How the People Live

James Tate

Every five minutes or so, a police car drove by telling
us not to go out through its bullhorn. I said to Amelia,
“I’m dying to know what’s out there.” She said, “That’s why
they’re doing this, don’t you think?” “It looks like it’s
a beautiful day outside. I don’t see any evil lurking out
there. Everything’s in bloom, blue skies, lovely, white clouds,”
I said. “That’s when they attack,” she said. “Who?” I said.
“How the hell should I know?” she said. “Some kind of phantoms,
known only to the police, seen only by the police.” “Well,
that’s ridiculous. Why should I believe them? Now, if they’d
tell us that there was a mountain lion loose in the neighborhood,
that would be something I could understand and respect,” I said.
“I’m going to walk to town.” Amelia didn’t try to stop me.
“I’ll expect you home by dinner” was all she said. Every time
I heard a police car coming, I hid behind a tree or a bush. No
one else was out driving or walking or working in their yards.
It made me sad to think I lived in a town with a bunch of cowards.
The birds were singing, though, and this got me to whistling
a happy tune. The ducking and hiding got to be a game I didn’t
mind. I assumed I would be punished if caught, but the police
weren’t monsters. They weren’t going to cut off my little finger
or anything like that. They weren’t going to blind me. They
were just afraid of things I couldn’t see. I was crossing the
bridge over the little creek when I heard another squad car
coming. There was no place to hide, so I instinctively jumped over
the rail into the water. The water’s not very deep, and I twisted
my ankle on some rocks. I crouched in the cold water until the
car had passed. My ankle hurt like hell. I curled up on the
bank of the creek under the bridge and felt like crying. I
could hear another squad car coming, blaring its fearful message.
I was afraid of what I might do next. I tried to wash the mud
from my face. I dragged myself from under the bridge and looked
up and down the road. I pulled myself up the embankment, trying
not to think about the shooting pain. Suddenly the street looked
like a place where anything might happen, and I had the power
to make it happen. I started to panic, but I didn’t know which way
to run. I felt like an escaped prisoner with no memory of home
and only a murderous instinct to survive. They were closing
in on me. I could hear the dogs. I dove under a spirea bush in
somebody’s front lawn. “It’s all clear now. You can come out,”
the car said. A few moments later, the owner of the house opened
his front door to let his dog out. The dog came straight over
to me and started sniffing. The owner walked over and looked
at me. “What the hell are you doing there?” he said. “The phantom
bit me on the ankle,” I said. “It’s nothing. I’ll be all right.”
“What’d it look like?” he said. “That’s the thing about a phantom;
you can’t see it. It doesn’t look like anything. You’re walking
along. It’s a beautiful day, then, bam! it’s got you,” I said.
“You didn’t listen to the police, did you?” he said. “How do you
know it hasn’t already got them?” I said. He stared at me. “You’re
on my property, you know?” he said. “I’ll be leaving,” I said.
“Beautiful day,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for a better one,”
I said.

James Tate (1943–2015) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 8. His first collection of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967), was selected by Dudley Fitts for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, making him one of the youngest poets to receive the honor. Tate published prolifically over the next two decades, including The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970); Hints to Pilgrims (1971); Absences (1972); Viper Jazz (1976); Constant Defender (1983); Distance from Loved Ones (1990); and Selected Poems (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award. More recently, he has published several collections of poems: The Ghost Soldiers (Ecco Press, 2008); Return to the City of White Donkeys (2004); Memoir of the Hawk (2001); Shroud of the Gnome (1997); and Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1994), which won the National Book Award. Tate has also published various works of prose, including a short-story collection Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (Wave Books, 2001), a collection of critical prose, The Route as Briefed (University of Michigan Press, 1999), and a collaborative novel (with poet Bill Knott), Lucky Darryl (Release Press, 1977). He also served as editor of The Best American Poetry 1997. Tate’s honors include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, a 1995 Tanning Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, he was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Emerson College, and for fifty years at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

“How the People Live” appears in our Autumn 2003 issue.