The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

by Jesse Ball

  — Treacherous cur, said Lubeck’s stepfather. We should never have let him in the house.

  The funeral was to be the following Tuesday.

  — I hope to see you there, said Lubeck’s mother. Brennan’s family is going to travel the whole way, which will take from now until then and they will stay here for a few days and then return. You are welcome to come and stay here if you like. It is better in such times as these to be around other people.

  Tonight, Carr told them, he thought he would rather be alone.

  — That’s all very well, said Lubeck’s stepfather. We are all alone in the face of uncomprehending death.

  Lubeck’s folks smiled encouragingly at Carr as he went away in the clothes of their murdered son.

  Then the dream shuddered, and he woke.

  He was lying in bed, in his room. He went to the window and opened it. It was dark out. He’d slept the whole afternoon. The dream was muddled in his head, and sat with unconscionable weight. What was true?

  He thought and thought.

  The Judge’s wife, he thought. She didn’t come here. Then it was on him again. There was no lie. There had been a miscarriage. He sank to the ground beside the window, and sat back, curled against the wall. They were guilty. They had done it.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Carr went towards the knocking. Lubeck’s stepfather was standing in the corridor.

  — Thought we’d check on you. Everything all right?

  Carr shook his head.

  — Tomorrow, eh?

  Carr indicated that the man should come in.

  — No, no, I’m not staying. Just stopped by for a moment.

  A thought struck Carr:

  — What is the Judge’s house like? Have you ever seen it?

  — It’s a small place, near the mill. A stand of birch trees, and a red house left of the curve.

  I know it, said Carr. So that’s the house. It’s a small house.

  — Yes, said Lubeck’s stepfather. A small house. Are you going there?

  — Not me.

  Carr related the events of the morning.

  — So, tomorrow. The track?

  — I am, said Carr. I don’t see a way out.

  — I’ll go with you, said Lubeck’s stepfather.

  — You don’t have to.

  — I know I don’t have to.

  — All right.

  — Tomorrow then, I’ll come here.

  — Tomorrow.

  Carr shut the door. The dream had now gone from him completely. He could no longer remember having felt betrayed by the Judge and his wife. His anger at the Judge was vanished in every extremity. In every direction, he could see only what they had done, he, Brennan, Lubeck and Harp, and how it could not be fixed.

  No one explains this to you, he thought. That there are so many things without solution.

  He lay down again, and lay for some time, with a blankness in his eyes before sleep drew him on like an illshaped coat.

  Another dream, and Carr found himself sitting on the lawn of a great, landed estate. He could not turn around. He did not know why. Behind him, someone was speaking. A man was speaking about the construction of a cemetery, of black granite, of the need for the services of a particular sort of stone mason, of the rationale for certain wind direction and distance from the sea. Carr drifted deeper into sleep, and was gone even from his own dream.

  the eighth

  He lay in bed. He could smell the morning where it was around him. A dog was barking somewhere in the building. A wind was blowing, and the house creaked. Doors locked shut strained to be wall, but they might never be. In a moment he had risen and passed out of the room. He did not permit himself to look at it before he left.

  Carr was early. He was outside. It was cold. It was early to have gone outside. There were trees that lined the street. Each had been allotted an area of stoned-in earth. More than a hundred years ago, it must have been, for now the trees’ roots up and down the avenue stretched and crouched and broke at the surrounding stone. The trees rose to make a tunnel of the street in summer. In winter the fingers met in the air all along, winding about each other. He felt the permanence of the street, of the town, the permanence of the trees. The wind came up again and turned him, pushed him a half step. He looked away from the wind. The sky was brightening. The wind blew harder and harder. He turned up his collar and sheltered against the house.

  When he looked back, the automobile was waiting. He got in.

  Lubeck’s stepfather squinted when he looked at him, put the car in gear and pulled out into the road.

  Carr looked down at his clothing. He was wearing his best, a three-piece suit, an overcoat. Why? He himself could not say.

  The car wound here and there. Lubeck’s stepfather was taking a different route. Somehow this was a vague hope. He had never thought of driving in a different way to the track. Might that change things?

