Terri Farish

Mt. Monadnock from the South (aerial), Fall
Photo credit: Deb Porter-Hayes (N.E.A.P.).

Terry Farish

Here is an excerpt from Terry Farish's new novel The Milk and Honey:

I remember when I first met Mari. My parents had dropped me off up here at Franconia. They might have been content to drop me off just over the New Hampshire line. I wandered around and somebody said, go the The Milk and Honey. It was September and still hot and I found the place on Main Street in this little town lined with white hotels and boarding houses, white with green trim with a look of elderly ladies with finely etched eye liner, a little crumbled. Here was an old building with wood floors and wooden tables and people in orange saris back in the kitchen with windows facing the woods. I didn't have any money so I just sat on the stoop and watched. A girl in jeans and a shirt with embroidered moons on
the sleeves came out to smoke a cigarette. She had thick, curly hair,
almost auburn, that she wore pinned up on her head in the heat. She looked healthy. She looked scrubbed. She had wide cheek bones, she was quite tall and broad shouldered. So healthy and smiling, naturally colored violet fleshy lips, a flower from the woods. It was discouraging to look at her. Her focus was debilitating to me. How could anyone seem so lush, that's it, she looked fertile and round, and content. Still, I didn't leave. I was attracted. I was in a druggy daze, looking at all her hair and hearing her laugh.
I was the abandoned cat, lurking. Soon this girl came out with a fried egg sandwich on thick slices of dense rye bread. She gave it to me and said I could do some work to pay for it. Nothing had ever tasted that good and to this day a fried egg sandwich makes me think of Mari and joy, and fear right in its face because a person can't stay this innocent and open to me, to strangers, to whatever happened to come upon her porch.

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LENNY'S SHED

From her Edwardian desk the lady gazes,
Fingers fretting down a velvet drape.
She looks across the lane to Lenny's shed.
Not Church End at all, Lenny's shed.

"Be the

Last to not have the Financial Times,"
Lenny says.
And since he lives to please he fetched a bloke
Who said,
"Dunno. To rip it down? Say fifty quid."

The next day pain shoots deep in Lenny's back.
He can't stand up. He can't lay down. Can't even
Pee. He sits, heels dug, mouth taut, pressing his
Groin. Ten days he sits and Lady A

Brings sponge cakes and, it being pretty June,
Strawberries.

"Aren't you good to me." His eyes
Are dull with pain and begging. "Don't you
Desert me."

                    He keeps his urine in a bucket
By his chair. Now he can't stop. He leaks.
He writhes and tries to plug it with a fist.
Lady M, in from the garden, lets spill out a gasp
        of fear
And turns her eyes from Lenny to his hearth stone and
Original oak beams. Lovely, she thinks.
Had Lenny's bloke been there he might have said,
"Dunno.    Eighty thousand?     Walls 'er thin."

The county sends an ambulance to take him,
But Lenny's shed still sags over Church End.
It blocks the view from Lady C's. its dog roses
Ramble excessively. its wood dangles.
Its floor droops. its chards of window panes call
Raucus chatterpies to pick and preen.
Church End ladies hold their breath as they walk past
And think of Lenny, maybe time to go to
Chippy, got a nice home there in Chippy
For the last old timer workman at Church End.

They wire Lenny, strap him, send him home to Church End
Decomposing like the dank floor of his shed.
Chatterpies flash, black and white, warding off Lenny with
Cold quiche in wedges and fistfulls of peonies.
His hand shakes so, his tea splatters their skirts.
Lenny, who lives to please, peers at his victims.
"What does we do now? " Lenny says.
Lady M backs to his door, drums the brass
With oval nails.
"Dunno. No more 'in eight stone
Are you, Lenny?"
They promise biscuits and meringues,
Flashing singly down the lane, steeling themselves
To the earthy stench of Lenny's shed.

Terry Farish

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