A Small Fan in the Window
2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/thr.2023.a903946
ISSN1939-9774
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoA Small Fan in the Window Ruby Hansen Murray (bio) The kind of neighbor I am walks when the red sun slipsbehind Nikolai like a coin. These hazy days, the light half gone,day softened gray, my neighbors’ housesoutside the dike, the river beyond. Each house has a personality, buttoned up. The Scotties charge the fence,tails little flags. The soft hull of the boat on its trailerwhere geese and turkeys, pea hens call. The empty beige grasswhere the killdeer scurried to lure me from its young. Oliver and Irene’s house, remodeled, the door open to the north,a box fan pushing air out the river side, three pots of white fabric flowersalong a brick planter. Lilacs between Oliver’s and Mark and Solvi, the hump of a drain field in the narrowspace between the road and their house. The wide expanse of sand to the water.A three-story shingled garage, a bank teller window affixed to the front;a joke I don’t remember. Paul and Mary’s little cottage, an RV in the back,the deck onto the river, see the grandchildren running. The game agent lives beyond the fishing beach, the old Norwegian fisherman’s cabinbeyond. You know Bernard Jerp was married to David Nelson’s great-aunt Astrid. Then,a tiny net house, redone like doll’s house. Lavender beside a wooden walk. These days on Welcome Slough, a man sits outside on his porch,arms bare in the evening light. A couple side by side on South Welcome. I watch the liquid color of television screens, wait for Fred, a border collie mix,the scatter of leaf mold on his back, eyes soft with cataracts, his smile. In the evening, before a door on the shed slanting west, a cat waits. Lime greenacorns. The vigorous bark of the cattle dogs, their yard scuffed to dirt. [End Page 170] My legs carry me past silent deer. No human sounds, but cars, their bright lights.Inside the dike, the big shop, the cattle, the old chute, sandy soil, a field ofnightshade beside the Trump people, their faded banner. In the humidity, my hair wet on my neck, the stories I cue up in the charcoal gray. [End Page 171] Ruby Hansen Murray ruby hansen murray is a columnist for The Osage News living in the lower Columbia River estuary. A MacDowell fellow, she’s a winner of the Iowa Review and Montana Prizes. Find her in Cascadia: A Field Guide, Ecotone, Under the Sun, The Massachusetts Review, and Pleiades. Copyright © 2023 Ruby Hansen Murray
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