WHY IWAS A other. recog with ^-plpces^ wasn’t it his body because of sweat, of sun, Clinton St. Quarterly Clinton St. Quarterly sand so hot thejtfc the legcalve&.thgl pews as overdressed priests, altarboys, and the nuns hiding in their little places of absences, of sinsecrets nobody could ever selfrighteous about to any but the sweatiest of us there in the peeyews of white shirts, of dressies of lace with the girlgirls of white gloves under the rosaries. One Sunday the Jesus pinned to a sky so blue it threw out its light of a world floating away from him, shining into the painting by the Italian surrealist on the cover of Life itself, and he’d been to all the churches so they had in him the new Michelangelo out of the heathen heaven. The one I only sidewise looked at, who because he wasn’t Irish, was in a race with something there was no prize to be one in. The one of clocks draped over crooks of desert trees, of torso bags hanging so improper they alone were childless, glorious. And it was hot, although I yes had my summertime tan and got over that terrible burn I had, throwing up everything but the sun I swallowed, and even throwing up that, the last bits of it lights finally, late, late at night when the lekOaley lives in Seattle, irr^alist” appears in his os, Empty Bowl (Port . Artist Jana Rekosh lives ted me. Wall ian,-th'en\g^ By Michael Daley Illustration by Jana Rekosh 1LJ lo t wasn’t it those growing up days so that sweat hung everywhere like J-Tllanother suit of clothes, thin sheet of wet, silk, huminity cloth. So we went to the beach, all the families wet. and three swans wherever they tried to come to shore someone stopping them with a Kodak, poor things, finally just lifted off from the water, salt water of White Horse, it was called, the beach, and flap flap above bathers sweating into their blankets of sand, sand crusted hardboiled eggs in the picnic basket circa 1954, magnificently white, and large the gangle of them, swans of hope escaping to shade, to any reasonable lake with the luck of pearl—a lick in the nick of thick o so thick time. On Sundays so different the Irish wore out their starch sweating in >man,fh.&'two of the one from the / 'fre ck le s surrounding the.Jii the bathingsuit and skinT ing. shining like some one । ^"Mediterranean bookshop. >bhthjng suit in two piepe^ neighbors were all in besi- What a killer the summer! My faUjef ajd-^walking in it off and knew of she said from out of her mouth of berries bright and dark and him smiling in that way—The Way—both like gods themselves on the sand ablast with heat, wanting to, o wanting to and nothing to be done about it, nothing in the civilising world because of course the animals having deserted us long ago, not with us that way anymore, not that way at all. He introduced them, the man whom I shall never remember except with pallor, bald, freckled, leering O’Leary, said her name which began with an ‘L’ and then my father’s—and it may be that my memory is backward, and it was not her, but my father who first joked about how Italian she was as if a deformity—and when she said his name, my name, how I really wanted her to look at me but she looked at him because it was too early and I hadn’t entry into that they were all there inside of. No words. Toddler I mightabin. She said ‘DaleylOI’ with a shiver of her hipsedixit, ‘but that’s Dali! Dali! Mr Daley, you’re an Italian. We’re cousins!’ Dali. And my father laughed. As when I want dizzy once, too much sun or moon— wasn’ t it moon?—only this morning dreamy in Church in and out of my eternal black cassock, on fire underneath, sweaty altarboy under the mission of Jesu the Helpless pinned by Salvador Dali to. the thin flotations of the planet beside his very face of wire moustaches on the cover of Life itself, like God, like Satan—the Italian and even the Pope was one—and we all laughed so, all of ,us, even me, and shook there all ignorant ^s wet dogs of his immaculate Spanisher ancestors, not Eyetalians at all, djsbeliev- tng.if we knew, that one was any different than another; and I was all all all all al- onalone beside them, the bodies twitch- fhg to be away from me, to skim out of itfeir Suits, curl into the inside of their own high bonefleshy kisses, all alone all alone' I brother to the impydivil, brother to god the Salvador who loved her who loved us in the sun, hot, hot, so hot. On long summer afternoons I snuck off with our oversize LIFE’S PICTORIAL WORLD WAR IL I was about nine, and something drew me to it. My father had often told me that he won the war, but many of my generation were told that. There were beautiful scenes in that book. The way sunlight ran along the side of a bomber just before takeoff, the painted cartoon of a black and yellow smiling bumble bee. I was transported to those jungles. And then the bodies. I turned pages of rubble and carnage. So confused were the piles that finally when I reached the page with one body stretched gracefully in the dirt, hands as if poised for dancing, neck bloodied, shirt open, a baby with a big head sitting in the dusk screaming, I would close the book for awhile. I had seen something private. I’d been present in someone’s dream. I would open it again a little later to the section titled “ Hiroshima.” In a newspaper clipping there I saw my father alongside other men awarded for missions over Japan. An aerial photograph of a large city, photos of burning, falling buildings. Then bodies again, and then the mushroom cloud, the fireball at its core. Very often I would close the book here, perhaps I was getting tired. But sometimes—and I might have enjoyed this lurking in other people’s dreams—I kept going. A woman was standing beside a fallen building. Bodies had been brought out of the ruins and placed without ceremony before her. Her right hand was open in the air, she was crying. Her mouth was uncontrollably wide. The dirt and sweat had given her flesh the quality of stone sculpture against the blue sky. Here I always stopped no matter my temptation to read further. I might re-read the newsclip, note my father’s uniform, fold the paper and put it at random into the book. No one else looked, no one knew I did. It was my book. Some time and place I didn’t understand where everyone looked hungry. Recalling it now for the first time in so long, I don’t remember what I felt about the pictures. I must have stared hard at them, for the faces are still familiar.
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