When we went there,
\nthe TV with the ghosts
\nwould be on, and the father
\ntalked and called out
\nevery now and then to him,
\nsitting in that space
\nwe always left around him,
\nIsn\u2019t it, June? Or Aren\u2019t
\nyou, June? And June
\nwould laugh like only his voice
\nwas doing it and he was somewhere
\nelse, so when the father
\nturned back to us like
\nhe was enjoying his son\u2019s
\ncompany, we could tell
\nhe was on his way out,
\ntoo. Until at the end
\nhe just sat saying nothing
\nall day into the dark.
\nWalking by there after chores,
\nwe would see the blue light
\nfrom their TV, shifting
\nacross the road in the trees,
\nand inside, those two dark
\nheads which had forgot
\nby this time even the cows.
\nSo when the truck came
\nto take the manure-matted,
\nbellowing things to the slaughterhouse,
\nall we could say was, Thank God
\nfor Liz. Who else
\nwould have helped load them up,
\nthen gone right on living
\nwith that brother and father, dead
\nto the world in bib overalls,
\nwhile all around them
\nthe fields had begun
\nto forget they were fields?
\nWho else would have taken
\nthat town job, punching
\nshoelace holes all night
\ninto shoes? So now
\nwhen we went, there
\nwould be Junior and his father
\nin the front room of the farm
\nthey did not remember,
\nwearing brand-new shoes
\nthey did not even know
\nthey wore, watching the TV
\nwith ghosts. And there
\nwould be Liz, with her apron on
\nover her pants, calling out
\nto them like they were only
\ndeaf, Isn\u2019t it?
\nor Aren\u2019t you? and telling us
\nhow at last they could have
\nno worries and be free.
\nAnd that thing was
\nthat sometimes when we watched
\nthem, watching those faces
\nwhich could no longer concentrate
\non being faces, in the light
\nthat shifted from news to ads
\nto sports, we could almost see
\nwhat she meant. But what
\nwe didn\u2019t see was
\nthat she also meant
\nherself. That the very
\nnewspapers we sat on
\neach time we brought her milk
\nor eggs were Liz\u2019s own
\nslow way of forgetting all
\nthe couches and chairs. Until
\nthat last awful day
\nwe went there
\nafter her father died,
\nand after the state car
\ncame to take June,
\nand we found just flour-
\nbags and newspapers and Liz,
\nwith her gray pigtail
\ncoming undone, and no idea why
\nwe\u2019d left our rock-strewn fields
\nto come. Then all
\nwe could think to do
\nwas unplug that damned
\nTV, which by now didn\u2019t
\nhave ghosts, only voices talking
\nbeyond the continuous snow.
\nAll we could do was
\ncall her to come back
\ninto her face and hands,
\nand Liz just watched
\nus, waving our arms,
\nlike we weren\u2019t even there,
\nlike we were the ghosts.<\/p>\n
– Wesley McNair<\/em><\/p>\n\n When we went there, the TV with the ghosts would be on, and the father talked and called out every now and then to him, sitting in that space we always left around him, Isn\u2019t it, June? Or Aren\u2019t you, June? And June would laugh like only his voice was doing it and he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}