he men were weav ing, weaving a cloak of h1s flesh, a harlequin's cape, parchment, mocha, rose, light purple, a coat of all the colors of his flesh. And each in turn would dance a spiral dance, first clockwise, miming the movement of the sun, then counterclockwise, miming the journey of their god, until the flesh became his own, until he fell into a trance, and the cape was passed to the man on his 1eft. They were gathering straw and feathers, they were sewing, sewing a doll of his flesh, like the teddy bear, the Hummel doll, he'd clutched in his arms as a child. He felt his fingers fattening, he felt his hol low belly taking shape. His head seemed full of cotton, and all the straw rushed to where his brains had been when they nailed his feet to the crotch of the pine. The slits once eyes now saw as the Egyp tian dead, who wander up side-down in the under world, who speak with their anuses, turds dropping from their mouths, the wind tossing him to-and-fro, the nail pulling at his flesh, as he wondered if and when and what might happen should he tumble from the tree. He watched as the men passed incense over his body, as they sprinkled water over his shrivelled groin, as they bent down to kiss the earth, and begged their god to feed them well, now that they had nourished him. Then they left him there, to watch over the fields, alone. The voices faded as the first stars broke through the canopy of night.
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up residence in the straw. Yet somehow he was certain it had remained behind. Oh, not all of it, to be sure, for he knew only too well that when they had severed and chopped and cooked and eaten the vari ous parts of his body, par ticularly the heart, the liver, the tongue, and the entrails, that 1ittle chunks of soul had drifted past the U p s of the men, some of the pieces floating upwards to the brain, oth ers floating downwards to the heart, the intestines, the genitals, all soon to pass through the anus, gift of his flesh, gift of the men, to the earth, those parts of his soul that would linger on, that would remain behind to wait for his return, that would weave themselves back into a new form, take up resi dence in a new belly, until it was time to be born again. The crow pecked at his head where his right ear had been. "Wake up!" it squawked. "Wake up!" He was determined to pay no attention. After al1, he'd never allowed them to bother him when he was alive, why should he give them credence, be intimi dated by them now? "Wake up!" it squawked again. "I'm Death, come to take you away! Wake up, I say!" How disappointing, he thought. A crow. I'd hoped for a H t t l e better than this, after all the years of waiting. A crow pecking at straw. "Goddamnit, boy, quit think ing, will ya! I should've thought you would've given up by now. Stop it right now! Open up your eyes, boy! Look closer and really SEE for once in your goddamn life!" The crow's voice now slowed, softened, deepened. "I'm only a crow for the live ones, so they won't see me before it's time. Surely you can understand." He might as well stop think ing, he considered, or at least stop analyzing
He wondered how his soul had managed to stay with him when all that remained j: was dried flesh stuffed with feathers and straw, as if the soul had sunk in to his pillow as he dreamt, as if the soul had taken 47