LAST NOVEMBER By Gordon Sorensen Dammit, I wish you could speak to me now. There are some things I need to know. Before you answered me so politely, now, you just lay there, looking at the beige wall, your half-paralyzed face perceiving nothing. Before I came to be with you for no reason. But now, I have to be here, and it is so much shit, so dishonest, if you're made to do something, if you're forced. You can't hear me, so it doesn't matter what I say. Your eyes have changed little since we first talked. What are you smiling at now, grandpa? You don't have any emotion, but still you smile. At what, though? At what? It's funny I'm not sad. The smell of the urine and vomit doesn't even bother me anymore. If it weren't so hot, so stuffy; if we were outside. Do you remember being outside? Pheasants! I'll bet that's what you secretly, out of faith, smile at now. All the old times together. Remember the late fall mornings, the smell of the manure pile and the drying apple pulp from the cider press? It really doesn't matter that you can't. I thought you couldn't remember because of what just happened. But that's not true. You've been forgetting little by little for several years now. This event just brings me up to date. The greyness of your once-blue eyes bothers me. I'm still trying to hold on to you. Aren't I? You're so much like a dung-pile laying there. How about "Old Black," the rooster? He used to stand on the dung pile and scratch for grubs. Don't look so innocent, old man. I'm just scratching. Excuse my inconsistency. I'm going to ignore you for a while. It's better to think about the late fall. We have that to look forward to. Summer is dying now. Third crop hay is cut. Company men have come to check the sugar beets. Why even they tentatively estimate. But my estimation doesn't count. You have to share estimations or they are only dreams. (Such simplicity. I bore myself.) Early November mornings, mornings after nights of light rain. You always told me that in November you never pulled the blinds down. In the mornings the sun would come through the breaks in the mountains. It came warm and bright. You said it even freshened the smell of the sheets and the pillow you lay on. The sun woke, it was easy to give yourself up to a November morning. What was it you said? Ah! Yes: "It gives me the feeling that I've just been baptized, only better, because I know where it comes from." You must wait till November, or I'll think you're a blasphemer, a hypocrite. You know so much how to live. Why become sacreligious? Living, hunting, killing pheasants, still surprised when they jump from cover. And yet, last night for the first time (you didn't think I heard), "O, my God." The sound of your voice prayerfully speaking shocked me. Why can't you talk to me now, just two answers? Why??? Out there in yesterday's November. Past the greying wood-pile, through hot surrendering summer to late fall. The barn dead all summer, given only to mice and the sound to hot wood and drying harness leather. Shelters now, comforts, is wanted, is not questioned, is taken advantage of joyfully, is love is. I thought so much of you as a hunter. The mornings when the fallen leaves were lined and rimmed with frost. Smelling wet yellow corn stalks, watching steam rise from moist black earth; living and there was no end. You always knew the time to shoot. How long to wait before pulling the trigger so that the shot wouldn't make too much mess of the meat. Was that the reason? Did you have so much confidence? that you knew that you wouldn't miss anyway? You never did miss. I watched, amazed, the whirr of brown wings knocking dew from the wild rose tangles. Watched a coppery green head peak forward; saw in my mind how I place the bead of gun through the air until it coincided with the white band on the neck of the bird. Then my heart pounded and in my mind the gun blasted. But you, you deceiver, you waited. Waited until the crux of my vanity robbed me from my being, stole me from my manliness, because I wasn't like you. Then the sound of your shot-gun sure, accurate, death pronounced. You even smiled each time, because you had escaped. But behind us each time we went, even after I had learned to shoot the same as you, something stalked. Something came as assuredly as we came to hunt each fall. But it had no time, no season nor bag limit to fill. You blinded me from it, you never let it enter my mind. Kept it locked like ice in the summer house. But even that has to be replaced. Now you smile your half-smile, rebuke with greying eyes. You taught me so much, but for two questions for two answers. I hate you. You never asked me. You never even questioned. Whatever I did you smiled at. You said to me, "it is right for you, you've used your head." Always you said that, even if I were wrong. And when I had to stop to correct or make up for a mistake, you kept going. Always you let me learn. You didn't force me. But now grand-pa, what is death? What is love? Only these have you forgotten. 37