frank by Keith Pearson

she sighed. said ‘he’s drowning. again.’

its like trying to keep your head above water with a rock in each hand.

they hiked up to where the railroad tracks passed over the waterfall and swam naked all afternoon in the cold mountain water and ate apples and drank wine from his goatskin bota and she remembered it for years as her favorite time with him.

he grinned a tooth missing and stringy blood hanging in his beard and said ‘aint that sweet i love her too’ before he took one last swing.

the waitress set their plates on the table and hiccuped and went away. ‘did you hear that’ she said. ‘what’ ‘she hiccupped on our food’ ‘you want the hoi polloi ‘ he said ‘dont be eating in no diner.’

‘well’ she said ‘he can be a little loose with the truth.’

he was the kind gypsies randomly spoke to on crowded streetcorners.
in those moments half awake before she opened her eyes she would hear the loons aching call from the pond and the birds cheery greeting of the first gray light and one dog barking very far away then open her eyes and reach for the far side of the bed and feel the cold empty space where he once slept.

‘he never said much about it least not to me.’

he came home from over there and bought a triumph motorcycle with his back pay and within a week rode it off a sharp curve into the reservoir and almost drowned. said it was worse than anything he did over there and she believed he believed it.

they would dance long after the band went home.

she had a tattoo of her home state on her back and he would gently poke with his finger all the places he had lived all his favorite places his favorite bars.

‘he never found a moments comfort in sleep.’

they picked blueberries until his damaged hip pulsed like a toothache and when she went to bake a pie he had eaten them all and explained shyly they were better than his pills. ‘honest’ he smiled.

right before the first fist flew he would lean over and say real quietly ‘the last thing i want to do is hurt you, but its still on my list.’

he stood at the edge and stared to the west where the prairies and the mountains and the deserts were the places he talked of traveling to of wandering in and she watched him do it one night until it was almost dark and prayed he would someday get there she really did.

‘then one day he was gone’.

Keith Pearson

I live in southern New Hampshire and works with special ed students at a local high school.