April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
– From The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
If you were to sit on the small limestone hill in back of my childhood home on an April morn you might see spring unfolding on a small scale across the landscape below. You would pan across green hay meadows and overgrazed cow pastures studded with patches of prickly pear and bull nettle. An abandoned cornfield is covered in a jungle of Johnson grass, its thick shaggy growth of winter-killed canes are gray and tall as a man. A barefoot boy in jeans emerges from them at full speed and crosses the dam of a dirt stock tank. A blue heron flies up and for a moment hangs before him; the perfect image of a crucifixion. The boy is only momentarily aware of the pond filled with paint-thick red clay water alive with fairy shrimp, tadpoles and musky smelling mud turtles. The frogs fire volleys of croaks as he runs by. He himself is unquiet. His blood races. He has to get somewhere. He is drunk on spring. Likity-split down the deer trail across the ravine by the piss elm tree his brother Jim had cut years ago with an axe, and left lying against its neighbor where it grafted itself and flourished. He feels feverish and excited. The morning light has warmed a thicket of wild plum enclosed in a milky cloud of bloom, and a soul-stealing fragrance like fresh hominy pours over him. His heart stops, he gasps for air and buries his face in a cluster of blossoms, almost inhaling a buzzing honeybee. Unbidden, the image of the girl who sat in front of him in English class comes to him. Billows of honey colored hair tumble and curl and catch the sunlight and explode in an evocative scent. He stumbles on. Eventually he falls exhausted beneath the cottonwood tree in the center of Blanton’s field and wonders what is wrong with him as he takes a ragged breath.
We lived in an old stone schoolhouse. Winters there were monochromatic. There were windows only on the eastern wall and the building was poorly lit with a few bare bulbs in the high ceiling. It had dark corners with shadows you could hide a grizzly in. The family’s daytime lives were spent within a small arc of the front of the fireplace in the living room and a smaller one near the kitchen cook stove. No window light reached the corner of the kitchen where the wood cook stove squatted in all its sea foam green porcelain elegance. The little illumination shed from the light in the ceiling was absorbed by the black cast iron top, and at times my mother almost cooked in the dark. Our diet was lacking in fresh fruits and vegetables during the high plains winters. We ate “arsh” (Irish) potatoes supplemented with Mama’s canned vegetables. We had no fresh fruits. Apples and oranges I only recall at Christmastime. When the weather warmed I craved fresh vegetables. I watched for wild greens like lambs quarters and poke greens and I was delighted to learn that radishes only took three weeks to mature.
I began early searching for the first harbingers of spring. I lay on my belly in the damp litter of dead weeds and grass to find them. Viola bicolor, miniature violets in purple and yellow etched with tiny lines and Houstonia-simple petaled pinwheels of the purest blue only half an inch tall. When the magenta of redbud appeared among the uniform gray brush strokes of dogwood and blackjack scrub along the creeks and hills it was unprecedented. The color was like the pink of a pretty girl’s lips; they sliced right through me and prepared me for the return of the whippoorwill’s song on the warm nights.
School, which was always unpleasant, became torture during the mildness of April. From the bullying of psychopaths in training and indifferent droning teachers, to a rural school bus route that sometimes ran 50 miles in the morning and 50 miles again in the afternoon, I was oppressed—perpetually nauseated as the yellow bus rolled and lurched across the prairie through the big ranches following red clay roads along pasture fence lines and rumbling across cattle guards. I studied the passing sameness for anything of interest to distract me. In the corner of the road by Kimbro’s calf pasture where a shed had weathered into the ground a stubby peach tree lifted crooked black branches toward the sky. Before any leaves appeared it erupted in a handful of coral blossoms that moved me and made me ineffably sad. I craned my neck to see it long after the bus passed. It became a landmark.
In science class I could not bear to sit and study the parts of the tooth. Through the window I watched the man with the septic truck feeding a giant hose into the hole in the ground. I begged the teacher to let me go outside and interview him. She agreed, if I would give an oral report to the class the next day. I filled my lungs full of the buzzing air, smells of wet dirt, rotting wood, sewage, sunshine and sweat. The Chinese elm trees were green as the grass in Easter baskets. The septic man told me all the strange things he’d found stuck in toilets. I took notes.
I couldn’t name my seasonal affliction when I was a kid. It was confusing. The experience of beauty was equal parts pleasure and anguish. I throbbed right along with the rising sap in the trees. I still don’t know what to call it. I breathe deep. God I’m glad it’s spring.
Tony Norris is a working musician, storyteller and folklorist with a writing habit. He’s called Flagstaff home for 30-plus years. Visit his website at www.tonynorris.com.
