The Were-Raven, Part 2

In which the Lady Ermeline tells the Raven of her plight ... Part 1 was adapted from an ancient Danish ballad. Part 2 is my own invention of a back-story to the ballad's "Evil stepmother." Cormora is a were-cormorant, and her son Shagg is named after another common name for the cormorant.

by Brett Rutherford

2

Of the Coming of Cormora
& Of the Earl’s Bewitching

“Raven, I know not whence she came, but she it is
     who casts a dread shadow and brings us ill.
’T was but a month and a day, my father mourned
     that long and that long only, and then wed
the hideous crone that all must call “Milady.”
     He walked along, clothes rent, and bare of foot
from the moat to the high cliffs, to where the sea moans
     its own sad requiem on the skerry.
the one called “The Widower” up to its white neck
     in tide-blast, at low a solemn pillar
clad in sea-shells and limey foam. A second height
     he climbed that day, whose downward slope he knew
was to a soft stream spreading to a grassy mere,
     a place of peace and prayer his Lady
had cherished. But lo! his way was made barricade
     by a stalwart youth, dark-locked and smiling.

“Make way,” the Earl commanded, waving his hand
     which oft enough sufficed to make men kneel.

The boy moved not, and showed no sign of rising up
     from where he sat athwart the one footpath
the Earl was wont to climb. “Be thou defiant, deaf,
     or lookout for a band of villains, boy?”
“I hear ye well enough,” the young one answered then,
     and there be no thieves or bandits by me.”
The Earl remembered the elder lore and gazed
     anew at the dark, curled locks and fiery eye
of the stubborn lad. “The Old Gods come here no more,
     so be not Loki’s shade or Odin’s son.
If you be son of man and woman and here
     defy me without a cause, you may feel
how far my wrath can thrust you to the rocks below.

The black-haired languid boy, with neither shrug nor sigh,
     held eye to eye the Earl but raised one hand
as if it held a brazen shield. “Good Earl,
     I am but here to block the view of men
from where two beauteous ladies bathe in the lake,
     and it would be a grievous fault for thee
to come upon them in their naked frolicking.
     At this, indeed, the Earl heard voices twain,
Singing a round in time and eerie harmony.
     The words were not in any tongue he knew.
“Ha!” the Earl laughed. “And who are these naked ladies?”
“One, my mother, is lady-in-waiting
     to her sister, the Lady Cormora,
whose sorrowful life of exile she chaperones.” —
     “And you are called what, young black-eyed idler?”
“I am called Shagg. A homely name; I know not why.”
     “Your locks need shorn,” the Earl be-guessed, and laughed.

“Still I would pass through, “ the Earl demanded.
     There is no woman in my realm I may
not look at as nature made, if it is my wont.”
     “They would be much abashed to so be seen.”
“Tell me, thou Shagg, who art so dark and winsome made,
     if these two sisters do resemble thee?
Thou art so good to look upon that I would bed
     thee out of sport, were there no woman-kind
that bore the godly imprint of thy brow and eye.”
     The one named Shagg now laughed in his own turn

“If I be beauteous in thine eye, good Earl, then woe
     to you if you should view these ladies twain.
We three, they say, are from the same mint cast and stamped,
     while I am but a limping Faun, those two
would make the Greek forget his Helen, or rend
     both Roman lovers from their Egypt queen.”

“I will, I must, I shall regard them, then, the Earl
     declared, his grief for once forgotten.

Shagg stood, and to himself declared, “I have,
     alone, bewitched the Earl. Those singing
sirens will now complete the work.” And then, aloud:
     “Good Earl, if you will sheltered roof provide
to we three of good birth shipwrecked here, I’ll go
     before and announce your coming hither.”
The Earl, with wave of hand, gave his consent to this,
     and Shagg leaped up and bounding to the crest
of the hill, called down to those beyond: “Hail,
     Comora and mother mine, the Earl comes!” —

The Raven listened avidly. She saw him shake
     when she said the names “Cormora” and “Shagg.”
“You know them then?” she asked the harbinger of gloom.
     “I know their works, and thus have suffered much.” —
“What I have said so far was Father’s oft-told tale.
     Of how the two strange women dressed in haste,
and in strange robes that lured him more than naked flesh
     they offered him a drink that seemed nepenthe
from a silver goblet, and showed him other things
      in a cask they said had floated with them
with all the shattered scraps of a sunken galley.
     The rest was stuff of dreams, confused and dim.

