Elegy on Pearl Mountain, Pt. 8
Part Eight of “Elegy on Pearl Mountain,” a series of prose and poetry by Kevin Chesser, featuring tintype photography by Chris Parsons.
Read Pt. 7 of Elegy on Pearl Mountain HERE
I.
The days pass without names. The New Me moves in. We fill our hours with a lot of boxing and stealing from the neighbors’ cars. One night, we let a family of raccoons into the house, and leave for three days. When we get back, the raccoons are gone and the house is destroyed. We play fun pranks, like putting broken glass under each others’ pillows. I catch a fish out of the smelly creek behind the house, and cook it in wine and butter and herbs. It makes us extremely sick. The New Me likes to get up every day at noon and run out into the street and wave a gun around. What’s better yet, we’ve befriended every single one of the neighborhood cats and dogs. The porch is lined with kibble and cuts of raw meat. We get lots of sleep. We watch TV and make up nonsense songs. We stare at the peeling walls until we wet ourselves.
The raw meat of sleep,
equally amenable
to all things living.
In dreams, sing songs with raccoons
or have face chewed by raccoons.
II.
Because we’re so good at robbing people and stealing food, and because we siphon electricity from a neighbor’s house, and because we’re not afraid to drink straight from the creek, and because the landlord is terrified of us, I don’t have to work anymore. I almost forget about the undrilling plant entirely until the foreman shows up at the house. Apparently, Tim Qualm, Skylar Kerr, and Clay Charles have been in the wind for weeks, no one with any clue where they went. The plant is falling into chaos — contracts months overdue, machines broken, angry phone calls. “Not my problem,” I say, noticing that he’s taken the dog with no eyes for his pet. “Well I’ll admit, you don’t seem to have too many problems. Who’s that ugly feller back there?” he says. The New Me swings into a rage, but knocks himself out running headfirst into the doorjamb. Then the foreman tells me that before Tim and Skylar and Clay disappeared, he heard them talking about The North Star.
Cold lips of the land-
lord taste awfully like a
snail. I shall tell the
siphons! Your theory’s confirmed,
now where’s my fucking money?
III.
That night, I dream of Pearl Mountain. It’s cleaned up, mostly, save for a few stray fires, dogs, and shit heaps. Now there are a lot of faux-rustic vacation cottages that would fool a person but the lawns are brown and overgrown. There’s a community pool, a coffee shop, and a cemetery, all on one lot. The place is scarcely inhabited. A couple of bored baristas slumped on the curb smoking, the occasional set of eyes peering through the occasional set of blinds. The only thing that couldn’t be done away with is the Heap of North Star, burning bright and clear even in the middle of the day. I orient myself in its direction and start walking, slowly, savoring Pearl Mountain’s rancid acres. When I reach the aluminum flats that mark the edge of town, I’m stopped by someone who looks a lot like Old Best Friend, if the years had kept up with him. He takes something out of his pocket and places it in my hand. Just as my mind is about to seize on what I’m looking at, a peal of thunder and the first taste of rain, like onions and motor oil.
This dog and onion
bonfire seems to be beyond
going out. Slumped I
am at the feet of its strange fumes,
faux-rustic and so wrong.
Read Pt. 9 of Elegy on Pearl Mountain HERE
Kevin Chesser is a writer and musician whose poems have appeared in Hobart, Talking Book, Still: The Journal, Rabid Oak, Empty House Press, and elsewhere. He lives in West Virginia.
Chris Parsons is a native of South Carolina, now living in Nashville creating artwork as a portrait and still life photographer.
