Act of Divination

JOHN DAVID ELLIS JR

Contents A Mother to her son about his father The Babysitter broke it off Act of Divination How Murder Creek Got Its Name, 1788 The Spacewalk, After Chagall's Der Spaziergang Karma's an itch One Best Way, or A Shithead in Business School Bummed on New Year's Eve Silas walks outside to make sure he's still alive In retrospect, the Grandfather grows taller Who consoles who I gave Father a face 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

A Mother to her son about his father I was fat like the sun,a whitewashed fence with a cowbird sitting in my stomach, and I carried you,an overow grown too big forthe banksin my belly, a bucket of blood, I carried you, my baby born of me. And when you rst breathed your fatherstood, a mouth of teeth just set to smiling,just showing the good side of a weary soul,and heheld you like a weight, a cord of wood. All himself, he held you, and said he saw a forest within you. Yes, he said he could see straight through the pith of you,a nch shaking in the cage of your chest, and when you was born, he said he saw the Redeemer, and he was saved for he was cursed like a knifefound lying in the grass, a straight blade temperedby the heat of the elds, a pair of shears cutting patternsout of sadness to be worn as a coat sweatingin summer. Our baby boy,you grewlike tendrils trained to the ways of your father, and I swear, whenyou spit, the wind spit back.

The Babysitter broke it off Wantingthe reworks to wait,the boys' hungered noiseswere matches lit like eyes widened. Ravenging through cherry bombs and roman candles, sparklers and fountains, all in the box of reworks that I saved for you. The world was ending andI wept like Jesus on a spongeto apply the temporary tattoosof hearts splinteringand furious skeletons.Your arrivalwas the tail end of a bottle rocket.Coincidence?I think not. I want to build time machines as gifts for everyone, so they can warn the others past that even with glasses, stars can't be seen from space. Andto my younger self: did she resemblea soccer playeror a autist or a woman or a goddessor what's the difference? Maybe she was complicatedlike time.Still, I eat the white rice for fear of Y2K,the yearthat never came for us, Babysitter, whom I love.

Act of Divination Mymother says she found me in the gutter, explainswhy I prefer to sleep on the oor. It's the reason why I've never told anyoneabout how I fellout the bed. Once when she tried to hug me, I was slick. I shot out her hands like a fat catsh, landing under a bridge right across from a girl whom I watched climb up to walk barefoot and let her hair down. I imagined it braided like a length of rope to climb during gym class, a dowsing rod pointing me in the direction of her doorstep. Sometimes when I've been in the sun too long, I see Big Mother picking enough cotton for two people and walking the eight miles home. I see the future like a regular palm reader. Do you believe in magic?Because I do. Once, I was a baby.Now, I am wandering towards a place of comfort, a house, maybe, or a tent waiting in the woods with the others.

How Murder Creek Got Its Name, 1788 I. Innocent tributaries point in ways ngers cannot, the thorns of a windrose that spill aged blood like brown leaves in piles. A boy pulls on his britches, or maybe he says, "breeches", as the father and his servants blanket the horses, clouds of hot air escaping open nostrils. Above, a single black bird ies circular, Their host yawns, waving them away from his porch, the trail ahead narrowing into a knife blade. "What are the names of the trees?" the boy asks of his father. "What are the names of the creeks?" The father has no answer. He is just passing through this land that cannot be claimed as his own. Still, he calls it home. II. Catt can't travel alone because he gets lonely like an animal chased up a tree, so he brings his squaw wife, he brings the servant, Bob, he brings the Hillabee whose name is Manslayer. Catt knows trails better than any Indian, but Manslayer says he can hear the words they speak. Up ahead, a man with golden pockets and a funny tongue. The trails never lie. With one hand, Catt covers his squaw wife's eyes and with the other, he shakes with the stranger. They share the sofke. It is soured except for the little taste of honey. The man and his boy ride on. Catt spits in the dirt. Bob's one ear can hear the coins jingling midst the horse tack. They count the steps and decide they are not so many, doubling back with the cloak of night and the hood of silence. A twig snapping disrobes them. The boy starts for the trees, but Manslayer is faster. He says,"Watch this knife whisper cross your daddy's throat."