“Of what transpired between my Father and these three,
     no one can say. But ere the day was done,
the Earl on foot led the Lady Cormora in
     to castle and chapel and a wedding
Aye, tremble for my lot, for they were wed that day
     and it was a day of horror for all.

“The Earl wed, to a shriveled crone in black tatters!
     His moon-eyed longing reflected in orbs
that swelled with ebony, his arms enveloping
     the skeletal ribs, the sagging bosom
of a Hell-spawn witch. Her servant crone hideous
     smelled of a morning-after battlefield
and spit teeth as she tore into the banqueting.
     Her wake was a trail of shed hair and finger nails.

“No one dared speak. More than one guest vomited.
     And with them, mincing and obsequious,
aflirt with Latin and Greek poetry, a lute
    in hand that made one shriek to hear it,
this hideous dwarf the bed-spawn of who knows which
     of the two crones, this pustulous beast Shagg!

“All day and every day the court was required
     to sing the praises of Lady Cormora.
Her sister rampaged through the treasury.
     Everything silk or silver went to them.
The Earl had banished three who tried to counsel him.
     He drank a strange wine and his eye grew dim.”

The Raven flapped angrily. “Sorrow enough
     for thy Father and all of thy sad court.
But what is thy sorrow in all this, Ermeline?

    She sighed. Head bowed, she told him all of it.

“I was betrothed, to one my equal, and a Prince.
     All was delayed by my mother’s passing.
He came at last to claim my hand, and was sent home
     with a grievous insult. He has gone East
on a crusade from which he may never return.
    My hand my Father would now give instead —
O God! I cannot say it!”

                                                  “I dare not think it
     but if the evil works as I know it —”

“O Raven, it is the worst! That I wed Shagg,
and call that foul mis-shapen imp my lord!

The Cold Wave, 1958

by Brett Rutherford

i

Slept on a church pew, walnut-hard
close enough to the still-hot radiator
she could roll up her thin cloth coat
to pillow her head. She licked cracked lips;
her numbed toes finally warmed. Three days
below zero and no sign of better to come!
She dreamt of a steam-hot kitchen, turkey
baking as in those long-gone Thanksgivings,
Charles and LeRoi anticipating
how much stuffing and sweet potatoes.

Lights red, lights blue, lights amber gold,
not from the Christmas tree past but from
the stained-glass morning sun-up
warming her face, oh! just an hour,
an hour longer rest; no one would know
how the unlocked Methodist Episcopal
had been her hotel for one night only.
She’d wash up in the bathroom below,
then come back up and give a nod to Jesus,
thank him out loud before she tip-toed
out to frozen ice-pack of sidewalk.

After what seemed only an eye-blink,
the windows were brighter, hotter,
and a hand poked at her shoulder
rudely. “Ma’am,” a man’s voice,
low like summer thunder on the hills’
other hollows, rumbled, “Ma’am, wake up."
Cora sat bolt upright, one hand tugged
down her long black skirt, the other across
her bosom, sliding away from where
the unwanted hand had prodded her.
The man’s form changed, dark silhouette
to sun-paint, his white skin mosaic’d red
and blue and gold. His name was Ernest.
She knew him, and sometimes she mended
the clothes his mother brought over,
piecework she did for many in town.

“Ma’am,” he told her, “You can’t be sleepin’ here.
It’s not allowed.” “Hmm,” she muttered, and took
the coat and slowly unrolled it. She rose
to bundle herself back up for the winter air.
“I don’t mean to be a bother. I —” She stopped
as Ernest suddenly backed away. He saw her face.
He didn’t know her at all. Of course we are the same
and all alike to them, she thought. And then he did
the thing with his nose, that testing-the-air twitch
to see if you smelled funny. No matter
that Charles always told her no lady
had ever smelled so nice as when
she morning’d him with her rosy air.

