Cuyahoga Read online

  OTHERS FLED, DOG REMAINED

  I WILL SEE YOU DIRECTLY

  MOVE AWAY THIS GRAVE IS MINE

  DO NOT TOUCH MY BELONGINGS

  There was a great many more – these was only the politer ones. I considered on what other folks’ burying stones might say. And my own. I were glad to stop considering when Mr Job and our other friends and neighbors arrived. Not far behind were Mayor Frawley, who set right into jawing.

  * * *

  My friends I understand TWO BRIDGES OR NONE I understand it to the very soles of my feet  And there is a sinew in my arm that prefers to rip Clark’s bridge into ribbons  that prefers NONE  but my friends  ONE is your true course—

  Mayor Frawley had talked the bridge question so many ways that I expected his jaw might fall off – although I am not sure that would have shut him up. He might only turn about and talk from his ass. There were rude opinions circulated that he did already.

  Several such rude opinions crossed the soggy grocery air.

  —only it is the nature of ONE we must reconsider—

  A grocery cat screeched displeasure at a tail stepped on.

  —the devotion of our founding generation for the UNION—

  A pork bone flew from the audience over the mayor’s hat.

  —we must consider whether the time has come to make TWO CITIES into ONE—

  Half the room rioted. A merger of towns were a new line of talk entirely for Frawley.

  D___lessness  Treason  D___less treason and a whole Webster’s of profanity.

  Before long an indoors thunderstorm brewed up. Hats and cats and spit and fists flown. A jug were smashed over poor YL Honey’s head. The mayor hollered for Civility  civility  We must have civility

  Ohio city were in no mood for it until  krTTHWANNFFNG!

  Dog had thrown a thimble of gunmeal into his personal stove. A robe of sulfur smoke spun around him and one word came out.

  NONE

  Cries of approval.

  Speak on it Dog  Let us hear the Dog  What is to be done?

  He stepped up onto a coffin and tugged at his shirt like a preacher. One line of sweat rolled down a barber-soaped cheek.

  NONE  he said again.

  The assembly hollered for more but the sermon were finished.

  * * *

  Ohio city went to bed with Dog’s NONE ringing in every ear. Mr Job and I rode home in a specially brown mood. The sky had opened up a warm rain that stopped any spark of chatter. Even our good ox did not give snorts and tail gestures. Under the clatter of the wagon, I could tell Mr Job were wrapped up in his particular way of silence while judging up another’s foolishness. He must have been thinking on Dog’s intemperance.

  He never invited me inside the silence until—

  Meed

  Mr Job

  I care greatly for you two boys and I am afraid for your brother

  This were a niagara from Mr Job as far as sentiments gone.

  I said Big were heavy on my heart as well and expected an end of it. But Mr Job talked on at a slow trot—

  He is gone sideways  between  courting  Cloe and drinking whiskey and pitying himself

  Asa brung us into the drowsy air of the barn and looked over his great shoulder. He were listening to Mr Job’s talk or perhaps only waiting on his victuals.

  Mr Job did not move to climb down. Big has found the slough of despond

  I climbed down and unhitched Asa as the ox minced in anticipation of dinner.

  I do not know how to help him  Mr Job said.

  I spread out a dinner of hay for Asa and added a pinch of sugar from a sack hung on the wall.

  Still curled forward in the wagon seat, Mr Job eyed me up for the first time since he started talking. He looked at me the way he looked at wood before he went to carpentering.

  I have a notion for putting your brother right  When your brother worked feats  Before he took poorly  He were never paid in coin  Only in adoration

  I knew I were not meant to respond. Asa chewed happily.

  Besides  how do you value a wonder working?  You do not think to pay for miracles

  More chewing.

  The trick is  He did not say what the trick were. He only lingered a moment longer and then bid me good night.

  * * *

  The next morning I climbed down from the attic and found Mr Job in the barn, waiting atop the wagon, Asa already hitched and smiling.

