Around Christmas,
I’d wake to my father
asleep on the floor
facing the fireplace
of the old Coffelt house
with high gray ceilings,
his brown sweater
reeking of #2 diesel
and I’d lay beside him
as he snored.
He’d been up and down
all night checking temperatures,
lighting smudge pot sentries
whose flaming helmets
surrounded his father’s
orchards of oranges
to turn back a freeze,
or climbing towers
with spinning turrets
to start the flathead Ford’s
twin prop wind machines.
I begged to go with him
block to block
passing Ike Clark’s lean-to
of old scrap boards catching fire
from two lit smudge pots
and bottled heat
with him asleep
on gunny sacks of straw.
Dad pulled him free
as we watched the shelter
disappear.
My mother suffered most
the suet that leaked
inside the house
from the black cloud
that hung over
Exeter’s crop of gold.
to ship East
and the new dress
she bought for a Christmas
party in Visalia
she never got to wear
because the freezing weather
claimed my Dad.
She never forgave him.
drycrikjournal 