No. 5

Winter 2004

Raindog languished in the not-quite-dreams of awake-too-early --

hens all dust and fear, cherry-bombs, summer-black clouds,

swallows wheeling at dusk over the parade ground, the surf a mile away



a mild thunder, an ancient Evinrude torn apart and bathing

in pie tins and halved milk jugs and junked oil pans full of gasoline --

Raindog loose-limbed on the futon, a faint buzzing from the clock.



The catalog on the driftwood table puckered Inuit lips.

Raindog chanted Ich weiss nicht was du sagt as coffee dripped.

He had no bruises, scars, facial lines, no moisture in the hollows



of his knees. The light at Fort Worden effected these cures,

brassy light, light jammed with odors -- jasmine, sea-salt, eucalyptus.

Every last shred flummoxed him. Yesterday, as he hunched



over a mug of tea and half a honeydew, he said breakfast bored him.

The melon looked good and I said so. He blubbered Ich bin

and vanished. I don't mean metaphorically. He didn't skitter



to the cash register, withdraw a souvenir Confederate twenty

and demand satisfaction. He didn't say Nope, it's on me

and drop his Gold Card on the tray. Mere flesh didn't cloak Raindog.



Neither did hope or impatience, hatchlings snuggled under one mother.



Today, jazz enfilades the melmac ashtrays. Raindog strokes his scars.

So be it. I've stroked skin that shiny on my own body.

Unwounded places age. No one outgrows childhood.



Even in a loft stuffed with flea-market art books, Civil War diaries,

Depression tea sets and toy roadsters and the odor of a legendary dance,

even in a columned hall overlooking the Merrimack River



where cigars got wrapped by French-Canadians, Germans, a few Slavs

and the ubiquitous Irish, no one pours chocolate syrup on ice cream

without smelling mosquito repellent, cigarette smoke and used motor oil.



Sanka is the great equalizer. Last night as I riffled Car and Driver

I drank some laced with evaporated milk, the ghost of Dave the Stutterer

haranguing me about the l-l-l-l-lost b-b-b-b-bills of l-l-l-l-lading.



Raindog wouldn't have sat still for Dave's folderol, but Raindog

was mere fancy then. I hunched over scammed meat loaf and peas

while Dave rifled the file drawer I'd defiled. Porky Pig in double-knits,



he wore orthopedic shoes and waddled. Save your pity.

Or, better yet, ladle some of that sausage gravy over me.

If I could make the payments, I'd get a Volvo, but, Ich weiss nicht,



that may be Prudence talking, and Prudence scoffed when Raindog said

Restore my TR-5, or at least make like your uncle and rebuild Beetles.

I remember now. He'd no sooner have an engine strewn



on the concrete apron than it would rain: Damn. Help me with that tarp.

Hey Bud, get me a cigarette -- my uncle, not an itch on a hot morning high

above the river, not neurochemistry, not nostalgia, not a character,



but the actual man grinding a valve, the corporal spared combat

doing splits in the dance hall, vrooming past Westminster,

typing requisitions as well as anyone ever has, extoller of Patton,



German design (the bastards), and the Plymouth Valiant,

the actual man trolling for bluefish in a short-sleeved rayon shirt,

bald, tanned, furrowed head bobbing as a big one bends



his pole Uh-huh, uh-huh, here comes dinner, Bud.

Copyright 2003, John Repp

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.