University of Northern Iowa

Mules in a FieldAuthor(s): William OlsenSource: The North American Review, Vol. 267, No. 3 (Sep., 1982), p. 43Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124294 .

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fair. In the distance he saw a hemisphere of light rising from the ground, plain as the moon, wobbling slightly. He

stopped to look at it. All around him there were dark

fields, and when he got out of the car he could smell,

against the musk of earth and alfalfa, something like

distant fire. The hemisphere was gold-veined and bril liant against the otherwise unmarred country night, and as

he watched it seemed to flatten and revolve on a hidden axis. He was halfway across one of the fields, running as

fast as he could, before he realized it was the Ferris wheel.

We wade in until the water comes up to our knees; we are

not holding hands. Near the edge of the woods behind us there is an abandoned tractor?it seems archaic and irrita

ble, as if it had a sense of purpose which it has only briefly relinquished. The steering wheel has a strange elongate

primness, and vines have begun to tangle around the

narrow tires. The water is clear and very cold. I am sur

prised by the whiteness of my skin, the length of my legs when seen from above; I float in a small much-patched

inner tube, skimming my heels along the surface. Joey swims laps until he is tired, and then stands on the low cement dam at the far end of the swimming hole, parting his wet hair with his fingers, surveying the bottom for a stone. When he finds one he cups it for a moment in both

hands, as if to warm it. I float with my back to him. Stones skim along the surface near me, touch, falter, touch down,

rise again. Each time a stone touches the water a small

circle swells against the stillness. This morning when he

came into the bedroom I was sitting up, balancing a saucer

on my knees, drinking coffee. "I'm all packed," he told

me. "You knew this was coming, didn't you?" A little

coffee spilled on the bedspread. I traced the stain over and over, as if I were supposed to memorize it. He came back

into the room and stood in the doorway, staring down at

me. "Don't look so shocked," he said. "Let's go to the

swimming hole." The clouds which are reflected in the surface of the swimming hole are motionless, high and

distant. It is hard to tell how often a stone will touch the water before it sinks.

What I think about later, sitting in the sand with my arms around my knees, is this: The wind in Butte came around

the cars in the parking lots, some of them still with snow

on their windshields, and it hit you in the face. Everyone stood with their backs to it, except Joey and me. I was

shivering; there was the wind, and there was an argument

Joey and I had had, earlier. That day my stockings were

green, with a red patch over one of the knees. The people were mostly middle-aged men and women in ragged par

kas and scarves, little kids in bulky down jackets and black rubber boots. I held the hat before me carefully

while they tucked in their slips of folded paper. Their knuckles were red from the brief moments that they had been exposed, writing. When I tripped and spilled the hat, the slips of paper tilted through the wind into a bank of snow, skimmed its surface, disappearing into puddles, be

tween the feet of people in the crowd. Behind me, Joey cried out. No one in the crowd looked angry, only amazed.

They'd never expected their questions to blow away like that.

WILLIAM OLSEN

MULES IN A FIELD

When Beethoven finished the Fifteenth Quartet a leaf dropped on the sill, the air done kissing it.

The notes on the pages

settled like birds into an easy sleep on an autumn evening in Gneixendorf

where his grown-up nephew

finished beating a wool rug,

a cloud of dust slowing down

long before it settles. Carriage dust

sparkling on Bonn's high bay windows.

Beethoven didn't know his nephew was

sorting through his pant pockets before throwing them over the taboret

and slumping into a sleep

that somehow touches the leaves.

Sleepy, he let his nephew go deeper,

an elbow on the ivory keys.

"Gneixendorf. The name sounds,"

he said out loud, "like the breaking of an axle-tree."

He couldn't have heard it, or seen

his surprise, face at the window?

mules in a field, open-mouthed.

Their braying, unheard, was free,

so he could think how as a child

he was told the forest leaves

fell more quickly moonless nights,

even more so after his father and he

had emptied the forest for home, bed,

falling then, now,

always more easily.

43

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