchio, chervil, chicory, bok choy, sweet endive, early spinach, nasturtiums, all kinds of edible surprises.

  The tender salad greens that seeded themselves last autumn are now rising like nuns in an abbey, hands raised in praise. I will do a second planting of my favorites in a couple of weeks. I also place seeds in other beds among the flowers and shrubs, anywhere there is a sunny spot. The rich and tender greens decorate the bare spaces with ruffles that shiver when I water them in the early morning. They delight in the bliss of a cool shower, much as I do in the heat of summer.
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  My main vegetable garden is small, an oval bed of four yards by three, just enough to fill a salad bowl every spring and summer night. Crisp greens picked and plucked are still alive as Lorna and I and our friends eat them drenched in virgin olive oil and fine red vinegar.

  The boulevard garden in front of the house is a catch-all for every shrub that bears fruit. I wondered why for a few years until I realized the garden sits under the power and phone lines where birds regularly perch to rest and sing. Of course, they defecate while in that state of tonal bliss and when they do they drop seeds they’ve eaten, each one surrounded by rich manure. Every spring I am confronted by any number of plants and shrubs, from the salal and Indian plum to red huckleberry and crowberry. I don’t bother picking the berries, just allow them to be eaten by robins, thrushes, and the spring swarms of robins and cedar waxwings. This fall I will put a meditation garden here with bamboo fences, a few shrubs, water, and stones. It will be my last project for the year.

  The waxwings, Bohemian and cedar both, have arrived and already the holly tree is almost stripped of berries. The birds appeared three days ago and the holly is a quavering whir of sound as they feast. They are delightful birds and love to gossip. No wonder the Bohemian’s Latin name is garrulus. Their gregarious nature is a wonder to behold as they swirl up in a single, startled flock much as starlings do. The Bohemian has a cinnamon patch on his belly under his tail and yellow, black, and white markings on his wings. What a pleasure to see them again this year. It’s very odd to see the two species at the same time and place. They’re very affectionate with each other and quite fearless. Seeing twenty of them in the birdbath is to watch an immense shower as they quickly empty it out. They’re such sleek dancers in the air.

  I think the robins are going mad. I’ve had a male banging into the window in the dining room for a week now. He perches in the cedar tree and attacks his reflection until he’s exhausted. I think he is a young male without a mate. I’ve seen his behavior before among our own kind, young men who constantly look for argument and fights, the whole of it a frustrated sexuality. The robin like a young man crashes against himself as he delights in the exhaustion of his blood.

  He cries as he bangs against the pane, and it is easy for me to make the leap from his madness to my own. I spent much of my time as an alcoholic crashing into my reflection. I can stare through the glass at his frenzied eyes and see in them myself during the years of drinking. I felt the same panic as I made the same repeated attack upon an image I saw as an enemy and who was only myself. It makes me think of friends who are alcoholics or addicts and who methodically and with exquisite malice spent their hours hurting themselves, sometimes with a razor blade or a piece of broken glass, or sometimes with their fists, beating their faces into something broken and, finally, thankfully, unrecognizable. This is my pain, the alcoholic says to himself. It is only mine.

  I watched the shy appearance of a young woman at the treatment center last winter. The slow unfolding of her beauty was a wonder to see, for she had hated herself and her body for years, hurting it with anorexia and razor blades. She had scored the tender flesh of her arms and the white scars withered on her skin whenever she moved her hand. As the weeks went by in treatment she began to grow a new person out of her old self. I watched her one day as she stared into a mirror. There was a gentle, tentative smile on her face. She had begun to see someone she might love instead of hate. It was her gentleness I saw. I don’t know what happened to her after she got out. Pray God, she is all right. She talked a lot about suicide.

  I know her story well. I tried to kill myself several times with a gun and many times in the covering illusion of car accidents. The last time I tried suicide I sat on the edge of my bed in the house on the Sunshine Coast. It was deep autumn and raining. My wife and the boys had gone into Madeira Park to pick up groceries.

  I was once again deep into drinking. I had found my annual fall depression at the bottom of a bottle a day. It was six months before my wife and I split up. I knew I had to leave, but images of the wreckage of my first family had reared up in my head. Here I was, doing the same thing all over again. I had once more found my life both predictable and appalling. The great ghosts of the past danced in me. I welcomed the grotesquerie. A recurring nightmare of the dark cellar and the blood I had to hide from whoever was coming downstairs had returned. Every night I woke up in a sweat, weeping. Sitting there on the bed I stared down the barrel of my 22/410 over-and-under, the brush gun I’d inherited from my father.

  I had the shotgun barrel open and a shell in the chamber. The taste of the gun oil was strange honey in my mouth. I had tasted it before. There was peace in that moment, peace and a great tiredness. I had the stock braced against my foot and my right arm down with my thumb pressed in the trigger guard. My left hand gripped the barrel just below my lips.

