Yellow

At the south end of town, a tall arched bridge crossed a deep ravine with a stream below. The brick road veered sharply 'round and down the steep incline. At the foot of the hill we passed a shady nook where, according to Hitch, exiles had built underground baths. They were long abandoned. A grove of lemon trees shaded the spot. Buttercups sprouted between cracks in the stones. Honeysuckles clung to the lemon trees. Seven tunnels stood in tangent. Yellow lichen crusted the damp stones of their interiors. Water bubbled from cracks in the walls. It soaked the spongy moss and puddled in the dank. No one used the baths any more. They lay empty after the war.

"On November 9, 1939
In the shade of the lemon trees
A child was murdered,"
Hitch sang in her rich contralto.
"The thieving murderer
Snatched her nose."
(Torn from her tender face
With a rusty pair of pliers.)

The pliers were recovered in a nearby stream. The girl had gone to buy tomatoes, a bad idea, but never reached the market. They searched for days. In consideration for her grieving parents, the inspector didn't mention what happened to her nose. No one heard the screams. A kid found her panties floating in the stream, further evidence snagged on a branch of rosemary.

A woman who lived several doors away from the girl's house refused to give her name, but said early the next morning as a radiant sun rose above the distant hills at the far side of the valley, "It's like panic in the building. You don't know what's going on. Everybody is afraid to go out."

Red

"We're gonna day it all in a do?" Gail trilled, jumping back and fourth from a low B to a middle A, as she bounced into the car. Leafless trees appeared, broken masts on the horizon. Their dead branches supported enormous nests intricately woven with weathered twigs and faded strips of cloth. Ospreys stood motionless on shaggy lofts like porcelain statues. Their belly feathers fluttered. The earth turned sienna then black. Hills folded over to vermilion nooks. Thistles flapped by the road like pom-poms in a silent cheer. Palms sheltered four fluted pillars. A couple of old statues lay crumbled in dirt next to a stripped mattress and rotting cherries. Spotted amber beetles clung to a neatly trimmed hedge, as azure crickets posed. A cat slinked through the underbrush.

Hitch lifted the mattress. Five pale fingers twitched in the underlying soil like the spindly air roots of a different orchid. Their rancid flesh stank. Salamanders slithered to find darkness. Worms withdrew from the light. Spiders crawled left and right. A centipede curled into a ball. A mouse sat up on its haunches. It blinked an eye then froze. The cat spotted prey and pounced crying,

"Mao,
 Mao,
   Mao."

The putrid face lay partly submerged. It was an angular face with an arched eyebrow. An ear was missing. Gail trembled. In her mind there were several unanswered questions:

"Ear in the hit afternin, With a kill evening briz,
Who sicked kick, or
Licked pissy hir?
Did they
Strip niked in the rifus,
And fick
In
Flickering pitches of sinlot.
In Niples by the bay,
I wiked where cripples leaned against thick trinks
and rubbed their bidies tigither and tried, and
gripped groins with fingers and gripped trees.
Nit ear, nit ear."

A tool normally used for snipping lay nearby.
Gail trilled:

"I thit he wa uh
Red Sqa, pre
Served,
And not ear ritting."

A Chorus of Fireflies

Late night bullfrogs croaked full force. No one had booked a hotel. We looked to the stars, but ominous clouds crowded the sky,

And it seemed like rain for ever and ever.

We stumbled on a shed the size of an outhouse with a gothic opening at eye level which was covered with a screen. Behind the screen hung a curtain. A refreshment stand, improvised with a barrel, stood off to one side. We bought a couple sodas and asked directions. The urchin who sold us the drinks peddled us tickets to the evening's performance,

And it seemed like rain for ever and ever.

A man and a woman on either side of the shed held jars filled with fireflies. They released the insects gradually. A gramophone provided background music, and the two ventriloquists sang vocals. The kid who sold cokes played a snare. The bugs spent most of their time in the air. The performance opened with a comedian that circled and blinked a few inches above the floor while one of the ventriloquists threw an existential joke, "Knock, Knock"-"Who's there?"

And it seemed like rain for ever and ever.

For a strip-tease, microscopic bits of meticulously sewn clothing dropped on the stage, a couple of gloves, and a garter the size of a curled eyelash. This garter was so small you could only spot it by using one of the magnifying glasses which hung on strings on either side of the curtain. As a finale, a miniature pipe organ rose from a trap door in the floor of the platform. They rigged it with tiny water spouts that rose and fell with the volume of the music,

And it seemed like rain for ever and ever.

They released a dozen or so scantily clad bugs glued to micro-umbrellas singing:

"Welcome and hail to thee!
Patron, to-day.
We're flying and humming,
We hear and obey."

With a change of pace, one ventriloquist stomped his foot on the stool bumping the stage. The screen fell off. The ventriloquists stood aghast as they saw their entire troop fly away blinking a Sagittarian flight through the night sky. Undaunted they threw their voices heavenward, following the insects aloft:

"It's time to make hay
What can we say?
We're taking our walkin' canes
To the fast lane
We're putting on our high hats
And our white spats,

Cause we got lightning,
Lightening, lightening
Where we..."

Blue

Crunchy snow covered the road aside a frozen stream. Smoke whiffed from a wooden hovel. Burning peat flavored the crisp night air. Hooves had compacted the snow into half round sheaves of ice. High round rolls of hay flanked the door. A blazing fire warmed black manure piled high on the floor. Two foals snuggled. Luminescent horizon light silhouetted three gigantic forms around back. The beasts grunted, exhaled, and stared at us. They nudged our shoulders with their noses and fogged our glasses with their breath. There were two black stallions, one a hand taller than the other. We didn't see the massive gray mare at first. Wanton gray spots speckled her haunches like camouflage in the snowy scene. A thick mane cascaded over the side of her neck and great swathes of hair covered her feet. Light fluffs of snow fell. A halo in the still dark gray sky surrounded the moon. Beyond a gutter, metallic fragments lay scattered in the snow. Chrome bumpers and grills glittered. An old Chevy pulled up the path, fan-tailing side to side. The car stopped near the horses and parked long enough for the rear windows to steam. The tail fins glistened. Thick white smoke billowed from the exhaust. The mist tumbled over itself in the cold air folding into the vapor of the horse's heavy breath. The head lights illuminated the dump like a stage. Engravings embellished the scattered metal junk. Twisted bumpers and mail, door handles, helmets, odometers, breastplates, gas caps, tonlets, rear view mirrors, shields, alettes, hubcaps, jambeis, and corselets lay frozen in the snow. Occasionally a swatch of velvet popped stiff above the surface near whisky and scattered petals.

What evidence now? A Phillips-head screwdriver? A stained patch of snow?

A swath of hair twisted through metal and brambles. We stood around the tangle. Gail broke the silence; her voice was hollow in the thin air. She began low and soft then gradually rose but did not peak. The syllables fluttered, fell, rose again and died. Leo lin- gered on a high note. Then his voice faltered and died. I tried to hum. My valves were frozen. My horn was dumb. The face in the virgin snow was dreamy. The glassy eyes froze open, the mouth smiled melancholy. Two punctures like dimples on either side of the lips marked where her jaw was screwed. Suddenly I recalled a girl one summer sunning herself on the beach flipping through pages. The Chevy turned around and shimmied down the slippery lane obliterating the hoof prints of the hot breathed horses.