Ken Hada is a fourth generation Oklahoman, descendant of Danish and Hungarian immigrants: Gypsy poets, barn dance aficionados, art lovers, amateur philosophers, wheat farmers, preachers, teachers and common-sense craftsmen.

“These poems, acting as spare parts themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”

 - Diane Glancy

Author of Pushing the Bear

What Happened to Lilly | by J.Don Cook

 

The boy was ushered by the hot wind of summer and fat clouds that dipped low enough to hold his hand.  He crossed Crescent Street in front of a red Dodge faded to pink and heard a swipe of voices from inside, one shrill, the other medium—“oh a raspberry sno—“ and “Jezz, Betsy, the three o’clock picture show—.”

      He stood on the safe curb and pushed black hair from his eyes.  Nearby a fat mother with a wart in the middle of her forehead dragged her four-year-old boy along.  The child wore a flat-brimmed black hat and red suspenders.  He whined and twisted in the woman’s hand, and scuffed at the sidewalk.  Passing him, the child pointed a cap pistol at the boy and fired—pop!  The boy flinched; he felt his new muscles twitched under his tee shirt.  He never liked the sharp acrid smell of spent powder.  When he was younger, he always tried to stand downwind when he fired his own cap pistol, a Smoky Joe, a gleaming unit with a thin leather holster.

     Around the corner was Puggie’s Sno-Cone Stand and the boy dug out a dull nickel, the generic Indian head worn smooth, and plinked it down flat and pushed it toward the stringy haired girl with a bad overbite and said, almost in a whisper, “One strawberry.”  He bit into the cold and it hurt his teeth, and he knew the sno-cone syrup turned his lips red because he noticed it on other people.

     Two days earlier a traveling circus had grown from the old rodeo yard and hunkered there, heralded by colorful waving flags on poles; trucks and wagons emblazoned with painted pictures along with organ music and the mixed aromas of popcorn, hotdogs and candied apples swirled around the small town, providing a low-grade excitement, riding the underbelly, rippling over the pristine canopy of his Midwestern home in the 1950s.  It was only four blocks away and the boy headed toward it and noticed the Big Chief Theatre already had a milling line of moviegoers because it was Saturday, and Saturday was the day when people went to the movies.

     The boy discovered the circus was closed for the afternoon because of the heat.  It would re-open at seven p.m., so he skirted the perimeter, smelling the prickly mixture of odors given by hot canvas and dried horse manure;  clumps festered in the sun, buzzed by fat flies.  The huge tent was secured with thick metal stakes lipped from pounding hammers, and the suspending ropes were drawn taut as guitar strings.

     The boy saw a canvas flap slapped by the wind, and slipped through the opening.  Inside, the cavernous space was murky, but he could see the high trapeze riggings, the bleachers and three rings laid out on the pungent sawdust.  He liked the smell of sawdust; it reminded him of his grandfather’s workshop, the one where he made highboys, coffee tables and once a year, a violin. “Just one a year, because these fiddles are labor intensive,” he said, his half-Creek grandfather, the one with a savage twist of coarse gray hair, who’d lost one eye in the war and had to be extra careful with power saws and told him that’s why he mostly used those sharp Japanese hand blades, although he hated all things Jap—maybe he even killed some in the war, because he was a bombardier.  Before he lost an eye from shrapnel.  High above the wind snapped the tent and let in intense shafts of sunlight, striking the sawdust below like tiny nervous searchlights.  He smelled animals, manure and roasted almonds.  The smell of almonds made him hungry.  

