The Woman in Oil Fields by Tracy Daugherty Read Free Book Online Page A

“Josh,” she said.
    â€œI love you,” I said.
    â€œI think I want to rest for a minute.”
    â€œOkay,” I whispered. “Angel of God –”
    She squeezed my hand. “My guardian dear …” But she slept before I reached the next line.
    ______
    This afternoon the baby and I lie on the floor staring in delight and disgust at the Knife’s latest gift: a half-dead pigeon, one wing meekly thumping the carpet. I say, “We’d better get this out of here before your mother sees it, Jess.”
    But Susie’s standing in the doorway, laughing, with the camera. She’s quit fighting the squalor that baby and pet and an occasionally still-ambivalent husband – not to mention her own uncertainties – have brought to her life. She’s not very good with the Kodak; heads and feet tend to be missing from her shots. I once read that cats (depending on their gene-patterns) can’t see many colors. They can’t tell gray from green. Complex shapes are fairly easy for them to resolve, but they can’t distinguish human faces.
    Meckie stares at me as though I’ll snatch her catch. She’s right. Then I’ll vacuum the carpet.
    But first, I think, I’ll lie still for a while. It’s pleasant here on the floor. I watch my wife twist the lens and try to pull our daughter into focus.

M USTANGS
    Y esterday Philip, my nine-year-old, found my old drum set in the closet. The cymbals had turned pale green. They sounded like tin. The snare rattled and wheezed. “You play?” Philip asked.
    â€œI used to. In junior high and high school.”
    â€œWhy’d you quit?”
    â€œGrew up. Got busy.”
    â€œYou could’ve been on MTV.”
    â€œI wasn’t that good,” I said, though my riffs were snappy enough, in the spring of’69, to shake his mother’s hips at a high school dance.
    Philip weighed an old pair of sticks in his hands. He bashed the hi-hat with delight. “How much did this stuff cost?” he asked.
    â€œNot much. I pieced it together over a couple of years, mowing lawns.” A Gretsch tom-tom, a Slingerland bass drum, a Yamaha snare. Ludwig cymbals. As a beginner I used a matched grip, holding the sticks like two hammers: that’s how Ringo did it, and that was good enough for me. The music teacher at school told me this wasn’t the “proper way to be percussive.”
    â€œThe sticks must oppose each other,” he said. “The right one straight, the left one held like a fork. Tension and opposition are what give the music fire. Like the act of passion, do you understand?”
    I said I did, a little.
    I’d joined the junior high marching band, the Pride of the Mustangs. We wore green and white uniforms and hats with plumes. We marched in parades through the city.
    â€œWhere was this?” Philip asked. “In Texas?”
    â€œYes.” Midland, Texas. Twenty years and half-a-country away from me now.
    I remember, in the ninth grade, in the big Thanksgiving Day parade, I dropped my left stick as the band turned a corner on Main Street. I couldn’t stop to pick it up – the trombonists were right behind me with their dangerous slides. Elephants and horses and shitting zebras followed our fat little twirlers, marching steadily in broken rows. For several blocks, until the parade was over, I kicked the stick ahead of me.
    The marching snare, strapped to my left leg, pounded my right knee whenever I high-stepped: black and blue for the sake of the beat. Mr. Webber, the band director, drilled us after school on a practice football field, yelling at us through a cardboard megaphone whenever someone made a mistake, rehearsing us for hours in sun or wind or rain. From him, I learned the most I’ll ever know about self-discipline.
    But in those days, when I was just a little older than Philip is now, I wasn’t interested in discipline. I yearned for girls