We didn’t see it coming for Fathead.
But when it came, we were prepared
to be gentle, to show the sympathy
required of us when this thing happened.
You never know when it will come to you
or to someone you know. Plenty people
like that. They ghost about in our yards,
allowed under cellars, never inside
the house, called up to the veranda’s edge
for something to eat or drink, small kindness
we give, not entirely without reproach
because they are beyond reproach, darkened
by a phantom haze, shifting through cinder, thorn,
and zinc, vanishing for the day or weeks,
others for years like Robinson Crusoe,
returning with a rusty, seraphic look.
Our small kindness is our mercy,
and that not easy, not easy at all,
when workhouse and almshouse empty and broke
worse than most of us. Still, we give mercy.
So when Fathead bulb finally blew,
our kindness was ready, and our mercy.
But Fathead? The shopkeeper? That surprised
us, for a shopkeeper was somebody,
a someone, top of top, top shelf you could
say if that didn’t sound a bit cruel
since we are talking about Fathead, who gives
out trust you’d think he was selling it.
Good man Fathead. Too good to scramble up.
What really this goes to show is that God,
if it is God, doesn’t discriminate.
“Fathead,” says God, “it is now your turn to crack.”
Couldn’t we have seen when the signs started,
the first chirp? Signs aren’t always clear,
or signs to begin with, and by the time
they become wonders of someone losing
it, that person gone. The Bible did warn,
“A wicked and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign; and there shall no
sign be given unto it,” and, yes, far
more adulterous than wicked here, wicked—
small wicked, mind you, like our mercy—
scatter all bout, like those who say money
flew up in Fathead’s head, that the first sign
he started to slip he tapped his head side
with two fingers and looked vacant-like down
on the counter for coins, invisible
coins, counting them under his breath. True, he
only speaks numbers now, figures for words,
mouth dribbling like a newborn in the shade
of the almond tree with the stray mongrels.
So what? How coins flitted in his mind mad
the same man who gave trust left, right, and center?
You ever hear such malice? But alright,
them see that silver lust taking Fathead
to a dark place and no one said nothing
to Sister Will, his mother, old, bent, now
back at the counter beneath the cardboard
sign TRUST DEAD which Fathead had taken down
long ago, so long we didn’t remember it—
a shock and shame to see—but there it is,
in coal letters, the writing on the wall,
the implacable sign that we deserve,
at least those who said coins clotted Fathead’s
brains. To be fair, when he finally snapped,
we all noticed. You didn’t need Bible
and key or psychiatrist to see that
Fathead was no longer Fathead that morning.
That man was gone. Mouth opened, tongue missing,
propped on the counter was a goat’s head
which Fathead, mouth opened as wide, cradled
with one arm, the other stretched toward us
with his usual indiscriminate trust,
the goat’s snow-white tongue, Fathead’s last offer
before Sister Will spat at us to leave
and her son broke into a mass of sums.