bandstand. My mother had imagination, I remember hearing, and a knack. Who but Bonnie Dahl would ever think to fill her troughs with dirt? And who would
sculpt the dirt, build the little earthen mounds that Bonnie Dahl built? Because my
mother did this. I helped her. I worked a trowel, mounded up the earthen hillocks
and the hollows and distributed the sprigs of tree and straw across the earthwhere I was told to. I placed the plastic Jesuses and Mother Marys and a gang of other
Holy Joes beside the water, where we meant for there to be some water, and on the
pasture, where we meant for there to be a pasture, and where we meant for there to
be a shade, I placed the Joes and Marys and the Jesuses where all of them might rest
upon their way beneath it. Our job, my mother told me, was to make of the troughs
all but several stations, “the slower,” said my mother, “less exciting stations” of
the cross, and to fashion in the trough the nearest to the dancefloor and the band
a creche, a reminder to prospective dancers of our commonground nativity, how it is
we all had come to be there, and where it was we all would go, before we joined each
other, man to woman, woman to man, to celebrate His birth, and mine, out there on
the plywood, in a twostep, said my mother, or a waltz, moving through the sawdust
in displays of thankful gaiety peculiar to each of us, to a simple country tune whose
words and rhythms were familiar to us all. Full Moon Over Elko. Castration Of the
Strawberry Roan. Porkpie Miller’s Sheepdog Shep. Coyote’s Last Lament.
“You wouldn’t think she had such taste,” I heard, “you wouldn’t guess a woman of her
size could be so delicate.”
So far out, they said, so little here to work with, well, the ladies simply failed
to see the way my mother did it. But I saw how she did it. Elbow grease, is how. Boots and nails, hammers, boards and muckrakes. Foresight, I remember, hindsight.
I tell my wife I can recall my mother running all the stock out from the barn a good
week prior to the party and opening all the doors up. She hung braids of herbs and
pine wreathes on the stall doors. She burned, sprayed, and scoured, set up rat traps
for the pigeons in the rafters, played a radio throughout the night to warn the skunks
off. She said she did not want to hear a single woman moaning over stinkthis year; she didn’t want to see a single man embarrassed over what he’d stepped
on in his town shoes. She said she did it all for me. Without me, she said, none of
this would come to pass. Looking back, I see I must have been as wise to her as I
was pretty. I see me walk about the barn with both thumbs hooked into the pockets
of my blue jeans, squinch-eyed, head-high to a hipbone, undeluded by the management
of surface. I weigh maybe fifty pounds. Too big for my britches, said my mother. She
said it never bothered her, my being lost to Easter bunnies and to Santa Claus, but
her heart aged for me sorrowfully the day she saw me sitting on the fencerail with
my legs crossed. Next thing she could see for me was hand-rolled cigarettes, a cafe
in a European capitol, a sneer, a book, contempt for her and for my father, a closet
full of black. One day I would be too clever to discover anything at all I could believe
in; I would lay my head against my horse’s chest and not be moved to love him. With
me, she said, there would be no reason for a dance; no drink, she said, no food, no
party. Apparently, I was a complicated boy. What would come to pass, it seemed, would
pass with me as well as it would pass without. I didn’t say so at the time, but I
remember thinking if this party truly was for me, and my mother meant this party to
be blessed for me by magic, then she ought not to have made me an accomplice in its
fabrication.
Still, I knew enough to show my gratefully excited side. I was eager, for her sake,
to call our barn a dancehall. On
sculpt the dirt, build the little earthen mounds that Bonnie Dahl built? Because my
mother did this. I helped her. I worked a trowel, mounded up the earthen hillocks
and the hollows and distributed the sprigs of tree and straw across the earthwhere I was told to. I placed the plastic Jesuses and Mother Marys and a gang of other
Holy Joes beside the water, where we meant for there to be some water, and on the
pasture, where we meant for there to be a pasture, and where we meant for there to
be a shade, I placed the Joes and Marys and the Jesuses where all of them might rest
upon their way beneath it. Our job, my mother told me, was to make of the troughs
all but several stations, “the slower,” said my mother, “less exciting stations” of
the cross, and to fashion in the trough the nearest to the dancefloor and the band
a creche, a reminder to prospective dancers of our commonground nativity, how it is
we all had come to be there, and where it was we all would go, before we joined each
other, man to woman, woman to man, to celebrate His birth, and mine, out there on
the plywood, in a twostep, said my mother, or a waltz, moving through the sawdust
in displays of thankful gaiety peculiar to each of us, to a simple country tune whose
words and rhythms were familiar to us all. Full Moon Over Elko. Castration Of the
Strawberry Roan. Porkpie Miller’s Sheepdog Shep. Coyote’s Last Lament.
“You wouldn’t think she had such taste,” I heard, “you wouldn’t guess a woman of her
size could be so delicate.”
So far out, they said, so little here to work with, well, the ladies simply failed
to see the way my mother did it. But I saw how she did it. Elbow grease, is how. Boots and nails, hammers, boards and muckrakes. Foresight, I remember, hindsight.
I tell my wife I can recall my mother running all the stock out from the barn a good
week prior to the party and opening all the doors up. She hung braids of herbs and
pine wreathes on the stall doors. She burned, sprayed, and scoured, set up rat traps
for the pigeons in the rafters, played a radio throughout the night to warn the skunks
off. She said she did not want to hear a single woman moaning over stinkthis year; she didn’t want to see a single man embarrassed over what he’d stepped
on in his town shoes. She said she did it all for me. Without me, she said, none of
this would come to pass. Looking back, I see I must have been as wise to her as I
was pretty. I see me walk about the barn with both thumbs hooked into the pockets
of my blue jeans, squinch-eyed, head-high to a hipbone, undeluded by the management
of surface. I weigh maybe fifty pounds. Too big for my britches, said my mother. She
said it never bothered her, my being lost to Easter bunnies and to Santa Claus, but
her heart aged for me sorrowfully the day she saw me sitting on the fencerail with
my legs crossed. Next thing she could see for me was hand-rolled cigarettes, a cafe
in a European capitol, a sneer, a book, contempt for her and for my father, a closet
full of black. One day I would be too clever to discover anything at all I could believe
in; I would lay my head against my horse’s chest and not be moved to love him. With
me, she said, there would be no reason for a dance; no drink, she said, no food, no
party. Apparently, I was a complicated boy. What would come to pass, it seemed, would
pass with me as well as it would pass without. I didn’t say so at the time, but I
remember thinking if this party truly was for me, and my mother meant this party to
be blessed for me by magic, then she ought not to have made me an accomplice in its
fabrication.
Still, I knew enough to show my gratefully excited side. I was eager, for her sake,
to call our barn a dancehall. On
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