“I’ll get in trouble if the pastor sees.
You’d better go down and out the back, now.”
He pointed. He looked at his watch.
His teeth looked to chatter squirrel-like.
“I’ll be on my way, Mr. Ernest,”
she answered him. “Just let me give
a nod to the Lord, and I’ll not trouble you.”
Before he could protest she reached the altar-rail,
looked up in awe at how the morning light halo’d
the sad Christ, while red-glow dabbles
daubed his wounds and nails that put them
in hell-light. He may have fed five thousand,
but a house and a warm bed were something else.

ii

She had to walk slowly. Loucks Avenue
was piled with snow. One narrow way
had been shoveled and tramped to some
resemblance to a foot-path. Somewhere beneath
the hillocks of snow were peoples’ cars.
Her shoes slid this-way, that-way; she tumbled
sideways more than once until Broadway
where she could walk the roadway.
Few cars were out, and let them make way
for her instead of she for them. She was
seventy, and seventy should have at least
the right of way on a Sunday morning.

Nothing was warming up. Trees groaned
as they tried to gird themselves in
against the killing cold. Her thoughts
in the mile she’d have to walk, were on
the sun that would soon pain her eyes
as it slid its low path into noon-time.

That sun might warm her house a little,
she reasoned. And there was one last plan
to get her through the cold spell. But first
she had to tread the long walk of mill-fence —
nothing shoveled, no path except the road —
along the smokey factory that made long tubes
of shiny metal that filled the rail-cars, day
and night of pounding and grinding, lights
on and off at all hours. Coal, coke
and the working of the earth’s metals were all
that this town was about. Charles had worked,
until the black lung killed him, one mine
and then another and another, always
the parts of the mines the white men avoided.

Charlie and the Negro gang worked side
by side with a bunch of Hungarians, almost
as much despised for their one-off language,
their dark-eyed pride and intransigence.
Just to defy and baffle their bosses,
some of the Negro miners learned “Hunky talk,”
enough to joke and drink together, enough
to be able to fool the foreman and warn each other
when something too dangerous was asked for.
She went along. The Hunky women didn’t like it
when she learned a few words on her own
and Charlie and the Kovacs and she
would laugh and pass a bottle amongst them.
But that was before …

iii

Over the bridge and past Caruso’s, the store
that gave her credit and saved her more
times than she could count, then up the hill
to her own steep-stepped house she went.
In through the unlocked door, into the kitchen.
Lightless, heatless, her breath went icy
the moment she got inside. It was colder here,
for she had covered up the window so wind
would not get in, but neither did the sunlight.

No matter. She had her plan, the one
that came to her just as she awakened.
She only needed a little coal. The furnace, dead,
would never come to life until a truck came,
filling the chute below with welcome fuel.
But the coal stove would do, and huddled near
she could get through the day. Tomorrow’s mail
might bring the cash that LeRoi sent
each month from his pay in far-off Korea.

This was pride swallowed, her pride of home
and of needing nothing, ever, ’cept what folks paid
when she helped them out, or sewed, or watched
a baby that needed minding. Now she, Cora,
would beg from door to door. The neighbors
would hear her bowed voice a-tremble and ask
for just a bucket or two of coal. That’s all.

She lifted the bucket. She opened the door.
Five houses this side of Kingview Road, five
on the other side. That ought to do it.
They must all be home. Smoke rose black
from every chimney. It wasn’t as though
she was really begging: the loan of some coal
was all she would ask, and then she’d pay
it back when the delivery came. That’s all.

Knocked on one door. They yelled inside,
argued on who should answer her knocking.
Man’s voice bellowing, woman in turn.
Two lions in a cage would have been quieter.
She knocked again. Lace curtain parted.
Two eyes regarded her from shadowed parlor.
Then from behind those eyes, the man
called out, “Get off our steps! Go on!
Whatever you’re selling or preaching,
just go away!” She turned and sighed.

At the Polish neighbors’ home, despite
the puffing chimney, there was no answer.
They went to Mass early, she remembered.
They would be back, confession-clean,
but not for hours to come. She tried
another door, the old widower’s, but no,
he didn’t answer, either. The bottles piled
along the porch floor told a dead-drunk tale.
He might not rouse himself till after noon.

Her feet gone numb again, she knocked
at the Kovak house. Charlie had worked
with their father until the explosion
made Mrs. Kovak a widow, her sons
into angry orphans always in trouble.
Now Cora smiled as someone came running
for she had a way in mind to reach out
to the reclusive and suspicious widow.
It was the younger boy who answered.
He had just got out of bed; his hair
was awry in every direction; he rubbed
his eyes and tried to make out her face.
“What d’ye want,” he asked her angrily.
“Let me talk to your mother, please.”
He shrugged and walked away. She waited
and felt the rush of warm air from the open
doorway. The disheveled mother came.

