King of Carrots
As my father and his friends drilled
with their wildcat rig at the first line
of arid Sierra Nevada foothills my
young brothers and I saw a boy our
age by a great overturned silver tank
that winked in the sun near a peeling
house with wrinkled green shingles,
asphalt at their curled edges, a couple
rooms with lean-to screen porch. We
hiked into waist-high golden oats and
sharp foxtails until we found a door
cut in the dented metal. In the cooler
dark the child sat on the dirt strewn
with hundreds of orange carrots still
with feathery leaves. “Why do you
pull them up?” I asked. “You should
save them to eat.” I don’t remember
what he answered. Maybe they were
his toys or treasure, his only friends,
each yanked like a spirit from its bed
and carried to his round silent house.
He was prince of carrots, general of
an army, their god, powerful and rich
enough to let them waste. We didn’t
eat any but sat without names inside
a realm of dying vegetables, nothing
to say. We said goodbye and returned
down the hill and in my father’s truck
waited in the heat, watching the derrick,
its casing sinking into the ground, our
father’s and the others’ arms stained with
yellow drilling mud. No oil gushed and
we drove home from the solitary king
in the castle and his fallen subjects like
strange fingers his mother let him gather
and rule in doomed rings all around him.
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