  We have an errand

  The wagon wheels murmured over lanes wet with the night’s rain and Mr Job were back to saying nothing at all. At Handerson and Panderson’s Mr Job whoaed, hopped down, disappeared into the thicket of notions.

  I sat atop the wagon and hidyed folks. Quickly Mr Job returned with a bundle of good letterwriting paper and a pot of ink.

  What is our errand, Mr Job?

  He shoved the merchandise into my hand.

  This were all

  * * *

  The sun were warming up the damp world and you could feel a steam rising. On our trot home we stopped at Dog’s. It were terribly early for Mr Job to take a refreshment but perhaps he only meant to crackerbarrel or fetch a jug for the homeplace. I never minded a stop at Dog’s and a look at news papers.

  Bring your writing paper, Meed

  * * *

  Mr Job pointed me to the table closest to the front door, where the cats congressed in the morning light. They did not clear out for me but only blinked, curious as I were. I picked up a fat orange tom from the coffin bench to make a seat.

  We have paid Big Son in wonder for years  Mr Job proclaimed again.

  Dog spidered over to talk, clutching a tin cup of hideous-smelling coffee.

  I agreed and did not say that I had heard this point already. Instead I peered at the ARGUS on the table and read that Spenser, the actor, who killed Frimbley, the impersonator of statues, in a duel, at N. Orleans, is said to have been in Texas—

  Dog grumbled that Big ought to wonder down Clark’s bridge   He gulped from his coffee. No one asked Big to do all that night soil  He cannot expect payment for what he puked up by his fool nature

  One of the cats glercked up a hairball, as if prompted by Dog’s talk of puke. The other cats stared at the mess, glistening in the sun, like it would speak omens at them.

  August  you are right without knowing  said Mr Job. We ought to have gotten money out of Big ourselves  He were only the fruits of nature wanting husbanding

  At the mention of moneygetting, Dog squinted some as if to say I am listening

  We will make Big into a notion  If his feats were enough to make us wonder at him  Then they will be enough to entertain folks  They will pay good money to hear them

  Mr Job were glowing some with the light behind him, same as the hairball but less slimy. He were grim sober most of the time, but I could see the boy’s heart showing through now. Mr Job loved tales, even if he only read scripture. The Bible has got battles and adventures in it, after all.

  We will write up Big’s doings into an almanac  And add in some home truths and useful knowledge—

  I saw the use of paper and ink.

  —and captivating drawings of Big at his adventures And advice for emigrants to the west And advertisements for Ohio city—

  It would grab folks’ imaginations and their money  Dog allowed.

  Mr Job sat back, satisfied with what he had spit up.

  You were a bastard at heart all this time Job Stiles  Dog said. I always known I liked you

  Mr Job’s pride dimmed some at being cussed. How am I a bastard?

  You profit coming and going  By Big’s feats first and by selling them as stories after

  The money is not for us Dog  It is for Big  As payment for his feats

  The very idea of giving away the profit wracked Dog into a cough, and he cussed Mr Job further. But after the contempt passed he agree
d that the notion were sound – even if the money would be wasted on a fool such as my brother.

  I did not think to ask Mr Job how money would help Big, if Big never came home to find it.

  * * *

  Mr Job never meant to carpenter the almanac himself. He left me behind at Dog’s to begin the work straightaway. The fever season of summer were near to over, which meant less call for coffins. Besides, I were the natural choice for almanac-making – I knew Big best and had a good hold of my letters.

  So in the warm rump of August I set up a writing factory at Dog’s at the table by the windows, sat on a coffin I might have made myself. As I worked, Dog’s cats licked themselves and fought, sending fur floating into the sunlight.

  You cannot have a fire without wood. You cannot have a harvest without plantings. So Mr Job spread the word as he delivered coffins by himself. Everywhere he gone he asked after stories of Big and even took out a notice in the ARGUS.