      The boy heard sounds coming from a small wooden room nestled behind the bleachers painted with bright colors; it sounded to him like a cat in trouble—-a high-pitched meowing and guttural growling.  Maybe a stray dog had a cat cornered.  He peered through a tiny slit in the door and in the gloom saw a nude man, sweat-slicked, squirming between the legs of a woman balanced atop a stack of cushions.  He’d heard of this, men and women squirming in sin—the Bible talked about it—he’d overheard his Aunt Avanell talking about it, rolling her eyes to her friend Fat Josey, when the plumber across the street was caught by his wife, writhing in sin in the back of his van with the short order cook down at the Coffee Pot Café. “She jerked open the door and saw his hairy butt, and he was supposed to be working.  Yeah, he was working alright.”  The boy watched and felt a melancholy ache nag in his belly and a ripple of warmth in his groin.  He quickly fumbled and unzipped his jeans and held himself and felt his flesh grow; he moved with urgency, the ache consuming his groin, and within a few seconds his knees liquefied and he buckled to the sawdust and spent himself there.  He’d heard of jism, as his older friends called it, he knew it would spurt but he wasn’t ready for the feeling, didn’t know it would feel this good and didn’t think it would be so sticky and white.

     Suddenly someone grabbed his shoulders and spun him around and he saw an unshaven man in a brown felt hat with dirty tattoos traveling his arms; the boy smelled whiskey and salami and a staleness that spoke of old sweat.

     “Git outta here kid,” the man growled. “The circus is closed now.  You got your eyeful anyhow.”

     The man pushed the boy, and he ran from the tent into the brilliant hard light.  The sudden light hurt his eyes, and everything was luminous and blurry.  He fell hard over a stretched rope, feeling the skin break under his jeans.  He lay there panting in pain, but wiped it from his mind because his thoughts went back to the tent and what he saw and felt and wondered if he could repeat it—that warmth he felt and what came out, so unexpected—-yes, he remembered, for a second when it happened, his vision went black and then he saw streaks of red and orange and he trembled—and what came out, thick as cream.

     The tattooed man did not follow him, so he lay there and watched the flapping flags on poles, snapping his name, and felt the emptiness in his groin.  Then he remembered something else.  He moaned “Lilly!” cradled into a fetal curl, and lay there, washed by the wind and sun.

 

                                                                     #

 

A mile away the boy’s mother sat in a room suffused with sunlight.  A silent breeze breached the peeling windowsill and gently moved the lace curtains she’d cut and sewn two years before. Now, she deftly maneuvered the foot-powered sewing machine, pushing the pale yellow satin through the furiously stabbing needle.  She noticed the creamy cloth was the color of churned butter, just before it turned to curd.  Her rimless spectacles slipped to the tip of her sharp nose and she reflexively wrinkled her nose and jerked her head back, flipping the glasses farther up the bridge.  Her gray eyes grew hard when she worked and her hunched intensity was palatable; she was never bothered by others because she drew around her an invisible veil that was repellent to all but the most determined.

     Watching her work so, a visitor would’ve guessed it was an ordinary Saturday of sewing for the woman, because nothing seemed out of place; her focused demeanor was as it always was. But it was not so.  She struggled moment by moment for composure, feeling the needle stab her heart with each thrust—she thought, oh I need this needle, stitching me together, holding my torrent—lest it explode and ruin the dress she was so meticulously constructing, the one for her daughter, the one she would be buried in.

     Only an hour before her daughter’s body had been brought to her house by the funeral home and now the redwood casket rested in the parlor.  Lilly’s once pink and vibrant body was cold and pale, the color of old porcelain.  Or magnolia blossoms, two days old, floating in water in my hand-painted bowl, a gift from Miss Waverly on graduation.  In that hour, the woman had wondered in three times to see Lilly, expecting each time she would see her daughter rise up and speak and jump from the casket to hug her.  At least she’ll be young forever, she finally thought, surrendering.

    “Oh come Sullie, there’s no need for this; there are several pretty dresses to pick from—you have other things to consider,” said her sister Blair-Marie, who, after all these years, still reminded her she was the one who got the music scholarship.  As if she cared, or anyone for that matter.  Of course. there were always things to consider.  But now, she felt her daughter deserved something new; a dress made by her own hands—-oh, was it her pride again?  Her sewing always won the blue ribbons, or—-no, this was her daughter, her only one; she would have the dress, damn them all!  She needs to be pretty in death, damn them all.  

