University of Northern Iowa

Winter Landscape, MissoulaAuthor(s): Patricia ClarkSource: The North American Review, Vol. 270, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), p. 57Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124653 .

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opposite ends of the supper table, each listening to his own radio. When the batteries went dead, they threw the

radios away. The Quinions trusted, even liked, people they knew.

A neighbor who used to slog up through the drifts unan

nounced around Christmas with a Mason jar of maple syrup once mentioned he was thinking about planting a

vegetable garden in the spring. One day the next April, the Quinions appeared on his property with their team

and plow. Tom asked the man where he wanted that

garden he'd been talking about. Certain neighbors were allowed to hunt coon on the

hill?they were fair game, Tom said, because they got in with the chickens and corn?and periodically a hunter

brought them liquor. Confronted by a jug of any size, the

Quinions finished it off on the spot, although they disap proved of "drinkers."

Tom Quinion was 84 when he died. He had put in a full day's work, but had eaten little that night and was too

weak to get up the next morning. Two days later Bill walked to the firehouse in West Stockbridge and said his father was dead. Before he died, Tom had told Bill how he wanted his funeral to be.

On the following Monday, then, with a heavy mist and a sporadic downpour obscuring the farm's shoulder

mowings lower down, Bill went out to the barn and hitched the ancient workhorses to the newly painted flatbed wagon. He headed the team for the house, where he carefully backed them up to the small side door. He eased the dark gray coffin, made from spare barn siding, off its saw-horses and onto the flatbed and then swung a

tarpaulin across the wagon's ridgepoles. In the coffin were

Tom, his hat and hunting rifle, a few rounds of ammuni

tion, some candy and a tin of tobacco.

Bill had dug the grave beneath a butternut tree sixty yards from the barn. Under the tree huddled 27 people, the largest gathering on the hill in years. Next to the grave

was a Mason jar of zinnias.

Bill moved the wagon up. He stayed seated as the local Congregational minister climbed up, stood on the tailboard and, rain dripping from the brim of his hat, read

briefly from the Bible. Then Bill got down and moved aside the planks that had been covering the grave. He and the minister and two neighbors in coveralls lowered the coffin. Bill unhitched the horses and led them to the

grave; they stood for a time, he quieting them in the rain, and then he gave them each an apple. Bill put the horses back in their traces, climbed into the wagon and clucked

softly. Letting the reins trail, he cantered the rig back across the meadow to the barn. The people drifted away.

Tom had been explicit about his grave: It was to be well secured. Within half an hour, a truck from Canaan Cement & Gravel was laboring up Dean Hill. It maneu vered gingerly into place and poured five cubic yards of concrete over the coffin.

Bill had to wait eight months before the right buyer came to him, one who would pay for the farm in cash and

who would let him keep title to the half-acre with the butternut tree at its center. When the deal was closed and he had the money in his pocket, Bill left without telling anybody where it was he was going. D

PATRICIA CLARK

WINTER LANDSCAPE, MISSOULA

Only the black-capped chickadee stays behind

in pines edging these roads.

Stalled in drifts and lowering valley fog, landmarks whited out, I try

accepting notions of fenced land and a woman

keeping one man warm, for a season.

Once, I tried to love a man into loving me.

I spent years afterward learning how to leave. There was always distance

making me sad, rooms we lived in

without heart or heat. Sometimes he comes

back in dreams, a woman blonde

and laughing on his arm. Here the river runs

under ice, and all month,

thinking of my own death, how little

it would matter, I went out

each morning and shovelled snow off the walkways and the car, snow that fell in darkness.

Blue car, blue light inside, how easy to lie down cold in cold.

Sometimes, in other dreams, he stands

between me and whatever it is

I'm afraid of. It stays, in shadow, when I wake.

There are distances to cross,

house to snowbound car, a woman

talking to a man in bed.

My breath plumes in thin air as I leave

in the morning, everything drifted out of shape, the trees still

in the yard, with bare, lifted limbs.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/September 1985 57

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