A Table of Green Fields, Guy Davenport [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

heard that he is the bastard of the miller's wife got on her by a drummer who sells needles and thread. Old Sollander raised him on our place. He would say tried to raise him.

Sometimes when I find him he has his usual crazy sweetness in his eyes and tears too which he wipes with his rotten sleeves. Sollander has crisscrossed welts up his legs. Some on his arms. And one across his forehead beading blood. He is older than I but a baby. The predikant says that we are not to associate with him. He is vile and depraved. I learned that for myself down by the river collecting beetles. He was there smiling as wide as the urchins in the funny German picture books. He was wearing my cast off breeches mended beyond mending more and a jacket that had been Papa's. His hair was cut any which a way and combed with fingers if combed at all. His smile bloomed into huggermugger. He asked to see my peter and showed me his. I felt lucky and liked his friendliness and his interest.

I think I knew that his welts were something to do with his peter and his playing with it lots. I knew that the predikant had given Sollander leave to beat this vileness out of Tarpy. So I balked. And knew that my stubbornness was a false face.

I lied and said that I didn't do such things. All the while there was to my mind a rammy prestige that went with his goatishness. Of a man who butts down doors with his head you can only say that he butts down doors with his head. But he is not a niddering about it and does it with a will. Tarpy had his peter out of his fly. It was bigger and longer than mine.

In times of temptation you must think of the angels. Their wide ears are always before your mouth. They move beside you tread for tread. No man is ever utterly alone. They are in trees. They love a thicket and a still place. Yet Grandmama says they have houses of their own for all their sitting in nooks of ours and cities of their own.

She has seen her grandfather the sea captain against the ceiling of the library as if he were floating upward and could get no farther. She says I must look for the angels in my rambles. She says that with my innocent eyes I should be able to see the most distinguished spirits. Gold or silver they will seem to my eyes. I am to remember that in seeing one angel I am seeing all of heaven.

The angels are clothed in a vesture of light. The best are dressed in clinging fire. All is by degree with Swedenborg and the angels inmost to God are naked and are the beautifullest of all. I think I have seen what Grandmama and old Emmanuel mean by angel. You go by signs. The sign of an angel is influx. One of her words. One of his words. There is an influx of angel body into a hedge of wild roses when the light is level at morning and when it is downward at noon and level again toward evening. There are tall angels in the larches. Round angels in sunflowers.

Stirk everybody said he was. I could not tell luck from pitfall. I followed him down the thistle path to the willows by the river. He went to a sand bank where the bears fish in winter. He pushed his breeches down. I played at chucking rocks and poking around the place as if it were new to me. I gave several interested glances and said I had to be going. He looked hurt and had just been thrashed. That we were not friends did not help my feelings as I walked away. If he was a halfwit I was a liar. Two kinds of shame tussled in me. But I kept climbing the path. Stubbornness is always a kind of treason.

I could not look into the microscope without thinking of him. He was in the stereopticon. He haunted me under the covers. Everywhere. Let the air be as thick with angels as snow I would still be jealous of his doings. Better a halfwit than a prig. I caught glimpses of him along the river or on the knolls. He was always alone.

I made myself a promise. I would not walk away the next time. The promise itself was a pleasure.

The pounce came one afternoon when I saw Tarpy squatting in the river sand drawing with a stick. All I saw from above was the mess of hair. Strudel as it was you could see the verticillus commanding the whorl. I chucked a rock over his head to splash just beyond him. He looked miserable and lonely. He jumped at the splash and I hollered cheerfully to reassure him. His eyes were suspicious. I looked at his drawing. An eddy of lines like water or hair.

He asked me right off if I wanted to see a fox's den. I squatted beside him to add closeness to my bravery. Did he feel like playing with his peter? I whispered. He grinned.

I led this time and in a roundabout way that was meant to be casual brought us to our barn from the back where a ladder goes up to the loft. We looked at the tracks of a hare on the way. He said it was a buck in its first year. He showed me deer droppings. An owl's nest.

The loft was dim and cozy. I was sorry to be so clean when he was shoddy and dirty. I shamelessly took my breeches off and made myself comfortable on a heap of feed sacks. My forehead and the back of my neck tingled because I'd not done it with anybody watching. Only in bed or in the copse or back of the stables. Or secretly in my breeches. Tarpy used a slower pull and tigged his chin with his tongue.

I'd seen Pelser the blacksmith's boy jiggling away at his lizard's tail of a peter and Nock the stablehand swanking his stang from pucker to stark but the one was being silly and the other larking on a dare. Here was Tarpy with his