**for reference only**
You're awake early enough to see the men walk past the farmhouse nearby, stand at the bedroom window and watch—can see the spots of lanterns between the soft maple and walnut tree, hear the boots on gravel of the thirty or so loggers wrapped as they are in darkness carrying axes and small packages of food the boy walks downstairs and goes to the kitchen window where he can look out the driveway at men who seem already exhausted before the energy of the sun. Sometimes this procession will meet the cows being brought in from the field for milking and would stand on the side of the road, holding up the lanterns, and w/ a sort of hushed politeness stand in knee-high snowdrifts so that the cow may pass lazily by on the narrow road. Some even put their hands on to the animals' flank—their black-and-white barely visible in the darkness—to receive their warmth, doing so gently for they own nothing of this land
And so the Holsteins pass this silent gauntlet of men, as the man following the cows—the farmer—nods—he passes this strange community at times taking small comfort in their companionship so early in the morning. He himself had been up for an hour or so before
The boy bears witness
Even dreams about it at times
Has watched the man working away among the gray trees, heard their barks their axes banging away, seen the fire beside the creek, its water appearing gray under the thin ice sweat moving on their hard bodies and cold clothes where some will die of pneumonia, others later from Sulfur in the lungs they get from working the mills in other seasons. Sleep in little shacks behind big hotel—they have little or no connection to the town. These men—neither boy nor father have been in those dark rooms entered into the warmth which is the odor of these men—one table, four bunks, window the size of a torso—built in December and dismantled in spring, no one knows where these men come from their only connection? When they appear to skate along the line of river on homemade skates the blades made of old knives
For the boy the end of winter means blue river
Means the disappearance of these men
This boy longs for summer nights for the moment when he can turn out the lights (even the small cream funnel in the hall where his father sleeps) so that the house is all in darkness except for the bright light in the kitchen where he sits at a long table and studies his schoolbook—its geography, the maps of the world and markings of the sweep of current, and he mouths out the names
Will close the book brush it and feel underneath his palm the texture of the pebbled cover
Hands over a map of Canada
Still hot
Naked to the waist
Later upon returning the book to its shelf he will move in the bright kitchen going from window to window searching out the moths pinioned against the screen as they cling to the brightness that they had glimpsed from across the fields, this lighted room and so traveled
A summer's night inquiry
All manners of bugs. Patrick gazes on these travelers who have navigated the warm air their muted thunks against meshes—he's heard them as he reads so sensitive to their noises, and years later will learn of their habits how the one bug destroys shrubbery, how another feeds on the juice of decaying wood—and would in time, find order, a shape to these nights, learn the traveler's formal names in place of the fictional ones he's given them
Such names!
Amber-winged skimmer
Bush cricket
Throughout the summer record their visits
Sketches the ones who repeat –is it the same creatures?—crayons the orange wings of one in his notebook, the lunar moth & soft brown as if rabbit fur of the tussock moth. Won't open the door to catch their pollinated bodies having done this once and the terrified thrashing, with the poor thing releasing colored dust on his fingers, scared them both
Up close they look prehistoric
Insect jaws chewing minutely reminded of the way his father chews his tongue when out in the fields. The kitchen light radiates through their porous wing and even the most squat among them seem to be constructed of powder
Patrick pulls a ocarina from his pocket—its sound won't wake his father, will simply drift up into the arms of soft maple. Perhaps, he thinks, he can haunt these creatures, that perhaps they are not mute at all but whatever noise they make is simply outside his range of hearing—yes, he knows the robust calls of cicadas but what he wants is conversations, to know the language of damsel flies who need to translate their breathe the way the ocarina might give him a voice which can leap over the walls of this place
Do they return nightly to show him something?
Or does he haunt them?
In the way he steps from the dark house over to the doorway of the glowing kitchen he speaks to them, says to the empty fields
I am here
Come and visit me