  But soon enough, the ways came together, and it was over the bridge, through the curling country, and then up ahead, they saw, distinctly, through the starkness, a car and two figures waiting.

  Lubeck’s stepfather pulled to the side of the road.

  — I’m sorry, Leon, he said. I can’t stay.

  Carr nodded. He patted the man’s shoulder and got out. He could see through the trees the Judge’s profile. The second figure was a woman.

  Up to them went Carr.

  He nodded to the Judge. He looked then clearly on the Judge’s wife. She did not look very much like she had in his dream. This woman had clearly been quite ill. What must it have been like? he wondered.

  — I’m sorry.

  The cloth was laid on the hood. The pistols were there.

  The Judge had turned away. He was staring off into the trees.

  Carr touched his shoulder.

  — I want to say, said Carr. I want to say I’m sorry to you both. We didn’t know what we were doing. It’s strange how luck can be so large and small. One turn, and everything goes. I mean. .

  The Judge looked at him wordlessly. The Judge’s wife’s face was drawn and pale. Her hand twitched.

  Carr continued.

  — I don’t know what this is for you, what your life was, what it would have been. But this, it was something that happened in a street. There are streets and things that happen in them, and no one knows how or why. I want, I mean. .

  He looked around him. The day was now come completely and the track stretched away. The trees rose up. The drive curved into the road which ran on and on into the town that he knew, and beyond. Birds sailed effortlessly between cold branches.

  — I mean, he said. I mean. .

  The Judge’s wife moved. She put her hand on the Judge’s arm.

  — Allen, she said. It’s time. Let’s be done with it.

  He turned towards her, and his back was to Carr. Her eyes came over the Judge’s shoulder. They were dark and small. There was nothing in them, nothing at all.

  — Love, said the Judge quietly, he stopped the other yesterday. Hasn’t it been enough?

  Carr could not hear her reply, but the Judge spoke again, and then she spoke. She spoke on and on, her voice rising. The Judge turned back then, and his face was grieving.

  — Take one, he said. Take a gun. Let’s be done with it.

  Carr took the pistol closest to him. It felt strange in his hands, smooth and heavy.

  The Judge took the other revolver and went out onto the track. Carr followed.

  The lines were still there where they had been drawn. A sickness was in Carr’s belly. He felt himself thin and weak. He was walking and he was not. He felt that he was watching himself walk to where he would begin.

  The Judge was where he would be. Carr heard the Judge’s wife call out the signal.

  Then they were walking towards each other. Carr held the pistol out in front of him. He pointed it like a stick and pulled at it with his fingers. He pulled with all his fingers and it went off. It went off again. T
he Judge was still there. They were at the lines. The Judge fired. He fired again. Carr felt his chest was hurting. He felt his legs hurt. He was firing, and the air was very clear. There was a hole in his chest. He could see it there. When had it happened? This was another thing that could not be fixed. Panic and his face white, and he was on the ground with his hands.

  He could not see the Judge. He could not see the Judge’s wife. The cinders of the track were in his hair. He could feel the track beneath him, and stretching out in every direction above there was a depth to the clouds that seemed very far and good. But then he saw that it was shallow.

  He felt very much that the sky was shallow, not a trick but something worse, absent all human ambitions. He thought that there were clouds and then clouds behind clouds, and then just air. Where is there that’s far enough?

  Then shapes took their places. Men were looking down at him. The Judge, the doctor. There was blood on the Judge’s coat. The doctor was saying something. He was moving his hands in a gesture. What did it mean? Carr felt if only he knew what the gesture meant, then there would have been something, some one thing to salvage from all of this. But the figures were become very small. One couldn’t see them at all, no matter how hard one looked.

  the skin feat — 2008

  1

  I will tell you a thing, a thing you know, a thing perhaps you know

  I will tell you the skin feat.

  That I, of things relating, relate then this:

  I was born — and die.

  I am in between.

  I leap in my skin and sew it to myself

  and see how far I can follow

  where leading leads

  down under closed eyelids.

