Inland

He's a pig when it comes to rum, he hears her say, to a crowd. He flees, drunk on the damn rum, trips, watches her from a floundering spot on the lawn.

The stars are out. That is, off. Navigation has ceased.

She's steady on the patio, haloed by party-light. Smiling, she makes as if to slap a guy who makes as if to cringe, smiling. On the lawn he cringes truly, an island of pain in a green sea. He burps a loud bellow of rum and people turn to the noise, the one-man vaudeville honk-horn act there on the grass.

He starts to sing, Farewell to Nova Scotia the seabound coast, to draw her to him, draw her out of that light. It was their song once, when they did leave that coast, when they left and came in to this more toss'd world. He needs her now. But he has sunk low, to earth, and he has burped, and she will not come.

They have suffered this evening before. Yet he feels her receding tonight, drifting out of reach. He knows she questions his legitimacy as a rum-comic. He wishes he were Malcolm Lowry, or Ondaatje's father perhaps, decanting vanilla extract into a gold-rimmed snifter with the family's blessings. To be blessed is to be freed from the nets of judgement.

Now a lurching sailor's-run for the bushes. His moans in the fog. No one aids. This wet shirt front he wants to explain is not rum, not vomit, not yet. In the corners of their eyes he sees his face reflected, his storming bad cheer.

His toe hooks a tomato cage and he is bellydown in the garden, recognizing what are beet stems. Tropically purple an inch from his face. Hands confirm this vegetable by molesting a small breast of beet mounding out of soil. He growls a pirate's joke into the dirt about flowerin' knockers that stem and leaf. What sort of bra. . .? What foreplay should. . .? Har.

He sees he is nearly asleep. He relaxes, warms the dirt from above, a broad, spreading love. He senses the rising worms.

How, how do worms stay wet?

All that is necessary, is.

But is all that is, necessary?

Garden spirits, like mists on his hot face, whisper: with right humour. You will be safe.