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University of Northern Iowa
Death Is Always with UsAuthor(s): Lawrence SwaimSource: The North American Review, Vol. 254, No. 3 (Fall, 1969), p. 64Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117005 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 19:50
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This content downloaded from 62.122.79.52 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:50:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
feel yourself thrust in a circular direction, but this time
lost to the events here and just the clip clop, clip clop of
a train traveling at night with bright lights and musty seats that were no longer velvet smooth but rough and
stubbled. Clip clop going backwards, but feeling foolish because no one else was alarmed or
thought we were going
backwards, why this vertigo? from the dark window that looked back, was some guy looking back with a
cigarette hanging out of his mouth going backwards.
And when the train stopped, I climbed out into the
bright daylight, a little kid, with a gun in my father's barn playing cowboys and jumping on Ronnie and hit
ting him with my gun, hitting him and feeling his head
jerk with my blows, feeling the elation of pounding his rubber nose with my fist, hitting, and pounding, hearing him scream, "No!" hearing him crying and pushing weakly, and me hitting him with my gun on the head, hating my best friend wanting to kill, and he screaming, "NO, No, no," feeling his warm blood?she screaming and smelling his rushing breath?smelling pine needles and?cold fall air?and then feeling the heavy stick go thud against our skull that was way outside away from
me like somebody hitting a barrel that I was hiding in,
feeling the body drift through the air, falling from the
hayloft, hearing the wind and the groan from the throat when the body smashes onto the cement floor, and then
stillness and quiet and cold.
JL came back to my senses shivering and throbbing and
aching all over. My face was pushed against the fence,
and it was brighter outside. I lifted my head away and looked into the sky, still not knowing why
or where or
what happened. The sky was a dark grey, and the fluores cent light was hardly lighting anything. My neck was stiff, and one eye closed, but still nothing was clear in my
memory. I could hear birds singing somewhere, but every
thing else was quiet and cold, and then it came to me,
and I stiffly rolled over, my heart pounding with fear, my stomach half in my mouth, feeling panic, seeing the blood all over her exposed legs, and I reached for her, and she was warm and breathing and stirred, and I felt
my own pain again. I forced myself to my knees, and looked at her face.
She was wide awake, and looked at me without a single
sign of emotion. Just looked without blinking. Her head was bruised but not badly, just her forehead and cheek bone.
"Are you all right," I groaned stupidly. She just lay there looking into my eyes, hers just as
clear and brown and large as ever, not angry, not sad,
but just colder and clearer.
"We'd better get you to the hospital." She just lay there, staring. I put my hands on her
shoulders, and she took one of her hands, and grabbed me firmly by the wrist. I didn't know what she was doing so I took my weight off that hand as I kneeled there, and
she took that hand, that wrist, and flung it away, still
staring coldly into my eyes.
"We'd better go," I said quietly, but she lay there
and stared.
It must have been half an hour before she moved or said anything.
"God!" she cried with a deep painful whine, "I could have fought harder. I could have screamed. I could have clawed his eyes out. It was
only him?the big one? and
after that they left. I let him do it, that's all?it hurt less that way. And he was gentle. Oh God! I moved." There
were no tears?her eyes were clearer now than before.
Her voice shook and squeaked, and beneath was a moan, "I moved, God! Goddamned." And she looked away through the fence at the cat which had come over and
was rubbing its side back and forth against the heavy wire.
LAWRENCE SWAIM
DEATH IS ALWAYS WITH US
There were the different times in Kansas
There was the time
of the storm wind
when it
sucked at the earth
in the dusty railroad
bottoms
there was the time of winter, the
grave of winter when
children left the steaming kitchen to
go-to-the-barn and were found dead in
a glazing bank of
snow at noon
There was the tired and pleasant time of early summer a
noisy time and a
time
of sudden
quietness when the wheat turned its heads
against the wind (like a glass ballet)
a long sheet of silence
against a
slope of blue and
then you heard someone
calling your name
64 The North American Review
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