Lurkers of the Swamp

A male seeking a female and himself watching carefully to understand. -William Saroyan

Her dad calls us “Animals! Animals!” 

“Like wild beasts of the jungle! LIKE ANIMALS!” he said, as if the word spoke for itself. 

He tried to stop us, “Like stopping Hitler at Munich!” he said. 

“Can’t stop me,” she said. 

“Look at my foxes running through your cornfields!” I said. 

“It’s all his fault!” he said, “I told you stay away from boys with long hair!” 

Getting drunk on my story, getting carried away with my story. 

“Intoxicated by the spectacle of my story,” I said, “My story took me into bars and got me drunk. My story took me into the beer hall where all sorts of things are done through boredom.” 

“Tell me everything you saw,” she said. 

“I wanted to see everything, and they let me see everything! Let me see and let me write! I said. I want to see like Zacchaeus in the tree! There’s so much to write, if only I could get this right! And I saw a fat man asleep in his chair, a pig who weighs as much as three men!” 

“And they call us animals!” she said. 

“I saw men working since they were two years old, gathering enough courage to explode! I saw a man fire a gun! I saw a man chasing a woman. I liked her a lot—I wanted to be him.” 

“This is more savage than the death of kings,” she said. “We should be careful. Do you think anyone can hear us? What if someone uses this story for nefarious purposes? Don’t you ever worry about that? Like Nazis did Nietzsche.” 

“What if they use it for good?” 

“That’s not going to happen!”

“Well, somebody has to take the hard seat,” I said, “My story is primitive in its appeal. My story is one man and one woman. One hard of smelling.” 

“That’s me!” she said. 

“One hard of hearing.” 

“That’s you!” 

“Both hard of fearing! Going against everything with a stone, better yet a knife,” 

“But who’s going to wield it?” 

“I think I should.”

“You wanna go for a walk?” I said. 

And she follows me down into the valley, past the nondenominational church with their barebones notions of God. And she lays with me in the same great piece of turf every time. 

“We’re like a pair of Albrecht Dürers,” I said, “This is just where boys got caught sticking their noses into Queen Anne’s lace.” 

“I wish I could smell it.” 

“I imagine we look like the most incredible still life right now, like a photographer arranging for a group photo, hanging fowls.” 

“Bread dusted with flour and scored in clever designs.” 

“Funky cheeses.” 

“And plump fruits, like bursting figs.” 

“Like rotten fruit of my brain.” 

We circle each other like animals in a cage. 

“I have this thing about girls,” I said. 

“What thing?” 

“They’re scared of me.” 

“I’m not scared of you.” 

“I’m scared of them too. What am I supposed to do with my hands? I never know where to put my hands. They’re like two dead ducks.” 

“Ducks are known to be foolish,” she said.

Then my hands inside her clothes like frisking for a weapon. 

“My nameless woman of the south!” I said. 

“I’m from the north.” 

“You can’t beat mother,” I said. 

“I’m not your mother.” 

“Well, they used to call each other mother and father in the old Ring-Lardner days,” I said, “Instead of husband and wife.” 

“I’m not your wife.” 

“You can’t beat mother.” 

“Stop calling me mother!”  

“Theres so many things wrong with this story!” she said. 

“Like what?” 

“Well, you have to tell why we’re animals in the first place.” 

“Only the dullest of minds would fail to comprehend.” 

“You have to help the reader.” 

“He don’t help me, I don’t help him.” 

“Well, I guess you’re just writing the dead sea scrolls here then.” 

“Well, that’s your father fault. He caught us having sex and called us animals.” 

“So now we’re animals is what you’re saying.” 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“There’s too much going on with this story.” 

“Well maybe it’s not even a story, maybe it’s a fable.” 

“Now you’re cooking with gas, now you’re cooking on the front burner.” 

“Aesop used animals in his fables.” 

“They were almost like people. I just thought of something…fables contain lessons.” 

