Jack and Jill

©1986, 2003 Andrew Calhoun, recorded on Walk Me to the War and Phoenix Envy

I wrote this first verse in Mrs. Pond's senior English class at Glenbard West High School in 1975. She was a terrific teacher. The supernatural aspect of the song - the attempted seduction by a trespassing form in nature - is based on a vision my father had. It was Kali, attempting to seduce him by impersonating my mother, but her muscles didn't look quite right, and he took a stick and hit her; as she fell into the pit, he saw that her hips were ringed with snakes. There was much more to the vision, but that is the part I was struck by, so to speak, and used in the song.

It took me ten years to get a performable version - I've rewritten this 25 or 30 times, I think it is close to right at last. After a year of translating Scottish ballads, and changing them anytime something confused someone, I went back in to try to clarify the story - Jill's intention and such. And cut out a section, that was the main thing. And I saw a grasshopper on a cornstalk in Council Bluffs, Iowa, too many syllables but the dictionary says a grasshopper is a locust, and the connotation of plague was a coincidence with Jack's illness.

This is, simply, about two people who wouldn't have made it without each other. Jill knows she has to fight an invading spirit that is killing Jack, is where it starts.

Time stood still, when Jack took ill
Big flies died on the windowsill
Across the pond, the wind blew chill
And Jill ate candy in the kitchen
Curtains ruffled over chocolate lead
Cool wind blew dust over Jack's forehead
Oak claws scraped the house and a blackbird fled
From the bright, cold touch of the morning

Jill heard the bed creak through the ceiling as she walked in her socks
Across the floor to the door of the round icebox
And she tried to assemble the afternoon's blocks
And looked at the light on the meadow
Near the roof, Jack rolled over to escape the heat
And wrapped his blanket tight around cold feet
The kitchen floor gave out a creak
As he stared at the light in the window

Jill walked outside with a fight on her hands
Past the marigolds and the garbage cans
She was out past the garden when the screendoor slammed
Gathering strength from the ground
Jack, amazed as the day he was born
Saw light sit in the hills like locusts on corn
He didn't know what it meant when he heard the screendoor
But he fell into sleep at the sound

Down through the pasture and into the trees
Jill plunged through thorns that clutched her knees
To a pathway covered in fog and leaves
Where the red berries fade into shadow
And the wood grew strange, though she knew every place
Every nook where the busy spiders chase
No friend nor foe would show a face
On either hill or hollow

Jill took a stick to guide her when night began to stir
And she felt the horizon close in with a blur
A blackbird flapped, and it startled her
To think of a life in the air
Then earth gave way before her feet
She gazed into a moonless deep
One owl flew, while the world went to sleep
Jill stood like iron, and brushed away her hair

A marvelous man appeared in the pit
Like Jack made perfect, bit by bit
His mouth drew open, a trembling slit
As he looked her through and over
And he spoke to her, he rattled her name
And he gnawed at her dreams and her eyes as he came
And she was a puppet, open to flame,
"and so you're mine, sweet lover."

She cried, "you lie," but he took her by the shins
And she cried, "God help me," but he pulled her farther in
Then she swung her stick, and struck the thing
And froze stiff in its hold
Owl at the window, fever swoon
Jack saw Jill freezing into stone
His blood swam warm, as he rolled to face the moon
He dreamed he held her in the cold
And he held her in the cold

Jill climbed out of nowhere into simple night
Ivory skin shriveled up and tumbled out of sight
There's only a stick in the new moonlight
Fresh dirt in the heart of a clearing
Jack dreams of one he'll love forever
Coming through the pines like a constant river
With a worn out mind, and a broken fever
He's wrung like a dishrag, sleeping

Jill staggered upstairs and lay down in bed
With scars on her arms and peace in her head
Drifting into sleep when a thin voice said,
"Where have you been all night?"
In the new-born light, where Jack woke up
Frightened stiff as a toad in a cup
Jill looked to the stars, though her eyes were shut
She said, "It's all right, love, it's all right.
It's all right love, it's all right."