BY
THE LAKE
The clouds came in over the river; pregnant
with rain and wind and filled with summer lightning -- high, golden, and
faraway.
We sat in the grass by the boat dock and
watched it come; the air around us first empty and silent, waiting for the
storm, then loud with the sound of the wind in the pecan trees and the thump of
the fat raindrops against our backs as we ran for the lakehouse.
Afterwards, the grass was wet and very
green and the sky glowed with the coppery, after-storm glow as we picked up
branches the wind had broken from the trees and stacked them in a pile.
Beneath one of the trees was the nest of a
bird made of brown grass and string. It was torn apart and in it were three
tiny pink and gray sparrows that you said I should not touch because the mother
bird would not take them back if I did.
I picked them up anyway and looked at them
as they squirmed there in the palm of my hands, which always seem too big when
handling very small things or trying to be gentle. The little birds seemed to
be too small to contain all the things that God meant a sparrow too contain and
yet they were very much alive; their black-rimmed, tightly shut eyes and bright
yellow beaks bobbing and pecking at my fingers. They were naked and blind and
as they squirmed there in my hands they reminded me of the things I can never
tell you with my mouth; the words I can only say when I read to you from a book
I love, or touch your hair in the darkness or show you the river at dusk;
things as vulnerable as them and yet ever so more complicated.
You came and took them from me, slowly and
carefully, and held them in the lap of your dress, your July-brown legs
sticking out from underneath as we sat in the wet grass and watched the storm
clouds over the river --- high, golden, and faraway.
--Michael Babel, PERSONA
1982
THE
CALF
The smell of the rain hung heavy in the
air. Papa and I walked down the dark, rutted cow path.
"It would have to happen on a night
like this," Papa said, spitting tobacco juice into the Johnson grass
alongside the dusty path. He reached into the baggy pockets of his overalls,
pulled out an old, long-handled flashlight and shone it into the weeds. "I
sure was countin' on sellin' that calf," he said quietly.
I nodded, glancing down at my watch. In
half an hour Gail would be waiting for me on her porch, smelling sweet like
Dove soap in her soft white sweater and her plain brown shoes, a bread wrapper
full of popcorn for the drive-in popped and salted and ready for us to eat held
under her arm.
"How long do you think this is going
to take?" I asked.
The old man turned and looked at me. He was
dressed in his old gray overalls, shiny and slick from wear, and the khaki
baseball cap he had worn when he had pitched softball for Cordova Road High
School many years ago. He looked at me and rubbed his chin, and I could hear
the scrape of his whiskers against his old, hard hands. "I figure it'll
take as long as it takes," he said, spitting tobacco juice into the
silvery, moonlit path.
"How did ya find out he was
gone?" I asked, changing the subject.
"Cow came up by the house at feedin'
time lowin' all sad and I figured something must be wrong."
The old man swung the flashlight from one
side of the path to the other. "Then he didn't come in for feed at all and
I went out callin' and he didn't come in ..." He seemed to spot something
in the mesquite across the draw we had been following, squinted at it for a
moment, then changed his mind and went on. "I was figurin' on paying off
the tractor this year, too," he said.
"Maybe he ain't dead," I said.
"Maybe his head is just stuck in the fence boards or he got caught in the
mud down by the creek or somethin'."
"Maybe," the old man said,
chewing his tobacco fast. "I hope like hell he ain't."
Overhead, thunder broke the silence of the
pasture as the dark clouds began to drift in. I glanced down at my watch. In
fifteen minutes, Gail would be on her porch.
We found the calf lying in the bend of the
wash where it began to slope down to meet the creek. Papa shone the flashlight
on its broad red back until he reached the shoulders where the typical blaze of
Hereford white was.
The beam of light glinted off of a pair of
green, watery-looking eyes, then found the bloody, sharp-nosed face of a
possum. The possum hissed once and was gone in a scuttle of toenails against
the gravel of the wash.
"Goddam varmint," Papa said,
pulling the baseball cap from his head and crushing it in his hands.
I slid down the gravel side of the wash and
knelt down by the calf. Its neck was twisted at an impossible angle and it
already had the curious, stiff-legged rigor mortis that cows always get when
they die. The hole where the possum had been was wet and dark in the now faint
moonlight.
"Must have just broke his neck,"
I said, standing up and dusting off my hands on the side of my jeans.
Papa squeezed his cap between his big hands
and spit the whole wad of tobacco into the darkness. "Got three months of
grain and two months of hay in him," he said. "And the son-of-a-bitch
goes off and breaks his goddam neck."
