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ovipositor iii

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The grey lids roll briefly in the mud before settling in a random pattern around Clyde's worn boots. His laces are two different types. I remember that. One a braided yellow and brown, the other a true red, but faded and damp. He pays the lids no attention at all. His concentration goes into placing the black canisters in neat rows of ten on a wooden table next to his bench. He looks up momentarily. Enough to make eye contact and that's all. Enough to let me know he's well aware of my company but isn't inclined to do anything about it at the moment. I take a couple steps back and lean against the bottle tree, watching.

Down the block a dog barks three or four times in very quick succession. It is the only thing to break the awkward silence between Clyde and myself. Yet it makes it only stranger because it acknowledges the division that exists between us.

Clyde seems not to care. He finishes lining up the rows and when he gets to the last canister, they don't come out even. He pauses for thirty seconds or so, as if contemplating a rearrangement. Then very carefully he picks each canister off the last row and throws them over his shoulder where they scatter about the sculptures behind him.

He gets up and half turns away. "Ya can pick your piece," he says to me.

"Okay." I reply numbly.

I really didn't know what else to say if anything at all. I felt entranced by the yard, his presence, Bynum. So I said okay and just stood there. Ever been frozen to a spot like that? I just stood there leaning against the bottle tree. I thought of where the sun would be if it weren't so grey outside and realized that it would shine through the tree when it went down over the trailers and shanties of Bynum. It would undoubtedly throw colored shadows of the green, blue, and brown glass bottles onto the tin lined up across from them against the back of Clyde's house. They would grow longer as the sun got lower until the bottle tree became huge. If the wind blew at all it would become a kaleidoscopic show.

I didn't know how it worked then.

Pick my piece and go away.

But I couldn't...

goodnight 2.7.98