“Oh, we’re going to teach everyone a lesson all right,” I said, “Don’t worry your pretty head about that.” 

Then realizing somehow our tails got tied together! 

“Were they always tied together like this?” she said. 

“Well, I didn’t do it I know that much.” 

“You must have done this!” 

And then we set our tails on fire! Running through Philistine fields! And setting their fields on fire! 

“Don’t look now but the whole town’s underwater,” I said. 

“How do we know who’s a Philistine who’s not?” 

“It’s a good question.” 

“I guess it doesn’t matter.” 

Ruining everything! For everybody! 

“Look at them! It must be the scent that brings them,” I said.

“This is a no-no in the Bible,” she said. 

“Are you kidding? I got this idea straight from the bible! It’s only natural to act this way. What do you expect when you tie Samson to the pillars?” 

Singing our coarse love song, eating everything like goats, eating like a goat eats. 

“Did you just eat a page from my Bible?” she said. 

“I’ll eat your shoes if you’re not careful!” 

“That would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” 

Doing everything goats do to each other.

“I thought you liked it,” I said. 

“I do but you’re an oversexed animal!” 

“Animals! Animals!” I said in mimicry of her father, smelling her where animals smell other animals.

“You eat all my energy up,” she said.

“Like wild beasts in the jungle!” 

“Aren’t you funny.” 

“LIKE ANIMALS!” 

Adventures…

“And all the time murders lurking about,” she said. 

Going into the woods…

“The Trojan horse was also made of wood,” she said. 

“Anything that can be said about the Trojan horse can also be said about me.” 

My hands under her shirt…

“You’re getting too skinny,” I said, counting her ribs like Joseph counts years of famine.

“I’m actually not, I’m gaining weight.” 

Then seeing two horses…

“Beautiful animals, one’s me and one’s you,” she said. 

And tying their tales together…

“You mean tails,” she said. 

But we can’t do it, they won’t let us. 

“Most animals aren’t that dumb,” she said. 

Then downtown, past the fortune teller and her sign with the eyeball, which says “Readings.” And I see people beating a path to her door, like she’s built a better mousetrap. I see boys coming out of the barber shop with their eyes gouged out, shaking their fists at their parents. 

“Let’s get you a haircut,” she said. 

“No fucking way!” I said. 

“I’ve never seen a man that concerned about his hair.”

Then we walk past the Eat-a-Pita, we see two girls we know. 

“Known for having menstrual headaches,” I said. 

“They’re faking it, crying wolf.” 

We can see the Knights of Pythias leading a parade to the cemetery. We can see boys bouncing basketballs, singing their bouncing ball song. Then past Harm Freye’s Bait Shop, where the sign says “Live Bait in Rear.” 

“It might be a trap,” she said. 

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” 

Past St. Charle’s church with the sign that says “There is none like me!” Past the “Hasty Tasty” where Vina Neitzke lets the boys feel her up. 

“You never did it did you?” she said. But I won’t answer, “Answer me!” she said.   

“Stop grabbing me!” she said, “This is downright bestial!”

“Let’s go to the zoo.” 

“What will we do at the zoo?” 

“We can see the snakes.” 

Then after the zoo…

“Let’s go to Jessie’s pet shop,” I said. 

“What for?” 

“I don’t know how to say it, but I gotta be around it.” 

And we watched animals pawing the ground like animals. And we watched animals pairing up like they were called to the ark—making babies right where people can see!

“I want to see!” the boy beside us tells his father. 

“Do you really want to see? Don’t just say you wanna see unless you mean it,” the father said. 

Dancing, treading on each other’s corns so to speak. 

“Do you want free dance lessons?” I said. 

“You have two left feet!” 

“And two right hands,” I said, “Whitman and Dickinson.” 

Then I tell her about Dickinson, I can’t wait to tell her about Dickinson. 

“She lived in her father’s house, never desiring to leave, a recluse.” 

“Do I remind you of her?” 