I could sense the slow anger building in
the old man.
"Yeah," I said noncommittally,
glancing at my watch. Then the clouds sailed over the moon and the pasture was
washed in deep, well-bottom darkness. I looked up the side of the wash at the
old man. The iron-gray stubble on his chin and the tobacco juice shiny on his
lips were the only light things in the darkness of his face.
"Goddam," he said, crushing the
cap between his big, hard old hands.
I looked up at him. "Still going to be
able to pay off the tractor?" I asked.
"Don't know," he said.
The pasture was silent, as if waiting for
the storm overhead to break and get it over with.
"We could get another one," I
said. "We could buy one pretty cheap down at the auction in town Tuesday
and have it raised up good and fat by spring."
The old man shook his head. "Somethin'
would happen. He would just fall in a wash again or the anthrax would get him
or he would drown in the creek."
"We could watch him real close,
Papa," I said.
He spit on the ground. "Somethin'
would happen. Somethin' always happens when you're poor."
As he stood there the rain broke, falling
softly at first, then getting harder and drumming against the dried, packed
dirt of the draw. For a moment Papa was silent, looking at nothing, and all I
could hear was the sound of the rain in the Johnson grass and the faraway
lowing of the cow and for that moment I was afraid.
Then he put the cap back on his head and
stuck his chin into the rain. "Guess we better go back up to the house and
get a rope and the pickup," he said, hunching his shoulders against the
rain. "We got to pull him out of there or he'll wash into the creek and
foul the water and kill the rest of 'em. We'll need the big rope at least,
maybe some chains. Reckon he'll be pretty stiff and hard to move by now."
I bit down hard against my teeth and he
turned suddenly towards me. "Less you got somethin' else to do?" he
said.
I thought of Gail and of the
wildflower-shampoo smell of her hair and the soft place where her neck curved
to meet her shoulder where my hand fit just right and of the salty taste of the
popcorn. Then I looked at Papa, small and old against the rain.
"Naw," I said. "I ain't got
nothin' else to do."
We walked back to the house in the rain and
it was very dark. Papa kept the flashlight off and in his pocket, and I thought
about what I was going to tell Gail.
-- Mike Babel, ARENA 1980, PERSONA 1982 Winner, Gates Thomas Award for Prose
Dear Mike,
It
has now been ten hours since you have gone and already I miss you. All of my life you have been there, almost
never more than half an hour away, and now every minute carries you farther and
farther away. I look at my books placed
in your shelves & am reminded of you, I type this letter on your typewriter
and am reminded of you; every now and then something will occupy my attention,
but then I think of you with a start and feel guilty for having forgotten
for a moment.
I
have noticed something strange. Things do not have a past until they are
gone. I mean they have a past, but they are not
in it. It is awful feeling so torn, but
I don't feel any despair. I know from
the past that things I think are gone forever turn up where least
expected. I hope you will turn up soon.
[Found
in his papers ten years and more after his passing.]
Lady Whiteadder: Edmund,
explain yourself!
Edmund: I can’t — not
just like that. I’m a complicated person, you see, Aunty… Sometimes
I’m nice, and sometimes I’m nasty,
…and sometimes I just like to sing little songs about goblins.
Today would have been my brother Mike’s 62nd birthday. Whenever I set out to describe Mike in written words, I am stymied. There is no easy way to sum him up, and I get the feeling he would be angry with me if I even tried. There is no way of getting all of him into one portrait; the subject is just too tremendous, too complicated. Mike was a man of big ambitions, great strength and great weaknesses, big loves, big appetites, big temper, giant humor, giant sorrows, great tenderness, and great talent. I have heard him described as the soul of Lord Byron in the body of John Belushi. I recently asked one of my siblings if they thought Mike might have actually been insane, and they replied, “You’re only wondering that now?”
If you went through this blog and picked out every instance where Mike is mentioned, you might get the impression that Mike was a bully or a guy with an anger problem, and that is a certain aspect of his personality. But he was stronger and smarter than most of his peers, and that made him impatient with physical cowardice or submissive conformity. He was our Imperious Leader, going boldly where no Babel had gone before, and our guide and icebreaker whether it was into a new school or a new job. I know he was most angry with me when my oddity threatened whatever social progress he might have made.
