I put four cards beside my plate,
a pencil by my bread.
The cattle slept beyond the fire.
The wind stayed up instead.
I meant to write the stories down,
just once, from start to end.
Len said he’d tell the truest one.
Mae said, “That’ll be a change, my friend.”
Tess had a map across her knees,
the road we’d take at dawn.
She marked the well beside the wash
and kept her boot upon
the corner where the paper curled.
“No story from me,” she said.
“I want to reach that well tomorrow.
Keep your monsters out of my map.”
Len named the wind the Giant’s Breath.
He’d met it, so he claimed.
It blew his hat to Santa Fe
before the beast was named.
“I fetched my hat on Tuesday night.
The giant wanted rent.
I paid him with a sack of beans.
That’s where our supper went.”
I wrote the giant, hat and beans.
Mae watched my pencil run.
“Write that he took the wrong man’s hat.
The giant kept his own.”
“It had my name inside,” said Len.
“The giant’s name was Len,”
Mae said. “He had a smaller head.
You should have asked him then.”
The wind came nosing round the plates.
It lifted one loose card.
I caught it with my butter knife
and pressed the corner hard.
“Go on,” I said. “What happened next?”
Len leaned against a wheel.
“The giant ate the beans uncooked.
He thought they’d make a meal.
“He sneezed so hard the mountains shook.
They shook from end to end.
I rode the sneeze back here by dusk.
That’s why they call me Len.”
“Nobody calls a sneeze by name,”
Mae said. “You’re out of breath.
That wind’s a queen who lost her fan.
She shook her skirts to death.
“She shook a hundred hills from them,
then shook a thousand more.
Her smallest pocket held the sea.
She spilled it at my door.”
“That’s two,” I said. “I’ll write yours next.”
I raised Len’s page to read.
The wind pulled it between my fingers,
as quick as any thief.
A second card, still clean and blank,
went sliding from my knee.
Len chased the page with all his beans.
Mae chased the queen-to-be.
They stumbled past the water pail.
They raced beyond the light.
I heard Len swear at something prickly.
Mae laughed into the night.
Tess held her map beneath both hands.
I held two empty cards.
“You’ll lose the road,” I told her then.
“Not while I hold it,” she said.
Len brought one card back to the fire.
He held it like a prize.
No giant, hat or beans were there.
Mae narrowed both her eyes.
“The queen has taken every word.
She needed them for lace.”
“The giant ate them,” Len replied.
“They fell into his face.”
“That’s the blank card,” I told them both.
“The other one’s still gone.”
Len turned it over just in case.
Mae said, “The queen reads on.”
“She took the ink and left the card.
That’s how she pays her debts.”
Len said the giant swallowed pencils.
“The point’s the part he gets.”
I wanted one straight tale to keep,
with someone’s name below.
“Which one of you should get the credit?”
I asked. “I need to know.”
“My giant,” Len said. “My own hat.”
“My queen,” Mae said. “My sea.”
“The sea was mine before she spilled it.”
“You borrowed it from me.”
Tess folded up her finished map
and put it in her coat.
She found a small spare notebook there
and passed it round the pail.
The pages had been sewn in tight.
No loose cards left to chase.
I pulled the string that held it shut
and found an empty place.
“Pages sewn in,” she said. “Try those.”
I laid it on my knee.
Len told the giant’s tale again.
Mae brought a second sea.
I wrote, The wind arrived at supper.
I stopped before the name.
Len changed his giant to a baby.
Mae changed her queen to flame.
They talked until the stars came out.
I left the next line bare.
Tess asked about the well at dawn.
Len said he’d meet us there.
Beyond the cattle, something white
went turning through the dark.
My written card crossed toward a fire
that glowed beneath the stars.
“They’ll find your giant,” Mae told Len.
“My beans,” Len said. “My beans.”
I shut the book and tied its string.
The wind went on ahead.
Loading comments…