MUMBLYPEG / K'REANS

    Mumblypeg

    The boys in the project would get together and play mumblypeg with our pocket knives. Whoever among us had a knife would open it. If it had more than one blade, you’d open the longest blade to have a better chance of sticking it in the scrubby lawn between the long, low wooden buidings of the Navy Homes. We’d compare knives for balance, and decide on the best one.

      You’d start low on the body, usually at the knee so the

knife would make a half turn. You’d place the point on your knee, and put the tip of your index finger on the end of the handle. Then you’d flip your hand out so the knife rotated as it fell to the lawn. If you got it right, the knife would turn just enough to stick in the grass. If it stuck but then fell over, it didn’t count. If you were good, your touch was light enough to keep from drawing blood when your rotating hand pressed the point into the skin on top of your knee. But if it drew blood, well, hey.

       Red spots or no, you had to stick it. If you did, you moved up to the hip. If not, you waited for another turn. The winner was the kid who got to the top of his body first: knee, hip, fingertip, wrist, elbow, shoulder, chin. Sometimes you’d even throw in nose and forehead. If there was enough time before dark, we’d do both sides of the body, adding extra points along both arms. It became an art, our bodies becoming launching pads for the knife, our hands learning its balance, just the right amount of pressure and rotation needed from each height to stick the knife in the grass.

K’reans

     We were playing war out in the housing project yard,

Darrell and I and a few other boys whose families lived in the parallel, five-apartment wooden structures. It was 1950 or ’51.

     We were choosing up sides: You guys be Japs, we’ll be ‘Mericans. Wait, somebody said. Aren’t we fightin’ somebody else now? Krauts, right? You be Krauts. No, somebody else. I forget.

     I’ll ask Mom, I said. I ran for the kitchen door of our apartment, the middle one in row 32. I hit the screen door on the run. I still remember the combined smells of dust and rust as my face rushed toward the screen. It had one of those long black coil springs to keep it closed; it slammed shut behind me.

     Mom was in the kitchen. She was pissed. “Son, how many times have I told you not to slam that screen door?”

     I had more important things on my mind. “Mom! Who’re we fightin’ now? Is it Japs, ‘r Germans?”

     “Neither one, son. We’re fighting Koreans now.” Our older brother Lance was in high school at the time, soon to graduate. That had to have been on her mind, as Vietnam would be on her mind ten years later when Darrell and I came of military age.

     But none of that was on my mind. “Thanks, Mom!” I yelped, and again hit the screen door on the run. It slammed shut behind me, and I heard her scolding “Ronald Dean!”  follow me across the yard as I returned, courier bearing important information, to my huddled playmates.

     “K’reans,” I said between gulps of breath. “Mom says we’re fightin’ K’reans now.”

     Puzzled looks. Some faint glimmers in boys’ faces who had heard the word begin to replace Japs and Krauts and Germans in their parents’ conversations.

     “Don’t matter. That’s who we’re fightin’”

     “You guys be K’reans. We’ll be ‘Mericans.”

MY BEER YEARS (POEM)

                         My Beer Years

                              by Dean Metcalf

I came upon a man who was sawing the earth in two.

"Whatcha doin'?" I asked.

"Aw... makin' a beer glass for some guy. You're the one, huh?"

"I'm the one. How's it goin'?"

"Aw... pretty good. Gotta cut it in two here, then hollow

the bottom part out with that shovel there. You'll

notice, I made the cut a little high."

"Yeah, I been lookin' for ya since North Africa."

He grinned. "Well," he said, "I was there durin' the war, an'

I always wanted to get to France. Besides, this way

you get more beer."

"Can you fill it?"

"They got this new process ‑ gonna turn all the oceans an'

rivers 'n' all that into beer. Figure to have some left over

for the others. They c'n fill it all right. Can you drink it?"

"Gonna try like hell. How soon'll it be ready?"

"Thirsty, huh? Tell ya what ‑ I need the overtime. I'll work

straight through ‑ should finish up here by midnight ‑ an' then

I'll talk to the plumber. He wants tomorrow off anyway. He'll open the floodgates soon as I'm done. That way,

you c'n start first thing in the mornin'."

