and breathed, but further at the metal relic buried in the middle of her chest, visible, through the silk, in its modest wedge. At that time it was the only cross in Mistletoe, Lou the only woman despite several who gathered in the cook’s room for cards.
Below the window and under the stare of searchlights brilliant atop dry and root choked posts, a file of creaking men sat still the length of the dormitory wall. Their backs were encrusted to the glittering tar board and they could not stir, singly mushroomed in a row, did not twist white and curious faces toward the upstairswindow at the sound of women, the exchange, starting overhead, of far carrying tones and smiles. The sound was enough, was robbed of sweetness near the ground by the chemically white light and itching in their feet; by the guitar that was struck now and then shortly above the rattling of the pails, crouched upon by the player who sang, suddenly muffled, as a man talking to himself and not in serenade.
Tin helmets at their sides, after a day of clinging to the turbine tower and before bed, they stilled the creeping of the fungus across their feet by immersion, waved them automatically, spreading the toes, in the medicinal, violet fluid that filled the pails. Septic patches of flaking skin and trails of the discharge from the soles of their feet caked the bottoms of their shoes and in the early morning reimpregnated cooling sores, fired, a sudden yeast, under men’s weight on the earth. But at night they rolled their trousers above the knee, sat still. Beyond the crushed glass of the lot they faced and away in the darkness, stretched open snares and painful walks, sand, black brush and the dam. They hung their heads, at night retreated in blue denim and with phosphorescent joints and bones to the gritty wall—and did not, after women slept and from the porch of a store, watch through heavy cobwebbed evenings for a moonrise. The women were awake.
“You better tell me about him,” demanded Lou. She leaned at the window and several times, in the beginning, looked down on the black and waxen heads, well lit naked legs, the narrow backs. “Been here before and damned himself. Or had a good time.” She glanced down again—searchlights hit her egg blue breast and sparkling cross —and breathed deeply, staring after caterpillars curled on a branch. “He’s short.” She looked at the gold braids, tarnished, at the cook with canvas hips, and she began to breathe like the fat woman, through her mouth. Already, giggling and without a word, the cook’s head shook in denial, admitting no eye on her bosom, no rocksthrown. “He sweats in bed,” said Camper’s wife. “He can stick things into himself and not feel. If he’s mad he cries. Remember?”
The journeying man was followed: a bandog with a trailing chain, by fighters brawling a hundred steps behind, by a fish that escaped in the years before or a woman pointing no sooner had he passed. He stepped fidgeting through the darkness, thinking now and then of the dead man, while, in the body of one and the backbiting of the other, he was described between two women lashed together for the night.
“A blue spot on his chest? Punches you in his sleep? Come on,” Lou urged in the foreknowledge of a young girl, “you weren’t just cooking all that time.” And she played upon the drawstrings of the bag they shared, pledged that dual experience imposed by birth—in its welter all men were innocent—to outlast, roundabout and broad, the lone conception men carried in a joke and for which they fought time and again. “Any other place I wouldn’t have missed him,” trying to judge the years and deducting pounds accordingly, squinting at the woman’s shape of old, “telling me he just come here to fish! He can do that in the bathtub.” And the cook stood stolid, no keener than when she had backed against the stove.
Lou flung away her own blonde hair. She slouched, eyes level with the cook’s,
Below the window and under the stare of searchlights brilliant atop dry and root choked posts, a file of creaking men sat still the length of the dormitory wall. Their backs were encrusted to the glittering tar board and they could not stir, singly mushroomed in a row, did not twist white and curious faces toward the upstairswindow at the sound of women, the exchange, starting overhead, of far carrying tones and smiles. The sound was enough, was robbed of sweetness near the ground by the chemically white light and itching in their feet; by the guitar that was struck now and then shortly above the rattling of the pails, crouched upon by the player who sang, suddenly muffled, as a man talking to himself and not in serenade.
Tin helmets at their sides, after a day of clinging to the turbine tower and before bed, they stilled the creeping of the fungus across their feet by immersion, waved them automatically, spreading the toes, in the medicinal, violet fluid that filled the pails. Septic patches of flaking skin and trails of the discharge from the soles of their feet caked the bottoms of their shoes and in the early morning reimpregnated cooling sores, fired, a sudden yeast, under men’s weight on the earth. But at night they rolled their trousers above the knee, sat still. Beyond the crushed glass of the lot they faced and away in the darkness, stretched open snares and painful walks, sand, black brush and the dam. They hung their heads, at night retreated in blue denim and with phosphorescent joints and bones to the gritty wall—and did not, after women slept and from the porch of a store, watch through heavy cobwebbed evenings for a moonrise. The women were awake.
“You better tell me about him,” demanded Lou. She leaned at the window and several times, in the beginning, looked down on the black and waxen heads, well lit naked legs, the narrow backs. “Been here before and damned himself. Or had a good time.” She glanced down again—searchlights hit her egg blue breast and sparkling cross —and breathed deeply, staring after caterpillars curled on a branch. “He’s short.” She looked at the gold braids, tarnished, at the cook with canvas hips, and she began to breathe like the fat woman, through her mouth. Already, giggling and without a word, the cook’s head shook in denial, admitting no eye on her bosom, no rocksthrown. “He sweats in bed,” said Camper’s wife. “He can stick things into himself and not feel. If he’s mad he cries. Remember?”
The journeying man was followed: a bandog with a trailing chain, by fighters brawling a hundred steps behind, by a fish that escaped in the years before or a woman pointing no sooner had he passed. He stepped fidgeting through the darkness, thinking now and then of the dead man, while, in the body of one and the backbiting of the other, he was described between two women lashed together for the night.
“A blue spot on his chest? Punches you in his sleep? Come on,” Lou urged in the foreknowledge of a young girl, “you weren’t just cooking all that time.” And she played upon the drawstrings of the bag they shared, pledged that dual experience imposed by birth—in its welter all men were innocent—to outlast, roundabout and broad, the lone conception men carried in a joke and for which they fought time and again. “Any other place I wouldn’t have missed him,” trying to judge the years and deducting pounds accordingly, squinting at the woman’s shape of old, “telling me he just come here to fish! He can do that in the bathtub.” And the cook stood stolid, no keener than when she had backed against the stove.
Lou flung away her own blonde hair. She slouched, eyes level with the cook’s,
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