26
CIRQUE
Volcanoes in the Window
Three women half my size help each other heft bags of sand at least their weight onto their backs. With tump lines across their foreheads, they lean into their steps. The scuffling of bare feet, their breath, and the whisper of hand-woven skirts is all you hear. Janet Levin
David McElroy
Pall Bearers
Shadows in the foyer condense to a woman who knows just what to do. She’s small, wears black of course, and one hand cups the other in the professional pose of not standing out. She sorts us by size: big, medium big, bigger. We follow her out to the hearse down chapel steps like obedient retrievers tracking the beautiful balls of her heels. She rolls the casket half way out, and we clump around. One with a torn rotator cuff switches sides, but she keeps us moving and smiles us into position for the lift which must be level up stairs, around doors, and in. There’s no ignoring the weight. The shrunken woman we imagine inside also smiling has this little job in mind, and we bend to this work and honor, clumsy but careful. Her face, the priest says composing his, was the map of Ireland. We wipe our eyes and sniff or laugh as stories from son and sister lead along her life from birth, family, something about work, and now this. Soon the professionals and organ lead us with this load of transfiguration, but it’s slow going for us, out and down the steps. Death may be light, but not the box it goes in, and we are such beginners.
With the kind of muscle that once built pyramids, all day they haul sand from the beach of the lake up hill to the expat’s house, five plots bought from locals, each deed signed with a thumbprint. The women labor through the gate of the wall they helped build to keep themselves out. Over stones of five homes men with shovels, not even a wheelbarrow, mix the sand with water and cement on the floor of the what will be the living room. “Go with Santos. He’s honest and takes care of everything,” the new owner says with new owner pride for the archeology he’s building. He shows me kitchen counters with bullnose tile, the terraced yard with tons of rock work, irrigation from the village creek. “They do good work for which I’m glad to pay with only here and there a mistake.” You have to admit the view over the wall of this paradise and the next takes your breath away. You have to admit you can afford this.