She’d been drinkin from the hose again.
He got hands like thin tiny wires—like the ones in the back there, on the fence. They was cracked, his hands. They cracked when he sent the old man upstream in the dumpster durin the hurricane. His hands was cracked and bleeded. That rain was red, blood—and it smelt like the blood to. I seen a dead man, a man as tall as this here wall, like a picture in a book, out of stilled ground—
Jesus had little to do with the old man drowning in his urine during a lightning storm. But the magazine skin develops and turns into a pyramid. Really, the father and his boy had been too busy walking in the wood and hunting rabbits and telling each other stories:
“I am made of god.” The father said.
“Oh.” The boy said.
The father and his boy hunted in the wood. They caught furry rabbits. The rabbits ran in and out of holes in the ground. The rabbits had little paws and tiny eyes. The thin fishing wire cut them into little rabbit pieces. Each day, the boy and the father ate in the wood.
"I am made of god." The father said.
"Oh." The boy said.
“These are rabbits, boy.” The father said.
“Oh,” The boy said.
“Tomorrow we will hunt out of the wood.” The father said.
She still drinkin from that damn hose.
Not like a picture book, he come down the river on that sled of his, shooting and whoring, at each town. Then what you think? He get that skin diseased, you know. He got his skin diseased on his back. It gone clear to yellow. It has itself riden up all over his part like it out of some wartime sickness--
Jesus, they trampled the tall grass. They came clear to the window, over here, with flashes--magazine gators, we called them. Magazine gators. The father and son, were hunters, not squatters:
Father built a great bow: mighty and golden and god-like and war-like. Father placed the bow on a rock on a mountain that was carved by Apollo’s God. Father blessed the bow with his large hands. The blind wench went in and out. She did not see Apollo’s God. Poor wench. She wore the same clothes each day.
Shut up and stop drinkin from the damn hose!
Man was made inbred. The round women were weary and soon graduated to canes, then dissolved to the wavey water and the wine and the childbirth.
The boy was on fire. His skin glowed and hid the skin of the bear. It was blood. It was the blood that made erect the tiny statues that were thrown by hag wives—the aged wastes—into their basements. It was their petticoats, their despaired hope, that burned: for the fearful longing; for the strides of hell to wade their bedroom—No! It was not the hell that is the fire.
Anon! The sparse painted paper that coated the walls came to Hell—in turn, the streams that lead the sons of these frail huts were blood and urine. Soon, the wolves treaded and trotted on the forest carpet and licked the face of the boy.
Wolves have yellow eyes.
She drinkin that hose!
The father woke, red and bloodied. It was my urine, the father thought. The boy stood, stood and stared at his father. The bow had two halves, it was broken.
‘I have eaten your heart.’ The boy said.
The father saw a hole in his chest. His ribs were broken and in shreds. There was a hole in his chest.
A side—of the great opposite—was unearthed. The boy hunted the haired and upright jungle creatures. He ate the skin of animal kings. The beaten shuffled to hell.
[s]
