Bruce Weigl - Among Elms, in Ambush

by

Bruce Weigl

AMERICAN READER SERIES, NO. 37

BOA EDITIONS, LTD. ROCHESTER, NY 2021

Copyright 2021 by Bruce Weigl

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

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Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Weigl, Bruce, 1949

Title: Among elms, in ambush / by Bruce Weigl.

Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., 2021. | Series: American reader series ; no. 37 |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021009567 (print) | LCCN 2021009568 (ebook) | ISBN 9781950774418 (paperback) | ISBN 9781950774425 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3573.E3835 A823 2021 (print) | LCC PS3573.E3835 (ebook) | DDC 818/.5408dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009567

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009568

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A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (19381996)

for Zora Dorothy Grasa Weigl and Albert Louis Weigl, and for Chieko Kondo, in memoriam

The God-fugitive is now too plainly known.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

I dont know how the tortoise got in through the fence and past the neighborhood dogs that run loose once the sun is down, but I found her near a nest of her eggs where the garden had already begun to turn to autumn. It seemed shed found a home there, and who was I to tell her otherwise, so I brought her straw to make a better bed, and food I never saw her eat but that disappeared from the tin plate where I put it. I dont remember now how long it took, but she kept the eggs warm until they hatched, and her many babies scrambled out in every direction until she rounded them up again into her care. Now I have to tell you that there never was a tortoise, only one that I wanted to be there. There never was a fence to crawl under, or neighborhood dogs for someone to step around down the dark alley. There was no dark alley. There was no nest or eggs, no straw, no hope for anything. But I did find a tortoise in my yard one morning where it had laid its eggs in a nest it had made with mowed grass. I dont know where she came from but perhaps she was a neighbors pet, and there was a zoo nearby. I called the police to see if they knew what to do, and they came quickly, and confirmed that it was a tortoise, with eggs. Sometimes you need to tell a story to fill a hole in your mind, or to try and mend something thats been torn by a violent wave that washed through you once. There was no tortoise, and no policeman. I know, I have to stop doing this. I want you to believe me. Its all about the story. Its all we have.

The man in the chair is screaming his life away. No one cares that his bathrobe has fallen open, exposing the white skin of old age. No one cares that hes screaming until the screams float down the hallway, and then out into the night that cares even less.

The maple trees Im watching die have so much more freedom in their dying than the man in the chair. Someone who looks like me whispers in his ear that it will be alright, but for now he doesnt stop screaming, each scream a wave that comes from far away then breaks onto our rocky shore.

I dont know if the maple trees know that they are dying. Nothing can be done, so I watch them die and trim the dying branches and carry them away. The man in the chair wants someone to carry him away. He wont stop screaming in the nursing home where my demented mother keeps her eyes closed but manages a Shut up on her own. This is what a life may come to after all, this is what a life is, and means, and smells and tastes and sounds like.

Homer gives us a history of his own world. The Iliad shows us fifty days of a ten-year war.

Dont forget Thetis, mother of Achilles, or Artemis, sister of Apollo.

The stories were already old. A thousand years before Christ, the stories were already old, so you might ask, why our need for sacrifice, given how one thing is connected to all other things, and therefore, to everything that you can touch at least.

The gods are at work in Homer. They punish, and they reign over everyone, and they gave the Greeks a reason to be afraid. What would we call it now, this kind of god, and whom may we blame for the worlds transgressions? Already we have violated even outer space, and the numbers matter, man, the math matters: you take so much out every time, until theres nothing left.

I realize that the roses on my hotel desk are not paper as I had thought, but real, their redness blasting through the gloom. Outside,

the H Ni traffic breezes past. Sometimes I dont know where I am but its not a problem really, only a slight deviation from the path. I used to keep a shiny stone in my pocket to hold in my hand at times like this because I thought the stone was always in the world. I was wrong about a lot of things in those days. I want to go back

to the roses on my desk because the nature of their beauty is almost too much to bear, and they are not paper as I had thought, and the room is not a hole I fell into in the green place, and the bed is not my bunker. I love the mottled leaves, the long stems that prick.

For Nguyn Mai

Soon the free zones will emerge, new borders drawn in whatever blood it will take