She spoke almost no English, after all these years!
“Mit akarsz?” she demanded, closing the door
so only her head and shoulders stuck out. —
“I am your neighbor, Mrs. Kovac.” She paused,
then sorting her memory of the old days,
“Szomszéd. Neighbor.” — The woman started.
“Mit akarsz?” she asked again. What do you want? —
“I am Charlie’s wife. Charles felesége. Szomszéd.” —
The woman held out her hands in consternation.
Cora raised the empty bucket. “I need some coal.
Van … szén?” — Then Mrs. Kovac backed away.
The door got wide again. An older boy 
came up behind her. He had a stick.
He slapped it against his open palm. “Some coal.
Van … szén?” Had she forgotten everything? What word
would make her message clear except, “Please, please?”
There it was: the word. “Kérem. Van szén?”
The door slammed shut. At five more houses,
there was no one present, or everyone pretended
to be somewhere else, intent on television.

Cora sat in the kitchen. She wrapped herself
in a blanket, tied rags around her feet to keep
the frost at bay. She’d seen a movie once
where they broke up the furniture to feed a stove,
but she didn’t know how to do that. Two hands,
at seventy, frost-bitten and without a hammer,
what could she do? Would the neighbors talk?
Would they come around at last when they realized
she was there alone with no light or stove or coal?
Did the Methodist Episcopal Jesus care?

iv

I was ten years old when the police came,
and then an ambulance, and there she was
on a stretcher, the bundled-up frozen woman.
The door had blown open; the mailman found her.
Neighbors flowed out of their homes like wax
atop a fast-melting candle. All bundled up
against the cold wave, the word balloons
above all their comic-book faces repeated:
She froze to death. She froze to death.
          She froze to death.

One voice opined, “How could this happen here,
right in our midst, right on our street?”
“She was too proud to ask for help”
          someone else offered.
The new word-balloon passed among them.
It was taken up as an anthem, too proud, too proud
to ask for help, of course we would have helped.
Too proud, too proud to ask for help.

And then the little Hungarian boy called out,
“But there was a Negro lady asking for coal.
I saw her. A Negro lady asking —”

A hand reached out and covered his mouth.
The crowd went on murmuring
          until the ambulance was gone.
As the last door to the last house closed
the word-balloon lingered, one cloud
over all the chimneys, lettering
She froze to death. 
          She froze to death.
                    She froze —

 From the forthcoming book, The Pumpkined Heart: The Pennsylvania Poems.

Four Generations in the "Media"

I am the fourth generation of U.S. Rutherfords in my line, involved in news, books, print and other media.

"Rutherford News" was founded in Scottdale by my great-grandfather, then run by my grandfather Thomas H. Rutherford as a newsstand, newspaper distributing office, stationer, and bookstore. He was succeeded by my uncle.

Here's a news story from 1910 about how the Rutherfords celebrated New Years:

ANNUAL NEWSBOYS
DINNER GIVEN

T.H. Rutherford of Scottdale
Entertains All His
Paper Carriers

It Was the Eighth Affair

Sumptuous Spread at DeHaven's
Restaurant Last Night Enjoyed by
Thirty-Five of the Boys and a
"Flash-Light Picture Made.

Scottdale, Jan 5 (1910) – The eighth annual newsboys' dinner which Thomas H. Rutherford, the newsdealer and stationer, tendered to his faithful force of coming men of Scottdale who deliver the newspapers every day was another triumphal success. It occurred last evening and about 35 boys sat down to a feed that pleased them immensely and gave them a good time that they appreciated greatly, as anyone might know who saw them at the table. They were from the big boys down to the little tads who aren't much bigger than the papers they carry, particularly when the papers are the Sunday monsters.

The banquet, for it had many a more pretentious one faded for its lavishness, took place at Dennis DeHaven's restaurant on Broadway, where a number of the dinners have been given in the last several years. From fried oysters to pie, cake, and ice cream and fruit, with a lot of other things sandwiched in during the evening, the cuisine of the house shone with great brilliancy, and the appetites of the guests were satiated by the time they accomplished the eating of the dinner. Besides Thomas H. Ruutherford, there were present Stephen R. Rutherford, who has charge of all the newspapers, and George H. Shupe of The Independent and A. L. Porter of The Courier.