“No,” I said. 

“But I lived in my father’s house, and you carried me out, if not for that I’d still be there.” 

“Yes, but try and follow an intelligent conversation, it’s not the same thing.” 

“Why isn’t it?” 

“She was a genius.” 

“So, I’m stupid is what you’re saying.” 

“Do you even know any geniuses?”

“I have friends in the important places. I say smart things. I say clever things,” she said, like the boastings of a child. 

“So you think you’re a fox, say something clever then.” 

“I’m pregnant!” 

“You haven’t told your father, have you?” 

“No, God no,” she said. 

“You are or you think you are?” 

“I am,” she said. 

“This must be like the death leap of Simon Magus!” 

Now our fire’s almost out except a bed of angry coals, making plans in the dirt with our cigarette butts…

“This one’s you, this one’s me,” I said. 

“Now we’re cigarette butts?” 

“Walk right in don’t waste time,” I said, “Don’t take any chances. This is the entrance. Here’s the kitchen. Don’t let anybody kid you.”

Then going into the bar and spitting right on the floor! 

“What are you 5 years old?” she said. 

“Now you do it,” I said, and she does it, for it perks her when I treat her like a man. 

“Here comes big guns again,” a man said. And she calls that man a coward! 

“I can’t believe you said that!” I said.

“My favorite thing on this planet is calling men cowards.” 

“Looks like we won that one.”

But then I caught men looking at her the way you look at a city on a hill. 

“God she’s gorgeous in a new way,” I hear one man tell another. 

“They make an uncouth pair,” the other said. 

For the first time seeing the animals we have become.

“I’m going to shave my mustache right after breakfast,” I said. “I look like Samson.” 

“What do I look like?” she said. 

“Samson’s bitch.” 

“You have a dirty filthy mind!” 

“I’m kidding. You’re a real knockout.”

“I never thought of myself as pretty.” 

Men handling snakes in this bar like their name is Luke. And drinking poison like their name is Mark. Then me getting poisoned. 

“Can I have a coke?” she said. 

“Don’t you want a drink?” 

“No,” she said. 

And I got so drunk! 

“You can tell by the way you talk you’ve been poisoned,” the bartender said. 

“I was given poison and I drank it,” I said. 

And you can never tell what people will hear, being hard of hearing and being under the influence.

“Were you yourself in the prison with Socrates on the day he drank his poison?” the bartender said. 

“I didn’t know it was poison!” I said. 

“I’m the one who puts death in the pot,” the bartender said. 

“What are you, Lee Harvey Oswald?” I said. 

“Jesus said if they drink deadly poison it will not hurt them at all,” he said.

Now our story is packing up, leaving town, people are coming to say goodbye. 

Seeing a cat without its tail…

“Anybody can lose a tail,” I said. 

“I think that cat’s wise to us.” 

“Just say the word and I will go away with my tail between my legs.” 

“I will never say the word!” 

“Lucky for me, how did I get so lucky?” 

“For the first time you seem to be taking the whole thing seriously.” 

“And am I dumb to tell you I really am an animal? A beast. I’ve done terrible things to myself and others. I used to be violent! I used to hurt animals when I was younger!” 

“I forgive you.” 

“But you don’t understand.” 

“I don’t need to.” 

“I’m not perfect.”

“I don’t care.” 

“I smoke, I smoke nonstop.” 

“It doesn’t matter. I told you I think I’m in love with you.” 

“You sound like a mouse saying that. I live with my mother—she still makes my bed! She washes my underwear!” 

“I don’t mind.” 

“Then this is the story of how you saved me, how you saved them.” 

“I saved everyone is what you’re saying now?” 

“Oh you don’t even know what I had planned! You don’t know what I was going to do! It was sick! It’s something men have wanted to do for ages. I’m ashamed to tell you this.” 

“You’ve told me plenty, this is more than enough. Just about everything has been said. Nothing more needs to be said.”