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Brothers and Sisters
by Jim Harrison
I'm trying to open a window in this very old house of indeterminate
age buried toward the back of a large ranch here in the Southwest,
abandoned for so long that there's no road leading into it but a slight
indentation in the pastureland, last lived in by the owner's great-
uncle who moved to New York City to listen to music, or so he said,
but his grandnephew said that the man was "light in his loafers," which
was hard to be back in New Mexico in those days. In the pantry under
a stained vinegar cruet is a sepia photo of him and his sister in their
early teens on the front porch of the house, dressed unconvincingly
as vaqueros, as handsome as young people get. The photo is dated 1927
and lights up the pantry. I find out that the girl died in childbirth in
the middle thirties in Pasadena, the boy committed suicide in Havana
in 1952, both dying in the hands of love. Out in the yard I shine my
flashlight down a hole under a massive juniper stump. A rattlesnake
forms itself into anxious coils surrounding its pretty babies stunned
by the light.
by Jim Harrison
I'm trying to open a window in this very old house of indeterminate
age buried toward the back of a large ranch here in the Southwest,
abandoned for so long that there's no road leading into it but a slight
indentation in the pastureland, last lived in by the owner's great-
uncle who moved to New York City to listen to music, or so he said,
but his grandnephew said that the man was "light in his loafers," which
was hard to be back in New Mexico in those days. In the pantry under
a stained vinegar cruet is a sepia photo of him and his sister in their
early teens on the front porch of the house, dressed unconvincingly
as vaqueros, as handsome as young people get. The photo is dated 1927
and lights up the pantry. I find out that the girl died in childbirth in
the middle thirties in Pasadena, the boy committed suicide in Havana
in 1952, both dying in the hands of love. Out in the yard I shine my
flashlight down a hole under a massive juniper stump. A rattlesnake
forms itself into anxious coils surrounding its pretty babies stunned
by the light.
