Two Stories

Night Swimming, July 4th 2012

After midnight, when the smell of sulfur is strong in the air but most of the explosions have stopped, they climb a neighbor’s fence and greedily pull each other’s clothes off as they creep to the steps at the shallow end of the pool. The air is chilly, making the feeling of slipping into the water more exhilarating. It’s been dry this summer. Wildfires are scorching the West. Fireworks have probably burned down more family homes than any year past. He says, “It smells like rain.” He feels her legs wrap around his. She hasn’t shaved for a few days. Sometimes he likes her legs prickly. Little cactus girl, he calls her. She says, “No rain. Too dry.” She quickly dips her head beneath the water. “Too dry for rain?” “It falls and it evaporates before it hits the ground.” There are flashes in the sky but it’s not fireworks. Lightning in the clouds. Thunder. “This is what a thunder storm looks like in a drought,” she says. He runs his hand over the exposed skin of her shoulder. She shudders at a breeze. He can feel goose bumps rise.

We Drink to the Bottom

We drink to the bottom, letting the worm sit, waiting for someone to eat it. The locals say to bury the worm in the dirt. Gusanos rojos, they call it. No one is willing to eat the worm, so I pocket it and I take it home and I place it in a pot on my porch and feed it a shot of mescal every morning. My worm tree, I will call the final product. Every night, I sit and drink and watch, waiting for the story to be true. For my gusano to come to life. For my worm tree. I finish a bottle. Alone, I eat the worm. I swallow it whole. Wondering if my worm tree can grow in my gut. But I can feel the thing wriggle through my system over the course of the next few days, making it’s way to my brain, where it rests. I continue to watch the pot. I swear I’ve seen something bulging under the dirt. Something is happening. I drink. I eat the worm. I drink. I feed the worm in the pot. I can envision the future, my hopeful future, of not a tree, but little legs rising from the dirt and pulling, pulling those big red eyes out of the muck, pulling, pulling those wings from the ground and flapping them clean. And it does not fly away. It waits for me.