HAROLD BRODKEY
39
squint . I turn my head this way and that-see things-jerkily-dis–
connectedly-passages , corridors of the day .
Our side porch is built on brick piers hidden by evergreens . Nonie
has to pull and hold back branches of the yews for me : she knees me
forward , pushes me with the side of her lower leg , toward a break in a
trellis made of green lathes (nailed on the diagonal) . The lathes that
are broken end in naked wood , unpainted, splintery, shrill like the
flames of kitchen matches . Most pains are at least in part like being
burned by fire . I am into the windlessness of here-under-the-house.
The house str6tches above me wood-walled, monstrous , appar–
ently tilted , echoing .
It
is almost hot under here (for me in my heavy clothes , bare–
headed , squatting : very little heat comes from the house : it must be
the airlessness , the motionlessness of the air here) .
Nonie , partially visible through the lop-sided graph of the trellis,
is huge: her head is invisible . The light is horizontal , weak where I
am-is stronger on her. She stoops . The watery inner light laps at her
knees , her hand which reaches inside to hold onto a pier : bent over,
she enters.
On the ground is an inordinately fine blowy dust-blowy if you
breathe on it-a dustlike dirt it is , undisturbed by wind : it is frailer
and dryer and nastier than any other dust I've ever seen .
It
covers
yellow-brown ugly dirt , nasty under-the-house dirt .
A plaid automobile rug , old and smelly , is under here with us ;
and a dented kettle lies tilted in a small hollow. There is a spoon , a mop
handle, a dirtied doll , a hole: around its neck , in fissures , dust
drooped , occasionally whispered, slid , and fell .
The comparative lightlessness, silence , secrecy, and morguishness
suggest very loudly IT'S-TIME-TO-PLAY-NOW.
When we played in her room, she would end the game by an–
nouncing, "You've been bad- I have to spank you ."
She would turn me over.
My bared bottom would seem to develop vision , to look up in a
way at the air and at Nonie 's uplifted hand with the doll in it that she
intended to hit me with . It seemed her hand , in turn , was an eye
looking at me .
If the blow was soft, then , all right: Nonie would fasten me up
again: time would continue . She might try to do schoolwork and she ' d
