“Having not had his neck broken, the toes of his boots dangled just above the porch boards as he hung there with his still arms by his side. Suddenly he started to thrash, though looking more like he was rummaging through some drawers than losing his life.
“The boy would have thought had this moment ever come to pass, he would pull up a chair and watch patiently as his father strangled to death. Instead the boy ran and stood up the stool so it was there for his father’s feet once more. The father kicked it back over. Let it be said, the father did want to die. It was the son who didn’t want him to.
“Once more, the boy stood the stool up beneath his father’s feet. In kicking for the stool, the father kicked the boy, who fell back onto the two-pronged pitchfork they would use when gathering hay from the fields.
“The father used the last of himself to hoist his legs up onto the porch rail, supporting his body as he loosened the rope from around his neck. He smelled of piss and whiskey as he scooped his crying son up. He’s always been good with the saving, the boy thought as his father carried him inside and laid him on the bed.
“The father very carefully cleaned and dressed the two large gashes going up the boy’s back, along his shoulder blades. As he did so, the father apologized, and the boy reached out to the noose marks.
“‘Promise you won’t do it again, Pa. Promise you won’t let the rope get so short again.’
“The father looked down at his son. ‘You’ll have to help me. I can’t keep it long on my own. You must help me.’
“Later that night, while the father lay asleep beside the boy, the boy got out of bed and went to the porch. He took down the noose and carried it to the yard where the other pieces of chopped rope were piled. Piece by piece, he tied the rope together until it was long enough to stretch whole once again around their house. When the father woke the next morning and saw the rope, he promised his son, in the sober morning light, that the rope would stay together forever. In the world of truth, it stayed complete for seven months.
“While the rope was chopped after that, it was never chopped so short again to make a noose, and the son, while bruised, was always grateful to the father for at least keeping the rope long enough, because if it were to happen again, the son knew he would not prop the stool back up beneath his father’s thrashing legs.”
*
When I was twenty-one, I was with a woman with hair like rope. I say woman because she was thirty-seven. She had this small cabin by a lake in Maine. During the day, I’d go off to the town to replace the spires of the boot factory I’d been hired at. She’d go to work as the secretary of that factory. All day I’d be on the roof, on top of her, and then at night we’d go to that cabin, and all night she’d be on top of me.
I liked her. But I loved her hair. It was dark and long enough to graze the backs of her calves. During the day at work, she wore it up in a braided bun. But at night, at the cabin, she let the braid go loose, twisting and turning and so much like rope, I named her that very thing.
I remember how she’d stand up out of bed, naked in front of the windows. The moonlight silvering her flesh. She’d take her braid and circle it around her thin waist. It went all the way around, making the trip back to her belly button, where she would gently tie a loose knot.
“My, my.” She’d click her tongue and look down, admiring what her hair could do. She’d say her hair was like Samson’s and was where all her strength came from. Then I’d pat the bed and she’d come over, her legs around me, her hands on my chest, her rope stretched back. I came feeling like a good man who had not yet picked up the ax.
I stayed in Maine with her that winter, long after I’d finished working on the spires of the factory. I found other work to do in town.
Then, at the end of January, while standing in only a pair of wool socks, she wrapped her hair around her waist. The ends would not tie in a knot.
“It has begun,” she whispered.
That night I heard the chop of an ax. As the weeks went on, soon the ends of her hair would make it only to her side. Chop, chop, chop.
“Have you been cutting your hair?” I asked her.
“My belly is getting bigger. It’s making my hair shorter.”
Of course I knew that. I just didn’t want to say it. Neither of us ever said it. She just started buying bigger clothes, and I suddenly made a cradle for the back bedroom. There wasn’t a plan to make the cradle. I just one day picked up a handsaw and a piece of wood, and next thing I knew, I had a bed for my child in front of me.
The closest we ever got to discussing the baby was the night she asked me what I thought.
“Fielding? I asked what you think?”