They are there in an old photograph,
a man,
a woman.
His face is thin and tense.
She holds the baby, touches nothing else.
Boredom settles on them like a blanket.
They stare out at the photographer and at nothing.
Once she wore her sack dress.
We kids thought it looked funny on her.
Next morning they showed us the dances they'd done,
two-step and box-step,
and laughed at our cuteness,
Billy and I,
like two parallel models of them.
She wore it lightly then
that sack dress.
He never talked
beyond funny stories
or the necessary details of life.
He'd go out after work, pumping gas,
fixing cars,
to drink beer with his buddies.
She'd accuse him of going with other women.
She wanted him to come home.
He said, "Betty, I don't like being told I have to do anything."
They'd fight over money
and sometimes lock their fingers together
like horned animals
testing who could dominate
push the other back against the wall.
She'd call, "Billy, Billy, come help me."
He'd run to protect her with his small fists
while I stood by useless.
He said, "I wished you'd told me you were gonna leave,
I'd never have bought that freezer on time."
Sundays he took us to movies,
Kentucky fried chicken with sweet honey biscuits for dinner.
The Sunday before we left for Missouri he was crying in
the car waiting for A&W rootbeer,
"
I never thought she'd take you kids away from me."
She hadn't known how to drive when they married,
He made fun of her working, but he, the service station man,
thought everyone should learn to drive,
and he taught her.
So she packed up that U-haul trailer,
She and a neighbor keeping at it 'til late,
while we and the neighbors kids
played hide and seek as the darkness settled.
Next morning she drove away with it and us.
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