Annie Dillard The Maytrees (pdf)

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played with a roller skate on the floor. Without this new one
(and presumably his ilk) she had absurdly considered her life
full. When Petie was young, she assumed Petie would make
his life around her were they not miraculously, deliriously
as one? Then the next minute this same one propped his own
boggling-new, hitherto-nowhere child in his arms to display
to her as if she had never seen such a thing. Who had? It was
as if the tide came in under the door.
In her last years Lou puzzled over beauty, over the tide
slacked holding its breath at the flood. She never knew what
to make of it. Certainly nothing in Darwin, in chemical evolu-
tion, in optics or psychology or even cognitive anthropology
gave it a shot. Having limited philosophy s objects to certain-
ties, Wittgenstein later realized he broke, in however true a
cause, his favorite toy, metaphysics, by forbidding it to enter
anywhere interesting. For the balance of Wittgenstein s life he
202 Annie Dillard
studied, of all things, religions. Philosophy, Lou thought and
so did Cornelius, had trivialized itself right out of the ball-
park. Nothing rose to plug the gap, to address what some
called ultimate concerns, unless you count the arts, the arts
that lacked both epistemological methods and accountability,
and that drew nutty people, or drove them nuts.
June 24 was the first and as it turned out, the last warm
day in June. They cut each other s hair on the front steps. She
asked him to cut for her short bangs. Her braid was so thick it
popped hairpins, as if surprised.
In early July before they moved to the shack they drove out
to what they called the New Beach. Others called it Herring
Cove. They brought their respective books. Lou ran into the
waves. Maytree took a walk. There was a lot to see. Locals had
divided the beach informally. Half a mile left of the parking
lot, that is, counterclockwise, he saw many talking women
on towels. These women, as he had heard, wore nothing any-
where except bright plastic eye shields. Most were over forty,
some probably in their seventies. God and the neighbors,
his mother used to call that plein air jury that, so long as you
were outside, was everywhere in session. He had never seen so
many naked women, let alone naked women who could not
see him. God and the neighbors had seen a lot worse given
earth s thirty million years of hominid behavior but not
much weirder. The close-set eye shields two hollowed ovals
a nosepiece joined, like glasses made all the women look
cross-eyed.
Beyond the women was a stretch of naked men sunbath-
t he ma y t r e e s 203
ing their every detail. What the Sam Hill? He hurried scan-
dalized back to Lou, to their folding chairs and their two
books.
Lou asked him, Didn t he remember Ross and Milo? Of
course Maytree knew their parents openhanded friends, who
had nothing to do with the situation at hand. These people
on the beach ignored God and the neighbors, even little chil-
dren! Ross Wye and Milo Matheson lived together on Pearl
Street almost fifty years. Ross was an educated impressionist
painter. Milo bred dachsunds.
At least they kept quiet about it.
That night Lou dragged him to a drag show. Afterward,
they walked home upstream in the crowd.
What are we supposed to think?
That it s all a big joke, all pretence, and certainly what
people think, and you can drop dead laughing. You re going
to drop dead anyway. He thought, She talks more in her old
age. He thought, You wouldn t catch any man in Camden go-
ing around as Carol Channing! He almost said it. He stopped
himself just in time.
Maytree would write one last book-length poem: There
Will Be a Sea Battle Tomorrow, Aristotle s conundrum. Can
we establish the statement s truth or falsehood? He had by no
means finished with the sea, embattled or bare. Truth and
falsehood were a barrel of laughs. He would for starters read
Willard Quine, and The Odyssey again, and Aristotle and the
history of the 1812 blockade. Why the 1812 blockade? Readers
would see.
204 Annie Dillard
They stayed in the dunes till mid-October that first of
many new years. Cranberries came on. Dune people met at
cranberry patches. Among them were the Maytrees favorite
young friends, smart and funny, whose work over years had
convinced the National Seashore not to demolish the shacks.
One night an early frost capped ice on the pump jug. Clouds
began to withdraw to their winter heights and thinned.
They boarded up the shack. This fall as every fall, they
guyed the outhouse ever more strongly against storm winds.
Maybe this winter the outhouse would stay upright. They
knew it would not.
When they returned to their equally windy house by the
bay, leaves had gone. In the neighbors wisteria they saw a
nest. Maytree extricated it and showed Lou. Flown birds had
lined it with her blond-white hair in threads and his red-and-
white hair in threads. Their hair made a smooth cup inside
twigs. Perfecting the circle, he knew, were the nestlings wars.
Ants ate the ones that got pushed out.
As they aged they grew more avid of beauty, the royal
sea in their eyes in town, the dunes scimitar shadows, the
ever-perishing skies. The two were storing all this for what?
Blind death s long years. Bay tides amazed them again. Bay
tides re-created the world, stink and all. Twice a month spring
tides multiplied seas without diminishing sky. For three
nights and days after full and new moons, the bay drowned
the beach and climbed steps. It bore flat clouds upon it. From
her kitchen window Lou looked down to the beach and saw
clouds. People vanished. The sea swelled over ground with-
t he ma y t r e e s 205
out a sound and invisibly, as stars cross sky. Lou felt her eyes
brimming with tears, but it was illusion. Dying fish stranded,
as did party balloons that strangled sea turtles who mistook
them for their chief food, jellyfish.
Six hours later the same seas had withdrawn to Europe.
Acres and acres of mud showed brown. People walked this
absorbent surface, or sucking muck, cooling their eyes. They
strayed among listing boats tied to dry moorings. Beyond,
and back of beyond, Lou saw human forms wavering in dis-
tance wandering stretches at whim. Out there on the mud-
flats Lou wanted to wave her arms exhilarated, as did many
dizzy children, children she had never seen. There were no
paths or bounds, only the planet s bare skin. Children could
run anywhere and did. Only adults got stuck.
Lou memorized the faces of her friends, of children,
Maytree s face and knees, clouds, the paintings she loved. She
played Pete Fountain. They drove hours to see fireworks. She
asked Maytree, Are these new people afraid of the dark? Why [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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