Cream

       By Screamin' G. Durango Doug

When you're by yourself in the woods for any number of days, being a practiced eccentric, you talk to yourself now and then to see if you are still sane. When you notice your continued facility with the language, you are put suddenly in touch, with perfect clarity (though of a misty sort), with the complex ground of your training, your memory, and, thus, your sanity.

Parsimony played with the cream separator making the machine whir and slur. The cream flew to the outside and spumed from the milk, depending, of course, all on the speed of the handle and thus the centrifugal force. Two cats sat on their haunches nearby. The air of fall chilled the antechamber between barn and house. Her need for a baby talked to her. Chokecherry branches at the north window across the room crinkled in a steady breeze. Unwanted plastic two-litres lined the floor by the door. A plethora of activities preoccupied the flies on the windowsills. Surging didn't work on her new used Singer. Sour smells came from the opened canister into which the cream would go and she would wash it before filling it. In the woods a clatter of birds did not emanate as it had in spring when they couldn't sleep all night because too busy nesting and mating. Anchovy paste improved the flavor of pizzas if they contained no fruit toppings. The whisper of fine lacy things, Lind had said, and Judith had in time tried them on despite the prohibitions in the air. Grandpa had fallen into the hole the ice had made in the pond and somehow got himself out so that when he got back to the house Grandma saw him with frozen clothes and a funny smile on his face crazed with ice. Her period flow varied so much and this month it was strong and uncomfortable. She would have to change before lunch. Nibblets. The door to the barn creaked. Once someone (or something) had knocked on the house door at midnight and when she'd gone to look no one was there. The stars shone in eyeglass fullness and wind sighed above through the cottonwoods. Near her one of the dogs stood pointing toward the road as if someone had been passing. Nintendo. Wild with desire, Ned tore the shirt from her back and kissed her violently on her gleaming neck and shoulders, her hair flung back over the seat of the sports car. Down along the old tote road. The old colonial boy. Was there such a thing as supernatural intelligence? Could the bones have walked up the basement stairs and then be swept to the floor and lured up into the attic with the door locked quickly behind them so they creaked on the stairs at night trying for an unlocked door? That old cupboard there by the house door, dirty as the wood appeared by now after all these years, pleased the eye and made a kind of music that many creaking openings of the hinges had learned. The butter used to be kept in it. Did great-grandparents put ice in it daily to keep the cream and butter? Eggs, too. And bacon. Hams hung smoky in the smokehouse. The ashes piled there from the smoldering fires came up to the height of her shins when she entered it as a girl. She hid there during hiding games. Bandit now no longer gamboled in the field or even just stood there looking about as he did in his older years. His saddle still hung on the rafter. Soap the saddle and remember. Creamy tartar. Cream puffs. Cream of the crop. She would try creamed corn. Beef slices baked in a hot oven under asperic leaves garnished with cornflower and creamed corn on the side. Cinnamon coffee was disgusting. Her sister used it all the time. Why on earth not just straight coffee? Lord. Nebuchadnezzar died in his bed. Nebuchadnezzar watched what he said. Nebuchadnezzar raised from the dead.  Snuffling reminder her of the pigs and she stopped separating to bring them scraps. Oats on top made their meal. Squealing filled the dim air of the pen and cornhusks lay scattered everywhere. Chickens here and there with droppings on the soles of her shoes. She wiped her sandals on the grass and noticed how brown the green had already turned. Clearly the sky had changed attitudes and lost its patience. Overhead a winged v flew and underneath frost began to wake to a new dawn. Living here was a dicey business and Parsimony knew she could not stay in this place forever.