One Man's Dark by Maurice Manning

Author:Maurice Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: 2017-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE MARK ON THE WALL

I’d heard it was Kenny Downs who made it —

maybe an epitaph or an oath,

a kind of declaration — scratched

in letters a hand-span high

and in plain print along the edge

of the slab cap to the loading dock

that stood like a monument between

the shorn bed where the siding had been

and the fallen beams and rubble piled

behind, which had been a warehouse once

that received pumps and implements

from the north and stoves from a southern foundry,

heavy, awkward items to keep.

Ritchie the Rat — , it read, with the dash

of a tail scraped after the t,

as if a boy named Ritchie had done

some deed, an ill deed a boy

like Kenny Downs would probably

admire. It must have been heroic,

whatever Ritchie did or what

he must have stood for then — a rage

against some code or custom that drew

unnecessary lines around

a boy’s life, especially

a poor boy in a small town,

like the one that Kenny knew. His life

was circumscribed far more than mine,

but we shared the smaller shames — for a time

he had two pairs of pants and one pair

of shoes he held together with glue;

my shoes were of similar fashion,

and both of us were whipped one time

for stealing a bottle of glue from the school.

There was a lesson I learned in that:

invention isn’t taught, and worse,

it shall be punished. That is the meaning

of Kenny’s slogan, Ritchie the Rat —,

he’d done it with a railroad spike,

a primitive but useful tool.

I’ve thought how brave it is, the desire

to leave a mark; and then I’ve thought

Kenny had made a mark for Ritchie,

a boy unknown to me, a legend

I’ve wondered if Kenny Downs invented,

though the mark remains, indelible.

I make one, too, for both of them.

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