The Takers

The keening is bland this morning; the smell in the season thinning. My son is sleeping inside, rolling in those young lung dreams–I remember them–Pacific and covered in saliva. When he wakes, when I wake him, he will eat the eggs lukewarm and sit hunched on the porch steps. His mother is gone; his friends are at the corrals. He says they call it a ritual, a rite to survey the squatters and mock their prayers using our tongue: Who planted the ear? Who swelled the eye? They will leave with grins and flakes of red paint on their palms. My son will forgive my sternness because he has so little to forgive.

He was there already this year, without my permission. I have seen the petals of the marigolds on the bottoms of his shoes. Did he palm that flower like a ball when he threw it? How sharp was his aim? If he was able about it, he did not get it from me. As a young man I tried my own tongue—for the sake of, for the love of—everyone thought I was a riot. I am not a riot now.

Soon the mornings will be quiet, humid with the smell of their breath. That will be the time to take him to the corrals, when they resemble grim hounds. Sockets and mange. Dolls and rings will have been discarded by then. When they are slow like that, it is easier to see why we must extinguish everything that has been extinguished before.

When they are gone I have a difficult time with sleep. I sit atop the fresh soil pile and look at the stars barbing the sky. I have blessings. When my son wakes it will be knowing their hands are not like ours. He will ask me to make a fist. You’re lucky, he will tell me, your knuckles are white.