      She silenced the machine and sat back in the chair with a thump.  She barely heard the creaking stairs, the doors closing gently by guilty interlopers, the muffled stumping of feet, the low murmuring of threesomes and quartets, friends and neighbors queued in the musty old house, marching clandestinely down hallways sheathed in ancient Persian carpet, bearing like ants foods of every description: she smelled it all, and in ordinary times she would’ve also danced around the honeyed ham, black-eyed peas, chocolate pie, cornbread, fried chicken, okra and corn-on-the–cob, slathered with garlic butter  But she was not tempted now.  She even found the idea of all that food repulsive and obscene.  She couldn’t stop them and didn’t want to.  That’s what people do after a death, she thought.  They cooked food, brought it, and said what a shame, what a waste.  Their hearts were good—they only wanted to help—a full stomach made them feel better.  Eat. Stuff your body; fill it with mashed potatoes and roast pork instead of grief.

     She wanted the grief; she needed it, oh, God please don’t take it away, what would I do without it?  She finished the last line of stitching on the hem and held up the little dress, now a sieve, filtering the brittle sunlight into something softer, touching her lined face like candlelight. My dearest Lilly, you’ll love this dress.  But she was struck by its plainness, so stark, without decoration.  Something for the collar, perhaps.  What?  Lace, but I haven’t any.  Yes, a little trim on the collar would make it perfect.

     Then she saw the lace curtain, luminous in the sun, and quickly bent with her shears and snipped off the leading edge, cutting just enough for the collar.  No one need know about this—the curtain is no less for this and Lilly would like a lace collar, a little white on the pale yellow, and yes, how elegant!

     Some, the more guilty ones, fussed around her, wanting to help, but she shooed them away, flapping her arms.  She could dress her own daughter.  It was so cold, her little body, already shriveling.  She’d guessed right; the dress was perfect.  She slipped thin cotton socks over her delicate feet and then black Mary Jane’s.  In her hair, she pinned a bow of a deep blue, her favorite color.  So pale.  She reached down and pinched Lilly’s cheek for color—oh my, how foolish, she chastised, there’s no blood—how could there be color?  Blood, she noticed, is necessary for so many things.

     Bending, she reverently kissed her daughter’s bloodless cheek and lit a candle resting on an antique oak buffet, a wedding gift.  Then she walked down the hall, aware of the echo of her own footfall, toward the muffled humming of voices, the metallic slap of flatware, the gentle hissing of her canned goods being opened, the clink of china, and the throaty gargle, the regurgitation of brewing coffee; the hateful, thoughtless random music of life, swirling around her cold Lilly, cruelly resting in the parlor. .

 

                                                                    #

 

Two weeks before it had been the boy’s birthday.  For six months he’d hinted at a bow with arrows and he was elated when they arrived by mail order, ripping open the box with abandon. But the manufacturer had failed to include the arrows in the box. The boy, being industrious, cut the end off an old bamboo fishing pole, deftly tied sliced chicken feathers to one end, and jammed a rusted rail spike in the other.

     Two large matching cedar trees fronted the family’s home and a metal pole was slung between the trees’ sturdy lower branches.  A rope swing hung from the pole, and the boy, feeling like a real Indian, shot his homemade arrow at one cedar’s thick trunk but the curve in the old bamboo made the arrow untrue; it wobbled and struck the tree broadside, at a certain angle, causing the arrow to sling and boomerang off the trunk.  It pierced the side of his sister Lilly who was on the swing that day, clutching her homemade doll Bobbysue, the one made by her mother, and stuffed with dried beans. The arrow had first punctured Bobbysue and then pricked the delicate skin of his sister.  But it was only a flesh wound, and the rusted spike penetrated only one eighth of an inch.