  HAVING determined to establish himself permanently in Ohio city, offers his services to the public in all the branches of business relating to the preservation, comfort or beauty of the Teeth.

  His work will be done in the neatest and most durable manner, and on terms which will satisfy all who may favor him in his line of profession.

  days since, in Chester New Jersey, He proved to be an old offender, having lost two of his toes and a piece of his ear in former skirmishes. The Boston Times says “he walked into town, was killed and eaten,” in short metre.

  Ye complacent, brainless, heartless knaves

  Ye lizard-looking apes with cat-fish gills—

  Ye scoundrels! Go and pay your Tailor’s bills.

  Desired.

  STORIES of Mr Big Son

  Call at DOGSTADTERS GROCERY

  Pearl-street, Ohio city

  Ask for MR MEDIUM SON

  Stray Dog.

  CAME into premises of this subscriber on the eve of Thursday last, a large black dog, frisly hair, with a ring upon his neck and one around his belly, both bearing the name of T Floyd, Falls Point. The owner is requested to prove property.

  HENRY FRALEY

  CALICOES ! ! CALICOES ! !

  300 PIECES French, English and American Calicoes, just received and for sale very low at the Ohio Cash Store. LEO. WHITE & CO

  You already know some of Big’s ripest doings. There were many more I have not shown you, and folks brung in feats I had never before heard a word of. Wild garments stitched from every thread of truth and lies and fever – a hundred different Big Sons and tales of Ohio. Every person I ever met came and told on Big, and even folks I never met before came in with a piece of my brother.

  The first to call were the regulars of the grocery, the drunk owls who sat and watched passings-by all day. I got about what you expect from such fools.

  * * *

  They had seen Big rastle rivers and break lakes and rescue women in woe

  Meet the devil twice and whip him three times

  Teach alligators to waltz

  Get bit by one thousand rattlesnakes and live and bite each one back

  Ride elephants as race horses

  Race against a steamboat just by swimming

  Tie together the tails of every creature in the wildness  Wild cats and wolves and squirrels and wolverines what hardly have a tail at all  Knotted them up into a monstrosity  Rode the thing to Texas and fought at the Alamo  Ate twenty-five Mexicans and escaped alive  That were Alvarado Farley, who were stuck some on the stories of Texas.

  Ate eagle eggs for breakfast and bear bacon at supper

  Taught wolves to wail

  Put the face on the moon with a rusted musket

  Pummeled one hundred rotten Clevelanders  Stole all their teeth and made a gift to Dr Strickland  That were YL Honey, still proud of his incorruptible teeth. As he storied on Big, YL took his denture out and set it on the table like a fine pocket watch.

  As more respectable folks come in, the stories prettied some. They still told as much on their teller as on Big.

  The government at Washington sent five millions of dollars to dig the canal and Big Son were seen to eat it up and fart out a thousand Irishmen to do the digging  And every so often you will see him cough up a dollar coin and praise for the pope  He only says he is poorly to hide the crime  That were Ozias, who always suspected Catholics and theft.

  Gathered up all the liquor in Ohio —that were Philo. I wondered if he were taking the water pledge—  and switched the Cuyahoga from water to whiskey so folks could drink just like hogs  He were not taking any pledge.

  BUILT A HOUSE OF CRYSTAL FOR MISS CLOE AND HIM TO LIVE IN BUT A JEALOUS WIND BLEW IT DOWN AND STUCK HIM ALL OVER WITH SLIVERS  AND THAT IS HOW THE SHINE GOT INTO HIS HAIR— that were Handerson, before Panderson took over  —AND YOU COULD GET THE SAME SHINE BUT NONE OF THE STICKING WITH THE LATEST NEWYORK LINIMENTS FOR PURCHASE AT—

  * * *

  The finish of August and half of September vanished this way. There were surprises in who had a tale to tell, even those who would never set foot in Dog’s.

