University of Northern Iowa

Put Your Whole Self in and Shake It All AboutAuthor(s): Paul HunterSource: The North American Review, Vol. 257, No. 3 (Fall, 1972), p. 72Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117375 .

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haven't met me ask, when they see us together, "Is that

your father?" I'm only seven years older than she, but I

look worried.

I have a friend. He is Mr. Sparrow, a handsome man in

retirement, who reads to the blind students of the university. He is a fine voice of a man.

"To what do you attribute your handsome appearance,

Mr. Sparrow?" I ask him. "To my wife," he always says, "Better than I ever

deserved. "

I owe my worry to my wife.

We walked home from the supermarket. I carried the canned goods

on Special. She carried a

bag of nectarines.

"Get some bing cherries," I had nudged her in Produce. "Some of those beautiful, dark cherries."

I like sweet things now as much as I did when I was a child.

"Cherries?" said my wife, with the boy weighing the nectarines and listening

to every word. "CHERRIES!

FLIES ALL OVER THE CHERRIES. LOOK AT THE FLIES EATING THE CHERRIES. WILL YOU JUST LOOK AT THOSE BLACK FLIES CRAWLING OVER THE CHERRIES? It's disgusting that they let the produce become diseased. No cherriesl"

"I want some cherries," I told my wife while we were

waiting with our shopping carts. "Aw c'mon, let me have

just a pound. It won't hurt you. I pay the bills. "

I said this while the cashier totaled the last of the bill.

My wife pushed me through the lane with the metal basket and took all the Gold Bell stamps for herself.

At night I like her to put her hand on my face and let me breathe into her palm. But she has stopped doing that since I was sick last year. She fed me with a spoon, then,

hot tea, a little at a time.

"Sing to me," I asked her.

She said, "Aren't you foolish, old man? You know I can't carry a tune. It was my brother Harry who could

carry a tune."

I didn't ask her to carry a tune. I asked her to sing to

me, a lullaby.

I'm home every day now, and she doesn't know what to

do with me. "A man home every day for lunch," she says. "It's a

nightmare!" She undresses in the dark now and doesn't let me see her.

I walk by myself to the park to sit on a bench and look at the pretty girls. When I see one going by I hold out my arms to embrace her and say,

"Come here, pretty girl. Come here. What a pretty girl."

But they don't come to see me anymore. I buy candy with my allowance. I hide the candy under

my pillow, a new kind for myself each night. Black Crows

tonight. Mary Janes last night. Planters Peanuts Bar, the fifteen cents size, planned for tomorrow

night. I wait each night for her to fall asleep first. A woman

should go first, through the doorway, into cars, to sleep. "Good night, mother," I call to her in the other bed.

"Mother, good night." "DONT CALL ME MOTHER," she answers. D

PAUL HUNTER

PUT YOUR WHOLE SELF IN AND SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT

Driving her to an abortion

I find two splinters in pain.

My left hand, it can wait, yet

they begin hurting like kids

you mention eating around,

or dentists, or zoo rides,

kids you drive blocks to avoid

showing the circus is down,

children swept under the skin

dull, glancing blows you've forgotten.

I turn to her for a pin and she draws one from about her

to ease the paw of the lion.

72 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/FALL 1972

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