     At first, he told everyone that Bobbysue had saved Lilly’s life.  Perhaps that was true.  But she died two weeks later of tetanus, or a “bad case of the lockjaw” according to Dr. Jonas Wilcox, the man who had delivered the boy, Lilly and her mother.  Even now as he wandered the perimeter of the old field, still feeling the strange tingling in his groin, as if a new life form had sprung up in him, the boy re-lived that day, and each time he tried to summon the arrow back but each time it flew on, the hated shaft, and struck Lilly.  The day bled heat, the sparse trees sucking malevolence from the sky, an evil milking.  Grief had refashioned his insides, crumbling the tiny pink strictures, the striations of muscle, the crystalline bone.  His newly discovered power only served to spiral him further down into a dreadful vortex; he knew Lilly would never know that ecstasy because her little white body would slowly melt into the red clay.

    The boy noticed an old sleek bus squatting under a dying elm forty yards from the rim of the tent.  He walked closer and saw that it was an old Greyhound bus, because he could just see the faded outline of the famous logo: a slender Greyhound outstretched in mid-gallop.  Without warning, he felt the earth suck at his heels and he sunk to the grass without energy and leaned against the elm.  He noticed the tires on the bus were slick.  Then from inside the bus he heard low mutterings, so he moved under an open window and leaned against a dusty wheel, smelling hot, rotting rubber; he listened intently.

     “How was the morning take, Frog?”

     “Not good.  Small hick towns, not enough rubes to half fill the bleachers.”

     “Concessions?”

     “Better than it should’ve been, considering the thin gate.  Rubes that came ate a fair amount.”

     “Long as we break even in the morning show.  Profit comes at night.”

     “Yeah, long as gas stays decent.  But twenty-two cents a gallon is still outrageous.  Them light generators suck up the gas.”

     “What are we goin’ to do ‘bout Junebug?”

     “What do ya mean?”

     “You know.  She’s lettin’ herself be pestered by that new elephant man.  Knew we shouldna hired him. We don’t want her pregnant.  Hard to catch a trapeze with a fat melon in your stomach.”
     “She’s of age, can’t say much.  Can’t say I like her taste in men.  I could fire him but we’d be left mid-tour without an elephant man.  Wouldn’t mind a grandkid though.  Just would prefer someone else. Guess we can’t choose who peckers her.”

     “Where is she, anyway?”

     “Down by the bleachers, probably sniffin’ around that elephant man.”

     “Oh lordy!”

     The boy moved back to the tree and rested against the trunk for twenty minutes.  A boy of about six drifted onto the adjacent lot, a deserted baseball field.  Floating behind him was a crudely made kite.  The young boy made several vain attempts to loft the kite, running and jumping, as if willing the kite into the air.  Each time it briefly soared twelve feet into the air and then, as if determined to spite the boy, quickly dove nose first into the brown grass with a thump.

     The boy rose from the tree and went to the field and said to the younger boy: “You need a tail. Your kite is too light on the bottom, so it dives over in the wind.”

     “But I don’t have a tail, what can I do?”

     “You have to have balance.  My dad said you must have balance for a kite to fly.   He’s dead now, though.”

     “I don’t have any balance,” the other boy whined.

     “I can see that.  That’s why it noses over.  No balance.  Take off your tee shirt and tie it to the kite’s tail.  Here, you can use my knife.”

     The other boy did as he was told.  With glee, he ran with the kite and it rose immediately and steadily gained altitude.  Once the kite was safely aloft, he turned to the boy to thank him but he’d had already turned his back and was walking toward downtown.  Grinning, the boy turned back to his kite, his bony shoulders catching the sun, his scattered freckles darkening like spilled raisins.

    King Kong was showing at the Big Chief but the boy had already seen it three times.  As he walked by, he noticed the long line had melted, so he jammed his hand in his pocket and brought out twenty cents, more than enough for a show.  He looked at the coins and wondered what else he could do with the money.  Just then, a man with slicked back hair exited the theatre, pulling with him a draft of cool air.

