and shoulder-length hair, who squeezes in next to me.
"You ought to try the Diggers Place," he says,
"If you need a place to crash." So I go
to the three-story house, where they tell me,
"Sleep anywhere you can find, except
the couple's room." The hallways are dark
and packed with people who don't wake up
even when stepped on. I fall through a door
and I'm in the couple's room. A few feet away,
under a pink light bulb, a woman's back
arches—the walls seem to grind and convulse.
They ought to lock the couple's door, I think.
I give up on sleep, find a playground outside,
and sit on a Jungle Jim. The dew on the steel
soaks through my jeans. I light my last smoke,
sniff the bouquet of tars on my index finger,
watch the tile roofs darken as dawn
transfixes each gable in a coral light,
a jumbled perspective. Where will it end?
Where will I sleep tonight? The future drops off
into mystical space; I vanish,
can't see the decision I'm going to make,
or the years of hard work I'll gladly put in
in towns like Hibbing, Guadalupe, Nitro.
More recently, my daughter holds up
a stringer of blue fish and grins for me
and the camera, while the head boat
rocks underfoot, spray cold on my face.
But during the summer of love, I didn't
know where I'd find my next smoke, let alone
a future like this—and how easy it was
to arrive here. I had survived my past.
ON A PHOTO OF BABE AND LOU
It has that 1930s look,
and they look like men of that time—
no more famous than I am.
Except for the baseball jerseys,
they could be two harvest hands
who wandered into a tavern
after tossing square bales in the sun.
The shade and the overhead fan
are good things to these men—
elbows resting on the bar, chaff
in their eyes, chaff in their hair.
"I might follow the harvest south
to Texas or California," Lou says.
The two men shake their heads
and exchange oblique grins.
"Hell of a life," Babe adds,
crows feet showing through his tan.
Lou places a dime on the bar.
One more beer for Babe and Lou
and then they're gone.
MY FIRST SLAUGHTERING
Early winter—I'd gotten the day
off school
to go to Dean Bentzel's farm
for my first slaughtering. It
would be
educational, said Mr. Hamm,
my fifth grade teacher.
I got up early—sniffed the
low-hanging clouds.
"Warm for winter,"
I thought, and shook my head,
"no," as Mom held
my bulky coat up. Then we drove
in the green station wagon,
passing fields
that were x-s to me—ex-corn,
ex-wheat,
tilled stubble, all gray and
brown. They were
too rough for hard-hit
grounders—and if
you ran deep for a pass, a
pheasant squawked up.
She dropped me off as the
winter sun
parched the last of the mist,
chilling everything
in its blue-bright spell. No
one warned me
there'd be so much standing
around, or I would've
dressed warmer. But there
were important things
to watch for—like Dean's dad
and Mr. Zumbaugh,
arranging the chains on a
giant brace,
which looked like it should've
been on a playground,
holding up swings. They
pushed it, on wheels,
to the barn and hooked tackle
and chains
to the apex, high in the
frozen air. Meanwhile,
Mrs. Bentzel worked in the
kitchen,
with women from nearby farms.
They were
where I wanted to be, where
the air smelled of bread.
I was freezing outside with
the men—
who loaded and sharpened—when
the women
burst from the kitchen and
marched to the barn—
each bearing a tub of steel,
heated
and wrapped in a towel. A
curtain of steam
rose in front of the
steer—and I heard
a clink as theyplaced the tubs
on the frozen ground, then a
crack!—
as if those farm-women had
broken
the earth wide open. The
steer slipped,
like he was on ice. Dean's
father
let out the rope on his neck,
and Mr. Zumbaugh
lowered the gun. It was
over—I'd seen
the stunned look on the
face—and how small
the red hole was. I asked
Dean if we could
get warm, but he pointed at
his father,
who hoisted the steer by the
feet
from the quivering chain,
strung like a harp
in the frozen air, and Mr.
Zumbaugh
sliced the neck and jumped
back
as the steer came to life for
a sickening moment
and a stream of red poured
out and steamed
in the cold, while the men
danced with their tools,
and I slid to the ground and
got sick,
which no one noticed, because of how hard
they all worked—except Dean,
who led me into the barn. "Some
kids
throw up the first time. You
can rest here—
I need to go back—we've got
two more
Holsteins to do." I
shook my head, "no,
I'm okay," wiped my
mouth on some straw,
and we found a corner to pee
in (which Mr. Bentzel
told us never to do in the
barn) and went back.
The afternoon passed as the
men
shot and sawed, the women
carried off tubs,
and fluid of different colors
ran out. About four,
Mrs. Bentzel called us for
apple pie. "It takes
some getting used to,"
she said. Our eyes met.
"We'll have an old
guernsey next month—
tell Mr. Hamm, if you want
the day off."
David Salner worked as an
iron ore miner, steelworker, and machinist for 25 years.His fourth collection of poetry, John
Henry's Partner Speaks, appeared
last spring.His work appears
in recent or forthcoming issues of The Iowa Review, Isotope, and Southern Humanities Review.His
first published short fiction was nominated for this year's Pushcart Prize.He has been awarded grants from
the Maryland State Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation and is currently
working on a novel about the lives of hard-rock miners in the Old West.