  A wasp had stumbled into the bedroom and was banging his metal skull on the window. I remember feeling frustrated by his desire to escape and wished him into the kitchen where the door was open onto the deck. My eyes were closed. The wasp kept cracking against the glass.

  I heard the car drive into the yard and my wife call out. I could hear my little boy run to the steps. I pressed the trigger down and the shotgun went off and blew a hole in the light fixture in the ceiling above me. I don’t remember pulling my head back. I only remember a split second of frustration at their return and the feeling of shame that they might catch me killing myself.

  The light fixture flashed sparks and a fire began in the black hole my shotgun had left. Smoke curled across the ceiling in folds. I threw the shotgun aside just as they all came into the bedroom. I told my wife I had been cleaning the gun and it had gone off. In the panic of getting a ladder, disconnecting the wires, and putting out the fire, she didn’t ask why I was cleaning the gun in the bedroom, nor why there was no gun oil or rag there. The boys were excited. The oldest ran around the room as his brother lay on his back in his blanket and kicked his little legs in the air, happy to see his father fixing things, making everything all better.

  She put the shotgun away on the rack in the front porch. I finished dowsing the fire and sat down at the kitchen table. I poured myself three more fingers of Scotch. She had brought a sack of fresh prawns from a fisherman and began shelling them for dinner. I took my Scotch into the living room. As I sat down, the suicide attempt sank quietly into the depression where I kept such things as death. I held the two boys on my lap and began singing them a made-up song about guns and ceilings, explosions and fire, and the big bad bear that makes it all happen. The boys loved my songs because I always included them in the tale.

  In two days it was as if it had never happened. Only a story remained, something my wife would encourage me to tell over drinks after dinner to friends, the one about the time I blew a hole in the ceiling with my shotgun. One designed to make people laugh at my foolishness.

  A few delicate marsh violets have appeared out of nowhere below the holly tree and I transplanted them yesterday with care, for they can be fragile when disturbed and can die away. As Wordsworth said, “With gentle hand / Touch—for there is a spirit in the woods.” I put them in the shade garden. They’re a lovely addition to this quiet spot and I hope their spirits prosper there. They spread by seed, of course, but mostly by rhizomes and creeping stolons. Their flower is the most delicate white, although one plant is showing the palest mauve on its petals.

  I love it when plants appear from nowhere. I’ve no idea how the violets came to be here, but they fit into the shady habitat I’ve moved them to. They love the moist and the damp. Bogs and wetlands are their joy. They complement the early blue violet and the Alaska violet, both of which inhabit my garden. They all flower in late March, but all three are still blooming here and there in garden beds and in the lawns. They appear as if by magic.

  All the violets are perennials and are more than welcome. They are shy, low-growing plants and love the dappled, dampness of the semishade. In Europe
violets were sometimes worn in wreaths around the neck. It was said they were a cure for drunkenness, something I didn’t know before and wish I had. My mother should have knotted a wreath around my neck when I was born.

  The scent of violets always takes me back to my mother. Like most women of her generation, she wore powder, perfume, and lipstick, and all the filmy garments that made her think she was exquisite and beautiful in the eyes of men. I loved her beauty when I was a boy. I dressed up in my mother’s clothes one afternoon. I was, perhaps, eleven or twelve years old, just around puberty when both child and man ran side by side in my young body.

  One afternoon while everyone was out I walked down the hall to the bathroom in my mother’s silk underwear. The fragile material felt cool against my hard cock. My hand was behind my back, clenched in the silk and I pulled it tight against me. In my other hand her brassiere dangled to the floor.

  In the bathroom I put on her brassiere and then took handfuls of toilet paper and stuffed it in the cups. Satisfied, I went back down the hall to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of silk stockings. They sagged around my skinny legs, but it didn’t matter to me as I stepped into her black dress. I squirmed to do up the zipper in the back. My new breasts filled the front of the dress and I touched them. They felt soft under my hands. I turned then to my mother’s small vanity and carefully applied powder and rouge and finally lipstick. When my face was changed I stepped into a pair of her high heels and teetered over to her full-length mirror. Her shoes were bright red and they shone on my feet.

  How beautiful they were. The leather shone like an animal might shine who first saw herself clothed in glory. The skin I wore was not my skin. It was an other, strange with illumination.

  I turned around slowly as I gazed at myself. My thin arms moved in the perfumed air of the room. The smell of lipstick and rouge filled my nostrils. I licked my painted lips, touched my narrow waist and new breasts. You’re beautiful, I thought. I reached down to the crinkled hem of the black dress and lifted it slowly until the silk underwear was revealed. My small hard cock jabbed against the pale pink silk. I tried to force it between my legs so I would look more like a girl, but it wouldn’t stay there. It kept springing out. I let it stay that way and dropped the dress back down.