Circumstance

Darn you Skeeter boy, darn you.  Skeeter, we miss you so much.

All those fancy ideas and things, don't know where they came from, Skeeter, you mad boy. Not out the mud and critter-flat grits where they buried you.  Was it that bang to your head on Momma's broiling pot when you ran too fast for us to catch hold?  You sure ran darn fast!  Straight in the pot and we had to drag you back out the bubble-bubble water, cooked and scalded, screaming up to the light.

Maybe it's there you caught? Hunkered down in the tarpaulin, turpentine shack with your books and words and fancy thoughts.  All summer laid out and kicked sore, skinned like some kid-goat flayed and bloody raw red. And Momma sure wept some tears that summer, Skeeter boy.  Just the circumstance.

You read and you read and you read, like picking out the cotton. White page, black word, white page, black word. And you just kept on reading. All summer long, one big red scar from tipper-toe to tipper-toe.

Is that where it came on you, Skeeter boy?  The long build rail, steaming all the way up and outta the swamp, all the way to heaven. A million, million holy words cut, dried and stacked like the 'bacca leaves, hung out to dry and smoked in some weak, watery sun only to be coughed up like a morning hair-ball plug of phlegm.

That was the plan, wasn't it Skeeter boy?  Build 'em up tall, word and word and word, one after the other chasing all the way to the moon.  They laughed at you, mad boy. Skeeter, boiled in Momma's pot and building a tower, one word at a time.

They laughed when you cut up the papers, squared and ready like some rebel outhouse creek-wipe, smeared and steaming. And then you began to stack 'em, layer on layer.  All those words just tethered to the ground.  One foot, two foot, still it kept on rising as the trees shed leaves and the sow bugs crawled into little balls beside the cold, dark bayou.

You worked it hard that winter, Skeeter boy and we watched the tower rise.  Up it went, some mad-boy smokestack pile of words. Not that they made much sense for us Skeeter, no more than a Cane Ridge Revival camp-meet with hot words and spitting snake-medicine vials.  You reached the top of the barn by Christmas, lagged with dead indigo, cotton and hemp to keep the cold from leaching out those letters.

It didn't stop there, no Sir. On and upward as winter snow turned slush to spring and mud-baked fields turned hot summer dreams that threshed in the corn-dollied autumn days.  Climbing and climbing.  You disappeared from view the second year.  Up to the clouds with more letters and words.

You took a C
and you took an I
and you took an R
and you took a C
and you took a U
and you danced
you danced like a crazy boy on top of the world
and you took an M
and you took an S
and your scars bubbled
in Momma's scalding pot
and still you climbed
to bring
the T
that followed on with A
and an N
and you laboured in the sweating, grey folds of a sulky drawn Confederate dawn
as you reached for the C
and ….

fell to ground clutching the last letter of your cold-blow day on earth
and we buried you
deep in the critter-flat grits
while we whistled down the wind
with cracked and broken
molasses teeth

and left you

with ….. E

alone and blowing in the bayou wind.

Darn you, Skeeter boy, darn you.