Lincoln Michel
The Old House
I remember the small garden behind our house where my father
found a black widow under some vegetable leaf or another. He
dropped it in a jam-jar filled with yellow formaldehyde. It was
the same garden, too small to nurse any plant to health, where
my mother planted thin rows of beans and cucumbers. The spider
jar was on top of our fireplace next to my father’s trophies. I
would stand tip-toe on the brick ledge to look closely at the
dangerous, floating thing. We lived in the country then. Me,
Mother, Father, my dog, Winston, and my sister, Beth. Winston
and I spent our days sneaking through the oaks looking for
buried treasure. We explored every inch of those woods and even
then we sometimes got lost.
The black widow’s body was so black and shiny that it looked
like crumpled metal; skinny black pipes for legs. Behind our
property was a cow pasture. You could sneak over the fence and
stand in the field with your hand out and the cows would amble
up and lick the salt your body makes off your palm. Winston was
a black Labrador. He couldn’t go into the pasture or he would
frighten the cows. My sister was many years older than me, too
old to play with me in the woods. She had already discovered
boys her age. The garden belonged to my mother. She spent hours
carefully tending the tiny plants there. Whenever I got lost in
the woods my father would have to find me. I would see his
flashlight dancing around the trees. His hands were rough and
calloused when they touched my cheek.
You know a black widow is a black widow by the red blotch
etched into its belly like a wound. Not everyone knows that only
females bear this mark. We have left that house now and moved to
the city. Everything has changed. My mother spends her days in
front of the TV. Father is gone. The other woman had carried her
son above his head like an axe for years and she finally brought
it down on him. Beth got pregnant and left town with a boy whose
cheeks looked like they had been attacked by little pick-axes.
We still have the black widow, it’s suspended in the jar in
the same pose it hung from leaves when alive. There is no garden
in the city and we buy our vegetables at the grocery store. I
still get confused a lot. It’s just that not all of the cords in
my head have the right connections. I remember the day when
Winston got a bad case of the flu and died. It was at the old
house. My parents buried him next to the garden out back. A wet,
brown lump in the yard. The next day mom also caught the flu. I
thought it meant I would have to step up and be a man now. I
went into the backyard that night and began digging a second
grave with my hands.
Lincoln Michel’s work has been
published in journals such as McSweeney's Internet Tendency,
The Vestal Review, Journal of Modern Post and the
Pedestal Magazine. |
