WOOL BLANKETS AND THE OLD REVOLUTION

I had a few days before the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, so I relaxed and took a walk around my quarters.  The White House Master Gardener lived on the south lawn, about 100 feet from the pumphouse, in a wooden cabin.  It was tucked away under some spruce trees.  The trees wore giant hoop skirts of blue branches.  The cabin was under the skirts.  No one noticed the cabin because it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to peek at the underclothes of trees.

Inside the cabin were a cot and some wool blankets, and a desk with an oil lamp.  Above the desk was a single window that looked out at the big house across the lawn, and around the window were shelves where I could put my notebooks. The cabin had dirt floors, but they were very clean for being made of dirt.  There was a broom by the door for me to sweep when things got too dirty, though it would be awhile before I figured out when that was.

I was tired and cold, so I lay down on the cot and pulled the blankets around me.  The blankets smelled like the old revolution, like whiskers and whisky and dying of gangrene in April when the rhododendrons were blooming and everyone was falling in love, except those dying of gangrene.  I promised myself that I would air out the blankets to get rid of the smell of revolution.

I dreamt I was 50 feet tall, dancing outside with the spruce ladies at Andrew Jackson’s Inauguration Ball.  Their branches blurred when I spun them.  When the dance was over, I walked with them across the lawn, and listened to them tell of their childhood in small-town Pennsylvania.  We held hands and swung our legs over the cliffs of the Potomac.  At sunrise we made love and the ground was covered in pinecones.  The squirrels ran away with them and planted them all the way up into Oregon.  We watched them grow, and when they were teenagers, they asked us why we had never been properly married.

When I woke up, the revolution was over.  The men who died of gangrene were buried under apple trees, and the apple trees grew courageously and full of unrealized love.  The blankets smelled like cider, and the floor smelled like earth.