III. My friends and brothers: I do not wish to tell it, the story that begs to be told, to you, the respectable men that make their homestead here in Newport. Appointed by the Honorable Alexander McGillivray, I have been asked to track down the murderous party responsible for the death of Joseph Kirkland and his son, the bodies of whom were found by the creek which the reds call, the "Alootchahatcha". There, I found the deceased stripped not only of their valuables, but of their dignity, for in the ambush perpetrated by the man known as Catt, the victims were bare given time to open their eyes before the curs took to blades and opened their naked throats. For three days, they eluded the Scenthounds, but I come to proclaim that the ample arms of Justice have embraced the one known as Catt, as I, in my prodigious facilities, have captured him and returned him to the creekside where he was hanged by the neck. Below the very tree that Joseph Kirkland slept under before he was quelched! I shall have you know that Catt was not shown the same mercy he showed his victims. Nay, I showed him more! Before the nal airs escaped him with his wretched soul, I shot him through with a pistol ball, having grown tired with the dramatic clamor of his gasping. I should say that his boots hung from his body like twin stones of unpardonable shame.

The Spacewalk, After Chagall's Der Spaziergang Together thereon the earth, for now a patchwork quilt of apicnic, and the man and the woman are happy, it is in their posture,a delicate ribbon oating above his head, a proud anchor of a smile with greedyngers intertwined with hers. Euphoric is this space walk, this couple in love, but everyone is beautiful outdoors and in love, everyone is in love on a picnic. What the poor proud man does not know isgravity proves a better lover whenthe scarf of a woman oats awaythe rapturous end of the world.

Karma's an itch Were Hell real it would be these ant biteblisters, this insatiable itch. My mother says it's poison ivy, her nurse friend says no, it's sumac. My uncle blames the cow itch vine, The doctor's diagnosis:contact dermatitis. I'm thinking of a fallenangelwith many differentnamesbecause this itch is evil.Oh, and too,whata weeping rashfeltlike beforethe advent of antihistamines. I imagine a cowboy whistling,pockmarked and spitted, roasting overa campre. An indian scratchingwith a deer bone knife at thesummer blooms like a patch of azaleasacross his skin. Can pants and longsleeves cast out devils? I'm too chickenshit. My grandfathercrushed the leaves in his hands and sprinkled them over oats like old medicine for breakfast, a balanced diet of consuming his enemies. I'm pink with calamine, my skinglowing like a chigger's nest. I'm just a poor babe left in the woods. The cowboy is buried to his neck in velvet ants, and my friend, the indian, danglesfrom a tree while the sun sets.

One Best Way, or A Shithead in Business School I thought the guest speaker'ssuit and tie made him look like an old dog shivering just before it takes a shit,and when he said, "At your age, I was livingout of my truck and strugglingto passmy classes,"I wished the younger version of the manwas speaking to us. The one before the CPA and Accountant's Oath, the 18 hour days and three-gure salaries. Even more, I wished I satnext to the younger version in Management when we learned how Frank Bunker Gilbrethmade bricklayers more efcientby taking fast-motionphotographs of the process, reducing their essentialmovementsfrom eighteen to four and a half. Making little Sallie Gardners of them,all at a gallop. All of 'em, little brick-laying horses, mid-stride. I knew I was spinningmy tires, stuckin suspended motion.The same way the younger version of the accountant must have felt, living out of his truck parked near the tennis courts. Did he stop to ponder Gilbreth's theory that in everything, there was only "one best way,"which still seems like the perfect salespitch, but did he buy it? Now, the old accountant, and partner in a local rm, talks about Generally Accepted Accounting Principlesto shithead college students, and when I lost countof how many times he said, "starting salary", I knew I could never be a bookkeeper, and when he called for questions, I might've asked him if his wife ever saw his checking account before they got married,or how Gilbreth managed to reduce a motion to half a motion,or if he considered his youth a debit or a credit to his current standing balance. But I was too distracted,counting syllablesscribbled in a notebook, imagining Old Frankstanding over my shoulder, just hoping he might say,"My what you have here. Not a single word was wasted."