  One morning when I were climbing down from the attic with my papers, Mrs Tabitha ambuscaded me with cakes. As I chewed she gave her tale. Foreswore causing trouble and learned his chores and did all the work of every woman in Ohio for a hundred years

  Not all the stories were so moral.

  Woke up the dead under Monroe-street and had them dance a reel

  Ripped up all of Cleveland and set it wondering on the lake as an island

  Climbed to heaven and dared Christ to a rastle

  Gave birth to his own child  That were Birt the soiled preacher.

  Made a great balloon lifted by buzzards and vanished into the night stars

  As the stories piled up and Big remained vanished, more of the tales seen him whipped or dead altogether.

  Crept to Cloe’s window and sung songs of devotion  But Mrs Tabitha took fright that he were a madman or a howling wolf and shot him  And that is how his heart come to break

  Made a speech so tender that the millennium come down and folks had to beg to the Lord that it were not time yet

  Made a ladder two miles tall to learn what a cloud were made of  Only that ladder busted and he fell forever  Hollering the whole way that he were not sorry to die only sorry he could not die a thousand times more

  Took insult from the first steam engine  Said he could work as good and drank boiled water which cooked him to dying

  The survivors of the trees Big chopped came for him and said Give us back the planks what you busted out of our cousins  Big said he could not give back the planks as they was the very bones of Ohio now  When next he slept the trees reached their longest branch into the barn attic and stole his bones as revenge and he woke up as a rug of skin

  Were eaten by moschitos entirely and the man you seen is actually a cloud of them in a suit of clothes

  Put temperance on Ohio by drinking up all the whiskey in the west—  This were not Philo but his wife, Annabel —and his guts rebelled at careless thirst and his mind turned to pudding

  Said his hide were iron brewed from the very blood and flesh of the republic  And dared men to throw axes and stones at him  and so died

  Gone after Hillibert and his gang of counterfeiters  Were murdered by the bandits  Who sent back a shinplaster Big Son  We never known the difference

  * * *

  One afternoon as I scribbled, Dog came up next to me in his silent way of moving.

  I have got one for you  A tale for your almanac  A true tale

  About Big?

  About General Washington

  There were no greater American than General Washington. His doings were fashioned into instructions for right conduct by Parson Weems and a dozen other accounts. How he would never tell a lie, et c. The almanac would not suffer with a bit of Washington.

  Dog poked me in the shoul
der and said that he had seen Washington once  The living man when I were only a tadpole

  I were eager to hear how Dog would cuss Washington – he were too much praised. Dog were born to cuss – his tongue could kill a bird right out of the air.

  But his talk of Washington were nearly solemn.

  Dog said that the aged general were considerable swollen in his ankles and feet such that his boots were cut open at the sides. That the great man smelled of mildew. That he rode out to review the militia armies without his teeth in. That his soldiering talk come through wilted lips. That his eyes had a soaped look. That he trembled some. Dog said he had seen right there that day how birthing a country left you ill used as birthing a dozen babes  I should never like to be a spirit at all

  I asked whether  it were worth being used up if it made for moral stories

  I would rather be Dog alive and never storied than any dead president  Still stinking through all the flowers heaped on his burying box

  I made no answer.

  Will you put all that in your almanac?

  It is not the popular opinion

  You might put that it is the view of August Dogstadter of Pearl-street, Ohio city  Purveyor of refreshments  And I will gladly answer complaints

  * * *

  Folks brought me enough tales for an almanac and an Arabian Nights besides. Now I had to carpenter them together. I considered whether I ought to put the mostly true ones together in one heap, the less true in another, the not-at-all true in a third, the wildest ones in a fourth. Perhaps better to mix them all together, like a quilt.

  Big had been absent since his bridge fell on the last day of July – a month and a half. He had left behind his red neckcloth and the hank of paper money and the letter that Cloe had left him. I sometimes thought I saw his souvenirs move around some between morning and night. But if he were sneaking back I never heard or saw or smelled him.