John the Posthumous Read Free

and which feigns death quite gracefully. The claws are dark—red, to be exact, or perhaps black—and the body oddly marked. The brown-headed cowbird, incidentally, found in the New World, often in barn fires, is akin, given its most notable particulars, to the Old World cuckoo. Cucking, however, as in cucking stool —set at the culprit’s door or lost at the bottom of a pond—derives from a different root entirely, I was surprised to find, implying, among other things, the outlines of clouds, a house pulled down, and four forms in mourning.
    A gentleman carries his manners into every room, does he not?
    The horns are white, at least in Colonial renderings, the preferred versions of these, such as the portraits displayed at a pillory or at a gallows, or the drawings nailed to a soldier’s hands. The branding iron is of little interest here, whatever the letter—the cheek more likely than the neck, under most circumstances, and the neck more likely than the chest. The phrases, explained by location—Alton, Batten, Caul, and so on—date from the sixteenth century, perhaps a bit earlier, and—if I have this correctly—concern the design of bedposts and the placement of stakes. Or, in some commentaries, a blind horse in a barnyard—save for those editions in which the horse is a dog and the barnyard a forest. Either way, horn is akin to hart , as in stag —this offers the antlers, if nothing else—and accounts, of course, for hornet.
    There are drawings of the shoreline.
    She creased the first sheet, as you can see—once, and then again, lengthwise, the corner torn away. And now the inlet strangles a cat? Probably not. But remove the locust trees and you have a pleasant memory.
    Wrecks are less common downriver, or upstream, or in the creek in the next town.
    My, my—the rowboats and the hillside.
    Writ of ravishment suggests an error of sorts, given the nature of the occasion, while simple adultery , in American case law, will often accompany—among other ceremonial terms for the husband— man of blood and, in turn, ghost at the feast. The evidence usually includes several cheerful garments—here is the fearnaught, for instance, hanging in the attic—in addition to the children’s things. Consider Burrows versus Burrows, 1878, Pennsylvania—despite the drawn curtains. Or Trumbull versus Trumbull, 1881, Connecticut—most notable for an accident on a balcony. Or Stark versus Cartwright, 1897, Maryland—in which a valise is stolen, and then mislaid, and later found in a lake. The table-setting that evening, left to right, right to left—which is to say, the view of the suitor from the road—is small consolation, I know.
    The garden calendar calls for jackroot, a plant of the beggar-ticks variety.
    Bestiaries, especially Spanish versions—the miniatures in particular, circa fifteenth century—depict the horns quite modestly. Spikes give way to branches, though these may be mistaken for antlers or hands, after the fashion of other Christian depictions—in which, furthermore, a crucifix appears between the eyes. The pointed cross, also called the cross fitchee, takes a different form for demons and thieves, and, in Dutch versions, burns to the ground. English versions, finally, provide curious explanations of the glaive, the dudgeon, the halberd, the broadax—the wives die even as we speak—and then an apology for the paltry lawn.
    August arrives in due course, the color of a statue or a hatchet.
    But this does overstate it somewhat.
    A window, three doors, the roofline. They sat on the balcony in the morning. And now the water is apparent between the trees? From above, these suggest horseflesh.
    Blight, it turns out, is less likely than rot—as you will see in the fall.
    English canon law allows for mention of a hedgerow, or, in lieu of this, a narrative about a black house, beginning with two formal locutions in the corner room. The first concerns a murder— machination is considered the more