He was a strong man, and
nothing breaks harder than a strong man. He had hopes that his writing talents
(editor of the school newspaper) and physical prowess (member of the football
team) might overcome what he saw as his lack of good looks and social standing and win him the
object of his affections (‘I love—and who? ’Tis Fate’s decree I love the
fairest—how otherwise?’). Her final rejection after she toyed around with his
heart was the first great break. There were other breaks to follow, and
desperate measures to patch them up, but it was an uphill climb that wandered
into many dead ends and byways. I think he was finally finding a measure of
peace and accomplishment (he had recently finished writing a philosophical murder
mystery that had helped him untangle some moral and metaphysical knots) when he
passed away.
An anecdote: John and I got
into Mike’s car soon after his passing and started it up to move it away. To our
surprise the tape player was on, and it began to play one of Tom Petty’s
latest songs, Wake Up Time. We listened with indescribable feelings, not
moving an inch, to what seemed an eerily applicable final eulogy and call for
our brother. “You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance, you
hang out forever and still miss the dance … Yeah, you were so cool back in high
school, what happened? …You're just a poor boy, alone in this world … You’re
just a poor boy, a long way from home … And it’s wake up time. Time for you to open
up your eyes. And rise. And shine.” It may have been just a coincidence,
but it shook me to the core.
Have I come any closer to
explaining the enigma of my brother Mike? Hardly. In its incompleteness, this
essay might well count for my Friday Fiction. I show a few pictures of me and
Mike because the Mike I am describing is part of my Mike: I’m sure
anyone else who knew him could tell many a different tale. His boundless love for his nieces, his deep
affection for his dogs, his complicated relationships with our parents, his
uncanny marksmanship, his bizarre and sporadic talent for drawing, his
occasional threats of suicide, his weird bid to be an internet cult leader …
these are all aspects that would require infinite nuancing and are certainly
beyond my power to adequately analyze. What can I say? I love the guy, and I
don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of him.
Here I offer one of his earliest published works from our school magazine, The Arena. It represents the innocent halcyon days of his craft, and of our lives. The younger brother here could well be any of the other of us Babel boys.
"Hurry up, darn
it," the boy yelled. He stood against the wet concrete embankment next to
the dam. He was sixteen, tall and broad-shouldered.
"I'm not coming,"
his little brother said, shifting from foot to foot. The fishing pole in his
hand was twice as long as he was.
"Look, you wanted to
come, and now you're coming," the older boy said. His foot slipped against
the wet pavement and he nearly fell. Twenty feet below him was the slow, muddy
drainage pond with its tiny whirlpools and darkly-swirling water. Larry, the
little boy, looked down at the pond.
"What if I fall,
Jim?"
"Oh brother," Jim
said. "You're not going to fall. You're nearly nine years old. Papa had me
going across this thing when I was five."
"But it looks
slippery."
"It's not slippery up
here where you walk, just where the water comes up to when they open the
floodgate."
Larry looked down at the
dark water. Jim sighed and inched his way back to where his brother stood. On
his back was the seine they used for netting bait, and his bamboo fishing pole.
"It's bad enough that I
have to carry everything, but now you're too chicken to come across the
apron."
"Momma said not to hit
me," the little boy said.
"I'm not going to hit
you," Jim said.
He set the tackle box down
and looked at his brother. Larry had torn his T-shirt crawling under the rusty
barbed-wire fence they had come in through, and the flap of the ripped cloth
blew in the light breeze, making him look small and thin. Still looking at him,
he sat down and began picking grass burrs from his shoe laces. "You're a
baby, you know that?" he said.
Larry sat down and began
pulling burrs off his shoes too. "I ain't no baby," he said.
"Why do you have to do
every blessed thing I do?"
"They stick my feet
too. You think they don't stick my feet? They stick my feet as much as they do
yours."
"Just shut up."
Across from them on the
other shore, Jim could see several broken flood-damaged trees. The river had
killed most of them and the dead ones were broken and dead looking. Jim didn't
like the way they looked, and he wondered why no one had ever cut them down. He
stood up.
"Come on. We're going
across. This time you're going first."
"I don't want to."
"Then go home."
"No," the little
boy said.
Jim grabbed his brother by
the shirt collar. "Get over there," he said, pulling him toward the
walkway.
The cement walkway between
the shore and the spillway of the dam was narrow and slippery and it had scared
the older boy the first time he had gone across it. It was the only way to get
to the apron and that's where the fish were. Jim lifted his brother up onto the
pathway and crawled up next to him, holding the fishing gear. Larry stood
firmly planted a foot away from where he had been put, staring at the muddy
water below him.
"Let's go back,"
Larry said.
"Either you go across
or I'll throw you in!"
