The Little Girl Who Knows Your Name

In Stockett they like to play the odd practical joke on the unsuspecting.

Raven

A lone raven delivered a surprising message to me this week.

Child On A String

The Festival of  Martyrs in Stockett always has an unwelcome visitor.

Legs

The right leg goes first. The left leg is usually two or three days late. Which is typical of my left leg: can’t even dissociate on time. The left has no sense of timing. Anti-rhythm, I call it. If I want to dance, I have to dance around it. Usually I don’t bother.

But anti-rhythm is the least of my leg troubles. When the dissociation comes, there is nowhere to hide. No escape from the alien feeling. Nowhere to run to – unless you take the legs with you. You want to get away from them, they want to get away from you. But you are inextricably linked. Like living in a failed marriage: dependency and resentment.

You know when it’s coming. One morning, you wake up with a taste of iron in your mouth. The taste of blood. You can feel your teeth, like they are bigger than they were yesterday. Maybe they itch. First day, you can wash away the taste with your first sip of tea. A few days in, nothing gets that taste out of your mouth. Then you know you’re headed for a falling out with your legs.

There will be environmental pressures too. You are dog tired, regardless of whether you work like a bitch or loaf like a couch hound. There will be stress, barely manageable. Suddenly you can’t open the mail or answer the phone. Maybe you have to lock yourself in the house, and double check the lock every couple of hours. Imprison yourself with those legs, the legs of a stranger.

Because the next thing that happens is, your legs dissociate. One after the other they change from being tired to being different. Not yours. Alien. It is a sick feeling. You want to run. You feel like they’ve got their own brain, and they are thinking, we want to run too. Away from you. If you walk, or run, the feeling subsides. You have to work together. Bipedal motion, balance, instinct – a million years of genetic imprinting. But pause, just pause for a moment, the conflict returns. Genetics count for nothing. Sit down, they rock and shake, tapping out out a manic rhythm to the beat of growing anxiety.

Maybe you’ll have to run forever. Until you drop. Run, Forrest, run!

So far, that hasn’t happened to me. A few days in, crushing tiredness, the taste of blood subsides, my legs reconcile. So far, I haven’t had to run and run and never stop. So far.

Amos Well

There’s a black dog up on the hill yonder. My Amos wouldn’t tolerate the dogs on his fields but nowadays they run wild with nobody to stop them. Standing here on the back porch I always thought of that hill as Amos Ridge, though never said such a thing to him, lest he take the strap to me like some poor child he taken a dislike to. Everything around here got the mark of Amos upon it, including me. This is his farm. Amos Farm. That there: his field. Amos Field. Follow Amos Track down to the old barns where Amos done his slaughtering. Those poor cows afforded no dignity, in life or death. Amos Barns. Amos Meat. And then there’s me. Wife, he called me. Like I got no name of my own. Amos Wife. Well, not any more. Not since I took a rock to him, and put him down the well, bloody and confused and maybe a mite regretful. Now I’m Amos free.