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Big Eyes
by JB Mulligan The cows had eyes like Dan's sister when he scared her, as wide as Betty's mouth when he jumped out from behind a door or a dresser and yelled, “Boo.” Dan would laugh, and sometimes she would laugh, and sometimes she would cry, and their mother would make Dan go get a stick from the Beating Bush in the front yard. The cows wandered down the road from the farm to the one of the slaughterhouses in Brooklyn, lowing contentedly from time to time – or they seemed content to him – so big and scary until you realized how placid they were. He and one other boy would herd them to the pen before the big brown building, ten cents each cow per day, and Dan's mother let him keep one dime each week, and Dan was sure that the money would build up over time and he would be able to spend his adult years fishing. His adult years had other plans. These included some jobs that were honest, and some time spent in France, during which Betty's mouth opened one wide last time under the Atlantic water, and Dan's father, distant and cold as he was, stopped a little while after that, and Dan's Mom said he had never been the same after Betty died. As near as Dan could tell, the day Betty drowned might have been the same day that, over in France, Dan looked into Richie Black's wide eyes as they looked around for salvation, and then went suddenly blank. Dan shot an enemy soldier later that day and he always believed, in his heart, that the soldier he killed was the one who killed his friend. It didn't have to be that way, and wasn't even all that likely to be, but Dan was sure, and wished that he had seen the man's eyes go wide and search and go out like a candle. Dan came home and went to work as if things were normal. Nothing was normal while Over There shook Dan awake with the sweats at night and made dawn seem as far away as home. But maybe that was normal. Dan joined the army of the unemployed, and begged and stole and did jobs that were not so honest, and one day a falling man missed Dan by about five feet when he hit the sidewalk, and everyone asked for Jesus except for the fallen man, whose wide eyes asked for nothing. Dan blinked and said he was OK and went to a possible job. One day when he was old, wife passed, kids moved away – good kids, but with lives of their own that smiled up bright-eyed from photographs in the mail – Dan walked to where (he thought) the slaughterhouses had been, and there were stores and houses, and he grinned trying to figure out how much had changed. He got careless and stepped out into the street, and a taxi ran over his foot, and the cab screeched to a halt, and the cabbie stuck his head out the window to cuss Dan out, then drove away. A young boy, wide eyed and trembling, asked Dan if he was all right and Dan nodded, not quite sure how he would sound out loud. The young man walked with him for a minute or two and seemed satisfied that Dan was in fact OK, and wandered off, and Dan wandered home, chuckling contentedly from time to time. His foot hurt a bit, but that was easy. The world seemed a little more visible and bright for a while. |
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