      The old theatre, decorated with scrolling art deco concrete columns, was the only air-conditioned building in town.  The boy decided to use his remaining money, cool off, and see the huge ape topple from the tall building one more time.  As he walked in the dim theatre, the skinny blonde-haired woman was wrapped in the ape’s massive black hand and he was undressing her with his finger.  He’d missed the early boring parts, but it didn’t matter because he had the movie memorized.  He smelled popcorn but put it from his mind because he didn’t have enough money.  Then he noticed a discarded box of popcorn protruding from a closed seat in front of him and he leaned and retrieved it.  Most of it was eaten, but that was all he wanted, just a taste, because he always appreciated a salty taste while watching at the picture show.  He heard a sucking sound and turned to see Benson Longacre and Bonnie Stuckey oblivious, locked into one another, their pasty faces flickered with pale light reflected from the screen—not caring, as they exchanged saliva, that soon the great ape would do vicious battle with sharp-toothed dinosaur.  The ape would win, he always did.  He liked that about movies; the endings never changed.  And mostly the endings were good, unlike like real life.

 

                                                                     #  

 

At four-fifteen she hard a sharp, official-sounding knock at her front door and found two men from the florist standing on the porch.

     “Hello lady, we have your flowers, where do ya want ‘em?”

     “Oh, in the parlor with her.  She’s there, my Lilly.”

     From a white van painted with twisted vines, large leaves and colorful blossoms, the men brought roses, red, yellow and white, several vases of gladiolas, mums, heavy sprays of ferns and greens, and lilies.  Oh, the lilies, she thought, so many lilies, her namesake.  My good friends, so thoughtful.  My favorite flower—I thought of a lily when I first saw her.  She named herself; she made me think of a lily—such a lovely flower.

     After the men left she went to the parlor and looked around, slowly and critically; she nodded, pleased.  How beautiful they are.  Except those disgusting roses!  She forgot to tell them: no roses.  For her their sweetness spoke of death.  The rose was her mother’s favorite and when she was ten the flu swept her mother away and her room was filled with roses.  She hated them forever after.  Her mother had been fond of the climbing varieties, and her father always said their house was only held together by “trellis and rose bushes,” and her mother would’ve said, “and a  whole bunch of love,” while wrinkling her nose at his stinking Meerschaum.

     She clipped off one of the long-stemmed lilies and laid it across Lilly’s tiny chest.  She felt the tears pressing and she said aloud, “No, you can’t cry, Sullie, not now. Maybe later.”   My still, sacred Lilly.  Innocence felled by……what?  There was no evil in him, her boy—where is he?  He’d always protected her, the big brother.  Maybe he’s run away.  At least he’s alive.  But why, God, the little frail ones, the innocent ones?  

      She heard voices on the side screened porch and moved closer to the door and smelled old dust collected on the rusted mesh.  Water and vinegar will clean this, she thought, and noticed honeybees swarming the honeysuckle vines in Mrs. Greeley’s yard next door.  Such an ordinary bush, she thought—I will take my wisteria any day, and pressed her ear and listened to her guests.

     “Where is he?”

     “I haven’t seen him all day.  And she hasn’t mentioned him.  Have you asked her?”
     “No, it might upset her.”
     “Think he’s run away?  She doesn’t seem concerned.  I’d be frantic.”

     “Maybe just hiding.  Been me, I’d have run away by now.  Killing your own sister.”

     “It was an accident!”

     “Should’ve known better, boy his age.  Shooting a bad arrow in the vicinity.  He’s not a wild Indian. Should’ve gone squirrel hunting with a .22 like the other boys.”
     “I’m worried he’s not here, though.  He has to be forgiven.”

     “Maybe in our heads, but not our hearts.”

     She moved away from the voices and suddenly heard a coarse shriek of laughter (was it in the pantry?) and with heavy legs climbed the oak stairs and slipped into Lilly’s room, hard anger in her throat at the one laughing like a rabid dog on this day of mourning.   Was it Blair-Marie?  Surely not my own sister!  Her room:  I’ll leave it this way, she thought.  Oh no, I couldn’t bear it.  To daily, see her little things, to be reminded every day she died so young.

