University of Northern Iowa

Walking Peachtree Battle Avenue, AtlantaAuthor(s): Tom McKeownSource: The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), p. 32Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117973 .

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I banged my shin on a coffee table trying to get back to

my chair. My shin didn't feel so bad after a couple more

beers. I looked around the room and everything came to me in spurts?the windows, the ceiling, even time?and I

smiled because the beer was drowning out everything bad like beautiful music drowning out the scream of sirens. I

drank another beer and then another and the symphony rose higher and higher like a flood.

Then it stopped. I listened. It was the doorbell, I think. I listened closer. There it was again, I thought, but I couldn't be sure. The bell came to me from far off, like

fog drifting toward me making me cold. I rubbed my arms and stood up unsteady. There, did I hear it again? Like a

hospital bell. Or no, like a church bell. Not like a doorbell at all.

"Who's there?" I yelled. He didn't answer. "I said who is it?"

I limped careful to the door and put my ear up to the crack. He was silent like he had been the last time. I turned the knob and opened it slow. Then I opened it

wider. There was no one outside. I stepped out to the

porch and looked around, limped out to the sidewalk and looked down the street. No one.

I buried my head under the sheets and prayed to God that I wouldn't go under. The phone rang and I prayed to

God for something I could see, something I could run my

fingers over that would make me never go under, never

lose it. But I had nothing to grab onto because I'm not a

Catholic and I don't have a rosary. I curled up into a ball

and pressed my hands together and said oh please God, please Christ, please Holy Ghost, don't let me go under.

Everything's falling apart and I know soon it'll be me so

please God give me something solid that will keep me from going under.

I was cold. I pulled the sheets up close and shivered,

waiting. The phone rang and rang and rang but I was

afraid to answer it because I had this silly but terrible

feeling that it was God on the line and that he was calling collect.

I woke up today feeling fragile. There was no getting around it. I knew what I had to do. Time was running out and it made me nervous.

When the phone rang I did not answer it. I knew what I had to do. If I answered the phone and talked to Emilia she would probably talk me to my senses and I would end

up not doing it. I was waiting outside Kasha's at ten when the store

opened. No one had bought the player piano yet. I looked it over, walking around it several times, looking for blem

ishes. There were none. It was perfect, just like one of

George's forms. Like God sent it to me to fight death. I touched a key. It sounded like silk feels, soft, not human.

When Emilia returns she will stand in the doorway with her bags in her hand and no words will come. But she will see it, how perfect this green and gold player piano is. She will touch it. And then she will look at me and smile. After 41 years of marriage I guess we know each other

pretty good. D

TOM McKEOWN

WALKING PEACHTREE BATTLE AVENUE, ATLANTA

If any blood remains

It is breathing in the blossoming dogwoods These sprays of color floating in the light rain

No voice or bugle rises above the rain

Nothing sweeps up the hill of grass and flowers

Today the many houses are lost to themselves

They hold their faces upright

Expressionless as if embarrassed to look at what

Has passed before them

Often the armies meet as mist and wait

With softened eyes

Their weapons weightless their bodies

About to dance into the dense music of the sun

Their faces are creased with joy

Having walked out of blood and powdering bone

Out of every afternoon that believed in vanishing

32 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/Spring 1978

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