Place

by Jane L. Carman

I sit curled next to my grandmother, her lilac perfume as clear as spring, as strong as the shrubs growing in her yard. It is Sunday night. We watch Wild Kingdom, Lawrence Welk, Disney. Regardless of age or size, she calls the kids hotten tots and cherubs.

I am in my father’s gaze as I deliver a slick, black-blue lamb, its steaming body sliding into the cold February air, its mother cleaning. I am in his gaze as I learn to drive a rusty International. I cut it too sharp, tearing open a tire with the grain wagon, the moist, rubbery air whooshing by my face as I climb down. My father says nothing. 

I’m watching my mother melt away between her desire to satisfy my grandfather’s need for profit and her inability to embrace the idea that where there is livestock there is deadstock: that the bottle lamb we feed until his stomach swishes and then push around in a baby buggy either becomes a roast or a burden; that when the dog she talks to every day is hit by a car, the only affordable option is perma-sleep; that when that dog dies there’s a new one the next day to learn his work because the farm never rests. 

I walk the hard black soil in the wake of gleaming disks, picking up ancient pottery that never fits together, collecting arrowheads and axes, holding the old black pipe still bearing the mark of gut or vine that once connected it to the rest of history. I clutch the paint rock, rub it across my cheeks, the iron coloring my skin. I’m listening to my father’s stories of ancestors, his longing for something primordial, something he cannot touch. 

I hear the pheasant’s cry, high and harsh, beneath the brown and red of winter scrub. I see a merry-go-round of vultures, circling just out of reach, past the pond that shrinks out of existence when the sky refuses to rain. The same pond where, in wetter years, frogs chorus rounds of love songs between spring rain and snow showers, the most determined pairs of balled eyes poking out of water puddles surrounded by moats of snow. 

I’m warning the roosters not to crow at midnight, not to crow at 2 a.m. I tell the ducks not to shit on the steps. The roosters run away chasing a hen. Under the dogs’ protection, the ducks’ laughter is unmistakable. They laugh at me. They laugh at night, at opossums and raccoons.

I plant domestic rudbeckia and echinacea, their supermodel improvements making them stand out against their pallid ancestors in the same way my muted skin contrasts with that of my father, my grandmother, her grandparents. The flowers grow in purple and gold ovals like symbols of basketball teams. The plants create new boundaries each season.

I am in the living room. Outside the window, Leopold’s crane passes yearly. I watch the hawk fly by, carrying a writhing snake like Indiana Jones snapping a whip. The returning eagle carries a screaming rabbit.

I search but cannot find a prairie dog, buffalo, porcupine.

The crop dusters miss fields, sprinkling houses, ponds, and pets. The cat comes home, head on sideways, mewing, aborting her kittens. Stumbling, she does not die. My friend dies from cancer. My friend dies from cancer. My aunt dies from cancer. My aunt dies from cancer. My aunt dies from cancer. Two plus three equals five. There are more than five.

I watch a coyote down a rifle barrel and decide whether or not to pull the trigger. I don’t fire. I killed seven watersnakes, one opossum, five snapping turtles, and a raccoon with a pellet gun to protect rabbits, chickens, ducks, and children. It is the battle between indigenous and domestic. I don’t know how to stand atop the fence and balance.

I need to find awe in less space than Thoreau. This is not a choice.

My cousin died from shrapnel wounds. For seven years, war planes and helicopters have hummed through the night air indifferent to this place. For seven years, I’ve listened for silence but cannot hear it for the howling, crowing, humming, screaming, and buzzing.