     Then she saw Bobbysue propped on her pillow, the one that saved her life.  There was a rip in her side, and dried beans leaked from it onto the pale blue bedspread.  It used to be so blue, a dark blue.  I must repair her wound, I can’t have her spilling her insides; soon she’d been empty. Like me now, she thought.  I’ve been sucked out, a husk.  I’ll darn it next week, and make her as good as new—yes; repairs have to be made—oh where is that boy, my first-born?  I don’t care about him right now.  I’ll forgive him later.  Maybe God’s forgiveness will be enough.  That would be enough for anyone.

      She sat heavily on the side of the bed clutching a damp handkerchief; she sighed and looked out the window and watched as the sun struck a distant wheat field gold.  A speckled hawk, neck arched to the earth, soared effortlessly over the gentle beckoning, spread out, running to the ruined horizon.

 

                                                                   #

 

As the day wore on, she grew tired of saying I don’t know, and I haven’t seen him all day.  The mean ones said, “Aren’t you worried, he’s your son after all.”

      She’d never had so many people in her house.  Over a hundred, she guessed.  More than when her husband died.  The parlor would not hold them all and they marched by Lilly in shifts, some weeping into lace handkerchiefs, others shyly reaching out to touch her, some almost but not quite.  Some clutched worn black Bibles to their chests, their hands veiny, pocked with liver spots.  Others kissed her lightly and touched her arm.  She’s in a better place, they mumbled, which she resented.  What’s wrong with the here and now, with me?

      Later some went to the kitchen and dining room, feasted, and talked.  And when they left, it was if a swarm of locusts had swooped and ravaged, because all that was left was the savaged carcasses of chickens and hambones—the rooms were littered with dried crusts of bread and little saucers of half-eaten cake.

     Three women from her Bible study group stayed and cleaned and she was grateful.  Her sister supervised, sternly reprimanding one when she dropped a blue and white plate, as if they were servants, black ones at that.  She needed their murmuring, the clucking and scratching, but she resented them too.  I need the trappings of normalcy, she thought, but I want to be alone—-God where is he, he didn’t show up for the funeral, his own sister’s funeral.  I have a right to worry; I am his mother.  But right now I am Lilly’s mother—my dead flower wasting away, nestled in the silk.  He couldn’t face her, not even in death.  He’s a coward, like his father.  Men don’t stay.  They drift away like corn silk in the wind, over into the next pasture, always some place they don’t belong.  Like him, drifting from one bed to the next, sneaking, thinking no one knew but everyone did and finally me.  

      Enduring is a woman’s chore.  Oh, where could he be?  There’s a circus, boys do that, run away and join a circus, or is that only in books?  My mother said W.C. Fields really did that. Ran away, joined a circus, and became a world-class juggler.  What could he do in a circus? Oh, I don’t know.  I’ll put her in the ground tomorrow, my Lilly—cold there, under the ground.

 

                                                                #

 

Silence descended with dusk and she was alone.  Finally, they all left, including her sister, who kissed her on the cheek, the first time in twenty years.  At the door she said, “He’ll be back Sullie. But send for the sheriff if he’s not back by morning.”

     Lilly’s dead and he’s alive; it’s not fair.  I’ll think of her every time I see him.  Where would he sleep if he doesn’t come home?  I must put him from my mind and think of her.  I’ve not eaten, she suddenly realized.  Buttermilk and cornbread would be good.  She went to the kitchen but the smell of food was hateful.  I’ll throw up if I eat.  She wandered to the parlor and the lilies beckoned in the gloom, surrounding her like silent sentries, her bodyguards, gently glowing in the fading light.

     She carried a candlestick from the mantel and placed it near her—she liked candlelight when she was frightened or upset—just a little light to soften the shadows.  Then she heard a whimpering, a faint whispering and noticed the casket lid was closed and that the voice, so pleading, was coming from the coffin.  She slowly opened the lid and found the boy there, cradling her, curled with Lilly, her head resting on his slender shoulder, and he was whispering in her ear, “Please forgive me, Lilly.  Please Lilly-pad.”