Bummed on New Year's Eve Tonight the sky is a bellowing hydrangea, or a tin roof rusted red. I turn my back to itlike so many suns I've seendo the same before. I don't need to see to know the beginning of a new year, so I shut my eyes and go to sleep.

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Silas walks outside to make sure he's still alive Under the water oak I met the crescent in the night, a lover lying on her back,and I was waiting for the voice of godor the specters hangingfrom the upperboughs of the tree. Iwaited, but no onespoke much'cept for the little croaks of thunderleading lightning by the hand, and the voices of the mole crickets that sang of coming rains. Still I listened for a while, wrapping my heartin the thin kerchief of the night. I left it at the base of the oakin hopes that its rhythms would take root, a lullaby like the sound of attening coins on railroad tracks. I yawned and walked back to the porch and tears came,a habit for old souls that pass in their sleep,and before I went for the screen door, I turned to watch the moon pullclouds down over her head and cry paisley. I couldn't help to laugh rubbing my hands to my eyelids like a re that would never start or two sleepy-eyed lanterns that would never extinguish.

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In retrospect, the Grandfather grows taller I thought I caught a whiff of the cabof his truck coming down the highway,sitting with my mother in the gravel parking lot of Fran's Diner, the wafting scent ofspilt coffee and bee vomitrolling through like a tumbleweedor the sunof a lazy morning. Thesmellcamewith four generations of apiculture and followed himjust as well in his skin and loose tting button-ups, an Indian growing older.Only six, I knew I wanted to growinto that smell,to be able to tell the beesto bestilland have them listen. I'd tell them ofhow he helpedhis daughter moveinto the old house off Cove Ave., and while she made spacefor the Maytag, how he threw his arms around the dryerto carry it like a baby, albeit a heavy one. And of the source of his permanent hunch, the three-story plummet of an aircraft elevator on the U.S.S. Hornetwhen its hydraulics gave out, how he shattered his spineand would never walk again, but did anyway, going on to lift a dryer clear over his head. Though in this memory there will beno heavy lifting. Just heand Iriding, the windows rolled down, no faster than forty in his red Dodge pickup. The bees waiting for us on the river near the Tupelo. I am barely taller than the broom sage, he lumbers like a gallant pinebowing in the wind.

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Who consoles who I'm thinking at any moment either of us could disappear, too, you know, or maybe both of us at the same time, and just because we've both disappeared, they say that doesn't mean we'll disappear together, which is a scary thought because I think if I absolutely had to disappear at any moment, with anyone, it would be right now, with you.

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I gave Father a face My father wasThe Price is Righton Monday morning when I skipped school because I was "sick." That burning feeling undermy skin when my grandmother told me I had to go anyway, the vocabulary primer I read at recess, and the blurring lines I traced with my eyes from the window seat on the school bus. My father was my glove, my bat, and the willful team of ghost runners that played in the eld across the street, losing foreverto older cousins. He was waking up on Christmas morning with a broken arm, a busted head while my mother got ready forwork. Maybe kissing that girl in the empty movie theater, or George Washington crossing the Delaware, orlearning to shave from my mother,which is to say,on my own. He was driving at nightuntil the babyfell asleep, tossing the pairof cordovanwing-tips out when I wasn't looking. Maybe doing me a favor. My fatherwas Billy Powell changing his nameto Osceola,the unlacquered saxophone purchased by monthly payments.Hewas getting paid under the table. He was the cable,the electricity, and the waterturned off. My fatherwas watching Motherdatethe roofer from Detroit who drank enough to punchthrough wall plaster, enough to leave a hole gaping in the hallway. My father took my facewhen the drunken hand shook before it,thebloodpoolingin the knucklesof clenching ngers, the lactic acid in my legs riding a bike across the country, falling in love over a drycappuccino, spendinga month 14

in Puerto Rico. My father was my rst andsecond gray hair, invisible in the picture of me sitting on his shoulders. He was falling asleep in a bathtub, but beforethat he was thinking of wading the mouth of the river.

John David Ellis Jr. Contact @ jde10@my.fsu.edu 15