Mary Ruefle
Three stories
love story
The one winter I spent by water I would walk out on the ice every evening at dusk after the ice fishermen had abandoned their shanty. I would peer into the window of stapled plastic and watch the stick of frozen butter as it lay there on a plywood counter. I don't know what the butter was for. I knew they built fires on the ice for warmth and drank out of bottles for warmth, but butter in the shanty? I never saw them actually cook, usually they would take the fish home, home not being the shanty, the shanty being a temporary winter dwelling where they could store their gear and stuff. The sun would set. throwing a glare on the ice, and sometimes I saw through the window that it cast a glare on that stick of butter. I went back every day to check on the butter. It was never unwrapped, it was never cut. And then spring came, overnight the shanty sank on a doily of slush and the butter went with it. I never asked, I never found out, but as the days grew warmer, warm enough to melt butter over an afternoon, I often thought to myself that it was the perfect love story, and I was glad the butter had disappeared overnight and not stuck around to melt.
The Stagehand
My job is to remove the shoes from the stage floor at the end of the first act, those belonging to the Countess, sweet low-heeled slippers of rose-colored satin with a square marcasite buckle. And again at the end of the third act, only this time there are three pairs, those of the dead Countess and her lover, and those of the witless Count who has tried to save his wife's life. I remove the shoes at the end so none of the actors will trip over them when they take their curtain call, which is when I stand in the wings and think if it weren’t for me there would be a disaster.
The TRAnslator
Two insects exchanged information in the middle of the night. Perhaps they were birds, I can't say, more likely frogs, but the shrilling carried far, I woke in my snuggery and did not turn on the bed-candle, four times the information was relayed and came back verbatim, or maybe countered with questions, did I hear you correctly, are you absolutely certain, could you repeat it? And then they quit. A phone call after midnight means accident or death (I have received both) and though I know it may have been a creaturely announcement of love and ripeness (those too) it sounded like dire info to my ear. I lay there, confused. Was it something that I too would like to know or needed unbeknownst to know, something that would infect me personally, if only I knew? What was the world saying, out there in the night? To pay such close attention, to hear with every fiber of my being, and remain completely ignorant.
Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. Her recent volumes, all from Wave Books, include Dunce, My Private Property, and Madness, Rack, and Honey, the latter a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She is the poet laureate of the state of Vermont.