George Perreault

Across mid-morning fields, the cinder track fills with elementary blurs and shrieks as the children are turned out for the day, and mothers have gathered on the grass in what seems a harbor town to witness the ribbons, the smiles and praise while between the races there’s innocent gossip in approximately carefree ways, until

under the elms, the pullover for semis bending east and west along the four-lane, drivers refill mugs at Allsups, swap stories and then among them, in a telltale green truck two men are sitting, glancing over papers: La Migra hovers with a raptor’s shadow and the mothers, a dusting of snow in morning sun, are soon but almost unnoticeably gone.

They are no longer here, although inside the gym, outside of view they watch, listen to the feet, sus niños running the cinders, remember distant trains squealing in the night, and coyotes, always the coyotes—cristo obstinada en la cruz— while they ducked under wires whose teeth carved their backs into strips, traced their families’ names and drank their blood.

They wait unseen, like their men in the fields noted but ignored, a staggered line of hats, stooped shirts, their sweat rising to the clouds, next month’s rain somewhere over the Gulf, and when at last La Migra has moved on the mothers drift back, talking as they will one day waiting in line, for there is a line always and everywhere, waiting in line for heaven.

Down deep is a big slab of rock topped with caliche tilted west to east from the Canadian and the Pecos clear into central Texas, and down under that’s old water, the Ogallala Aquifer, which those farm boys been trying to suck dry for a century and getting there now.

Coming out of New Mexico, I’ll hook off 40 either San Jon or Tucumcari, the palisades rising up like a frontier stockade, make my way onto the caprock, quiet two lane blacktops, cotton floating along the roadside, slide through those little towns, drier in more ways than you might call.

There’s still places you can see it how Coronado did, never a hill or tree or shrub, just that endless sea of grass that even spooked the Kiowa, choosing careful paths across it, the early white men mapping out a desert, though it’s far from that if you follow its rhythms, tamp down the greed, and learn to listen,

just listen to the light, the way it slowly thickens like tree resin working toward amber, this land so flat the birds have learned to sing in flight, there being nowhere to perch, browned seed-eaters you’d have to look twice to even hazard a name, and after you cried out, there’s nothing man-made to sustain an echo.

Was telling that other feller, I’ve worked country stations all over, and everyone tells me a name like Bill Ackerman that’s okay for a paystub, but it don’t do nothing on the air. So I’ve gone by a few—they’re all on that list, and you call around under those tags, you’ll find I always done the job.

Some names just fit a place, still there’s times you gotta huck it. Plano, see there—Garth Boone? Then Garth Brooks, he just exploded, so I slid back to Billy. Hafta move on if you were Whitman in Austin, had a friend named McVeigh up in OKC. Some names though—Waylon anything—dead from the get go.

Days or nights, it don’t matter none—I just need the work. My choice, I’d take nights—something bout those songs sliding out over the dark plains, folks stepping into all them same troubles right there in the music. Air don’t feel nearly so cluttered –times in Lubbock I’d get calls coming clear up by Garden City.

Gotta be honest, though—other feller kinda rubbed me wrong –going on about, what’d he call it? That incident down in Midland. Like don’t I think it’s ironic that girl come by with a blanket, winking seventeen, with her name being Susan and that patch under the willows just thick with them Black-eyed Susans?

And don’t I think it’s ironic I made time for her racking up that Shifting Gears album when I hadda know the lead singer for Cooder Graw was with the D.A. over Gray County? Now don’t let him tell you I made an actual threat—just speculated sure be ironic some feller trying radio with his jaw all wired shut.

Was this homeless guy standing outside Taco Bell trying to stay dry in this welcome rain—well, for us anyways, raising thirsty crops up on the caprock— so on the way out I handed him an extra burrito I got, figuring it might be today’s best meal and hot besides.

Kynzie she ast about that and I said for your granddad, so I hadda tell her bout when he mustered out from Nam wasn’t no real hurry gettin home, hung in LA some time, gettin work here and there, just feelin out the world, and one of the jobs was a cafeteria downtown, edge of things.

He took orders, which he was usta doin, though these felt more like requests, on the graveyard shift, which everone in Nam was usta doing, more ways than one, and there was this woman come in regular, real old, just so frail everway you might think of, penciled eyebrows, thin thin hair

always wearing the same faded red coat, black hat, would ask a cup of hot water, then use the ketchup packs to make a kinda tomato soup, eat the crackers from the table, never

order anything, go back out into the night—maybe she had three four places on her rounds so they’d get her twice a week.

The cook, your granddad said, he would get all upset, say throw her out, but he wouldn’t and the cook maybe he didn’t dare, so she kept coming back and was part of the night crowd would come in when clubs closed down, the comics and the bartenders and such, talkin over their troubles, maybe tryin

difrent routines for each other—no, if you do the Duke you gotta get that walk, all pigeon-toed, important as the drawl— demonstratin in the spaces between tables, same same people ever night, and to your granddad she was part of that, and it got so he’d whisper a couple of them, make a mistake on the order

and then he’d tell the cook it was a screw-up, maybe had an extra grilled cheese, and he’d slide it on this lady’s table, ask if maybe she could help out please so he wouldn’t get in trouble with that cook, and she’d nod and not say nothin, eat that sandwich as a favor to this kid, those rowdy bar-types, being a nice lady and all.

So it’s a buck and change, I told Kynzie, not so much for us, but I look’m in the eye, ask some help with this wrong order else I’ll give it to the hounds and they’ll get all squirty-pants. Way I figure, it’s what your granddad would do, extra buck on the Sunday plate don’t mean that much.

George Perreault has worked as a visiting writer in Montana, New Mexico, and Utah. His most recent book, Bodark County, is a collection of poems in the voices of characters living on the Llano Estacado in West Texas.