Ironweed

“It’s a bunch of nothin’. I don’t know why I do anything in this goddamn life.”

“You did something good coming home. It’s something Da

“He got a bum out of jail.”

“You’re so mean to yourself, Francis.”

“Hell, I’m mean to everybody and everything.”

The bleachers were all up, and men were filing silently into them and sitting down, right here in A

They kept coming: forty-three men, four boys, and two mutts, ushered in by the Fiddler and his pals.

And there, between crazy Specky McManus in his derby and Jack Corbett in his vest and no collar, sat the runt, is it?

Is it now?

The runt with the piece out of his neck.

There’s one in every crowd.

Francis closed his eyes to retch the vision out of his head, but when he opened them the bleachers still stood, the men seated as before. Only the light had changed, brighter now, and with it grew Francis’s hatred of all fantasy, all insubstantiality. I am sick of you all, was his thought. I am sick of imagining what you became, what I might have become if I’d lived among you. I am sick of your melancholy histories, your sentimental pieties, your goddamned unchanging faces. I’d rather be dyin’ in the weeds than standin’ here lookin’ at you pinin’ away, like the dyin’ Jesus pinin’ for an end to it when he knew every stinkin’ thing that was go

You’re all dead, and if you ain’t, you oughta be.

I’m the one is livin’. I’m the one puts you on the map.

You never knew no more about how things was than I did.

You’d never even be here in the damn yard if I didn’t open that old trunk.

So get your ass gone!

“Hey Ma,” Billy yelled out the window. “Peg’s home.”

“We’ll be right in,” A

“A

“I think you probably ate all that already,” she said.

And then they went up the back stoop together.

o o o

When Francis first saw his daughter bent over the stove, already in her flowered apron and basting the turkey, he thought: She is too dressed up to be doing that. She wore a wristwatch on one arm, a bracelet on the other, and two rings on her wedding ring finger. She wore high heels, silk stockings with the seams inside out, and a lavender dress that was never intended as a kitchen costume. Her darkbrown hair, cut short, was waved in a soft marcel, and she wore lipstick and a bit of rouge, and her nails were long and painted dark red. She was a few, maybe even more than a few, pounds overweight, and she was beautiful, and Francis was immeasurably happy at having sired her.

“How ya doin’, Margaret?” Francis asked when she straightened up and looked at him.

“I’m doing fine,” she said, “no thanks to you.”

“Yep,” said Francis, and he turned away from her and sat across from Billy in the nook.

“Give him a break,” Billy said. “He just got here, for chrissake.”

“What break did he ever give me? Or you? Or any of us?”

“Aaahhh, blow it out your ear,” Billy said.

“I’m saying what is,” Peg said.

“Are you?” A

“I surely am. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and welcome him back with open arms after what he did. You don’t just pop up one day with a turkey and all is forgiven.”

“I ain’t expectin’ to be forgiven,” Francis said. “I’m way past that.”

“Oh? And just where are you now?”

“Nowhere.”

“Well that’s no doubt very true. And if you’re nowhere, why are you here? Why’ve you come back like a ghost we buried years ago to force a scrawny turkey on us? Is that your idea of restitution for letting us fend for ourselves for twenty-two years?”

“That’s a twelve-and-a-half-pound turkey,” A

“Why leave your nowhere and come here, is what I want to know. This is somewhere. This is a home you didn’t build.”

“I built you. Built Billy. Helped to.”

“I wish you never did.”

“Shut up, Peg,” Billy yelled. “Rotten tongue of yours, shut it the hell UP!”

“He came to visit, that’s all he did,” A

“Oh?” said Peg. “Then it’s all decided?”

“Nothin’ to decide,” Francis said. “Like your mother says, I ain’t stayin’. I’m movin’ along.” He touched the salt and pepper shaker on the table in front of him, pushed the sugar bowl against the wall.

“You’re moving on,” Peg said.

“Positively.”

“Fine.”

“That’s it, that’s enough!” Billy yelled, standing up from the bench. “You got the feelin’s of a goddamn rattlesnake.”

“Pardon me for having any feelings at all,” Peg said, and she left the kitchen, slamming the swinging door, which had been standing open, slamming it so hard that it swung, and swung, and swung, until it stopped.

“Tough lady,” Francis said.

“She’s a creampuff,” Billy said. “But she knows how to get her back up.”

“She’ll calm down,” A

“I’m used to people screamin’ at me,” Francis said. “I got a hide like a hippo.”

“You need it in this joint,” Billy said.

“Where’s the boy?” Francis asked. “He hear all that?”

“He’s out playin’ with the ball and glove you gave him,” Billy said.

“I didn’t give him the glove,” Francis said. “I give him the ball with the Ty Cobb signature. That glove is yours. You wa

Billy nodded and turned away from Francis. “Okay,” he said, and then he jumped up from the bench and left the kitchen so the old man could not see (though he saw) that he was choked up.

“Grew up nice, Billy did,” Francis said. “Couple of tough bozos you raised, A

“I wish they were tougher,” A

The yard, now ablaze with new light against a black sky, caught Francis’s attention. Men and boys, and even dogs, were holding lighted candles, the dogs holding them in their mouths sideways. Specky McManus, as usual hem’ different, wore his candle on top of his derby. It was a garden of acolytes setting fire to the very air, and then, while Francis watched, the acolytes erupted in song, but a song without sense, a chant to which Francis listened carefully but could make out not a word. It was an antisyllabic lyric they sang, like the sibilance of the wren’s softest whistle, or the tree frog’s tonsillar wheeze. It was clear to Francis as he watched this performance (watched it with awe, for it was transcending what he expected from dream, from reverie, even from Sneaky Pete hallucinations) that it was happening in an arena of his existence over which he had less control than he first imagined when Aldo Campione boarded the bus. The signals from this time lock were ominous, the spooks utterly without humor. And then, when he saw the runt (who knew he was being watched, who knew he didn’t belong in this picture) putting the lighted end of the candle into the hole in the back of his neck, and when Francis recognized the chant of the acolytes at last as the “Dies Irae,” he grew fearful. He closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands and he tried to remember the name of his first dog.