  2

  Every dream is startling to the dreamer. Yet when we wake,

  we go about unsmiling — things don’t surprise us.

  Even when they do, we imagine we prepare.

  But the world is sudden — that is its nature.

  We must divert ourselves into a fence, into a button, into the ivy,

  the grass, the fur of a coat

  from which point we can judge and say—

  each day I go ashore, and from what ship?

  3

  The skin feat. .

  Did I acquaint myself with it from a book?

  Did I find it leaping headlong into water?

  The skin feat is like the feeling of another age

  in an ancestor, a grandfather’s photograph. But you are not he…

  you did not even speak to him.

  How heavy arrival falls upon the house of the body.

  It must contain every new thing that joins it — must consent.

  We think that things are what we see — but our noses,

  our ears, we question. Frantic being that glows without any light—

  do you not feel it radiating from your face? You are los- ing it;

  it is going away.

  Those that love you agree — you will soon be bones in a wooden box

  and someone else passing by, beyond the gate,

  will glance at where you never walked, but lie.

  4

  The skin feat is an ascension of a ladder one carries in secret.

  I speak to a man on the street, a stranger, I speak to him and think:

  this is a messenger, a sort of letter that I may open in private,

  and so I follow him, and tell no one. I do not document it.

  It is not an art; it is for no one’s amusement.

  He goes down two streets, three streets, an alley,

  a street, to a house. I am far away when he closes the door

  but I go with him there, and vanish

  and resound in myself returning

  out of thoughts like barrel hoops—

  like disasters one hears of on the road, and winces,

  and in wincing, smiles at one’s plight.

  5

  Is there a name I go by

  if I wish to travel far?

  My friend, this skin, like the crow’s

  feels the outer air even through locks.

  And so we rush, my darling,

  again upon the gates and are released, released

  when wonder bids us die

  and we refuse, and cease.

  6

  Yes, there are gardens that have been planted, and laid well

  with stones for walks, and trellises, and arbors

  and someone tends them.

  I tell you this because I have seen them from a distance

  and like the clockmaker, I do not understand

  what grows without help in a place of safe keeping.

  7

  A house can have only one room. That is its character.

  Larger than that, they are all palaces.

  I feel I am, you know, like the building in a plague city

  that up against a city wall, has, deep within

  a door to leave the city.

  8

  The white scent of the sun cannot wake us, or else we were angels and therefore,

  like pain, simply a message.

  Our sleep is deeper — we cannot understand when it’s explained — wildness.

  we must fear it to feel it. One cannot oneself be wild.

  9

  Where wheels ring the lake a yellow word is seen at the corner of a child’s mouth.

  It is believed that things perceived as indistinct

  are clear when seen up close—

  but it is not distance that keeps them from us. A hurt mouth

  reckons in equations of a thousand variables.

  A hurt mouth is like a thicket, and cannot even be photo-

  graphed without error.

  10

  I learn to wear a coat in a particular way. I feel very carefully

  the matter of my shoes—

  I am setting out this morning for a funeral, my own

  at a place not of my choosing,

  a funeral as enduring, as patient as the cold beyond a door.

  11

  The worth of a saint is felt

  like the weight of a tree of birds.

  Wind learns its calling at the corners of the earth.

  Longing so to return there, it never can.

  And we — who when called upon,

  cannot even leave the room we’re in—

  the one we’ve loved is calling from the hall

  but we’re helpless — rooted.

  Where does a saint begin this freedom

  of rising from a chair

  to fall dead years later in a strange place

  not a moment having passed?

  12

  Cavalry charges ring the house and grounds.

  We learn to play with them, you and I,

  in our speaking, our singing of the skin feat,

  we learn to call

  and have them come.

  When you become better at it than I

  then I am gone back into my book,

  and someone is knocking at the door

  of the room you’re standing in.

  13

  Have you heard of a town baked into a loaf of bread

  and given as a gift to one ungrateful?

  Yes, streets, houses, squares — young men, women, dogs,

  soldiers.

  I was told of it too late, and when I tried to retrieve it

  I found it had been broken into a flock of birds.

  Our dire attentions waver so — I wish for seriousness