After the dinner was over, J.A. Chadderton and James Tarr of the Ping Pong Gallery in the Reid block brought their flashlight machine in a "caught" a picture of the dining party.

Niagara and Back, 1966

by Brett Rutherford

Four days off

for holiday,

instead of turkey

and stuffing, my friend

and I decided to hitch-hike

Walt Whitman’s open road.

To where? To nowhere

or anywhere! Let’s see

how far we can go.

Five miles short
of Erie a sailor,
on leave and adrift
on his own adventure,

picked us up.

Where to? he asked.
Where are you going?
we ask. Niagara Falls,

he said, and all the way

into Canada.

Wide-eyed, we said
in unison, Then we

are going to the Falls.

We all laughed.

He never talked
about his ship or where
it took him, whether
to Vietnam or some

safe coast patrol.

You didn’t ask

soldiers why or what
they might have seen

unless they wanted

to tell someone
and said so.

Arriving at the Falls

and its noisy grandeur

we thanked our driver
and parted ways. We made
our way along the banks

above the Falls,

defied the signs and scoured

the rocky river shore
for rocks. My friend
was a geology major
and knew what does
and doesn’t belong.
I found a hollowed-out
rock almost too much
to carry about. He said
it was an Indian wheat-stone.
Into my bag it went.

Oblivious to borders
and needing no papers
we crossed to Canada.
We sampled such food
as nearly indigent

students could afford,
then reveled in sunset
and the rainbow-lit

Falls, immense
and grander by far
from foreign vantage.

Taking a cue
from a “rooms for rent”
sign, we found a room,
a tiny attic garret

that cost as much
as what our two wallets
contained, sparing enough
for one tiny breakfast.

You’ll have to share
the one small bed,
the landlady said.

It’s the last room.
She winked at me.

In minutes we were in the dark
and under one tiny blanket.
My friend said,
If you touch me, I’ll kill you.

So much for Walt Whitman.

Next morning we found
the cheapest diner
and spent our last coins
on bacon and eggs.

Hearing our talk,

the man next to us turned.

It was the sailor again.

Things didn’t work out,
he said. I’m heading back.
Are you guys staying or …

The unsaid was said
in that moment’s pause.
Had he planned to desert
and changed his mind?
Were we across the border
to dodge the draft?

We’re going back, I said.

I’ll take you back, then,
he offered. I kind of need
the company, you know.

At the border he showed
his military ID.
We two were asked
where we were born
and where we had been
on the Canadian side.

We went right through.
The sailor moved something
from under his seat
into the glove compartment.
Not to worry, he said.

It’s not loaded.

It was a slow trip

southward. We stopped

at Buffalo. He bought
us a welcome lunch.

Then, long after dark
he left us along
a local road somewhere
north of Meadville.

Fourteen miles
to walk
in the November night!

The withered corn

leaned dead

into the frosty air.

Yellow lights beamed

from sheltered farms
across the stippled fields.

No cars came. Not one.

We heard no sound

save that of cows

stalking the brush

beside us,

they walked,

but kept their silence.
Not one of them
had ever gone astray.

At last, in despair,
we found a sheltered spot
behind a hay-pile
and curled up to rest.
My best friend
nestled behind me for warmth.

I gazed at the unsleeping stars.
You touch me, my friend said,

and I kill you.

Good night, I answered.

Fifty, a hundred,
miles away, the sailor
pulled over on a dark road.

He reached for the gun.
Things didn’t work out.

Note: the U.S. drafted 382,010 men into military service in 1966, the highest total during the Vietnam War

Imaginary Playmate

by Brett Rutherford

It was my secret place
away from bath-time and spanking,
away from Grandfather’s grizzled hugs,
from the cries of the baby brother,
away from heat and brambles,
blackberry barb and poison ivy —
a cool-air haven
where the acrid fumes
of coke-oven smoke
never intruded:
the “spring-house,”
a covered well, actually,
a cobwebbed shed
of cool-sweated pump and pipes.

Here I could sit
behind its plank door,
imagining another door,
flat on the concrete,
that opened downward
to a treasure cave,
a city of runaways,
a subterranean launch-pad
for moon rockets.

