The Blue Buick by B. H. Fairchild

Author:B. H. Fairchild
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

And kingdoms

naked in the

trembling heart—

Te Deum laudamus

O Thou Hand of Fire

So I’ve forgotten nothing, but if I had,

I would still remember this: one evening after

working late to finish out a load of drill pipe

when Maria drove up as usual to take us home

but made us wait in the car with the headlights on.

So we waited, high beams bright as stage lights against

the big front door in the midnight dark. We heard

the electric lift begin to hum as the door rose

slowly to reveal, inside, Maria in her white slip.

No music. Just wind pushing bunchgrass against

a stack of cold roll and the rattle of a strip

of tin siding somewhere. And she began to dance.

Against a backdrop of iron and steel, looming hulks

of lathes and drill presses, tools scattered in the grease

and dirt, this still lithe, slim, small-boned creature

began to move silently, just the dry, eggshell

shuffle of her feet against the floor, began to glide,

leaping, spinning, rising, settling like a paper

tossed and floating in a breeze. I saw her then the way

young men must have seen Isadora Duncan once,

the first time. And I remember thinking, so this

is how it was, had been, for her on stage in Paris

or California when there was a future in her life.

The idling engine made the headlights shudder

so her body shimmered in a kind of silver foam,

and then turning quickly in a sweeping motion

into the center of the light, she stopped, froze,

head lifted in profile, wide-eyed, looking astonished

and a little fearful, a face that I had seen before,

and late that night I found it in my Gombrich’s:

the orphan girl, by Delacroix. And I can tell you

that since that evening it’s the face I’ve looked for

in every woman that I’ve known.

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