SIV CEDERING FOX
231
"O.K." I said, and my son ran off toward the kitchen, racing
his dog.
I told the children I would answer the phone. Whenever it
rang, I picked up the receiver, held it for a while, then put it back
in its cradle.
It
was difficult to sleep that night. My dreams were
bloody.
The next morning I got up early.
I
put on red socks, a red
cotton turtle neck and black slacks. I put two pendants around
my neck: one is a Laplander charm-a troll-drum carved in
bone-the other, a tiny beaded bag of red dirt I bought from an
old woman in Samburo, Kenya.
I
took the dog out. Three black
crows sat on top of the beech tree. There was a rat on the bird
feeder. I saw a blotch of fresh blood on the snow.
I
went back
inside and signed on the computer. I asked it to give me a
complete storage report.
It
printed out the name of each poem,
essay, story, and novel chapter
I
had entered during the last two
years.
It
printed the date each document was entered and its
length . I started to delete entry after entry.
It
was a long process. I
typed
"d"
for delete.
dThe
Green Dress. The terminal asked:
The Green Dress?
I printed "y" for "yes."
The terminal printed:
DOCUMENT The Green Dress ··DELETEDu
The door bell just rang. It was a telegram.
I
brought it up to
my study, put it on the table beside the terminal, but
I
do not
open it. I continue the deletion process:
dThe
Dead Fish.
It
asks: The Dead Fish? I print "y" for "yes." It prints "DOCU–
MENT The Dead Fish "DELETED"" An extra line is printed
by the terminal. I read:
THIS IS YOUR LAST DOCUMENT
I print "y."
This IS my last document.