One day a man was there,
crouching inside
beneath a straw hat,
a shoulder pack,
more frightened of me,
it seemed, than I of him.

I sat beside him
on the cold stone lip
of the gurgling well.
His whispered words
were barely louder
than the distant coal trucks,
the chirring cicadas.
His name was Eric, 

a young man, yet
bigger than my father.
He asked about my mother,
my teacher, the friends
I would see again
in second grade in the fall.
“Too bad your mother is married,”
he said. “She’s pretty.
I watched her from the road.”

Two weeks he hid there,
sleeping all morning.
I brought him cookies.
He taught me games.
Once, I touched
the soft blond beard
that glazed his cheekbones.
I could tell him anything.

Soap opera organ
rose to a frenzy
on the oval-windowed
new television
as someone yelled:
“Kidnapped!
Our son has been kidnapped!”

What’s kidnap? I ask my mother.
She, ironing, from the other room:
That’s when they steal a child
and then ask for money.

I thought it might be fun
to be kidnapped.
I might even get to keep
some of the money.

Just watch out for strange cars,
my mother warned.

One day I mentioned Eric
at the dinner table.
“That’s all he talks about,”
my mother explained.
“That’s his friend,
his imaginary playmate.”
My father grew angry.
They shouted
as I read comics in my bedroom.

One day, my father took me
to a roadside tavern.
He sat in the back
with his band leader,
played an illegal
slot machine.
They worked on “Stardust”
together, his clarinet
and Tony’s trumpet.

A strange man came in,
saw me alone,
gave me a nickel
to buy potato chips.

As my father returned,
I asked my new friend,
“Can I have another nickel?”
My father exploded,
shouted at the stranger:
“No one gives my kid money!”

The stranger left hurriedly.

Why did he go? Strangers seemed

kinder to me than parents.
I thought about kidnapped children,
sweets and sodas everywhere,
fresh bread from the oven,
mountains of comic books,

a long wait for the ransom,
maybe never.

At home, the spring-house was locked.
My mother doled out dinner:
government surplus beef
and slices of cheese
off a long square loaf.
Some nights we ate bread
and gravy and radishes.

I stayed indoors all summer.
Sometimes at night
I thought I saw someone
cross from the poplars,
to the spring-house, then back again,
a lanky form darting
from shadow to shadow.

I sleepwalked many nights,
awaking against the locked
front door. On other nights
I dreamt my own door
at the back of the closet.
I opened it, to another door,
and yet another, until sleep
vacuumed me to darkness.

I never mentioned Eric again.

Years later I heard
of the men who slept
in the nearby foothills,
setting up camp
in the abandoned ovens —
draft dodgers avoiding
the Korean War call-up.

Years after that I suddenly
remembered him again —
his soft tenor voice in the shadow,
the friend to whom I said,

“Would you kidnap me someday?
I’ll never tell . . . I promise.”

The Old Brick House at Carpentertown

by Brett Rutherford

Only a few memories define it
now that it is gone, gone
to the last brick, a place
where two roads meet
in a bramble of scrub trees
and blackberries wild:

Never turn on the lights
in the dining room:
if you flick the switch
you smell smoke
and hear a crackling sound
somewhere behind
the peeling wallpaper.

Never go down those steps
to the cellar. The rats
are there, and they own it.

Tap water is only
for taking a bath.
It is not safe to drink;
the well is poisoned
by the slow seep
of wet ash-piles
from the glowing coke-ovens.

Never go up
to the slanted attic whose one
sole window throws light
one hour a day
on the head and shoulders
of a nameless Greek.

Do not eat the dog's
worm medicine,
even if it looks like
M&Ms.

Never tell anyone
you have learned to levitate
and do not need to touch
foot to stair-tread
coming down from your bedroom.

Never tell anyone
ever again
about your imaginary
playmate. Just lie
and say you were alone.
Both voices were yours.
Smile mysteriously.

When, late at night,
you press your face
to a window pane
and an escaped blank panther,
paws on the window-sill,
regards you eye-to-eye,
tell no one.

When a great storm
comes, run to the porch
to feel the rain-lash
against your face.
Welcome the lightning.
Imagine yourself as one
of the Lombardy poplars
aching for a thunderbolt.

Carry its many rooms
inside you forever,
haunter of your own
haunted house.