Jebby Eldon I found Jebby Eldon drowning and fished him out crazy like sand scuffed into wood. A year later he plays music at Midkiff’s Bar, plays jazz that scrambles pale smoke into some wild, clanky riffs. Sometimes he helps me load the barge or takes his old mutt hound hunting grouse on his daddy’s farm, where birds fly out like pine needles in a devil breeze, and blue lizards rustle across a rock bluff like fossils chiseled from midair. Jebby shoots nothing, just laughs along the lake fence where he should be dead. He tells me a young albino owl has pulled its wings from a pine knot, has fringed all its howling into another man’s life. Jebby says I shoulda left him water-logged. The Capehill Barge I float some cars to the island. Jebby says they’ll be the last ridden across Capehill’s flat crater pig path, moonlight frizzing into snow and pumice. The barge stays cold tonight and its shaky steel has flowered against Old Moody’s Landing like a rusty package swapped for some stars and music. But Jebby sings his money and I sing some crablegs and brew, a sour breezy comfort with our haul, with all these trembled beach cabins paled for another night’s Christmas. The Prize Bull Hobey and Jebby raced one night, caught the slant of a roof, and flew their dirt bikes past Ruben Coyle’s prize bull. They yelped like fools haunted by the deepest, coldest mud sunk in a thaw. And the bull roughed at them like a tank, knocked Hobey against a fence post, bounced Jebby two flips against a cattle guard. I laughed three days after I patched them. Made their eyes look like one slow twitching burl-knot hating sunlight. They slumped to Betty’s house, and she laughed, too—said the air won’t breathe itself without some jokes, and here’s two fine ones, joined in their bruises. I hear the boys done raced again on Coyle’s land. I hear the bull has started goring shadows.
