The Aerie
Recorded at 1:30 a.m.:
Clarity emerges from a longer dream in which my wife and I are alone
in a strange, old, ramshackle house, the kind of grand boulevard house
that has long become part of a college slum. It is night and we are
sleeping in a non-sleeping room, a living room with sliding doors that
open on some kind of patio. Through the glass door, a dim pre-dawn
light leaks in, exposing threadbare carpet, a damp rundown couch, and
gray walls. She is lying crosswise and above my head, asleep, when the
squirrel awakens us as it runs across my face. I am sleeping with my
head between an ottoman and the couch and it leaps from one to my face
and dashes off to the next, its foot landing on the soft flesh of my
eye-socket.
"It ran across my face," I say quietly. I hate the damned squirrels
that infest this rundown house.
"I know," she replies. I am just about to say "I can still feel the
warmth of its little foot right above my cheekbone" when she says, "I
can see where it stepped." I realize that it has left a dirty
footprint on my face.
I wake later to the tickle of snuffling. The squirrel is standing on
my recumbent head. My right cheek is on a grimy carpet, and a squirrel
is standing on the back of my head and neck on the left side. It is
snuffling my ear, and its paws slip and scrabble for purchase on my
face. I don't want to do anything to frighten it, both because I'm
afraid in its panic it will bite me, but also because it's kind of a
cool experience to have a squirrel standing on your head.
As a result a few minutes later its breath becomes soft and regular,
and I realize that it has fallen asleep on my head.
"It's asleep," I whisper, expecting it to leap away.
"I know," she says again.
With great difficulty but decreasing carefulness I rise. I realize as
I climb with difficulty to my feet that the squirrel is not likely to
wake, being deeply asleep, and that it is quite heavy. At one point
she has to help me. I rock up to my right hip, and then she has to
push on my right shoulder to get me upright.
When I'm finally on my feet, the squirrel clumsily braced against my
left shoulder and head, the creature murmurs something in its sleep. I
make my way down a railed stairway to the main floor, through a dark,
quiet front room, and out the great dark door onto a porch of
weathered old wood, warped and veined with age.
A fine mist settles through slivery morning light of autumn, and in
the front yard the leaves are wet upon the ground. I cross the uneven
front walk to the short flight of stone steps to the sidewalk. There
is a bus shelter in front of my home and a man and his young son
(about the age of my eldest, 11), are waiting in the bus shelter that
rests beneath the rain-blackened arms of a great bare oak.
As I pass them I notice some grimy, Hispanic workers in the shelter
too, but I move on. I am trying as I walk to adjust my grip on the
squirrel until I have a good grip on both legs, and it has slid down
onto my arms against my chest. It is still asleep but I think it will
be awake soon.
I find a stony part of the low retaining wall that borders my front
yard at eh sidewalk. I take a good grip of the squirrel's legs. It is
very heavy, and I realize it is almost awake.
Swinging ponderously, I slam its head against the stone.
It looks at me in confusion, not dead.
With greater strength, I slam its head against the stone.
Bloody dark, it looks dead at first. Then it raises its head slightly
and its eyes flutter. It's covered with blood.
One last time I swing it against the rock by its legs. Unexpectedly,
its head shatters, the top skittering aside to rest like a halved
walnut, the two hemispheres of gray brain matter very fine-grained and
not bloody. I realize the squirrel is now dead, but this is wrong. I
was supposed to kill it, not break it.
I feel ashamed as I turn to meet the stares of the workers and the
man, who is covering his son's eyes.
As I pass them to return to my home, one of the Hispanic workers asks
me a question about the squirrel. I don't understand the words, but I
know that he's asking, "Why did you do that?" When the man opens his
mouth to speak to me, his scraggly black beard surrounds his mouth
like fur. His teeth are yellow, crooked, and filed to sharp points.
They look like the teeth of a squirrel...
And then I woke up.
(And now I'm real hungry!)
[1]Last
Posted by Albatross at November 11, 2002 12:00 AM