First thing in the morning, I started. I grabbed Australia

in my left hand and South America in my right hand and tilted

the world and drank in long, oceanic pulls, sucking the sky in through my nostrils between swallows.

It was dry inside China when my gut muscles started to relax. India, and the pain in my back subsided.

As the level slid down the Southern Hemisphere with Antarctica keeping the dregs nice and cool, my face felt

warm, my brain was numb, and my eyes were clouds.

                              ©1973, 2012 Dean Metcalf

                              530 Amigo Road

                              Soquel, CA 95073    [ADDRESS AND

(408)476 8323      PHONE # OF LONG AGO; NO LONGER VALID]

Dream: Panther, Wife, Rifle

Dream: Panther, Wife, Rifle

Most of my dreams are in color. Sometimes they're extravagant with color, especially with the bright crimson of arterial blood. This dream is black and white, but not the black and white and grays of a photograph. The blacks are deep, iridescent, jet black; the whites are brilliant flashes. Annie and I are at our home, which in the dream is where a high plain meets the foothills of mountains. The place is wild. The mountains which loom behind us are no Ozarks or Smokies or Adirondacks; they are Canadian Rockies, only wilder: great, jagged masses of obsidian and ice, with trees as gnarled as they would have to be to live there. The plain sweeps away to infinite distance in a way that is as severe as the mountains: in all that great sweep of land, no sheltering grove of trees, no comforting hollows, no music of flowing water, no human hearthfires. But our house: large, airy, open, warm, bright with sunlight pouring in. Outside, a cold wind sweeps across the plain, swirls around the mountains. I am wearing a certain kind of shirt, a work shirt that is very well made, either of soft-tanned leather or some good quality wool. It fits just right. It makes me comfortable against the wind. I have a coat that is good and serviceable and goes well with the shirt and would get me into a decent restaurant without the snooty waiter scraping his eyes down my body. My pants are jet black: an unfaded version of those Frisko jeans I used to wear as a fisherman. Their deep black color is laced with streaks of white, the way my pants get when I've been working with sheetrock. The black throws off glinty blueblack highlights; the white streaks dazzle like new snow in sunlight. It's day inside the house, night outside - deepest, blackest imaginable night - slashed often, and violently, by white lightning. The lightning seems intent on reminding us that it is great bolts of electricity. There are wild animals and domestic animals. There is an antelope with antlers which give off intense sparks generated by creatures that are like fireflies, but whose light is greater, more electric than fireflies. Our domestic animals are around: chickens, ducks, dogs, cats. None of them is a fighter or protector; they tend to be on the cuddly side. Our domestic animals, and ourselves, are being threatened by the wild animals. The great windy plain, the looming mountains seethe with threatening movements of wild animals. Our spaniel is especially afraid. Now comes a panther, a great black beast whose obsidian coat is part of the night, whose scream is part of the wind, who gives off violent sparks of light from its long white fangs and from its blueblack fur; these sparks are kin to the lightning that splits the night. Annie is loading the rifle, a Winchester bolt-action .30-06 like the one I killed my second buck with. She is ready, she does not shrink back, she is willing to fight the panther. As she loads the rifle, the dream deliberately places the long phallic rifle, held in her left hand with barrel angled down, directly in front of her crotch, like some gun ad from Soldier of Fortune magazine or one of those posters we see in back of plumbing shops with a bikinied babe holding a big pipe wrench or power drill nestled in her crotch. In the dream, it doesn't seem nasty; it seems right. As she loads the rifle, there is the further explicit feeling of her sliding the male cartridge into the rifle's female chamber, where she holds the rifle across her crotch. She gets the rifle loaded, but doesn't know what to do next. The panther charges, all loping obsidian blackness and lightning-animated power, screaming with the force of the wind across the plain. She hands me the rifle. I aim, fire. The muzzle flash merges with the lightning. The panther explodes, disintegrating as its scream returns to the wind, its blackness to the night, its power to the lightning.