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Alexanders and Scotts, a Bramble John M. Anderson
The briar pattern of this carpet, blown up by all-fours inspection, clarified like stars through the side of the eye: my mother rambled down such stairs, the Scottish highlands of Aunt Alice’s house in the Ozarks, playing mouse with her first cousins, James and Leroy, her mystery lovers. Banging palms on those yielding thorns, Errol Flynn raids while the clock clucked its long tongue at their antics and the tall window in the attic ran leaded rain. A stained Tennysonian tone over all, though the depression was on, a War of Roses formality of plan and motif of swept stone: The kitchen where the mice scrabbled slabs of hard-crust bread into their milk teeth and bubbling scared giggles turned to ascend the long bluffs of stairs. Leroy my mother loved, who grew into the youth with hawk on hand in the Scotch-Guard tapestry the wind blew. Drafted, he slipped from his coon hounds, threw a kiss from the bus. Cut through a Korean minefield and went sky high. My father, his commanding officer, arrived not long after the news. Not a prince, never a replacement. More than cousins—she winces— they might have been twins. |
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