Slowly Larry edged his way
over the wet pavement. When they got to the other side and jumped onto the cool
wetness of the apron, he sighed loudly
"That wasn't so bad,
was it?" Jim asked.
Larry didn't say anything,
but wiped the seat from his forehead against the sleeve of his t-shirt. Jim
unrolled the seine and thrust one pole into Larry's hands. He took the other
himself. "Come on," he said.
They walked over to one of
the troughs next to the dam. It was only about three feet deep, but it caught
all the trash and algae that ran over the spillway.
As they waded in, Larry's
nose wrinkled at the smell. "Yuck," he said, careful of where he put
his feet.
"Oh shut up." Jim
began picking his way through the trash. "I'm going up alongside the dam.
You stay here. And remember, keep the net low or the minnows will swim through
the bottom."
Larry nodded obediently,
although he knew he could not keep up with his brother. Jim leaned against the
side of the dam and lowered his end of the net.
"Ready?" he asked.
The little boy lowered his end and nodded. "Go," Jim said, dragging
the net quickly across the bottom, Larry stumbling along behind him. Both boys
felt the squish of unknown objects on the bottom of the trough.
"What if there's a
turtle in here?" the little boy asked.
"I hope there is,"
answered Jim. "My biology teacher will give me five points extra credit
for a big one."
"What if it bites our
toes?"
"Just shut up and
pull."
Up ahead of the net Larry
could see tiny glimmers of silver shooting past him. "What's that?"
he asked.
"Minnows, stupid. Hold
down the net."
"I'm holding it!"
In the water ahead of them,
a large gray-green head suddenly popped out of the water, blinking its eyes
sleepily. It opened its mouth and hissed a dry, angry hiss. Behind the head the
boys could make out the outline of a large shell.
"A turtle!" the
big boy said. "All right!" The little boy nearly dropped the
net. "Let's get him," Jim said.
Larry scooped ahead with the
net, careful to stay clear of the turtle. As they neared the end of the trough,
Jim sped up even more. Larry stumbled on as best as he could, but when they got
near the end, he slipped in the moss. Larry screamed and went under for a
second, then came up gasping and spitting.
"Grab your end,"
Jim shouted, lunging for the edge. The turtle quickly climbed out of the
trough, fell onto the apron, and dived into the water. Jim scrambled up to the
edge just in time to see its stumpy tail disappear into the murky waters of the
drainage pond.
"He must have been two
feet across," Jim said, staring at the water. He turned to Larry who was
still rubbing his eyes.
"You dunce," he
said. "You let him get away! If I flunk biology, it's your
fault."
"I didn't mean
to," Larry sniffed.
"I didn't mean
to," his brother mocked him. He punched Larry on the arm once, hard.
"I didn't mean to do that either.
Tears were welling up in the
little boy's eyes, and he rubbed the place on his arm. "I'm telling
Mama," he said.
"Go ahead and tell. I'm
never bringing you along again."
They hauled the net up and
dumped it onto the cement, picking up the silver and brown minnows from its
bottom and putting them into a can, Underneath a pile of moss, Larry found a
crawfish. It was red and brown and held its pincers toward him like boxer's
mitts.
"A crawdad, Jim,"
he said. "Catch him for me."
"I'll catch him all
right," Jim said, grabbing it by the shell. "He'll make good
bait."
"I'm keeping him for a
pet," Larry said.
They put him in the can and
sat down on the edge of the apron. Jim put a minnow on his hook and threw it
into the water, watching the current suck it under.
"Remember," he
said. "The minnows are yours. The shad are mine."
"But the shad are
better."
"That's why they're
mine."
Jim fished for a while and
Larry played with the crawfish. It felt good to lay there in the sun feeling
the sun dry his shorts. For a moment he almost dozed. Then he heard the wet
plop of his cork being pulled under and he sat up quickly. His pole was jerking
wildly, half of it already under the water.
"You got a fish,
Jim," Larry shouted, jumping up and down.
"I know it,
dummy." Jim grabbed the pole and gave it a jerk that made his side muscles
ache. The fish jerked back and headed straight for the bottom.
"What is it, Jim? What
you got?" Larry asked, leaning out over the edge of the apron to catch a
look.
"I don't know. If you'd
get back maybe I could get it up and see."
Larry stepped back
obediently, eyes wide, torn shirt flapping in the light breeze. Just as Jim's
hands began to sweat from holding the pole, the fish broke the surface riding
on its tail, its blood-red gills open and flapping wildly.
