![One With Others: [A Little Book of Her Days]](https://fs.ageofbook.com/506144/thumbs/152x264/one-with-others-a-little-book-of-her-days.jpg)
It smells like home. She said, dying. And I, What’s that you smell, V. And V, dying: The faint cut of walnuts in the grass. My husband’s work shirt on the railing. The pulled-barbecued evening. The turned dirt. Even in this pitch I can see the vapor-lit pole, the crape myrtle not in shadow. My sweet-betsy. That exact streaked sky. The mongrel dog being pelted with rain. Mine eyes pelted. All fear. Overcome. At last. No scent. That’s what she said. Dying in the one-room apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.
MR. EASTER, AN OUTLIER [with FISH 4 SALE]: It’s probably a rat snake. Had a couple in the old storm cellar. My son-in-law accidentally caught it on fire and it killed ever one of my snakes.
+ + +
I came in by the old road from Memphis, the old military road. Across the iron bridge. No one in the field. Not a living soul.
I drove around with the windows down. The redbuds in bloom. Sky, a discolored chenille spread. Weather, generally fair.
The marchers step off from the jailhouse at Bragg’s Spur, 8:17 a.m. More police than reporters. More reporters than police.
The self-described Prime Minister of the Invaders, 31, and five others have begun their trek. SWEET WILLIE WINE’S WALK AGAINST FEAR is on the move.
V: We had the water and the shoes in my car. There was a black man named Stiles. [He was a midget.] He kept that water good and cold [for the marchers].
The threat they say is coming from the east [of the six Negroes walking to Little Rock and the white woman driving a station wagon].
It was something you came through that.
V: It was invigorating. It was the most alive I ever felt in my life.
FBI followed me for a long time. Stringers for the Gazette and the Appeal trailed me for a year. Once every ten or twelve years, I will get a caller. I used all of my life. I told my friend Gert, you’ve got your life until you use it.
I park in a spot of shade and walk around.
Downtown half shut down.
Cotton gin still going, not strong, but going.
Tracks working, neglected, but working.
The infamous overpass brought down.
September 15, 2004, Hell’s Kitchen, her life surrendered to her body. September 15 the day Padre Hidalgo uttered the famous Grito that kicked off the Mexican Revolution. She would have liked that, going off the air on a day marking a great struggle for independence.
The river rises from a mountain of granite.
The river receives the water of the little river.
The house where my friend once lived, indefinitely empty.
Walnuts turning dark in the grass. Papers collected on the porch.
If I put my face to the glass, I can make out the ghost
of her ironing board, bottle of bourbon on the end.
+ + +
HER FORMER HUSBAND: I’d come home from work and she would be in a rage and I just couldn’t understand it.
They were a poor match. He says so to this day. She said so then. They barely tolerated one another. But they were Catholic [another “error bred in the bone”]. If he looked at her, and she looked at him, in nine months she was back at the lying-in.
[My best guess: She woke up in a rage, eight days a week.]
Her friends—the musician, the poet, the actor:
GERT: She taught me how to live. Now she has taught me how to die.
And I: She was my goombah. My rafiki. It was the honor of my life to know her. Honor of my life.
ELLIS:
A crowd/ Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
[Yeats she knew inside out. Inside out.]
A MAN KNOWN AS SKEETER [his whole life]: Oh yeah, I remember her, she celebrated all her kids’ birthdays on the same day.
I talked to a number of people. In person. On the phone. Mostly, the phone. When I could get anyone to talk to me. I made so many calls:
Can we talk later because I’m trying to cook for my family
He’s not here now
He’s fishing
I’ve got to go to the hospital to see my brother
He’s about to pass
I’ve got to go to Memphis
I’ve got to work the night shift
Out at the big pen
I work there since the plant
MR. EASTER, AN OUTLIER [with FISH 4 SALE]: It’s probably a rat snake. Had a couple in the old storm cellar. My son-in-law accidentally caught it on fire and it killed ever one of my snakes.
+ + +
I came in by the old road from Memphis, the old military road. Across the iron bridge. No one in the field. Not a living soul.
I drove around with the windows down. The redbuds in bloom. Sky, a discolored chenille spread. Weather, generally fair.
The marchers step off from the jailhouse at Bragg’s Spur, 8:17 a.m. More police than reporters. More reporters than police.
The self-described Prime Minister of the Invaders, 31, and five others have begun their trek. SWEET WILLIE WINE’S WALK AGAINST FEAR is on the move.
V: We had the water and the shoes in my car. There was a black man named Stiles. [He was a midget.] He kept that water good and cold [for the marchers].
The threat they say is coming from the east [of the six Negroes walking to Little Rock and the white woman driving a station wagon].
It was something you came through that.
V: It was invigorating. It was the most alive I ever felt in my life.
FBI followed me for a long time. Stringers for the Gazette and the Appeal trailed me for a year. Once every ten or twelve years, I will get a caller. I used all of my life. I told my friend Gert, you’ve got your life until you use it.
I park in a spot of shade and walk around.
Downtown half shut down.
Cotton gin still going, not strong, but going.
Tracks working, neglected, but working.
The infamous overpass brought down.
September 15, 2004, Hell’s Kitchen, her life surrendered to her body. September 15 the day Padre Hidalgo uttered the famous Grito that kicked off the Mexican Revolution. She would have liked that, going off the air on a day marking a great struggle for independence.
The river rises from a mountain of granite.
The river receives the water of the little river.
The house where my friend once lived, indefinitely empty.
Walnuts turning dark in the grass. Papers collected on the porch.
If I put my face to the glass, I can make out the ghost
of her ironing board, bottle of bourbon on the end.
+ + +
HER FORMER HUSBAND: I’d come home from work and she would be in a rage and I just couldn’t understand it.
They were a poor match. He says so to this day. She said so then. They barely tolerated one another. But they were Catholic [another “error bred in the bone”]. If he looked at her, and she looked at him, in nine months she was back at the lying-in.
[My best guess: She woke up in a rage, eight days a week.]
Her friends—the musician, the poet, the actor:
GERT: She taught me how to live. Now she has taught me how to die.
And I: She was my goombah. My rafiki. It was the honor of my life to know her. Honor of my life.
ELLIS:
A crowd/ Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
[Yeats she knew inside out. Inside out.]
A MAN KNOWN AS SKEETER [his whole life]: Oh yeah, I remember her, she celebrated all her kids’ birthdays on the same day.
I talked to a number of people. In person. On the phone. Mostly, the phone. When I could get anyone to talk to me. I made so many calls:
Can we talk later because I’m trying to cook for my family
He’s not here now
He’s fishing
I’ve got to go to the hospital to see my brother
He’s about to pass
I’ve got to go to Memphis
I’ve got to work the night shift
Out at the big pen
I work there since the plant
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