"It's a big one,"
Larry yelled. "Oh boy!"
"Get the net and hurry
it up," Jim said, never taking his eyes off the point where the line
disappeared in the water.
The little boy grabbed the
aluminum net from where it lay next to the seine, and tried to maneuver it
under the fish. He splashed it in the water clumsily and once hit himself on
the chi with the handle.
"Hurry up!" Jim
said.
"I'll get him,"
Larry said, finally getting the net under the fish which was churning the water
near the edge of the apron. He started to lift it out of the water, but leaned
over the edge too far, lost his balance, and slipped off into the swift
current.
"Larry!" Jim
shouted, reaching instinctively for his brother and forgetting about the fish
and the pole. Larry was out of sight except for the top of his head bobbing
near the surface. In a moment he came up, gasping for breath, his arms flailing
wildly.
The current was strong
against the side of his apron, and already the little boy was being swept away.
Jim jumped in after him. The water was swift and dark with a power that
reminded him of being hit in football practice. It swirled around his head and into
his mouth and ears as he tried to swim. Up ahead of him his brother came up
again, water pouring out of his mouth. The current sucked him under again, and
Jim knew this time he wouldn't come up. Jim reached for him blindly under the
water and felt his hand close on Larry's neck. Pulling Larry to his chest, he
began swimming for the apron, his breath coming in ragged, choking sobs. The
little boy clung to him tightly, his nails digging into Jim's chest.
His arms aching, Jim reached
out for the slippery cement and began to pull himself up. He fell back twice,
his eyes and nose stinging. He thought that his brother was crying, but his
face was so wet he couldn't be sure. The third time he succeeded in getting up
out of the water, his brother still clinging to him.
They sat there on the rough
cement, staring at each other, the sun burning against their wet skin. Both of
them were breathing hard, and Larry was spitting up water and the sandwiches
they had had for lunch.
"You okay?"
Larry nodded and wiped his
mouth on his t-shirt. "You lost your fish," he said.
Jim laughed and looked down
at his wet clothes. "Mama's going to kill us for getting wet."
After a while Jim stood up
and went over to the seine and began rolling it up.
"Aren't we going to
fish anymore?" Larry asked.
"Naw. We're going
home."
They walked slowly up the
hill next to the dam, heading towards the highway.
"Hey, what about my
crawdad?" the little boy remembered. He ran back to the apron and
collected the can with the crawfish in it. Then he turned and ran back up the
hill to where Jim was waiting.
"Maybe you can put him
in the fishbowl I won at the fair," Jim said.
"Yeah, thanks."
They both smiled. The sun
dried their clothes as they walked home.
--Mike
Babel, ARENA 1979
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I DON’T KNOW WHY
It had to be October--
I don't know why--
October, when rain falls dreary,
And the hawks cry for loss,
When lone train whistles grieve
On the cold East wind--
Why, in October,
This month of shadows and ghosts,
Trees weeping dull brown leaves,
Dry grass rustling in fences,
Moments of mocking sunshine
Swallowed by clouds--
In October, oh why,
When times could be spent
With candy, and bonfire nights,
Masquerades and brave pretense,
But for the melancholy fact
Of parting in October.
FATHER WAS
Father was digging post holes
and barbecuing,
Killing snails and painting
cabinets.
Father was taking the hook
out of your jacket, and
unsnapping
your line.
Father was building doghouses,
and letting you drink a little
beer
while Mama wasn't looking.
Father was the guy that put up
pickles and slipped you some gum
on the side.
Father was forgetting to pick
you up at the party, and buying
you a sucker on the way home.
Father was planting potatoes
and letting you put the eyes in
the holes.
Father was who you asked
first if you wanted to go
grasshopper hunting, because you
knew Mama was scared of snakes.
Father was superman until
you were thirteen, when he
suddenly
became Moses.
--Michael Babel, ARENA 1977
Michael Wayne Babel was born Feb. 9, 1962, the first son of E.E. ("Buddy") and Patricia Babel. He graduated from Seguin High School in 1980, and attended Southwest Texas State University from 1980 to 1984.
A dedicated reader, writer, and editor of great skill, he was twice winner of the Gates Thomas Award for prose writing. In his time he worked at KWED in Seguin, KGNB in New Braunfels, and at the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, but perhaps enjoyed his work as a substitute teacher in the Seguin area best. His most recent job was at River Gardens in New Braunfels. He passed away at home on Oct. 21, 2006.
He was a beloved uncle, brother and friend; a great wit, a scholar, and a deeply loving heart.
